Practical Solution

Observations

When considering energy, the media tends to focus on electricity production, partly because electricity is a very easily transportable form of energy, and it is easy to measure how much electricity is used in your home. When fossil fuels are used to produce electricity, they are simply burnt to create heat, the heat creates steam, and steam turns turbines that produce electricity. There are a number of other significant major industrial processes that use mostly heat – to smelt iron/steel and aluminium, to make cement, to synthesize nitrogenous fertilisers, etc.

Currently, even renewable electricity generation plants, such as wind or solar, have a gas-fired power-station as backup for when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining.

However, if we were to rethink, just a little, we would realise that if we could have a carbon-free heat source, which would provide the raw heat for various chemical processes, and also, as part of the cycle, be able to produce electricity on demand, at very short notice, then we could provide the back-up electricity needed to supplement the growth and reliance on renewables for electricity production.

Thus, with one sleight of hand, we could remove the requirement for gas-fired power-stations which currently provide that back-up electricity, and provide the energy for industry in a far more efficient way.

Any change in form of energy wastes energy, thus if raw heat is needed, and we can supply raw heat, we should use that heat rather than converting it to electricity, and back into heat. When converting heat to electricity in fossil-fuel power stations you only get out as electricity about 40% of the energy you put in as heat.

Also – if we have a carbon-free high temperature heat source several more chemical processes, which are currently thought too expensive in terms of energy, become viable. One of these is truly carbon-free Hydrogen production, which is needed for synthesising liquid fuel, for those situations where the energy density of a liquid fuel is required, from atmospheric CO2. This would also be a fairly dense form of carbon, so could be used for the “storage” part of atmospheric carbon capture and storage.

Emerging key technologies

There are a few new key technologies which will have the potential to solve the world’s problems with CO2. These are on the cusp, but have not yet hit most main stream media.

The key technologies are in

  • Backbone Energy production – Molten Salt Thermal Generators
  • More Flexible use of that energy than has been previously suggested
  • Better storage of energy
  • Better load balancing of electricity production and demand.

To expand a little on “More flexible use of the energy”: We can use the raw heat produced by the Molten Salt Thermal Generators, both to produce electricity and to run chemical processes directly at the same time. This would enable the amount of electricity produced to vary quickly to balance requirements, by changing the proportion of output heat pumped to the different processes. The chemical processes needing an extremely high temperature include CO2-free production of hydrogen, CO2 removal from the atmosphere, as well as the more well-known energy-hungry processes: iron, steel and aluminium smelting, fertiliser production, and cement manufacture.

Politicians need to be encouraged to invest and encourage these new technologies, to make sure they become mainstream, and enable the planet in all its wonderful diversity, to thrive for the next millennium.

There is a Practically Carbon-Free solution, using technologies that do already exist

  1. Produce as much electricity as is possible/practical from renewables – Wind, Solar, Hydroelectricity and Wave/Tides, provided they make sense from a full cycle analysis.
  2. Produce all other required energy and electricity in a completely carbon-free manner using, for example, Molten Salt thermal generators.
  3. Build in the ability to Store electricity, at a grid-scale, to help even out and mitigate fluctuations in production and demand.
  4. For transport, wherever the energy density of a liquid fuel is needed, manufacture a liquid fuel – like di-methyl-ether (DME) from atmospheric/captured CO2. This chemical could also be used for storing the captured carbon.

We will probably also need some form of Climate repair, but right now let’s start the job of not making it any worse, and try to begin to reverse the damage.

We need to ensure that solutions are actively pursued, by everyone, world-wide.

However, there is hope, there are solutions.