Can energy security offer a sustainable future?

The Green Shed builds.

I was trying to enjoy a small, sad egg sandwich when I eventually saw him. He was sitting directly opposite me at the plastic dining table that we had both chosen for lunch. Both attending the conference centre, alone, in a crumpled grey suit. He, poking at a sausage roll. Me, with my egg sandwich. He was hard to notice because he was yet another me. Engineers. We are as invisible as our efforts to design and build the world, and yet you’ll see the results of our efforts everywhere you look.

I struck up a conversation, and his face brightened. He too recognised himself, and knew we were to talk technical. A question had been fermenting in my head for some time and I wanted to try it out, in a safe space. And no space is safer than a couple of engineers talking shop.

I specialise in new concept design and innovation. I must look as far over the horizon as I possibly can and predict the future.

He specialised in gas turbines for power generation. Essentially, a jet engine that one might see on an aircraft, but in this case its rotation drives generators to create electrical power.

“How efficient is your product?” I began, after some brief introductions.

He launched into a routine that he had no doubt presented many times at sales meetings, trade shows and conferences. In summary, about 35%. Of all the fuel that enters the most modern designs, about 35% of that energy emerges as power for generators to consume and transform into electricity.

“Does that require you to assemble skills, tools, components and materials from all over the world?” I enquired.

He continued his sales pitch, and described the vast global supply network that is required to design and manufacture the highest performance gas turbines. With this baseline established, I then offered to him a challenge.

“If you designed and manufactured a turbine using only skills, tools, components and materials sourced from within the borders of the UK, what kind of gas turbine would you produce?”

He looked at me, confused. This is not the sort of question to which he had a ready answer. I offered some context that might impose this hypothetical restriction. Perhaps conflict has isolated the UK from the rest of the world. Perhaps a disaster has severed global trade. Perhaps political friction prevents foreign suppliers selling to us the resources that we require. Hence, we are forced to rely upon our own resources, and must build a sovereign turbine.

He understood, so I proposed a simple metric.

“If we build a turbine using only local resources, how far back in the history of your industry must you look to find a model equivalent to this new sovereign turbine?”

He got it, and started to muse. He quickly offered an answer. If we must rely only upon local resources, we could only build a gas turbine equivalent to a design from the 1950s. However, as we now know so much more about the science of these mechanisms, we could probably coax from this 1950s design the performance to be found from gas turbines in the 1970s.

He included a caveat. Of course, you’d still need to source the fuel required to run it, and that may have to come from overseas.

I enquired whether a gas turbine might run on alternative energetic gasses and liquids. Perhaps they might be drawn from plant materials? For example, biodiesels, ethanol or methanol. Yes, he corrected himself. In fact, he added that there is plenty of research into methanol powered gas turbines going on.

He seemed quite confident with this prediction, and I was grateful that he was willing to play my game. It was now time for the big move.

“What performance might be expected from this sovereign turbine?” I asked.

He briefly sucked on his teeth with a sharp whistle and rolled his eyes to the ceiling as if calculating. His estimate came to him rapidly. The drop in performance would be massive. To design and build a gas turbine using only resources from within the UK mainland would degrade the performance from the current 35% peak all the way down to about 30%…

A brief pause in the discussion as I considered the implications of this estimate.

This is not a drop of 5%. It may seem small, but it’s not insignificant. If we can rely upon this ad hoc estimate, it represents 50 years of effort from an entire design and manufacturing industry to push the performance of gas turbines up by about 16%. However, this has required a contribution from a vast global supply network.

I moved onto a new question.

“If you designed and manufactured a gas turbine using only local resources, would this product be more sustainable?”

He immediately responded. Of course it would. Very much so. We would diminish those impacts provoked by sourcing and transporting resources and components from all over the world. Furthermore, by relying only upon local UK manufacturers, they would not only be bound by UK legislation, we could also more easily impose our own standards upon these suppliers.

He continued with a dire warning. Of course, to design such a thing would be a commercial disaster. No-one would be willing to purchase a gas turbine with such poor performance, so we must rely upon a global supply chain to offer to us that commercial advantage.

We soon parted ways, lunch complete and appointments to meet. I thanked him for his patience and his responses, for he had given me much to think about.

Many cling to the safety in numbers. Others use the authority of numbers as a cudgel with which to beat their rhetorical opponents over the head. When looking over that technology horizon, searching for the right questions to ask, numbers offer neither utility. The actual figures offered by my lunch companion may be entirely inaccurate, but if they provoke us to ask useful questions, then they have served my purpose.

When working at the cutting edge of new design you cast your questions out into the world, as you might a fishing net. Once you haul it in, you usually find this net full only of yet more questions.

For example, consider the same enquiry, but made of the sustainable energy technologies we hope to rely upon. If our lunch break discussion offers an accurate model of the world, would sustainable technologies also exhibit three distinct characteristics that may contradict?

We may require the commercial competitiveness that follows high performance. To achieve this may demand a reliance upon a massive, world spanning global supply chain to offer the resources required to build a commercially competitive product. If a technology cannot compete on the open market, can it exist at all?

We will require sustainability, by definition. Although we wish to transition to more sustainable energy sources, their design and manufacture will still impose an impact upon the very systems we hope to protect.

Finally, we may also demand security. If you don’t think that energy security is a topic of sustainable design, consider all the conflicts that follow our current, fossil fuelled energy demands. There seems little point ridding ourselves of endless conflicts over oil, only to enter into new, lethal and lucrative disputes over the exotic materials and subcomponents required to manufacture sustainable alternatives.

These three demands may contradict.

The more competitive our product must become, the more it may rely upon a global supply chain to provoke performance, and the less sustainable might be its manufacture. Conversely, the more sustainability we demand from its manufacture by relying only upon local resources, the less commercially competitive our product may become.

Similarly, the more competitive our high performance product, the more we might rely upon brittle global supply chains that are easily broken by disaster, conflict or political meddling, and the less security we enjoy. In fact, control over these global resources may provoke the very conflicts we hope to avert. Conversely, the more we draw our supply chains under our local control, to gain some security in our supply, the less competitive the product may become.

Only one side of this triangle seems to possess any synergy. Two features of this triad that could travel hand in hand may be the relationship between sustainability and security.

The more security we desire by relying only upon a local supply, the more sustainable our manufacturing process might become. Similarly, the more sustainable our manufacturing becomes by relying only upon local sources, the more secure our resources may be.

Perhaps the gain in performance offered by that global supply chain is more than enough to offset any environmental impact of a planet sized supply chain. Do those who manufacture these sustainable solutions actually consider this calculus in their pursuit of performance?

Suffice it to say, as the crumpled grey man, just like me, said his thank you and goodbyes, I was left to ponder on the relationship between sustainability and security.

Some are motivated to protect the planet. Others must focus upon protecting themselves and their closest. Both parties seem to eye one another with suspicion.

However, might the means by which sustainability and security are achieved actually serve both ends?

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