Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
or, more likely, that the item is not recognized as renewable energy in the
financial
world. We know there is major investment in nuclear fusion that was covered in
Chapter 4, but this area is not traditionally recognized as renewable energy. To be
sure, the ongoing work in Tokamak reactors is purely research, since there is no
product. Investment in battery technology and capacity is known to be taking place in
connection with the hybrid and plug-in electric automobiles. Hydrogen storage is not
evident in these listings, but we are quite sure that the efforts of Nocera (Section 9.2)
in collaboration with the Tata group in India have value and are going forward.
Whether the arti
cial leaf idea that was described in Chapter 9 will be commercially
successful is not clear, but it has great potential for growth, especially in developing
countries and in the vast third world.
11.3
The Legacy World, Developing Countries, and the Third World
The electric grid is a feature of the legacy world (whose citizens inherit a high
standard of living) and of the developing countries, but it is not a feature of the third
world. Poverty, in the global context of 7 billion people, is de
ned as earning less
than $1.25 per day, and it is said that there are 2 billion small farmers. Some of the
renewable energy approaches, perhaps comparable to the cell phone, for which
there are 4.6 billion subscriptions, can be deployed in the third world. Solar cells,
solar water heaters, and the arti
cial leaf energy conversion system can be
deployed on a small scale, on a rooftop. It has been suggested that renewable
energy can put an end to energy poverty: that electric power, even in small
amounts, will allow persons to make contact with the outer world of ideas. This can
start a path to prosperity [151] for people in the thirdworld. It is noted that 1.4 billion
people are not on an electric grid, and are effectively cut off from the rest of the
world. From the point of view of renewable energy workers, this is both a great
opportunity and a challenge.
The challenge of providing energy, in coming decades, for even the developing
world is severe. Figure 11.3 plots the numbers of cars per 1000 persons in legacy
countries (bottom three in Figure 11.3, total population
1 billion) and developing
nations (top three, total population
2.5 billion). The population of Africa, not
represented in Figure 11.3, is about 1 billion.
The suggestion is that the present growth patterns in developing countries may
lead to a world with more than twice as many autos and thus, even with growing
ef
ciency, more than twice the need for fuel. Indeed, it is reported that in 2010 the
number of cars in the world reached 1.015 billion (http://www.huf
ngtonpost.ca/
2011/08/23/car-population_n_934291.html), with a growth rate of 3.6%, which
implies doubling the number of cars in 20 years (http://e360.yale.edu/content/
feature.msp?id
2128). The growth in the number of cars in China in 2010 specif-
ically was 27.5%.
It is already the case that auto sales in China exceed those in the United States. It is
estimated that 2 billion autos would require oil production of 120 million barrels/day
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