A Visual Story of Energy

Introduction

On September 15, 1830, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first railway to rely exclusively on the steam engine, was opened to the public. Steam locomotives powered by coal hauled passengers, including the then Prime Minister, across the 56km of track between the Port of Liverpool and Manchester. A little more than half a century later, on January 12, 1882, the Edison Electric Light Station, the world's first coal-fired power station, began generating electricity in London. The plant illuminated 968 incandescent street lamps along a 1 km stretch between Holborn Circus (not actually a circus) and St. Martin's Le Grand (a former parish).

Nearly two centuries after the opening of L&M, on December 12, 2015, in a well-lit exhibition complex in Le Bourget, Paris, a consensus was reached at the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) on a global agreement to reduce climate change, conventionally called the Paris Agreement. The Agreement, which went into effect almost a year later, aims to keep the global temperature rise this century well below 2°C by, among other ways, reducing global greenhouse emissions, like the ones released when burning coal.

Between these events, the world of energy transformed like no time period has ever seen. Electricity went from being the subject of intriguing scientific experiments to an essential part of civilization. Soon after the first coal-fired power station in London, electricity began being generated by larger and more complex machines, using an ever-growing list of energy sources. Around the world, coal power-stations, oil refineries, and nuclear power-plants sprung up near cities and towns and oil drills littered the ocean surface.

Transportation transformed entirely too. A mere twenty years after the inaugural L&M train ride, Britain had managed to lay over 10,0000 km of railway tracks; a hundred years after, gasoline-guzzling automobiles replaced grass-munching horses as the primary form of personal transportation. Ships went from large to gargantuan, and planes went from gliding one individual 120 feet in North Carolina to transporting, on average, 8 million people a day across six continents.

Evidently, the billowing smoke from the burning of all these fossil fuels was overlooked and its effects on our environment underestimated. Global warming is now the defining crisis of our time, and an incredibly difficult problem to mitigate even under the best conditions. Ignoring the political and legal hurdles of implementing the Agreement, the move towards utilizing renewable energy sources has been slow for two main reasons: cost, which we will get to later in the visual essay, and our voracious and ever-growing appetite for — and dependence on — energy, which we will dive into now…

Of course, this period that saw both the Industrial and the Digital Revolution was also the period where the human population "exploded". It took from the beginning of human history till the early 19^th century for the population to reach 1 billion, another 120 years to reach 2 billion, and not even a century since then to reach the 7.6 billion we are today. So, it's probably fair that we factor population into the plot…

It's no surprise that developed countries tend to consume more energy per capita. After all, the widespread infrastructure that are the hallmarks of a developed nation, like expansive electricity-grids, comprehensive public transit and road networks, and technological prowess, are quite energy-intensive to create and maintain. And, of course, developing countries are actively pursuing the expansion of said infrastructure, which will mean a likely continuation in the rising–energy–consumption–per–capita trend.

So, it really comes down to the fuels used. Today, the world utilizes a variety of energy sources: heat from the earth, radiation from the Sun, the burning of fossil fuels, and the splitting of uranium atoms, just to name a few. A country might adopt a range of fuels to meet their energy needs; its location, politics, and technology playing important roles in which ones it chooses. Qatar and Iceland both consume an enormous amount of energy, but Iceland's electricity is generated completely by renewable sources (geothermal, mostly), whereas Qatar's is generated using natural gas.

Iceland is the exception, however, and most countries in the world use fossil fuels to power themselves. To get an idea of how challenging it will be to make the complete shift to renewables, let's take a look at the fuel breakdown of The United States, the second-largest primary energy consumer in the world:

And remember, the United States is not even the largest consumer of energy. That spot is taken by China, with 35,506 TWh (25% more than the U.S.), of which 88% is produced from fossil fuels. Along with third-place India, which consumes 8,419 TWh (74% fossil fuels), the three countries make up roughly 45% of the world’s energy consumption.

Combining the other 190 members of the United Nations, about 81% of the world’s energy consumption comes from fossil fuels (as of 2014). Clearly, there’s a large mountain to climb for renewable energy to be able to meet current and future energy demand, and subsequently, accomplish the goals of The Paris Agreement. But, there’s good news…

The Green That Saves the Green

The shift to renewable energy is inevitable; non-renewable fuels are, by definition, finite, and eventually going to run out. The purpose of The Agreement, as well as countless companies, organizations, legislation, and policies, is to accelerate that inevitability so that the costs to society are lessened.

Historically, the argument against renewables has been economic: the cost of solar photovoltaics was much higher than that of coal or natural gas. That’s not the case anymore. The levelized cost of wind and solar – the estimated cost of building and operating a plant over its lifetime – has fallen significantly over the last few decades, and in certain regions, is competitive with coal and other fossil fuels. As of 2017, the levelized cost for various energy-generating technologies looks like this:

While cost ranges for utility-scale solar and wind are both lower or within the range of coal and natural gas, it’s important to acknowledge that their costs are dependent on region: sunnier and windier places will invariably have lower levelized costs. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, solar already rivals coal in cost in Australia, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the U.S., and is expected to rival coal in China and India by 2021. And prices are expected to continue falling; they estimate that by 2040, prices will fall 66% for solar, 47% for onshore wind, and 71% for offshore wind.

Surely, the falling prices points to renewable energy being adopted more quickly. In any case, the plummeting prices have made investors quite optimistic:

Between 2005 and 2015, investment in renewable energy went from $73 billion to $286 billion, an increase of 392 percent. Leading this flood of capital is China, who has gone from just over $8 billion to $103 billion during the same period. That’s almost the same as the United States, Europe, and India combined. The BNEF report predicts that, between now and 2040, $10.2 trillion will be invested into power generation, of which 72% will be in renewables.

In mid-2017, the International Energy Agency said that the amount of renewable capacity commissioned almost matched that of coal and natural gas. The encouraging news doesn’t end there – in 2016, global coal consumption declined by 1.7% (compared to the previous year), and coal production fell by 6.2%. The U.K., U.S., and China, saw declines in coal consumption of 52.5%, 8.8%, and 1.6% respectively.

The Road to 2°C

Falling costs and rising investments have made renewable power generation a more desirable option, but there are challenges ahead. The intermittency of solar and wind – (the sun isn’t always shining and the wind always blowing) – mean that new infrastructure is required to accommodate renewable technology. The current power infrastructure is designed for fuel to be transported to a central location, and then the electricity distributed outwards. With renewables, the fuel (sunshine, wind, etc.), is dispersed everywhere, and the generators convert it into electricity right there, and then transport it elsewhere. This requires a more inter-connected and more expansive grid system, which requires countless permits and policy changes.

Whether or not the Paris Agreement will be able to achieve its goal of keeping global warming to 2°C is highly contested among scientists. But what it has managed to do, so far, is promote the idea of renewable energy from a global conversation into national policy. It has pushed for research, investment, cooperation, and technological collaboration, and sometimes, a little spark is all that's needed.