In Perspective - Sustainability

March 3, 2010

Sustainability has become a term that has been applied too almost every facet of life on Earth, from local to a global scale and over various time periods. But what really is Sustainability? Someone said that Sustainability is the capacity to endure. But it is way more than that. We could use the Brundtland Commission of the U.N.'s 1987 definition, "sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." But I prefer the local definition that has been around for hundreds of years, though most New Yorkers aren't aware of it. It goes like this, "In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation . . . even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine." This is from the Great Law of the Iroquois. I wonder whatever happened to that "skin as thick as the bark of a pine."

So what does Sustainability have to do with energy efficiency? More than you know. The US consumes 25% of the world's energy while making up only 5% of the world's population. Or to put it in a better perspective, Japan and Germany use about 6 kW per person and United States uses 11.4 kW per person while countries like India the per person energy use is closer to 0.7 kW. Bangladesh has the lowest consumption with 0.2 kW per person. So what happens if everyone in the world wanted the American lifestyle? A MIT professor calculates that if nine billion people in 2050 used energy at the rate that Americans do today that the world would have to generate 102.2 TeraWatts (TW) of power--more than seven times current production and that is a conservative estimate.

So how can we provide all of this energy? Nuclear could produce 8 TW which implies building 8000 new reactors over the 45 years at a rate of one new plant every two days at the cost of $10 to $20 billion each. Wind would generate 2.1 TW if every site on the globe with class three winds or greater were occupied with windmills whether we liked the view or not. Of course we can continue to burn coal and oil, but at the increased rate needed the resources would not last until 2010. That is not even close to seven generations nor does it addresses the emissions questions and climate change.

It was calculated, in 2000, that using current solar power technologies to construct a global solar-energy system would consume at least 20 percent of the world's known iron resources, takes a century to build and cover a half-million square miles. Well efficiency rates have increased since 2000 as did the technology. Dow Chemical is building a plant in Michigan to produce solar roofing shingles that are 30% more efficient than solar panels a decade ago. And where do we get the half-million square miles. Look up, or maybe go outside and look up. Roof tops are the answers. And it is sustainable. Not only sustainable, but as the technology improves so does the output. Another sustainable approach is reducing the energy use. In past articles I have used the light bulb as an example. A 100-watt light bulb uses 10% of the electricity for light and 90% goes out in heat. The compact fluorescent light is 75% more efficient and the LED is 90% more efficient. Add in the lifespan the incandescent lasts 1500 hours, the CFL 10,000 hours and the LED 60,000 hours.

So if we care about the future, you know family values, Sustainability is important. Most of us are now worried about the U.S. debt and passing it onto our children and their children and how are we going to pay for it. That only means raising taxes, cutting government spending will not relieve the national debt. But cutting energy costs will put money in Americans' pockets and that would offset the inevitable increase in taxes to cover the debt. That is part of what Sustainability is all about.

http://wilcoxen.maxwell.insightworks.com/pages/804.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption

http://reason.com/archives/2006/11/24/brother-can-you-spare-22-teraw

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3222967/Incandescent-vs-CFL-vs-LED-Savings