The two major crises [ie. other than the economy] ailing the world today are the food crisis and the energy crisis. There is a serious shortage of food among the producers/exporting countries and as usual there is and will always be a shortage of energy. I am not touching topic of the volatile present day economics. In this article I want to talk about the ever increasing energy needs and the ways we can conserve energy, or even better, find alternate sources.
We are incessantly depending on energy to fuel our basic needs in our day-to-day lives. The majority of the energy demand is for either electricity or fossil fuels. Let me show some fancy stats to reiterate my point. The global electricity consumption in 2005 was 16,830,000,000 MWHr approximately. And the present day oil reserves are to be present only for the next 40 years before they go dry. Mind you, this situation is going to be very much in our lifetimes. [Hopefully..! assuming the mortality rate doesn't increase all of a sudden!]
One thing is for sure, the consumption is only bound to increase by the day. So what can be done about this?
1. We can conserve whatever little is left and prolong the period of the fossil fuels running out/avoid wastage of electricity or
2. Find alternate sources.
There are basically 3 different conventional sources of electricity -
1. Hydro-electric power: as we all know, this is generated by water injected at high pressure that drives turbines which are coupled to generators. The high pressure is achieved by storing water in dams/reservoirs. This is the most popular means of power generation. There are many hydro projects that are very successful, Itaipu dam, that's located between Brazil and Paraguay is a good e.g,.
2. Thermal power: this is generated by burning coal. I just can't digest this fact. The heat energy thus produced is used to heat water, thereby producing steam to drive turbines. Thermal power stations are becoming unpopular as the wastage is pretty high.
3. Nuclear power: the concept is similar to thermal power except that nuclear fuel is used to heat water instead of coal. Nuclear power is supposedly 'clean fuel'. Lots of precautions have to be taken to ensure there is no leakage of radiation. [remember Chernobyl?]
There's the 'Why' and 'What'. Now let's go to the 'how'...
Energy Conservation-
1. Charity begins at home they say. Aptly said. Firstly, we must put off all equipments when not in use. [at home or work]. A monitor or TV on standby mode uses 50% of its rated power.. its not just about your electricity bills, its about how much energy all of us can save together. The amount of electricity wasted by one of us in a week or so maybe enough to power someone's house for at least a day. And that shouldn't be denied. Because, it all comes at a price.
2. Energy efficient equipments should be used; Lighting at homes, or high power equipments in industries.
3. Buildings should be built keeping energy conservation in mind. That is minimizing the use of artificial lighting and air conditioners; and incorporating rain water harvesting etc.
4. And lastly, urban farming can also be adopted. This is a technology newly followed in Japan [ I don't know much about this] using this, the environment where the farm is situated can be kept cool, thus minimizing the usage of electricity.
The above mentioned 3 sources of energy are not renewable. So there is a dire need to find alternate sources. There are already popular methods -
1. Solar energy: there should be many more solar fields set up like the one in Spain. Here arrays of mirrors are aligned with the sun to reflect and concentrate sunlight on to the top of a tower. There is a differential gradient and the mirrors align with the sun throughout the day. There are a set of pipes that circulate water in and out of the point of concentration. Thus the heated water is converted to steam and used to produce electricity. A very small land area is used to set up these arrays of mirrors. The investment is one time and the returns are high. The electricity thus generated is enough to power an entire city..! For more info on this please watch 'planet mechanics-solar paella' or 'megastructures-man made sun' episodes. This is ideal for tropical countries which receive ample sunlight that can be tapped.
2. Wind energy: there is a lot of scope for wind turbines to be set up in many countries. Denmark satisfies 33% of its energy need from wind sources. This is the largest in the world. An international commission can be set up to identify specific areas where this can be incorporated. The installation and operation can be given on a contract basis or outsourced.
3. Tidal and geothermal energy are yet to be tapped commercially and need a lot of technical development.
Other than these, more and more companies should be given carbon credits, so that they are encouraged to reduce pollution
The present day supplies from the existing oil sources shall last only for 40 more years. At this rate, and the present dependence by us on the vehicles that use them, there is a dire need to get to the alternate sources. The current petrol and diesel engines operate at a maximum of 35% efficiency. This technology has attained a saturation and very little can be done about the Internal combustion engines. In this scenario, the best we can do, at the ground reality to conserve fuel are-
1. Car pooling - many a time, I have seen single people travelling in huge cars like Innova, Civic etc. What a colossal waste of precious fuel..! People going to the same workplace from nearby localities can take turns and drive their vehicles to work. Or companies themselves can run cab-like systems even for people at the higher managerial cadre.
Today there are many technological parks which house many IT and Finance companies. Instead of having separate Cabs for every company in the same complex, the total transportation can be outsourced to an agency. Now, consider a hypothetical situation for example, say at ITPL: Infy, Wipro, Siemens, Oracle and GE have set up offices. All the transportation concerning the employees of all these companies can be given to a single agency. That way, you're not having separate vehicles, and saving a lot on fuel. I see some buses with "Global Village Technology Park" on them, good if they are actually doing this..!
2. Public transport - this topic was largely discussed in my previous posts' comments. Any city can keep its commuters happy only it has an efficient and affordable transport system. From my experience, I can say that an ideal scenario would be buses with high frequency like in Chennai, the quality of the buses being like those in Bangalore, and the autos with fares like in Bangalore. This is obviously an ideal scenario, but transport organizations can work towards this. The BMTC in Bangalore is doing fairly a good job with its services, and is THE largest profit making transport org in India. The much hyped metro rail can ease the load off the buses to a great extent. But I sincerely feel it can be much more successful if intra-city train networks are built underground. So much of space is saved above the ground, that can be used for widening or for construction of flyovers. And talking of flyovers, many of the flyovers today are broad enough to barely give the space they take on ground..! So what's the point.??! We need better planning. The transport and civil organizations must work in tandem to achieve this. The constructions are outsourced to private companies, which is a good move, as pvt orgs will be result and deadline oriented.
3. Control of vehicle inflow -
On one side, there is Nano [Tata], which is a path-breaking innovation, on the other there are big luxury cars which many people lust after. Let me take the former first. True, the technology and its pricing are revolutionary. No one actually thought that a car can be sold at 1 lakh Rupees, and Tata has made it possible. The common man's car is almost here. Tata and the likes can make fantastic business. Everyone has a car. Everyone is happy. Great! But think of the consequences. There can be two- three Nanos in a single house. This means each person in the family can have a car at his disposal. The car per family ratio will go up from 1 to 2 or even 3..! this is not a good sign considering the current choking scenario on the roads. For people in Bangalore, do you think it is possible to go shopping/roaming peacefully, on a bike to Avenue road or SP road? [leave alone a Nano or a Maruthi 800!] so think of the time spent travelling if the vehicle inflow becomes thrice..
Instead, Tata and the likes can take contracts from individual city transport corporations, and can manufacture large capacity cars/vans that can seat atleast 5-6 people, and price it at a competitive price [say 3-4 lakhs per vehicle] That way, there is an alternate means for transport other than the usual buses, autos or even the metro. This can be a comfortable means to some extent and with higher frequency than the buses. The maintenance of these vehicles can be outsourced. And the smooth running can be made possible by having a centralized control unit for the city. A GPS system can be integrated with the mobile service providers that can intimate the passengers when the next vehicle will be coming to their stop. This last measure may increase the overall cost of this operation, but that can be looked into. Monthly/annual passes can be issued to regular commuters [derived from the bus model]
Now, regarding the latter case, the luxury cars [petrol/diesel], people can still buy them, but they cant be driven in cities..for practical reasons which both you and me know. They can be kept purely for the driving comfort and experience of long drives. This is for the driving enthusiasts.
4. In the future, there can be "super-colonies". That is, a huge land area can be taken by the builders to develop industry on one side, and residential and commercial facilities separately on the other side. The feasibility of the industry should be looked into obviously. I remember seeing in one of the episodes of "extreme engineering" where a 100 floor residential cum commercial locality was proposed for the future. The programme showed all the practicalities and the means to combat accidents/natural disasters and terror attacks. Such a complex is THE thing of the future.
Now for the alternates part
1. Hybrid cars - cars are nowadays made with engines that switch between battery supply and petrol. This way, the mileage attained is atleast 3-4 times higher. The batteries that these run on are environment friendly [non-lead acid batteries].
Recently the Honda Civic Hybrid with Integrated Motor Assist was introduced in India. Its price? A whopping 22 lakh! but the base price is about 12-13 lakh. This near 100% import duty must be waived off for hybrid cars. Or even better, a concession must be given to such cars. Hybrids have a tremendous potential in the future market, say ten years hence. These can be used for the pleasurable long drive an enthusiast may need.
2. Biofuels - these are derived from decayed organic matter, currently used for powering homes or cooking. Engineering stalwarts like BMW, Honda can do some R&D in this field to tap this for automobiles.
3. Other technologies like solar cars, hydrogen fuel, or the water fuel cell cars have a long way to go before they can be tapped for daily consumption.
To sum up, the faster we find alternates, the better for us. We need to keep in mind that on one fine morning, there is not going to be a drop of petrol left...! the best we can do is to delay that day as far as possible... and all of us have to put in concerted efforts in that direction..
