CO2 free electricity in 2010?

My stomach turns when I read these news about the coming of the CO2 free car driving on electricity as announced in Politikken today. Is the electricity produced by the electricity company CO2-free when the car us due to launch in 2010? I think it is a vulgar management trick to claim a car propelled by electricity CO2-free, when only a tiny fraction of the energy provided by power companies produce is just that!

If the electric car is producing the electricity itself (eg. by sun, water or other), the story is different. But when I read Shai Agassis (promoter of the car) blog, his vision for Denmark is that windmills nightly output could, and would, supply the energy to power the cars in Denmark. Now that is visionary! However the article by Poltikken does not mention this.

So, cars driven by electricity - no thank you! Cars driven by continuous and pollutant free energy sources - yes thank you!

Hypocrits or users of an unvisonary system?

Politikken (DK) writes today that Eurobarometer shows 65% of Danes are worried about global warming, but the CO2 production is still rising according to recent data from Energistyrelsen (Danish Energy Authority). A paradox indeed, but the article does not indicate if the increased CO2 is caused by private or industry, and how the CO2 is calculated. So from all we know, we may change our habits, but it could be diluted in the big production line interacting with each other.

I raised this problem in my blog on the conference of Renewable Energy Resources. I see two problems with the CO2 in the mentioned article.
First, why make people responsible for the CO2 production, when you can easily improve the situation with simple political adjustments? People don't stop smoking because it kills them, or buy less exotic wood for the floors and furniture because it wipes out wild life, do they? A recent example is that now all new houses built in Denmark has to be consuming a minimum amount of energy. Good, but it could be much more concrete than that!
Secondly, as I wrote in the blog entry on renewable energy, CO2 can also be a new puff of good intentions. Meaning, switching to renewable energy as "cleaner" energy, also includes firewood that produce CO2. And if you turn off your oil furnace and install a heat pump without changing insulation of the house - you still use electricity - made by power suppliers burning for example coal. But in your mind you have switched to a greener solution. It is as narrow sighted as buying an electrical car and thinking it automatically makes the world greener. There electricity comes from somewhere, and only a fraction from clean sources such as windmills!

Would a vision like all new houses by 2018 has to be self supplying with non-polluting heat and electricity, not be slightly more visionary, and create new jobs and markets? There are many examples of people doing this already on their own (look up the books in Amazon), without goverment support, by their own initiative and brain power. Also in the urban areas.

Denmark is going to host the Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009, but the vision of being a host country with vision and a source for inspiration is doubtful as best these days (not just my words). I do not envy Connie Hedegaard, the Minister of Climate and Energy.

Yesterdays Frontier

August last year I wrote about stopping light in my entry Science Fiction, or the next frontier that Lene Vetergaard stopped light and created a new frontier in what is possible. Today the Danish newspaper Politikken announced Vestergaards team newest budge to the border of what is possible. Experiments in Boston Harvard University show that it is also possible, not to just bend, but to move the path of the light. So I repeat, can your ego define the boundaries of what is possible by defending facts that are constantly altered?

Change must come through the barrel of a gun

No, I am not a Communist, Maoist or environmental activist, that is not the reason for this quote from Mao Tse-tung. Change must come through the barrel of a gun is in this context meant, not as a slogan for a revolution, but a way that seems to work when change is needed. Or, it is a reversal of the saying if there is a will there is a way, becoming: if there is a way, there is a will.

In this article I will claim this mindset has been diverted to a needed change, both literally during wartime, but also in recent times, with success. And the reason for bringing this up is that political actions can actually can solve problems (hard to believe is it not), but the action has to be radical - in the constructive sense.

If we are faced, or think we are faced, with obstacles that resemble the barrel of a gun, we are most prone to change our habits and act out of united wisdom rather than fast economical gain (though one does not exclude the other, rather the opposite).

First example, second world war. In the mist of all the global horror the war race accelerated technological innovation up to the bombing of Hiroshima with a nuclear bomb, simply because governments thought they had too to meet the threat of the enemy (the barrel). But the knowledge accumulated in the years of the war continued and launched us into space (also in record time) and introduced technologies we still develop today. I will argue the threat was the primed the willingness to find fast intelligent solutions. Much like global warming is beginning to feel as a (real) threat, the willingness to take intelligent actions increase.

Like I have written in previous entries, intelligent solutions exist to most of our current problems already, in raw or developed form. If we wanted it, we could build cars that did not exceed certain speed limits. If builders were faced with a legal demand that 50-100 % of a new house has to be self-sufficient on heat and energy, it would be fairly easy to optimize existing techologies to meet this demand. Removing personal wate products could have a demand of breakdown to neutral and non-infectious components in soil by 2025 for all households, and firms would meet the demand. But if there is no barrel, and the pocket is full of money, why change a habit? Well, just see how the imaginary terror threats has boomed the inventiveness on monitoring and security measures. But as a new thing, compagnies does seem to be picking up on the greener mindset in their consumers (helped by the danger-loving news press). People want greener, smarter, safter, and more flexible solutions - and not just in buzz-word form on the wrapping. Tor Nørretrander cover this possible 360 degree change in trend in his new book Civilization 2.0. In short, the producers may have delveloped smelling senses to detect the money in sustainable development.

The Danish health sector, where everyone can get treatment when needed with no or at a symbolic cost, is a good example of when an ambitious project of visionary change pays off. Providing quality care for everyone in society spawned a wide spectra of new technologies and inventions to meet an efficient health system, that Denmark has living itself fat on for decades. This is an example, not of a threat, but that change does not have mean a sacrifice, but a change with gain.

It is doubtful that politicians risk anything these days, but for a minor adjustment to existing legislation. But if the risk is cataclysmic enough, maybe it can bring around bold enough politicians to inspire use of practical and easy development changes with effect on our habits. But it is probably more likely that our current solutiouns come from down and up to the political level. Yes, my faith in real boldness of politicians is rather small I am afraid. So good initiatives that has a long history of working might be safe enough for a politician to support, rather than demanding development through new ambitious goals.

Don't give up brilliant people - everything will change when we get ourselves scared enough!

Never mind the basics

These days science has a cancer. It is political, but not necessarily lethal – just resulting in some needless overspending. Buzz-words/newspeak drives the funding today, and thus forces the research in the same direction (nano-anything, multi-platform-anything, global-warming, CO2, food safety etc.) It is a bit like helping the third world countries: catastrophe = money = satisfied voters = base of problems remain unchanged.

At a recent lecture on pathology a researcher put this in crystal clear perspective in an example of salmon farming. We are intensely investigating vaccines for fish, but nobody has looked at even grossly describing the intestine. How absurd is that? This kind of research is probably sound by method, but I would claim it also contain a fair amount of guessing and assumptions. Are we falling over our own legs and getting ahead of ourselves because we have to be cutting-edge to get funding? I know in my own field the general feeling these days are that it is not real science if it is not molecular biology (where I started).

If we dared looking backwards a little we would discover that many of our clever inventions are copying older knowledge as David Edgerton described in his book The Shock of the Old.

Here is an example. I am the lucky to be in possession of a replica of one of the seven surviving imperial seals from the Ming dynasty. This bronze mirror looks like the common mirrors of this age, but was so intelligently crafted that the atomic structure was altered in the bronze at the cooling process, that it would reflect an detailed image of the blank mirror onto a wall when exposed to strong light. It was not until last century a smith discovered the key to replicate this amazing craft. Still I have seen no applications of this amazing knowledge, though I could imagine quite a few.

The mirror is a nice metaphor (for me) of science today. We are studying the applications of atomic structures, but the possibilities of metal working elude us on more basic levels.

Geothermal Air-Conditioner

A local initiative by an Estonian inventor, Heiki Jüris, invented the Geothermal Air-Conditioner. This device is in use and working. Dr. V. Viljasoo of Estonian University of Life Sciences is collaborating with Mr. Jüris on the testing of the device.

The principle is simple. Two "boxes" are built under, or in extension of the foundation of the house and connected with several sloped tubes. The device is then covered with earth, or built upon. In principle the circulation of the air through a heat pump (much like normal ground heating using a liquid to absorb the heat) the air in this device obtain the ground temperature (around 7 degrees), and returning to normal atmospheric electrostatic air and humidity before pumping it back into the house.

The Geothermal Air-Conditioner seems to be a cheap way to create a healthy air conditioning and heat for the house. It potentially takes up a less space than normal ground heating (if placed under the house), and the space can still be used for storage to some extent. The backside is that is best to include in the initial building phase (though it can be added later as well) and that it is still in (final) experimental phase. The device requires a little manual cleaning every year.

Now, this is not all advertising. The reason for entering this into my blog is that Mr. Jüris seems to be fitting my archetype of a local "alchemist". From what I am told he is a pleasant and modest person who does not do much advertise himself and his invention. He is not a scientist per se I understand (but collaborate with local ones). The principle of the device is simple, clever and cheap (mainly if put into building of a house foundation). Mr. Jüris is one of many brilliant inventors with better solutions to status quo, but chance is that his invention will suffer the same fate as most other of our solutions: little or no impact. The reason? Well, if you read about the conference in the last blog entry you might find one answer. If the focus of government, and thus the scientists (funding is needed by the governments), is on heating with biofules or wood/plant materials ("renewable energy source") then that is what people will use in the future. If the perspective is small in the leadership, and the small man (Mr. Jüris) is not raising massive public awareness on his own, I would sadly predict his invention to become a another future note in the patent office.

Interview with inventor (Estonian)

Power Point presentation of the Geothermal Air-Conditioner

Renewable Energy Sources Conference

The 15th November Estonian University of Life Sciences held their 9th coference on "Investigation and Usage of Renewable Energy Sources" in Tartu. I attended as part of the university, but mostly out of curiosity.

The conference had leading researchers in renewable energy from serveral countries and officials of the Estonian ministries. There seemed to be a strong focus on the countrys vast unused biomass and its applications. Estonia have a lot of unused agricultural land after U.S.S.R. occupation (3 hectar per inhabitant of which 200.000 hectar is abandoned), and a though they are not raping their huge resources of trees, firewood is a common heating source, and has been for hundreds of years. I could not help noticing that firewood is part of the term "renewable energy", but I did not notice references to the enviromental implications, only the economical rentability.


The goverment did, not supprisingly, bring out that they wished to focus their funding, and welcomed researchers who volunteered to state outdated or fields with too low cost-benefit. They also asked for more structured or exact research, since the last 30 years in some fields had given little clarity of the situation regarding renewable energy. On the other hand researchers gave an official plea to the goverment for guidelines to what they should do. Little news there I guess.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications gave some interesting data on the status of different renewable energies, but focused on the use of forest resources (biomass conversion, direct energy production and waste uses). I could not help raising a few questions on heat pumps. I asked if they had considered using deep sea water for heating Tallin like the plan in Stockholm? It had not been considered, but they had noticed that the last 5-10 years the sales and use of heat pumps were doubling every year in Estonia. They could not answer why most of the deep ground energy heat pumps were rejected in most cases in Estonia, but speculated it could be due to protection of ground water ressources.

I know that Tartu already has a great initiative that makes heat and ventilation to a house - basically ground heat that does not use electricity. But it is one of these initiatives that has an modest inventor with humble ambitions. So I think very few will see this technology - like others. I will write about the Geothermal Air-conditioner later.

Several fine initiatives were presented at the conference. The best in my opinion was a German initiative by Michael Wachendorf and his team, who focus on using the increasingly abandoned German farm lands. The abandonment is against EU regulations (which is worth a thought), but the farming is no longer financially sound in some areas. So in their initiative they harvest the wild plants growing and converted them into biofuel. I liked this project because it not only tries to produce sounder energy, but also invoveld a growing problem caused by a changing culture.

Estonia is third in Europe (following Lithuania and Finland) in use of renewable energy resources (including firewood) with a set goal of 5.1 % for 2010; a goal that has already been surpassed. Unfortunately this kind of statistics, I think, probably would not change the fact that Estonia is also one of the most polluting countries in EU. So I left with the feeling that the focus was on "renewable" rather that "greener" or perhaps just "sounder" energy. No leaping for Estonia, but small safe steps with the crowd.

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