Escaping Energy Obscurantism

It is natural, I believe, transparency makes governments uncomfortable, not for nothing, it is a constant struggle with citizens, media outlets and social organizations around the world. Here in Mexico, even, the government carries out an open crusade to define the true truth and establish nuances to everything that the media outlets publish, as if the media outlet were more important than the object that is communicated. Form is substance, then, the old political school would say.

The energy sector, of course, is not the exception and the problem of transparency is great, as if transparency harmed the consumer or the citizenry. I leave you some examples. In these days in which LP Gas has become a trend in Mexico because of price controls and Gas Bienestar, accessing the open data of prices to generate a comparison is a titanic task.

The Energy Regulatory Commission publishes daily the current prices of LP gas through distribution plant reported by the permit holders. For this, it establishes a form that asks for the Federal Entity, Municipality and Locality to be selected from the list, as well as to check a box that says “I am not a robot.”

If the media outlets or civil organizations wanted to report the average prices of the whole country in real time, they would have to select more than 2000 municipalities and other thousands of localities. As if it were a moral duty of the CRE to present partial data in areas of protecting the market.

The pattern repeats itself from agency to agency. In CENACE there is no information related to the amount of renewable energy that is limited, as does happen in California, nor can we know the amount of electric energy by technology by state, municipality and hour of generation. They will say that for protection of the market, as if the competent authority, COFECE, could not attend to this issue.

CFEnergía does not publish the prices and quantities of natural gas that it buys, alluding to the fact that they are unregulated activities. But they have a very important effect on the plants that deliver energy to CFE Basic Supply, which is indeed a regulated activity and whose effects we already saw in February with the freezes in Texas.

In any instance, energy obscurantism is present, from Environmental Impact Manifestations that have public versions mutilating the most important elements to protect the business, to the social impact manifestations whose publicity shines by its absence.

The national energy sector urgently needs a movement that consolidates an idea of open energy where the benefits for citizens and consumers are greater than those of the State, its agents or the business itself. Where transparency is not a painful and costly exercise for citizens and media outlets, but rather a practive exercise of periodic obligations that facilitate consultation and the maximum publicity of information. It is urgent, then, to escape energy obscurantism.

This article was originally published by Energía a Debate.
Date: September 10, 2021
Link: https://energiaadebate.com/escapar-del-oscurantismo-energetico/ [Online]

The Future Is Built First in Our Mind






It is 5:59 in the afternoon, in the middle of rush hour and it is raining. Juan waits for the bus at the designated stop, near his university; there is a line of people waiting. The board announces that the next bus will arrive at 6:00 in the afternoon. Exactly at the designated time, the transport arrives.

When the door opens there is no one at the entrance, only a series of systems integrated with processors, screens, sensors and cameras. To enter you pass a card that gives you your balance; if you have no balance you get off voluntarily, otherwise, the system will send an alarm and you could be admonished at the next stop.

Before, in 2021, it would have taken two hours by bus to get home. Now it takes only one hour. There are no longer traffic lights on the route; the road sensors are interconnected with each bus and each automobile that circulates. In the past, a large part of traffic jams occurred for three reasons: automobile accidents, not respecting traffic signs and a lack of road culture.

Traffic is organized by times. The interconnected systems use algorithms and plan in real time; they send stop and go signals directly to the automobiles, which process the instructions considering the central instructions, the cars around them, cyclists, pedestrians and obstructions on the road.

People have more time because traffic operates efficiently and buses arrive at the established time with a maximum tolerance of 5 minutes. The systems are also connected with other routes and the metro, so that trips can be organized and connected in several segments in an optimal way.

Elsewhere, Adriana left her office and the GPS indicates that it will take two hours to reach your destination. She is reading that book that was added at the beginning of the year to her resolutions and she is already halfway through, reading one hour daily on average, every day in traffic. She is in a taxi, but there is no one driving, the automobile is a unit that is interconnected to the company’s central system and in turn is communicated with the traffic control system from the central offices of the government.

Traffic control is very important, and not only land traffic control, but also air traffic control. Since the massive proliferation of drones a few decades ago, it is now common to see drones everywhere, from those that take photography and videos, to those that monitor traffic, without forgetting service drones that are dedicated to sending packages, making repairs on roofs and facades, fumigating and many other activities.

On the street, Javier sees in the distance a mobile autonomous business coming. An intelligent vending car that sells anything without the need for an operator or seller. This one sells coffee as if it were an old vending machine but that moves analyzing the mobility patterns of pedestrians. It is not the only thing, food, books, flowers, water, clothing, almost anything.

At her house, Laura receives a message, a package has arrived, but there is no one in the cargo truck; and it is that parcel services and food deliveries have also benefited greatly from light cargo autonomous vehicles that send their location in real time and that make deliveries automatically without any operator or delivery person, in addition to aerial delivery by drones.

We say goodbye to this quick visit to a possible future and, perhaps, not very far away. I hope that you, reader, have found this fantastic journey as entertaining as I have, and it is that the future is built first in our imagination.

This article was originally published by Business Insider México.
Date: February 16, 2021
Original Link: https://businessinsider.mx/futuro-movilidad-inteligente-opinion-energia-circular-paul-alejandro-sanchez/ [offline]
Archived Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20240522143337/https://businessinsider.mx/futuro-movilidad-inteligente-opinion-energia-circular-paul-alejandro-sanchez/ [Archived]

Dark Energy






After a brief interlude, we return to our usual programming. Two weeks ago we talked about the nexus of time and energy and a very particular concept related to this: dark energy, which makes up close to 70% of the total energy of the observable universe.

Dark energy or vacuum energy is underlying background energy that exists in space and expands throughout the entire universe. Said in another way, it is the name that physicists use to define any substance, force or property of space and that have an effect on the universe, causing its expansion to accelerate and, despite everything, we know almost nothing about it.

From the observations of supernovas, it has been hypothesized that the pressure of dark energy is negative, which implies that gravity, instead of a force of attraction as we know it, becomes a force of repulsion.

How to explain dark energy

There are at least three models that seek to explain dark energy. The first explanation is that dark energy is a cosmological constant, a constant that is consistent with Einstein’s equations.

Another current holds that dark energy is not constant but dynamic. This explanation suggests that the density of energy is not constant either in space or in time, in such a way that parameters are established based on the ratios of pressure and density of energy.

A third explanation is derived from the current of quintessence. This current takes the inflationary theories of the universe of scalar fields to solve the initial problems posed by the Big Bang and they were adapted in models to explain observations of the late universe.

In addition to these three currents is that which proposes, as we already indicated, that gravity simply works differently in the universe on large scales. Therefore, as we anticipated, on a large scale gravity would push objects instead of attracting them.

An interesting aspect that has allowed analyzing the dark energy of the universe is the cosmic microwave background radiation that has been theorized, since 1965, is a form of electromagnetic radiation that completely fills the universe. They are considered residual protons that appeared when the universe cooled enough to be neutral.

Undoubtedly, the universe is much more complex than we understand, our understanding of energy is restricted by our scientific progress from the earth. Revealing the secrets of the universe is fundamental for the understanding of energy seen from different perspectives and theories. The approach from quantum science could shed new light regarding energy, space and time; which would allow us, as a society, to advance a little more in the development of new applications that allow us to enter the future in a more audacious way.

This article was originally published by Business Insider México.
Date: February 9, 2021
Original Link: https://businessinsider.mx/energia-oscura-espacio-opinion-paul-alejandro-sanchez-energia-circular/ [offline]
Archived Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20221207124529/https://businessinsider.mx/energia-oscura-espacio-opinion-paul-alejandro-sanchez-energia-circular/ [Archived]