Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Increased future (beyond the mid-21st century) fission and fossil costs are likely
to make fusion economically attractive: assuming, of course, that the current Inter-
national Experimental Thermonuclear Reactor (ITER) project demonstrates fusion
viability 4 . It is unlikely to be cheap, hence there are fossil carbon-release implications,
but if fusion does prove technically viable, and economic in a more energy-expensive
end of the 21st century, then fusion combined with a hydrogen economy could be a
long-term, climate-friendly hope. There would, though, still be a cost in the form of
radioactive waste and we would still have to live with the climate impacts already in
train and also likely due from whatever carbon emissions are to come. Finally, like
fission, fusion, with its fast-neutron flow, also has nuclear-proliferation consequences
for any nation with sufficiently advanced technology.
8.4.4 Renewablefutures
The aforementioned higher price of future energy will make the majority of currently
expensive renewable energies increasingly attractive and so they are an option for
nations that can afford to develop these resources. Large-scale hydroelectric schemes
are the cheapest of large commercial energy sources. However, there are a lim-
ited number of sites available for developing these without incurring (currently?)
unacceptable environmental impacts, not to mention socio-economic consequences.
Currently (using 2010 data), HEP accounts for some 775.6 mtoe, which is about
6.4% of commercially traded global fossil- and non-fossil energy consumption (BP
Economics Unit, 2011). It may well be possible to double this contribution by our
2044 snapshot date in terms of tonnes of oil equivalent but not in terms of its percent-
age contribution to the global energy market. This means that new HEP development
will not be a factor that keeps energy prices down. Furthermore, HEP in itself does
not offset fossil consumption for personal transport. Were there enough of it then it
could theoretically be possible via a hydrogen economy but other forms of energy
generation will be required for that option to work.
That currently expensive renewable energies will become economically attractive in
the future, not to mention climate change concerns, will mean that these technologies
will become increasingly developed. Yet because most renewable energies, such as
solar, wind and tidal power, exploit a low-density energy resource they take up consid-
erable land or sea-surface area. This in turn confers a significant local environmental
impact. If renewable energies were extensively developed worldwide then this impact
would be extended and begin to have a global effect. In addition, given the existing
human domination of the terrestrial landscape and the current impacts that this has
(most notably the post-Industrial Revolution increase in Holocene biodiversity loss),
renewable energies are likely to compound current impacts and so not be the totally
environmentally benign energy resources that they are currently popularly believed
to be.
4
Remember, fusion programmes have not recently had the full R&D funding that had originally been
planned. For example, the 1976 US Energy Research and Development estimates and the funding
anticipated by the US Magnetic Fusion Engineering Act were not met. By 2003 only half the funding
anticipated by this act was made available (Nuttall, 2008). And the current IETR programme has ongoing
bureaucratic hurdles and costs.
 
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