Don’t Let Them Tell You It Can’t Be Done!






We live in times of confrontation and it would seem that suggesting something different from what we know is a capital sin that is punished with a penalty of silence; dreaming is prohibited —which is undoubtedly the beginning for innovating and transforming—. If you mention something about renewable energies, green hydrogen, energy transition, the knight-errants of the internet will seek to correct the audacity of going against what is known.

I imagine it would be as if the Florentine community of the 16th century had gathered outside Leonardo DaVinci’s room to demand that he stop designing instruments for flying, with arguments such as that man was destined to be on the ground, because if God had wanted it, he would have given us wings. Nothing different from the old inquisition that condemned men of science to death at the stake.

Let us go to the beginning of the 20th century, to the year 1908. Imagine the master blacksmiths saying: “there is still a long way to go before a Model T replaces the horse,” “there are not enough gasoline stations,” “How are you going to fill a tank on a long trip between cities?”, “The automobile will never replace the railroad.”

A leap further ahead in time would take us to RIM, the company that manufactured the Blackberry and that underestimated the potential of the market that Apple opened with iPhone. The company did not believe that people wanted a phone without a keyboard or a series of apps beyond email, messaging or the web browser. Even with the launch of the iPad that would open the tablet market, RIM executives would point out that they did not serve any specific market.

The wonderful thing about technology is that it does not advance as companies or governments would wish, but rather that it has its own inertia. We could talk about thousands of examples: whalers resisting the growing kerosene market at the end of the 19th century, or the producers of kerosene lamps themselves resisting the first incandescent bulbs lit by electricity.

Today we can see more and more drones in the streets or a memory card the size of a fingernail with a capacity of 1 TeraByte —which is equivalent to 1 million Megabytes—. There are more cameras than ever, with better definition than in recent years, and that, combined with more precise facial recognition, has generated very interesting moral debates and debates about the limits of the State.

Voice recognition, real-time translation, artificial intelligence and autonomous automobiles, to cite some examples, are advancing by leaps and bounds and there are still those who question whether the Earth is flat because they cannot see its roundness, without thinking, for example, that the first private space trips under the command of Space X have already begun.

In the world, solar energy breaks records in capacity and time, as do storage and green hydrogen. And also, why not?, conventional technologies such as combined-cycle turbines, nuclear fission or direct air CO2 capture, with which artificial diamonds are now even produced.

There are even challenges that we will see in the future that we still do not perceive in their complete dimension. The waste from batteries and solar panels, light pollution or the saturation of the immediate airspace could also require thinking about creative solutions in the long term.

This is circular energy and this is what this space is about: that no one tells you that it cannot be done, that you should conform; that it is impossible to think or even dream of a better world. That they do not tell you that it is too early to think about green hydrogen or decarbonization; that they do not tell you that it is not possible to have 100% renewable energy and storage; that they do not tell you that you cannot think or dream of a better world, because, quoting Heraclitus, the only constant is change.

This article was originally published by Business Insider México.
Date: June 22, 2021
Original Link: https://businessinsider.mx/energias-renovables-innovacion-opinion-energia-circular-paul-alejandro-sanchez/ [offline]
Archived Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20240229054340/https://businessinsider.mx/energias-renovables-innovacion-opinion-energia-circular-paul-alejandro-sanchez// [Archived]

Hydrogen: The Japanese Bet






South of Tokyo, at the base of Mount Fuji, Toyota is developing the project called Woven City, a Hydrogen City. It is a prototype of a smart city whose source of energy would be hydrogen and which began its construction this year in February. But, beyond how Woven City works, there are many things to highlight about this project.

The first aspect is that the bet that government and companies in Japan are making on hydrogen is evident. If we analyze the country’s energy profile and its history, this makes much more sense than it seems at first glance. According to the United States Energy Information Administration, Japan’s energy consumption is composed of 87% fossil fuels among oil, natural gas and coal, with an additional 3% of nuclear energy. The remaining 10% are renewable energies, which include hydroelectric plants.

Japan’s great dependence on fossil fuels is accompanied by its lack of these natural resources, of which it has historically been a net importer. In 2019 alone, the country was the fourth largest importer of crude oil in the world, the largest importer of liquefied natural gas and the third importer of coal only behind China and India.

Japan’s bet is a true act of energy security and not in terms of dependence on the supply chain, but it is also a way to improve the country’s trade balance, which is affected by the strong costs of energy products and their volatility.

Another fundamental element is that it is the way in which Japan would promote the energy transition. Given its strong dependence on fossil fuels, the country has had difficulties reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. Solar and wind development has been limited for this reason; however, an aggressive plan to develop the energy transition using hydrogen could be much more feasible.

After the incident with the Nuclear Plant in Fukushima, Japan decided not to build new nuclear plants and to gradually close the existing ones. The same has happened recently when it announced that they would no longer build more coal plants. This implies that there could be greater investment in combined-cycle plants that use liquefied natural gas, which would be fundamental, in this first stage, for the development of gray or blue hydrogen, alongside green hydrogen.

A third aspect is that the bet addresses the issue of mobility. The greatest use of oil in the country is used for mobility, whether of private and collective automobiles, as well as for the transport of merchandise between cities. Although the train system is electrified and quite efficient, wheel transport continues to be important in the country.

Unlike other automakers, Japanese automakers, such as Toyota, Honda and Nissan, are betting on the standard of hydrogen vehicles more than on vehicles that use electricity from the grid. This implies that at least two other models are promoted besides the plug-in electric one: the fuel-cell model and the internal-combustion model with hydrogen. In such a way that we could say that the standard of the future of automobiles has not yet been decided.

Space is running out, but next week we will address more on this topic, expanding on Woven City, the smart city pilot that would use hydrogen as a source of energy.

This article was originally published by Business Insider México.
Date: June 10, 2021
Original Link: https://businessinsider.mx/hidrogeno-la-apuesta-japonesa-opinion-paul-sanchez-energia-circular/ [offline]
Archived Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20240528033643/https://businessinsider.mx/hidrogeno-la-apuesta-japonesa-opinion-paul-sanchez-energia-circular/ [Archived]

Climate Crisis, a Titanic Task






Atlas, in Greek mythology, was a titan who was condemned by Zeus to carry the sky. Many of us will remember him because of the image where he appears carrying the world on his shoulders, in his hands, on his shoulders or on his back. For good measure, those who have played lottery —the board game— will be able to see that the card of “The World” presents a modern Atlas holding the planet.

It is almost poetic to think of Atlas and the climate crisis. On the one hand, because preventing the deterioration of our environment has turned out to be a titanic task, a word that derives precisely from feats like that of Atlas. On the other hand, because taking care of the world is in our hands, our shoulders and our backs; ours and those of our descendants.

The task has been titanic and the road relatively long. Next year will mark 50 years since one of the first milestones in the international agenda regarding climate, the Stockholm Conference. Also, 25 years will be commemorated since another of the great milestones in the international agenda against climate change, the Kyoto Protocol.

The United Nations Organization has made the recount of the background that marks the establishment of global warming and climate change as a public problem in the international agenda starting from the Stockholm Conference in 1972. Therefore we could say that, in 1972, at least for some chroniclers, half a century of international efforts against climate change is marked.

A first positive result was the international commitment to eliminate chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) through the Montreal Protocol signed in 1987, a struggle that owes much to the laureate Mexican Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Mario Molina, may he rest in peace.

What are CFCs?

CFCs were gases that affected the ozone layer and were used in the refrigeration industry, aerosols and thermal insulators. It is considered a success because the speed at which they were replaced, both in industry and in consumption habits, was such that it was thought that with technological innovation and better consumption habits, major climate problems could be reduced.

In that scientific-climate euphoria, the following objective was set: to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that caused global warming. The struggle was framed in the Kyoto Protocol as the first international commitment of a global nature whose purpose was the reduction of at least 5% of greenhouse gas emissions taking 1990 as a baseline; this goal had to be achieved between 2008 and 2012.

The fight against greenhouse gas emissions proved to be titanic and the Kyoto Protocol did not produce the desired results. Some design problems that have been cited are:

  1. The greater difficulty of finding substitutes for fossil energy sources both for mobility and for electric energy generation.
  2. The speed of development of non-obligated countries such as China and India.
  3. The economic cost and loss of competitiveness of the obligated countries.

The years have shown us two things. The first is the size of the problem; the second, the importance of taking more forceful actions that involve all actors.

Of course, this implies a radical change in our consumption habits, a greater commitment to the energy transition and greater technological innovation. Perhaps, 25 years later, we are barely beginning to understand the titanic nature of the climate crisis.

This article was originally published by Business Insider México.
Date: June 1, 2021
Original Link: https://businessinsider.mx/crisis-climatica-opinion-paul-alejandro-sanchez-energia-circular/ [offline]
Archived Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20240228071615/https://businessinsider.mx/crisis-climatica-opinion-paul-alejandro-sanchez-energia-circular/ [Archived]