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Limitless Affordable Energy without Climate Changes

By Klaus H Hemsath

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 05Dec2009 Word count: 898 Viewed: 445 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

World economies are facing serious threats from climate changes and rising sea levels. There is only one single solution; world leaders must develop realistic strategies to completely change and transform existing global energy supply systems.

World economies including the US are facing global problems of unprecedented magnitude and complexity. A profusion of serious economical, ecological, political, and energy related issues is overwhelming world governments. Powerful interest groups with widely differing motives are at work to create provincial, profitable, and self-serving positions.

World leaders need to agree on a long-range plan to assure that urgently needed economic growth of industrialized nations is not jeopardized. Non-preventable population growth, geometrically growing energy consumption, skyrocketing costs of transportation fuels, and accelerating greenhouse gas emissions are threatening future economic progress.

The solutions that are being discussed in preparation of the Copenhagen Climate Meeting are ineffective and economically damaging. The recently proposed Cap and Trade legislation is fool's gold. If approved, this cornerstone of the newest US energy bill will result in the export of jobs and of capital to developing countries.

Only one option is economically feasible. All fossil fuels must be replaced with novel, renewable, inexhaustible energy sources. At least two such sources exist. One is nuclear fission energy; the other is everlasting solar power.

Several, important technologies for converting these energy sources efficiently, safely, and economically into the three, exclusively used, modern energy modes are still missing. Technologies for converting nuclear heat and solar energy into electric power, liquid transportation fuels, and heating gases are not available. Accelerated development efforts must be initiated immediately for closing these inexcusable gaps.

The US has the resources, the infrastructure, and the human resources for advancing identified technologies effectively and quickly.

However, before the US and all of the world's industrialized nations can embark on a much needed cooperative journey for saving the world from past excesses, it is unavoidable that the goals of such endeavor have to be outlined and must be agreed upon in principle.

If there are no agreed upon objectives and timelines, there cannot be common and universally useful accomplishments.

Therefore, world economies need to commit to several fundamental covenants. 1. The world must stop emissions of all greenhouse gases that are resulting from fossil fuel combustion as soon as economically feasible. 2. Large scale electric power and liquid transportation fuels must be produced exclusively from energy sources that do not emit carbon dioxide. 3. Accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere must be reduced below 350 ppm eventually. 4. Those countries that polluted the atmosphere must clean up their own emissions.

These ambitious but wholly non-negotiable, ultimate objectives will require very long times for implementation. Realistically, industrial nations will have to labor more than fifty years to reach these goals.

This long time horizon will give industries, which are entirely dependent on burning fossil fuels, a chance to change operations and will give producers of fossil energies to look for other economic opportunities.

Only by reaching these ambitious goals will industrial nations have a chance to continue their economic advancement, serve quickly growing populations, and operate in a terrestrial environment that will very slowly become less dangerous, less threatening, and more prosperous.

Efforts of the European Union have demonstrated that the present concepts of reducing energy consumption are ineffective in view of dramatically increasing energy consumption in newly industrializing countries. Fast population growth and strengthening demands for improved living conditions will increase demand for energy dramatically, relentlessly, and undefeatably.

The only way to reverse the escalating growth of carbon dioxide emissions and their accumulation in the Earth's atmosphere is by stopping all emissions as soon as economically and politically feasible. At the same time, any reduction in fossil fuel combustion must be overcompensated by converting more and more nuclear heat and solar energy into electric power and liquid fuels.

The most dangerous and potentially most disastrous threat is going to come from the unavoidable disappearance and resulting shortage of affordable, liquid transportation fuels. World traffic of foods, goods, commodities, and people is wholly dependent on liquid transportation fuels. Scarcity and excessive costs of transportation fuels will inescapably lead to food shortages and famines. Shortages of life's necessities will result in political upheavals and revolts.

World communities of scientists, engineers, and technological products producing industries must immediately embark on efforts to make critically missing energy technologies available. - They must learn to store electric energy in great quantities. This will advance the conversion of intermittently available solar energy and wind power into electricity. - They must learn to generate electricity from absolutely safe nuclear fission reactors. - They must learn to convert biomass with high energy efficiency into petroleum substitutes and refine these substitutes into standard transportation fuels. - They must learn to grow huge amounts of biomass without competing with food crops for fertile, arable lands. - They must learn to remove accumulated carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into useful, commercially valuable products and commodities.

All these critically needed technological advancements seem to be possible in principle. Due to very high development costs and very long development times these advances will initially not come from market driven investors or industries.

Initial government subsidies must reduce excessive development risks and must especially provide financial incentives for early investors. Investors will take over at the very moment when a technology can offer realistic sales and cost projections in a conventional five-year business plan.

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