The Waste of the Past








“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have told me faster horses”

– Henry Ford

The waste and refuse of an era are associated with the dominant technology. That is, the waste of the past is not the same as the waste of the present and, rest assured, the waste of the future will have new characteristics that today are not analyzed in great depth. With this in mind, this week we open a series of three installments to analyze the waste, refuse and residues related to energy in the past, present and future.

To speak of the past, we will not go back to the ice age, but to the zenith of the energy model prior to the massification of internal combustion automobiles, between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, when transportation powered by the muscle of animals dominated, particularly by horses.

The main source of energy of this means of transportation was, precisely, food and, of course, it required maintenance and particular spare parts, for example, the changing of horseshoes, medicine, water and an appropriate place for rest. As you can imagine, the main waste of that transportation system was the manure and urine of the horses that fell directly onto the streets and, of course, their corpses when they passed to a better life.

It is estimated that in New York more than 600 liters of urine and more than three tons of manure were poured per day. Additionally, each year more than 15,000 horse corpses were discarded per day, which represented a replacement rate of between 15% and 20% per year. In other words, demand was growing and so was the need to raise more horses.

This situation generated jobs and entrepreneurs did business. For example, the excess of urine required that the streets be washed several times a day and for this, carts were created that transported water with this function and government workers were in charge of washing the streets. For their part, organized manure collectors and depots appeared who charged for lifting and disposing of the waste. More than 20,000 horses and mules were used in New York for the tasks of collection and disposal of waste and street washing.

However, this mobility model also generated damage to health. It is estimated that in the 1900s, in New York, around 20,000 people died per year because of diseases related to horse waste that were transmitted through the air. Therefore, the collection and disposal of waste was fundamental.

Given the growth projections, most historians agree that the use of the horse was not sustainable in the long term for three reasons: the management of waste, the increase in the cost of horse food that was already becoming more expensive than coal and because of the methane emissions that would have been released into the atmosphere due to a world mobilized by horses.

On the other hand, coal was the primary energy source for thermoelectric generation, steam engines and mobilization by railroad and ships. Therefore, in addition to the environmental impacts in its extraction, greenhouse gas emissions were also generated. In such a way that the great industrial cities of the time were characterized by soot, black clouds and poor air quality.

Although today hydrocarbons have become the villains to defeat in order to mitigate climate change, their adoption in the first quarter of the twentieth century allowed a first energy transition that helped improve the management of manure and coal and more. We will analyze this next week. Until then.

This article was originally published by Business Insider México.
Date: August 12, 2020
Original Link: https://businessinsider.mx/basura-del-pasado-energia-circular-opinion-paul-alejandro-sanchez/ [offline]
Archived Link: No server is available to handle this request. [Archived]

Democratization: The Fourth D of the Energy Future






There can be no democracy without citizenship every day

– Ralph Nader

In recent weeks I have addressed three trends of the energy future: decarbonization, decentralization and digitalization. Together these three trends create and reinforce a fourth trend: the democratization of energy, which is the fourth D of the energy future.

Democratization, for the purposes of this article, is not related to the concept of political science that refers to the transition from authoritarian political regimes to democratic ones, but it does take the most important component of the concept of democracy: the citizen who is the center of the democratic process.

A related concept would be the democratization of knowledge, which refers to the process of disseminating knowledge among ordinary people, thereby breaking the concentrations of knowledge enjoyed by elites. Libraries and access to the internet are sources that allow knowledge to be democratized.

In the same way, democratizing energy implies the process of breaking the barriers that prevent universal access to energy and the adaptation of consumption centers into production centers. This implies several things, but the most important is to develop regulation that places the consumer, the user and the citizen at the center.

This means that they are freely allowed to choose their energy provider and their source of generation; that they are allowed to install solar panels on their roofs without the need for complex regulations that benefit horizontally and vertically integrated production chains; and above all it implies that all citizens have access to energy, understanding by this not only electrification but having the capacity to pay or having a protected tariff according to their basic needs.

Just as in political democracy the source of the legitimacy of the ruler is deposited by sovereign citizens as a whole, the energy sector starts from the same logic, from the existence of social demands that are important for the development of a modern energy future for new generations.

This includes decarbonization reflected in a responsible consumption of energy that must consider the least possible impact on the environment. It also includes the breaking of state monopolies and State control in matters of provision of energy services and redesigning its role as regulator and protector of citizens, that is, a process of decentralization.

It also includes taking advantage of the resources that digitalization places within reach of modern societies for the consolidation of a sector that takes advantage of the interconnectivity of consumption centers with production centers and breaks with the limitations of the integration of renewable energies into energy distribution and transmission networks, which must at all times be intelligent.

And, of course, it implies paying attention to the most unprotected, marginalized and vulnerable, to those citizens who do not have access to energy or who have access to energy of lower quality — such as firewood or other solid fuels — or who have access to polluting energy or who, having an electric connection, for example, cannot pay their electricity bills.

The gap in access to energy is the fundamental source of energy poverty and inequality and that has an impact on the quality of life of citizens. In an energy democracy that must matter. The democratization of energy is therefore about bringing more energy at lower prices at lower environmental and social costs and that goes hand in hand with the digitalization, decentralization and decarbonization of the energy sector of the future.

This article was originally published by Business Insider México.
Date: August 5, 2020
Original Link: https://businessinsider.mx/democratizacion-energia-electrica-futuro-energetico-energia-circular-opinion-paul-sanchez/ [offline]
Archived Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210306234818/https://businessinsider.mx/democratizacion-energia-electrica-futuro-energetico-energia-circular-opinion-paul-sanchez/ [Archived]

Digitalization: The Third D of the Energy Future




“Artificial intelligence is the new electricity”

–Andrew Ng

Digitalization is a topic very intimately linked to energy, but it is necessary to differentiate the exogenous and endogenous effects of this relationship. The exogenous effects of digitalization have more to do with the process of transformation of goods, products or processes. We have already addressed this: how currencies, records and books become chains of digital data that ultimately require electric energy. For example, we no longer use the Guía Roji to locate ourselves but Google Maps, and today’s students no longer need to have an illustrated encyclopedia but only access to Wikipedia.

To the above is added the digitalization of classic household appliances and other electronics that are not only automated, but also interconnected to internet networks, giving rise to the so-called internet of things. Beyond devices to which we have already become accustomed — computers, video game consoles and televisions —, this is also a trend in washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioners and even lighting in general; everything can be controlled through networks with a cellphone or another device connected to the same network of our house or even remotely through the internet.

But, on the other hand, there are endogenous effects of digitalization in the electric sector. Digitalization in turn implies a process of adaptation and rapid response to a changing environment such as greater integration of renewable energies and storage. Power plants and large consumption centers are interconnected through remote communication means, whether through conventional internet or satellite communications, in such a way that they can process information in real time and integrate it into a more robust network with intelligent dispatch.

Operators and intelligent networks connected in real time, together with generators and representatives of consumers and other marketers, would have the possibility of sending more precise data on generation and consumption, which would avoid the programming of excess generation and would reduce technical losses. Likewise, it could help a better integration of renewable energies in real time and also make precise information available to citizens instantly.

Accompanying this interconnectivity goes hand in hand artificial intelligence and data science for the development of algorithms and self-learning machines that allow integrating a large amount of data in real time, such as weather, prices, operations, demand and storage, which would grant greater reliability in the operation of the electric system.

Additionally, consumption centers integrate smart meters and distributed generation and storage systems that can interact continuously with the network and enable the sale of solar or stored energy; controllable demand and other products for the benefit of the network. In case of non-payment, it also allows remote disconnection and connection without crews of technical bodies or long waiting times.

A smart home could decide whether at a given moment of the day it uses energy from the grid to store it or to charge an electric car; or else sell energy from a distributed generation system or share it with its neighbors or, why not, donate its surplus to a nursing home, church or school.

Digitalization and interconnectivity are, undoubtedly, two of the topics that reflect the bright future of the electric sector, decentralized and decarbonized, and this enables something else: democratized. We will talk about that next week.

This article was originally published by Business Insider México.
Date: July 29, 2020
Original Link: https://businessinsider.mx/digitalizacion-futuro-energetico-energias-renovables-opinion-paul-alejandro-sanchez-energia-circular/ [offline]
Archived Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20201026073748/https://businessinsider.mx/digitalizacion-futuro-energetico-energias-renovables-opinion-paul-alejandro-sanchez-energia-circular/ [Archived]