Engineering Calculation for Ready to Go Technology

This post continues a series of articles that present an optimistic playbook to combat the consequences of climate change being experienced by the world today.

Needed Engineering Analysis and Calculation

 

  Saul Griffith, inventor, entrepreneur, and engineer is the founder of Rewiring America, a nonprofit dedicated to decarbonizing America by electrifying everything. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship “Genius Grant'' in 2007. He offers an optimistic plan to address climate change.

Engineering the Decarbonized Energy World

 

Some of the benefits of an engineering analysis of the climate crisis, like that offered by Saul Griffin in his 2021 book, Electrify: An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future, include experience differentiating efficiency benefits and transformation benefits using calculations of energy use.

It’s not the 1970’s anymore and we are not facing a 70’s energy problem that can be solved with efficiency. We need transformation.

70’s thinking focuses on lots of small decisions and distracts us from the big picture.

70’s thinking muddles thermodynamic efficiency with energy saved through behavior change.

70’s thinking leads to a narrative of deprivation.

70’s thinking is about doing less bad, not about doing more good and building good into the way we do everything (Griffith, 2021, p47)

 Comparisons of electrical transportation and heating/cooling systems to existing fossil fuel technologies require engineering quality efficiency calculations.

In an electric car, we take electricity, store it in a battery, (approx 90% efficient), and then pass it through a drivetrain (approx 80% efficient).

Total efficiency = 1x0.9x0.8=0.72

We get 0.72 units of transportation for one unit of electricity.

If we use the same electricity to make hydrogen (via electrolysis, approx 65% efficient), then compress it into a tank and decompress it back out, (approx 75% efficient), then run it through a fuel cell (approx 50% efficient), 

Total efficiency = 1x0.65x0.75x0.5=0.24

We get only 0.24 units of transportation for the same one unit of electricity (Griffith, 2021, p52)

 Proposals to supply fossil fuel free energy and use innovative technology to capture and sequester carbon dioxide need to be assessed with the engineering calculation of EROI, Energy Returned on Energy Invested.

One unit of fossil fuel in gets you 7 or 8 units back… Estimates vary but wind and solar provide approximately twice the EROI of fossil fuel power plants. As manufacturers reduce the energy input of producing wind and solar technology, and as engineers extend the useful lifetime of this green machinery, the advantage will only improve. (Griffith, 2021, p59) 

Griffin estimates that when we add up all the energy savings of electrification we will find that we only need approximately 42% of the primary energy we use today.

Winning the war against the climate crisis will also mean a cleaner, more positive future. Our homes will be more comfortable when we shift to heat pumps and radiant heating systems that can also store energy. While it may be desirable to downsize our homes and cars, this isn’t absolutely necessary, at least in the US. Our cars can be sportier when they are electric. Household air quality will improve, as will public health, since gas stoves raise the risk of asthma and respiratory illnesses. We don’t need to switch to mass rail and public transit, nor mandate changing the settings on consumers' thermostats, nor ask all red-meat loving Americans to turn vegetarian… And if we successfully employ biofuels, we don’t have to ban flying. (Griffith, 2021, p61)

The engineering analysis of “Is it ready to go to scale today?” is crucial to avoid using resources on solutions that will come too late.

There will be trade-offs. More nuclear means fewer batteries but more public resistance and, most likely, higher costs. More solar and wind means more land use. What we cannot afford are plans that make no progress because we are wasting time arguing over these issues before we begin, or because we are over-investing in technologies that can’t scale up sufficiently. The real test, given the urgency of our climate situation, should be, “Is it ready to go to scale today?” We need to act now. (Griffith, 2021, p73)

Time to project completion is a key engineering parameter that must be considered in this decade for action to mitigate the worst impacts of climate emergency. 

References

Griffith, S. (2021). Electrify: An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future. MIT Press.

Overturning Roe isn't the answer

Madison Chastain comes from a place of intense nuance that she believes undergirds a truly consistent life ethic.

Agenda for Change

 

She does not think criminalizing abortions will stop them, because having access to abortions isn't what causes them.

Things that cause abortions: lack of comprehensive sex education, inaccessible health care, violence against women, religious shame and exclusion, familial rejection or coercion, and workplace inequalities including but not limited to barriers for advancement, disparities in pay and lack of paid parental leave or child care. (Chastain, 2022)

She comments that making abortion illegal before addressing these injustices is going to kill women, because women will continue to have abortions, secretively and unsafely.

References

Chastain, M. (2022, May 6). I'm an anti-abortion disability advocate. Overturning Roe isn't the answer. National Catholic Reporter. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/im-anti-abortion-disability-advocate-overturning-roe-isnt-answer

Consistent Life Ethic, Nuance, and Mercy

An article by John Gehring, Catholic program director at Faith in Public Life and author of The Francis Effect: A Radical Pope's Challenge to the American Catholic Church, caught my eye recently as I pondered the problems, moral, political, and social that surround attempts to overturn Roe vs Wade in the Supreme Court of the United States. (SCOTUS).

 

Gehring quotes professors of theology and bioethics and a "pro-life ethicist," to present the point of view that Catholic moral tradition is more nuanced than anti-abortion slogans or extreme bills. M.T. Dávila, a visiting associate professor of practice at Merrimack College and a past president of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States, argues that something fundamental is often lost in Catholic discussions of abortion.

"Human dignity in Catholic social teaching often seems not to include respect for the autonomy and personhood of women," she said. "We have failed to build in the Catholic and pro-life tradition a robust understanding of the personhood of women. It's a failure of thought and imagination."... 'You can be pro-life and also highlight the way these measures are very clearly anti-woman.'... Dávila finds it telling that none of the most restrictive anti-abortion legislation includes social supports for women and children such as child care funding or prenatal and postnatal health care. (Gehring, 2022)

In the past few years I have curated articles in my Ponder Patterns blog that present opinions on the treatment of abortion in the context of a consistent ethic of life. The individual articles are listed below.

Discerning Benefits for all in Culture Wars

Some Common Ground for the Common Good

Abstract of Legal safe and rare

Legal safe and rare

Cooperation and Culture Wars

The gradualism of Pope Francis applied with the virtue of mercy is a process to encourage communication and co-operation to address the needs of women. Working together is a worthy goal that is made very difficult in the politically energized “culture war” that diverts our attention and efforts from supporting women in need now.

References

Gehring, J. (2022, March 31). Catholic moral tradition more nuanced than anti-abortion slogans or extreme bills. National Catholic Reporter. Retrieved May 3, 2022, from https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/catholic-moral-tradition-more-nuanced-anti-abortion-slogans-or-extreme-bills 

Electrify Now

This post begins a series of articles that present an optimistic playbook to combat the consequences of climate change being experienced by the world today.

A Playbook for Decarbonization

 

  Saul Griffith, inventor, entrepreneur, and engineer is the founder of Rewiring America, a nonprofit dedicated to decarbonizing America by electrifying everything. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship “Genius Grant'' in 2007. He offers an optimistic plan to address climate change. 

Saul Griffith, an engineer and inventor, calls for grid neutrality, ensuring that households, businesses, and utilities operate as equals; we will have to rewrite regulations that were created for a fossil-fueled world, mobilize industry as we did in World War II, and offer low interest “climate loans.” Griffith’s plan doesn’t rely on big, not yet invented innovations, but on thousands of little inventions and cost reductions. We can still have our cars and our houses - but the cars will be electric and solar panels will cover our roofs. For a world trying to bounce back from a pandemic and economic crisis, there is no other project that would create as many jobs - up to 25 million, according to one economic analysis. Is this politically possible? We can change politics along with everything else. (Griffith #)

The cost of electrifying everything will be large but it will be less than the cost of mitigation of the effects of increasing temperature of the planet. A game plan that is based in science, engineering, and entrepreneurship connects with the disciplines that have improved life on the planet in modern history.

Work Cited

Griffith, Saul. Electrify: An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future. MIT Press, 2021.