Heating a cup of tea
One of my little crazy projects this bizarre spring has been building a solar energy system on my balcony.
Little did I know how many light bulbs this solar project would light up (pun intended). While I was expecting to learn a lot about wiring and batteries, I ended up making fundamental realizations of our life.
Key learnings about energy for you, my friend.
- We are dependent on energy
- We take instant energy availability for granted
- We consume a lot of energy
- Energy is unsexy and exclusive
1. We are dependent on energy
Imagine having always cold showers, eating raw veggies, living in a house without a heating system during long and cold winters (the North most of the year), and carrying heavy grocery bags from the store. Final catastrophe: no sauna.
On a molecular level, our survival depends on energy. Food is stored chemical energy, which our body breaks down. Glucose is then used to produce ATP (adenosine triphosphate) via cellular respiration¹.
2. We take instant energy availability for granted
Imagine not being able to charge your phone/ laptop in the middle of your hectic work day or not getting gasoline from the gas station to fill up your car’s empty tank.
Our modern society has been built on the expectation that energy is always available. Little do I appreciate how extraordinary this is, but rather get angry when it takes “too long” for the warm water to start running in shower.
When we are moving towards renewable energy, accommodating for this high availability level becomes challenging. Sun happens to shine during the day, and falls and winters are typically more windy. This means that we need to build massive energy storage and take other critical measures in order to add flexibility to the grid aka to accommodate to our inflexible energy demand.
3. We consume a lot of energy
Heating water just for a cup of tea requires half an hour worth of energy from my solar panel!
Little math: My solar panel is 100W, water heater 2,000W, and it takes 1.5 min to heat it. Useful formula: Watts * hours = Watt hours
Energy consumption of heating a cup of water: 2,000W * (1.5/60) h = 50 Wh.
Energy production with my solar panel: 100 W * 0.5 h = 50 Wh
Now think about how many cups of hot water 10 min shower or filling up a bathtub takes. Or heating up blast furnaces to 2000℃ to produce on average 900 kg steel for your car.
More precisely our global primary energy consumption was 157 TWh = 157 000 000 000 000 Wh in 2018. This is quite a bit of solar panels and (still unfortunately mostly) other production methods.²
4. Energy is unsexy and exclusive
Watts, Watt hours, Amps, Amp hours, Voltage, Capacity, Resistance. I faced this jargon, when building my solar energy system. No wonder that energy feels unsexy and something only “for those geeks out there”.
For many does energy not only feel distant, but it is literally distant. In 2016, 940 million people (that is 172 Finlands) did not have an access to electricity and 3 billion (that is 545 Finlands) did not have an access to clean cooking fuels.³
Energy could be sexy and inclusive. And it should. As I pointed out in 1), 2) and 3) our survival and modern lifestyle is dependent on inexpensive, instantly available, and abundant energy. The same or at least the bare minimum conditions should be also enabled for those human fellows, who are still lacking the access to this energy heaven.
So what?
Energy is a crucial piece of humanity’s own Hunger Games, The Climate Crisis. I’ve started to feel like a more descriptive title could be The Survival Crisis. Food and water shortages, less habitable land, and mass migration combined with the steady rise of populism does not sound promising to me. I hope to be incorrect, but I dread that even our unprecedentedly long international peace will be hardcore tested. Corona is just the starter.
This is a call for you. We need more brain power, capital, determination, and collaboration to ensure humanity’s survival. Start small and scale. Start from having a shorter warm shower and turning off lights, when you don’t need them. Then work for or build a survival tech company. Raise a survival tech fund. Vote in elections. Be a policymaker. Teach your kids, parents, and neighbors. Be a conscious consumer. Everyone has a role.
I’d like to end this piece with a word from Steven Pinker. He beautifully simplifies the requirement for us to persist and progress also in the future:
“For it it requires only the convictions that life is better than death, health is better than sickness, abundance is better than suffering, and knowledge is better than superstition and ignorance.” ⁴
Happy to hear your thoughts and see your actions, fellow Homo Sapiens⁵.
Sources
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Eo7JtRA7lg
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/energy
[3] https://ourworldindata.org/energy-access
[4] Pinker, S. (2018) Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress.
