RESCUE, part 12: Technological Innovation
This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series with a discussion of alternative energy solutions, battery technology, geothermal energy production, and the adaptation of existing at-sea platforms and rigs to capture energy from the ocean as a less-polluting, renewed, refit utility, taking an old technology and transforming it into a new solution for our energy future.
The most promising alternative energy technologies of today are solar, wind, hydraulic, and ocean dynamic energy, and there are burgeoning examples of these already in development to include floating solar arrays, wind farms, interconnected dam systems, and wave and tidal projects that have generated early investment and production outcomes that clearly demonstrate that they can supplant fossil fuel production and emissions reduction, at equal or more economical cost with value added as an old, destructive energy apparatus is replaced with a new. But it is already clear that success in these areas can only be enhanced by additional innovation in new fuel research, battery storage, grid enhancement, and the re-direction of financial incentives and subsidies to bring the new ideas to fruition at scale. There are an amazing number of start-ups and proposals, all seeking venture funding, some of it, judging from the participants a recent World Ocean Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, sponsored by the Economist Magazine, having found first round capital and presently engaged in bringing their specific innovations to market. But external forces, reflective of an omnipresent subversion, called greed, remain, as we see today, in the banking system and irresponsible corporate behavior.
Battery technology is moving at the speed of imagination, and it seems likely that new and far more efficient and less destructive batteries will be close behind the now conventional, heavy, and expensive lithium and cobalt dependent models, the expansion of which is stalled in controversy over negative land and deep ocean mining conditions and outcomes. There are exciting possibilities: for example, an “iron/air” battery that mixes iron oxide in water in a closed container that releases the oxygen and hydrogen to react and make electricity in a recurring cycle; or a battery based on molten sodium and salt, or battery based on a new material developed for electrodes that enable a solid-state battery, notorious for degradation or failure, to maintain and renew charge indefinitely; or the creation of lignodes — anodes, derived from lignin, a chemical compound that gives strength to wood, that recycled or grown from sustainable forest practices, may substantially reduce the acquisition, manufacture, and environmental cost associated with alternative anode material production. Almost every day, a new idea for better battery development is forthcoming. All good.
I continue to ask about geothermal energy production, in the ocean and on land. The effect of that technology has been successfully demonstrated by the now ubiquitous heat pump, energy derived from the temperature differential in the air or ground, that has become the go-to system for economical, small-scale home heating, still expensive to install, even with subsidies available, and still not yet at scale enough to make much of a dent in our continuing demand for fossil fuels.
Batteries are useless without a viable energy source, and I am compelled to return to geothermal as an energy generation technology comparable to other alternatives. Some successful demonstration projects exist in Nova Scotia and Indonesia. There is the notorious example of Iceland where 66% of the homes are already heated by five power plants using geothermal energy. The ocean, of course, is the greatest heat pump of them all, regardless of warming, still offering a temperature differential to drive the system to create energy for general use, not to mention for desalination plants located adjacent to coastal installations. Think of all those oil well shafts and platforms on land and sea. Might they not be re-drilled, retrofitted, and adapted to this new technology, capturing energy from the temperature differential from core to surface, and through the water column? Rather than leaving these to dereliction, including the communities on which the industry had previously relied, is it possible to re-use those structures and re-fit and renew their utility in a less polluting, more effective and socially rewarding use than abandon? There are coastal power plants, dependent on fossil fuel delivery by ship, that are an existing infrastructure for transformation. How ironic would that be?
To take the old technology and transform it in place, at scale, with a new, to take the old paradigm and reform it with a new, to solve an old problem with a new solution: to provide technology innovation with a new realization of RESCUE:
R FOR Renewal; E for environment; S for society; C for collaboration; U for understanding; and E for engagement.
R for renewal
E for environment
S for society
C for collaboration
U for understanding
E for engagement
PETER NEILL is founder and director of the World Ocean Observatory, a web-based place of exchange for information and educational services about the health of the world ocean. He is also host of World Ocean Radio, upon which this blog is inspired. World Ocean Radio celebrates 15 years this year, with more than 660 episodes produced to date.
