The reliable supply of cheap energy is something that is taken for granted in the developed world. This now seems to be under threat.
‘Japanese authorities have raised the severity rating of their nuclear crisis to the highest level, seven. Level seven previously only applied to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, where ten times as much radiation was emitted’ (BBC News, April 12 2011). ‘A year on, fear and division still poison the oil spill coast’ (The Times, April 18 2011). ‘Germany withdraws from nuclear power’ (The Telegraph, May 31 2011). These are bad news stories arising, firstly, from the outcome in Japan following the tragic earthquake and tsunami and, secondly, from 12 months ago with the explosion of the Deep Water Horizon drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico causing America’s largest environmental catastrophe.
Energy demand
The world population is growing and, with rapid industrialisation in China and India, so is the demand for energy per person. Many experts estimate that by 2050 the population of planet Earth will consume twice as much energy as it does at present. It’s an open question as to where this extra energy is going to come from. Seeking more oil in ever deeper waters is going to be a high risk activity. While there are major reserves of coal, the impact on climate change of doubling or trebling carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere will be massive.
Climate change sceptics might want to dismiss this argument, but one Nobel Prize winner has said mankind is running an experiment with the highest level of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere since the emergence of plant life. To supply the world in 2050, a factor of around ten in expansion in nuclear power would be required. Apart from the availability of uranium, which is not plentiful and by some estimates could be depleted in 10 years, the international security risk is much higher. How many reactors would be built in geologically unsafe areas? How many earthquake proof buildings have failed to keep that promise with horrendous results? There is present international concern over nuclear reactors in Iran and North Korea. It will be a dangerous world when every country and every regime has a multiplicity of reactors capable of making weapons grade plutonium. There is also the unsolved issue of the disposal of nuclear waste. Nuclear power does have a role to play, but not as the 100% solution to world energy needs. Nuclear fusion remains a great hope but it always seems to be 50 years away.
With no solution one can imagine a future with increasing energy shortages, environmental catastrophes and wars over natural resources. This is a bleak outlook. Genesis 1.31 tells us: ‘God saw all that he had made and it was very good’. This is an absolute statement. It doesn’t mean God’s world is very good as long as the human population is not too big and doesn’t develop energy consuming technologies.
Thomas Edison
A quotation in 1910 from Thomas Edison, well-known inventor of, among other things, the light bulb, is instructive. ‘Sunshine is a form of energy, wind and sea currents are manifestations of this energy. Do we make use of them? Oh no! We burn forests and coal, like tenants burning down our front door for heating. We live like wild settlers and not as though these resources belong to us.’ Edison was pointing out that there is a huge source of energy waiting to be tapped. The Earth’s surface currently receives annually 6,000 times more energy from the sun than the human population consumes in a year. Why, as Edison asks, don’t we use it?
Objections
A number of objections have been raised in the past. For the UK, the most common is that there isn’t enough sunshine. However, a study in the 1990s for the UK government by the University of Northumbria concluded that the unshaded south-facing roofs of the existing buildings in the UK could generate all the electricity required in the UK, albeit with a seasonal imbalance.
Another objection is that a solar panel takes more energy to make than it generates in its lifetime. This may have been true at one point in the 1970s, but recent studies, particularly at the University of Utrecht, have shown energy payback times for the latest technology to be around four years in Northern Europe and much less for sunnier climates. Most manufacturers guarantee solar panels for 20 years and the current estimate of panel life is 30 years. For some emerging technologies the payback time falls to a matter of months.
The most powerful objection has been the high cost of electricity generated by solar. This remains an issue, but prices have fallen continuously over many years and a halving of manufacturing cost has occurred in the past three years. Cost parity for solar production with retail electricity rates is expected in Southern Europe by 2015 and the rest of Europe by 2020. A final objection is that national electricity grid systems can only take a limited amount of variable generation from renewables, typically 10%. Yet it has been demonstrated in Spain that the electricity grid system can operate stably with up to 50% of the electricity source coming from renewables.
Now the discussion begins to touch on a more fundamental problem in the sinful human nature. There is an instinctive dislike of renewable energy by many political decision makers, because renewable energies essentially use the weather which is not under human control. It comes back to that very natural desire to be in charge of one’s destiny and not in any way to be dependent on God. Fossil fuel is there and can be used instantly. It’s a very human trait, as Edison implied, to live for today and not care for tomorrow. If there is something that one wants and one has the power, one can take it. The concept of sustainability is largely foreign to fallen man.
As Christians we believe we hold the Earth in trust from God. In Genesis 2.15, God put Adam in the Garden of Eden ‘to work it and take care of it’. Rebellion against God is also a rejection of the concept of stewardship of the Earth. Look at Cain’s evasion of God in Genesis 4.9: ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ The same kind of thinking penetrates energy policy. Fundamentally, in just consuming fossil fuel, mankind is saying it can do as it wishes and denies that there could be negative consequences.
Good news
There is a good news story to be found in world energy. God has provided his ‘good’ creation with an abundant source of energy through the sun for the vast majority of the human population and the technology to capture it. It requires a willingness to develop a sustainable energy policy and deploy technology but without any loss of living standards or convenience. Christ, in describing his Father’s goodness and provision to all men in Matthew 5.44, reminds us: ‘He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good’.
Dr. Tim Bruton has nearly 30 years’ experience in development of solar cell technology and was head of global R&D in silicon technology at BP Solar until 2004. He is now an independent consultant and managing co-editor of Progress in Photovoltaics, published by John Wiley.
