We need to talk about energy solutions

Sharing Experience: Charles Stanley Norwich

Energy is everything.

Our complex world is only possible because we have incrementally empowered ourselves. Through trial and lots of error, we now have an incredible array of technologies – all of which require energy to make, use and maintain.

And as we continue to manipulate and rearrange the atoms of our planet at an ever-increasing speed and scale, the whole process leads to plenty of reasonable questions as to how we should best direct our energy.

Better directed energy

If energy is everything, then all the challenges we face today must be linked to energy. It certainly looks that way in today’s increasingly divided world, which suggests that the framework through which we make our energy decisions has room for improvement.

How did we get here?

I would offer that our complicated world has achieved fantastic advancements for humanity. However, the complexity has necessarily required the creation of specialist and powerful organisations and institutions. While their original aims were directly aligned to serve society at large, as they have inevitably grown, even the most well-intentioned actions, subsidies, regulations, tariffs and targets within these silos have the potential to result in outcomes that run counter to the original holistic goals. We are familiar with concerns regarding the power that large multi-national businesses can wield, but we must not forget the enormous power that lies with governments, supra-national organisations, global foundations, the military industrial complex, science, education and media.

Moving forward

What’s the solution?

I would suggest we, as a society, need to be much more curious and demanding regarding the information we are given from all perspectives in the energy debate. We must also consider whether the incentives of all those perspectives are aligned with the advancement and flourishing of humanity – or something else.

As we look to plan our energy future, I believe we will be better served by allowing more space in the discussion for the real engineering challenges and the laws of thermodynamics, and a little less space for emotion, beliefs, hopes and platitudes, however well-meaning. 

We must get better at having sensible conversations about energy. I wonder if AI could help us? At last a question which I know I can answer with absolutely 100% certainty.

AI will definitely help us; it will help us consume even greater amounts of energy!

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