| 'Our aversion to risk limits the development of energy solutions.' |
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Here is one vision for 2050: energy is beamed to Earth from solar powered satellites able to generate gigawatts of power, 24 hours a day, and is generated in power stations on Earth by nuclear fusion; energy, especially for transportation, is distributed in the form of hydrogen, and in the form of electricity over a grid of superconducting cables.
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I offer these examples not because any particular element will inevitably come true, but as a way of making us think about the scope of possibilities that exist, and the scale of changes we should aim at  .
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My fear, which is borne out by the contributions to the debate, is that short term problems and hostility to development will severely limit society's capacity for change and adaption. A relatively slow rate of economic growth acting as a brake on the adoption of new technology is likely to be a bigger problem than environmental risk .
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Malcolm Grimston's discussion of the problems faced by nuclear power illustrates the point. The problems he identifies are all substantially a product of our exceptionally risk-averse age rather than technology or economics. The primary problem is a fear of accidents - and, after 11 September, terror. It is this that leads to over-regulation, and through that exceptional expense. Uncertainty over what to do with nuclear waste bedevils nuclear power. Yet solutions that in other times would be seen as perfectly acceptable are now rejected out of hand for fear of their possible consequences thousands of years in the future.
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As a result, the industry has entered a vicious circle of decline, in which it fails to gain the full benefits of operating experience or economies of scale and standardisation. Instead of the bigger, better and more efficient schemes we need for the future, we are left with new designs that, as Grimston says, are smaller, cheaper and safer.
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Tom Kearny and John Lawton both identify global warming as the key problem that will shape the future of energy. This is not the place to enter the global warming debate. However, it is clear that prioritisation of the problem over others will mean missing other opportunities.
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Kearny contrasts a gradual move away from fossil fuels to a more positive vision in which we carry on using fossil fuels to generate energy, but capture the carbon dioxide (CO2) and distribute the energy in the form of hydrogen. For all his talk of technological discontinuity, it seems to me that this is a pitch by an oil company to preserve its business in the face of hostility to CO2 emissions. Good luck to Shell with its business plan - maybe it will prosper. But this is not necessarily a dynamic vision of the future.
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Lawton's contribution is even more shaped by a sense of limits: 'History shows that most vanished civilisations failed because they depleted their energy sources, or destroyed their environment, or both!' This is simply not true of the most important civilisations in, among others, Greece, Rome, India, China, Mexico and Peru. Lawton's call for 'big solutions' is unfortunately shaped more by a sense of big problems than big gains to be made. The crisis mentality can have a paralysing effect and cut off potentially fruitful avenues of investigation which may not seem to fit into address the problem at hand. After all, if the problem at hand is of such catastrophic proportions, who could afford to indulge in unproductive speculation?
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The preoccupation with greenhouse emissions has led the UK government to invest tens of millions in a medieval fuel source, biomass . Energy from burning plants will never form the basis for a twenty-first century energy supply. Nonetheless, the justification offered is fighting global warming. The immediate consequence is to replace subsidy for one uneconomic use of land (small-scale farming) with subsidy for another. Perhaps more significantly, it diverts attention and resources away from more sensible and ambitious sources of energy.
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As a final example, consider the fashion for distributed power generation. The Economist has even suggested that the third world's lack of infrastructure might allow it to 'leap frog' over the West by adopting technologies for local power generation . Power cuts in California, caused by botched privatisation-cum-regulation, sparked a miniboom in micropower. Companies sought to avoid reliance on the grid by producing power 'in house'. But in doing so they cut themselves off from the efficiencies created by the division of labour. The autarchic tendency is reminiscent of Soviet factories that were unable to rely on outside quality control, and so forced to make and repair their own tools.
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What we need instead are not just national grids, but more cross border link-ups into international grids and networks. When the fear today is of political instability which encourages countries to retreat behind their borders in a quest for security, we need to remember the benefits of collaboration.
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The contributions to the debate identify some real problems to be overcome that cannot be wished away. However, we should keep our eye on the another world of possibility which will open up if we are imaginative enough to build it.
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