Page 18: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (May 2021)

Back to the Drawing Board

Social Impact of Sustainable Energy, the Really Important Part of the Game.

By Rik van Hemmen he future could be bright for small island nations. purchase enough energy with a few days’ work to ? y myself

Cheap sustainable energy is the core component of across the country in a few hours.

the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Make no mistake about it. Money is nothing more than stored

T Engineers like making things, but rarely think of the energy. We use money to get access to energy to support our life social impact that ? ows from their creations. Today, while we are styles. While food uses sunlight to grow, the sunlight is only a standing at the threshold of sustainable energy, we should take a tiny fraction of the energy it takes to get it into our mouths. Mon- moment to re? ect on the social impact of sustainable energy. Ac- ey is access to available energy, and available energy sustains our cess to sustainable energy puts us at the threshold of massive so- lifestyle. Cheap energy makes everything cheaper. Stealing mon- cial change and, if we play our cards right, we all could win big. ey is stealing energy. Money hoarding is energy access hoarding.

Since human nature and human psychology has not signi? - Equal access to energy is the core of a fair and just society.

cantly changed in centuries, the world as we know it is simply So now we are changing to sustainable energy. Will this lower the result of technological innovation. Engineers like to con- or raise our standard of living? If sustainable energy becomes clude that our general improvement in livings standards is the cheaper than fossil fuels we can expect our standard of living to result of technological innovations (jointly with medical and improve. A decade ago, it was unclear as to whether sustainable purely scienti? c innovations). energy would be cheaper than fossil fuels, but today there is

That is really only partly true, because to a much stronger massive evidence that we will develop the technologies where extent the March of Humanity has been driven by available sustainable energy becomes cheaper than fossil fuel energy.

energy. The ? rst improvement came with ? re, the next im- That is only the ? rst step in the program though, because provement came with animal power and the next improve- it appears that sustainable energy also will produce less pol- ment came with wind power (Yes, this is where maritime truly lution which in turn will reduce the cost to remediate pollu- changed the world). tion damages.

Then we had a period of coal and then we had a period of oil And then there is another bene? t. In the last 10,000 or so and then we had an only partially successful period of nuclear years the production of energy has trended towards larger power. The relative reduction in the cost of energy available to and larger corporate and government conglomerates. Our each human directly improved our living standards, although politics, whether on the local, national, or global level, have adversely it resulted in increased pollution and atmospheric been largely driven by who has access to energy and who has carbon. Access to energy massively improved our lives. not. Hence Saudi royal wealth, US wealth, and Russian oli-

Think of it this way: In 1820 I could only pound enough garchs. However, sun, wind, and waves are more equally dis- energy into a horse (food) and get enough work out of it to tributed across the globe than readily accessible fossil fuels, get me across the country in, at best, two months. Today I can can be directly harvested and are much more dif? cult to own

Martin & Ottaway 18 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • May 2021

MR #5 (18-33).indd 18 5/6/2021 5:08:21 PM