Energy Transmission: The Most Important Industry of the Future
“Electricity is really just organized lightning.”
— George Carlin
Most of us know that the transformation to sustainable energy systems will be one of the most important, but also one of the most difficult challenges we have to overcome in the near future.
The global energy mix (the overview of how much we use each energy source) shows that we still generate most of our energy from fossil fuels. In fact, oil, coal, and gas — which are all fossil fuels — are still humanity’s three favorite methods of generating energy.
This article will explore why energy-related CO₂ emissions are still on the rise, why the global electricity demand will probably never decrease again, and why the electric power transmission industry is currently the biggest bottleneck.
Energy Production: The Biggest No-Brainer
When we talk about reducing the carbon emissions of the energy sector, we usually start by discussing the emissions that are directly generated during energy production. After all, this is where the whole process starts and it is very easy to notice huge pillars of smoke in the sky (see image below for proof).
From a politician’s perspective, a public focus on new energy production methods makes a lot of sense, too.
The topic sounds simple enough to make anyone think that they can easily understand it, while, traditionally, it is straightforward for politicians to claim that they “saved their voters’ jobs” by “protecting” some regional monopolist or industry leader.
It is also a fact that most (if not all) politicians adapt their worldview based on who contributes to their election campaigns: A 2020 study used 28 years (!) of data to determine that fossil fuel companies treat their “contributions” as reasonable and reliable investments because corrupt politicians are proven to be very faithful and comparatively cheap.
In Germany, for example, the biggest coal-producing companies used the influence they had gained through decades of corruption and disinformation campaigns to receive billions of Euros in compensation, simply because Germany aims to phase out coal-based power plants by 2038. This oligopoly of energy companies will therefore be rewarded by the German government for promoting really idiotic business decisions — well by the German taxpayer, to be precise.
At the same time, wind and solar energy companies in Germany lost their government subsidies and thousands of sustainable jobs were lost.
Still, it is an undeniable fact that renewable energy sources are the only proven way forward. In most places, it is pretty clear to experts what types of renewable energy sources can be used to satisfy the respective needs of the region, too.
After all, it is well known which parts of our planet have strong winds, many hours of sunlight, or powerful water currents. In some places, renewable energy sources produce much more energy than we can use there already!
Wrong place, wrong time
But socioeconomic transformations on a global scale are never as easy as they sound. As it turns out, renewable energy sources are dependent on the natural forces they tap into.
If there is no wind, there is no wind energy. If there is no sunlight, there is no solar energy. You get the point.
Because of this conundrum, every country in the world uses fuel-based energy sources to “balance” its overall energy supply. As much as we all might want to save the planet, nobody wants to freeze in the dark.
While the use of renewables increases every year, the growing overall demand for electricity also boosts the demand for coal, gas, and other fossil fuels.
Additionally, not everyone lives close to areas flush with renewable energy sources. Some areas simply cannot be served by renewable resources at the moment.
At this point, some of you might say: “Wait, Tom, there is an amazing fuel that doesn’t produce direct CO₂ emissions! Why don’t we use nuclear energy to stabilize the overall energy supply? Bill Gates says it’s the future and he is pretty smart!”
And your statement would be absolutely correct! Nuclear power plants produce very few direct CO₂ emissions and Bill Gates is a smart person.
Unfortunately, the building of nuclear plants, as well as the disposal of nuclear waste, do produce a lot of direct CO₂ emissions. Even more unfortunately, Bill Gates’ bet on a nuclear energy future might be guided more by his own investments than by science.
Independent scientists are actually a bit skeptical towards Gates’ reactor. There is also a myriad of other reasons not to use nuclear energy and I will not list all of them in this article. You can find some examples here, here, and here.
While new inventions (like a feasible fusion reactor) and optimizations of existing technologies would undoubtedly make nuclear energy safer and more sustainable, none of these magical solutions exist yet.
Until they do, we are left with two realistic options:
We could store the overproduced energy from renewable sources for later or we could transfer the energy somewhere else. Let’s take a look at our first option!
Energy Storage: Always Almost Feasible
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, said in August 2020 that the energy density in batteries (the amount of energy stored per kg of weight) would increase by 50% within four years.
This prediction would entail that 400Wh/kg batteries became feasible by 2024 (which would be pretty cool, trust me).
Now, you might say:
“Yeah, but Elon says a lot of things to draw more attention and funds to his cash-intensive businesses, Tom. This does not mean it will actually happen.”
And you would be absolutely correct again! It doesn’t.
Musk hailed his overpriced Tesla subway taxis in Las Vegas as a revolutionary transportation system, even though it is worse than a 20th-century subway line in any conceivable way. He actually believes business travel on Earth via giant rockets makes sense and he regularly engages in pump-and-dump-schemes to enrich himself. Trust me, I know.
But this doesn’t mean that batteries will not become much more efficient in the near future, nor does it mean that his prediction on energy density cannot become a reality.
But what does it actually mean?
To put the 400Wh/kg promise into perspective, let’s take a quick look at current (early 2022) battery densities. According to the Clean Energy Institute at the University of Washington, lithium-ion batteries can nowadays have an energy density of 100Wh/kg to 265Wh/kg.
While that’s pretty good, it is still far from the 400Wh/kg promised by Elon Musk.
In fact, over a year after their CEO made his bold claims, Tesla still used lithium-ion batteries with a density of around 260Wh/kg — just like in August 2020.
Luckily, many other companies, institutions, and entrepreneurs work on improving the density of traditional battery systems, as well. Faster, more reliable, and more powerful batteries have been launched every year for the past decade and it would be stupid to expect the trend not to continue (which is probably what Elon thought to himself).
“If I had asked the public what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.“
— Henry Ford
But will we actually use “traditional” batteries? After all, there are other options for storing energy. We could use the overproduced energy to pump water into a reservoir that is raised off the ground, and we could then generate electricity by letting it flow down again. We could also use air pressure, rotational energy, or thermal storage.
All of these methods have been discovered and researched, but they are (mostly) not as convenient or scalable as a battery. Creating a large water reservoir, for example, comes with enormous implications for the surrounding environment and the people living there. The other options come with similar disadvantages, which make them only viable for a very limited number of use cases.
The hydrogen uncertainty
Fuel cells are a little bit like batteries, as they convert chemical energy to electricity. While “traditional” batteries (like the battery of a Tesla car) store energy using metals (such as lithium) fuel cells use some type of fuel — obviously. This means that fuel cells can provide energy as long as there is enough fuel (mostly hydrogen) and an oxidizing agent (mostly oxygen from the air).
The chemical reaction within a hydrogen fuel cell merely produces water as a byproduct, which is enough to convince many people that hydrogen is the energy solution we were waiting for. It is (relatively) easy to transport and we can use renewable energy for the electrolysis of water to produce it (that’s called green hydrogen).
But we already learned that it’s never this easy (check out my article on Hydrogen vs Electric vehicles). Many of the hydrogen-related issues that were already known over 15 years ago have not been solved yet, and hydrogen has a long road ahead if it wants to solve the escalating energy crises by itself (like some highly “motivated” politicians tend to prophesize).
Energy Transmission: The True Bottleneck
Electricity moves remarkably quickly: It can move through a regular wire at almost 90% of the speed of light. This amazing feature of electricity allows us to place our homes far away from the stinky power plants that produce the energy that we use to cook our food.
Power grids have been installed all over the world to allow the transmission of energy from power sources to power consumers:
No money from old men
But power cables don’t go everywhere and the power cables we’ve installed already are not going to last forever. While the lifetime of any wiring system depends on a myriad of factors, virtually none of them will last for longer than 80 years or 90 years.
In Europe, some of the grids have been built in the early 20th century, and other regions are facing similar difficulties with their aging infrastructure.
The US, which has a large but incredibly outdated power grid, is currently starting an infrastructure investment scheme, but President Biden’s “Bipartisan Infrastructure Law” might be too little too late.
While the proposed investment into the energy grid is definitely a good plan, this needs to be a continuous process instead of a one-time thing. After all, creating a nationwide EV charging network and a more connected rail network will also boost the energy demand in the US.
At the same time, most other countries are even further behind on their infrastructure plans.
While some of them might have specific climate goals, it is not really explained how they will be achieved and there are mostly no specific budgets for the modernization of power grids. Buzzword-filled press releases proudly list Wikipedia article rewrites about renewable energies, but they do not actually provide any useful information.
Our only hope, at this point, is that the US will be successful with its infrastructure bill early on, so more countries will copy their “ideas”.
The path of least resistance
Electricity always travels along the path of least resistance. Similarly, humans often make decisions that are aligned with their own paths of least resistance. This does not only include politicians, but they are usually the prime example to explain this phenomenon.
As a result, federal infrastructure projects are often planned by populists and not by actual experts. Solutions are not analyzed based on their potential but based on their popularity.
And this almost makes sense. It is important to gain public support for infrastructure projects, especially large ones. They have to be (at least) tolerated by the local population and the voters need to believe that the investment is not wasted.
But how do you mobilize support for a project that is not popular even though you know it is the correct path forward?
Finding solutions
During the early phases of the Hyperloop project (example), multiple teams were working on incentives that could be offered to landowners along the track. After all, people wouldn’t just let you build a huge concrete pillar carrying loud transportation infrastructure on their land without a reason.
This included a broad range of ideas, including bee colonies living in the pillars to revive the surrounding landscape, implementing carbon capture technology within the pillars, or combining the design of the pillars with a vertical-axis wind turbine to provide electricity.
The ultimate goal was to make it desirable to have Hyperloop pillars on your property.
In my research for this article, I could not find an example of a government that uses the same tactics for energy infrastructure projects on a national scale. The playbook for governments is usually:
- Try to buy the land
- Disown the people who own the land if they don’t sell
But this ingenious plan does not always work, and projects can get delayed or even canceled due to these issues.
Of course, not all of the fancy Hyperloop multi-purpose ideas work for the boring energy transmission infrastructure. Especially underground cables do not really have the chance to provide any additional benefit and monetary compensation (or free electricity) might be the only option in this case.
But many countries do not even have to convince their people.
The German government, which has a proud history of privatizing parts of its assets unnecessarily to make everything more complicated, could use its partly-owned, extensive rail network to lay power lines across the country.
Solar energy from the south and wind energy from the northern coast could be distributed much more efficiently within the country. Similarly, the Autobahn network connects to almost anywhere in Germany, and people usually don’t live next to it anyway.
As a result, Germany could probably make a huge step just by using land that is or should be owned by the government anyway, and they wouldn’t even have to find more ideas to be nice to landowners.
Lessons
There is no single solution that works for every country in the world and finding the right path for each region will require some thinking (sorry).
At the same time, there are many studies and inventions that provide us with great paths into the future. We can find the proven concepts that are most suitable for our region and try to implement them.
During that process, the following lessons are important to understand:
- We need to stop looking for a single solution to fix everything. The most promising solution is a mix of various technologies and policies. We need to pool our resources to come up with a system that will facilitate a sustainable future for every person on this planet. Otherwise, the climate crisis will destroy human civilization as we know it.
- We need to focus more on energy transmission. As explained, energy transmission represents a huge bottleneck for the transformation of our energy mix. While investments and research are pouring into the energy storage market, energy transmission infrastructure gets (relatively) ignored.
- We need to be more critical of entrepreneurs who overzealously promote untested technologies. While the ideas may be promising and have the potential to change the future, climate change will not wait for us to finish our research. Large corporations and corrupt politicians may even use the ideas to justify their own inaction (have you seen “Don’t look up!”?).
- We need to collaborate more. While every country requires its own system of solutions, many regions of the world share similar requirements. This means that we can learn from each other and exchange notes on specific projects.
- We need to hold politicians accountable. As we have seen, political decisions have created the precarious situation that humanity is currently trapped in. While the politicians, responsible for Earth’s climate catastrophe, often knew better, none have actually been punished for their abuse of power. Why would they change their ways?
Do you agree? Did I leave out something important? Let me know in the comments!
