L'Energie en 2050 (Energy in 2050)

Jacques Richardson (Member of foresight's editorial advisory board.)

Foresight

ISSN: 1463-6689

Article publication date: 1 July 2006

113

Keywords

Citation

Richardson, J. (2006), "L'Energie en 2050 (Energy in 2050)", Foresight, Vol. 8 No. 4, pp. 62-63. https://doi.org/10.1108/14636680610682058

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2006, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Books on managing the future of the globe's energy resources abound, and most of them tell the same story. Reduce reliance on fossil fuels, rationalize their consumption; be wise instead of profligate as to how we exploit natural gas in particular; learn to depend on alternative energies. These ideas pervade our traditional views, furthermore, of how to produce and consume the readily available – for now – energy resources, but how few are listening?

What author Wiesenfeld succeeds in accomplishing in this pragmatic volume is to offer an almost surgically accurate analysis of energy's different forms, how they are made available industrially to consumers (whether corporate, community or private), their degrees of renewability when this applies, and the socio‐economic problems pertinent to each. He interjects in appropriate spots the limiting characteristics concerning exploitation. In the last respect, for example, the author describes geothermal heat as deriving “mainly from the radioactivity coming from rocks in the mantle and the terrestrial crust. The radioactive elements responsible for this are uranium, thorium and potassium” (p. 127).

For those who believe that hydrogen holds the key to energy's future, here's Wiesenfeld on H2:

The density of hydrogen is 90 g/m3 at 0°C. and pressure of the atmosphere. Its energy potential being 2.6 times higher than that of petrol, we find that 1 litre of petrol has the energy equivalent of 4 m3 of hydrogen …

This means, in effect, that in order to assure 600 km of distance run “one would need a petrol tank of 60 m3 (a cube measuring a little less than 4 m on a side) of gaseous hydrogen”. To transport all that gas, compression would have to be at 1,000 bars, which is roughly four times what industry can handle at present (p. 147). Author Wiesenfeld is suggesting that we need to accomplish minor miracles in adapting future technology to the first law of thermodynamics.

The author, who holds the DSc and operates an energy consultancy in France specializing in energy foresight, has divided his book into three main rubrics: energy and human activity, energy and sustainable development, and conclusion. In the first he agrees with more authorities on the waste accruing from the operation of reactors from nuclear: warehouse the stuff “in geological sites consisting of clay or granite”. As for the second, ensuring environmental sustainability, Wiesenfeld lays much stress on the need to change our thinking and create reliable reserves of energy and projects coherent needs for Europe, the US, and Asia.

In his concluding sections, the author projects concise energy descriptions of the world in 2050 especially in terms of electricity needed and producible, and three calculable outcomes in 2050 if we do not revise drastically our energy budgets. These are:

  1. 1.

    We shall be lighting with candlelight if we do not opt today for the right investments to meet our needs in electricity.

  2. 2.

    The bicycle will be our means of locomotion if we fail to prepare immediately for the post‐petroleum era

  3. 3.

    We are heading for climatic disaster without drastic reductions in the production of greenhouse gases (p. 220).

Failing to implement all three of Wiesenfeld's recommendations, he comforts himself that humankind's instinct for self‐preservation will tide it over till nature turns cold again … when the next ice age begins. Literally cold comfort.

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