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Sustainable Society

Energy–The Fundamental Change Agent

Sagar Dhara

[Following is a shortened version of a paper presented at the 37th Indian Social Science Congress at Aligarh Muslim University, organized around the theme of building an ecologically sustainable society]

To become sustainable, equitable and a peaceful society, humans must power down by at least 60%, become solar beings, distribute energy equitably and manage it democratically. For this, global outlook must change from Gain maximization for a few to Risk minimization for all species. The formulation of sustainability indices and a wide public discussion for short and medium term programmes for such a transition should be conducted.

World War Zero has been fought for the last 250 years by fossil fuelled Europe ,and North America to project their power through factories, railroads and gun boats to vanquish solar and animate energized countries in Asia, Africa and South America. Yet, history books tell how Robert Clive played a key role in establishing military and political supremacy of the East India Company in India and securing the wealth that followed for the British crown.

Of the primary energy sources, solar energy has been the most important in shaping and changing the world. It energizes inanimate processes, e.g., climate, biogeochemical cycles, as well as life, including human society. While inanimate processes and life forms other than humans have consumed more or less constant quantities of energy, humans have continuously increased their consumption as they created improved knowledge of energy conversion.

Since the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago, humans have usurped increasing amounts of energy from other life forms, primarily plants. The driver for this process is class society—slavery, feudalism, capitalism—that creates the need to maximize energy surplus (profit) accumulation by increasing energy use.

HANPP (Human appropriation of net primary production = NPPh + NPP lost due to land use change and fires caused by humans), a measure for the amount of energy usurped by humans from nature, grew slowly till the industrial revolution began, and exponen-tially in the last 250 years. In the last century, it has doubled from 13 to 24% of the Net Primary Production (NPP) estimated to be 65 GTC (Giga tonnes of carbon). Human theft from nature, or HANPP, is today estimated to be 15.6 GTC, i.e., equal to the energy in 7.5 million Hiroshima sized atom bombs.

Peak oil
Fossil fuels began to be used 250 years ago when the industrial revolution began. By the end of the 19th Century, they overtook bio-mass use—the primary energy source. From a consumption of 300 MToe/year (million tonnes of oil equivalent per year) in the year 1900, fossil fuel use today is 10 GToe/year (Giga tonnes of oil equivalent per year), a jump of 33.5 times and a growth of 3.2% pa.

The party is over. The world has hit peak oil, i.e., oil production peaking, followed by a decline as new oil resources have not been discovered in large quantities. Peak gas is to follow in a few decades. Declining energy resources has grave implications for the future human society as it has the potential to cause economic crises, exacerbate inequity, and even throw society into chaos.

Energy use and inequity
The total energy consumed by humans today is 18.47 GToe/year. Of this, 64% is from commercial TPES (total primary energy supply), ie, fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro-energy, 5% from biomass and 31% from NPPs (net primary production-solar energy fraction, which is the contribution of solar energy to Net primary production energy harvested-NPPh, and appropriated by humans from crops lands, pastures, forests) by way of photosynthesis (Table 1). NPPs is free of energy cost and contributes to surplus energy, which can be variously called surplus value or profit.

The per capita commercial TPES + biomass energy consumption in the European Union and North America is of the order of 2-4 times the world average and 5-10 times that in India. There is great inequity in energy consumption between nations and within nations.

The ratio of commercial TPES + biomass energy to total energy is higher for the European Union and North America than for Asia, Africa and South America, as the former regions use a greater proportion of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels provide about 80% of the world's (Table 2) commercial energy. Fossil fuel addiction, which began in North countries, hss now become global. Biomass supplies a significantly higher proportion of the total energy consumed by India and China in comparison to Europe and North America.

Tipping points
Driven by class society's greed, a massive energy overdraw is the most important cause for today's environmental crisis. It manifests as global warming, rapid deterioration of air, water, land and biodiversity quality, and disturbance to the biogeochemical cycles, in particular the carbon and nitrogen cycles. Earth's environment's life support systems have been badly compromised. The carbon cycle will not correct itself for centuries even if people stopped emission of excess carbon completely today.

Perception that there is inequitable distribution of energy between various sections of people—class, caste, gender, colour, nations—has caused conflict throughout human history. In the last century, three types of human conflicts—interstate, colonial and civil wars—have killed no less than 100 million people.

Peak oil and climate change are tipping points that have the potential to collapse human civilization. Such collapses have happened in the past, e.g., Mayan and Roman civilizations, but they remained local. In a globalized economy, collapse will be global. As the global economy's EROEI (energy return on energy invested) drops to >9-10, supporting an industrial civilization will become increasingly difficult. At an EROEI of 13 today and dropping, societies across the globe are not far from a collapse.

Sustainable capitalism–an oxymoron
Sustainable development, trickle down theory and green energies are myths that capitalism has created to make people believe that it is sustainable and has solutions for the maladies of environmental injury and economic inequity. These solutions have not worked till date, nor do they show any promise to do so in future.

Development, as understood today, requires energy. Peak oil is here. In the 20th Century, North nations used massive quantities of fossil fuels and energy stolen from South nations through unequal exchange for their development. These sources are no longer available to South nations. They can never develop to become like North nations.

Trickledown theory is dead. At current growth rates, it will take over 100 years for the world's poorest 1.5 billion to creep above the poverty threshold of $1.25/day (2005) PPP, and centuries to cross the $5/day poverty line. With peak oil being here, whether the current global growth rate of 2.6% pa will sustain for the next 100 years for wealth to trickledown to the poor is moot.

Green energies do not have the energy density or the high EROEI of fossil fuels to replace them. Nuclear energy is expensive and hazardous. Moreover, uranium ore at current consumption levels, will run out within this century. While there are coal reserves for over 100 years (at current consumption levels), its use will hasten global warming as it releases twice the amount of carbon dioxide as oil per Joule (J) of energy.

Ideologies that support inequity and unsustainability
If the EROEI of coal is 50, a coal mine owner is able to harvest 49 J of surplus energy for every joule invested. That 49 J becomes her property which she can use whichever way she wishes, including in mining more coal to increase her surplus energy accumulation. Those denied such ownership remain poor. Since slavery began 5,000 years ago, private ownership of energy resources has created and perpetuated class society and inequity. Today capitalism justifies private ownership over natural resources as an ideology that works best for human development.

It took 300 million years for nature to bake coal from dead plants and animals of the Carboniferous period. Humans created private ownership rights over coal when in fact they played no part in making it. The same logic holds for other natural resources used in arte-facts and services. Humans therefore have no ownership claim over nature or its products; at best they have a usufruct claim.

Anthropocentrism is the belief that humans are the most important species on earth and the rest of nature is for their use and enjoyment. It is epitomized in v 1:26, Book of Genesis, "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Anthropocentrism legitimizes unbridled use of nature for humans, energy overdraw being its direct consequence.

Without fighting the ideologies of private ownership of nature, first of land, then water and very recently of the atmosphere; and its products, and anthropocentrism, a sustainable, equitable and peaceful human society is impossible.

Vision for a future society
To become sustainable, equitable, and peaceful human society must replace its current global outlook of Gain maximization for a few with Risk minimization for all species. People must believe and act in a manner that makes them a part of nature and not apart from it, and strive to achieve equity between species.

Two things must happen first—powering down and energy equity. The world must reduce commercial TPES + biomass, currently 12.72 GToe, by 60%, and rely largely on the sun for energy needs. One must have only usufruct and not ownership rights over nature, and must put energy resources—energy sources, converters, conveyors, storage devices and knowledge of energy conversion—under social and collective management.

With a population of 7 billion, equitable distribution of energy will give each person 0.75 Toe/year of commercial energy (current average annual per capita consumption: US-7.5-Toe, Europe-3.7 Toe, lndia-0.57 Toe, World-1.8 Toe), including of eMergy (embodied energy—energy used to produce a good or service). This was the annual per capita energy consumption prevalent in the 19th Century; which is adequate for a good life at current lower middle class levels in India, but without the possibility of luxury consumption. A smaller global population would give each person more energy.

Sustainability energy indices
Sustalnability energy index 1: How much energy can people take from nature without disturbing it? Nobody knows it. This question has neither been asked nor answered adequately. The answer would depend on how one defines what one considers disturbance to nature. A wider discussion of this question will contribute significantly to understanding of Sustainability. For such a discussion to take off, an attempt is made below to define two Sustainability indices.

How much should HANPP be, for human society as a whole, and for specific communities in different environments? One clue to finding an answer is by determining the band of redundancy that nature creates for various life forms. HANPP can be the energy available within this band.

Sustainability energy Index 2: What mix of energies will heip human society become more sustainable? The higher the proportion of solar energy used, the greater would be the energy Sustainability of a society. A good measure for understanding the Sustainability of various countries/ regions would be the ratio of NPPs to total energy use. The ratio of NPPs to total energy for India is 0.41, whereas it is half that for North nations and as low as 0.16 for China (Table 3). India's energy use is more sustainable than that of North nations and that of China.

To get a better picture of the energy Sustainability of a region/ country, energy consumption should be computed by adding energy in imports and excluding energy in exports. NPPs should include solar energy not just in goods and services produced locally, but also in imports and exclude that of exports. Likewise, total energy use should add embodied energy of imports to energy expended locally, and subtract embodied energy of exports. If this were done, China's energy Sustainability would improve slightly, that of India would worsen a bit, and USA and EU would be seen as being even more unsustainable.

Renewable energy's, discounting hydro power, contribution to energy supply is very small, and hence can be neglected in this index. As it becomes significant, its contribution to energy supply can be added to the numerator.

Roadmap towards a sustainable society
A well worked out roadmap is difficult to visualize at this stage due to several imponderables. Social change may happen in many ways—global economic collapse, peoples' groundswell, slow but incremental change, changes in specific local areas without human society as a whole changing. In the past, change has happened through each of these pathways. A clearer roadmap will emerge only through a dialogue.

Table 1 : Energy supply today by type

Region

Commercial
TPES

Biomass
CGARCommercial
TPES Biomass
1990-2013
NPPs
Total
Energy
Population
Per capita energy Consumption
(Toe/Yr)
GToe/Yr
GToe/Yr
%
GToe/Yr
GToe/Yr
billion
Commercial
TPES Biomass
NPPs
Total
World
11.83
0.89
1.8
5.75
18.47
7.16
1.8
0.8
2.6
India
0.62
0.13*
3.6
0.53
1.28
1.23
0.6
0.4
1.0
China
2.14
0.29
5.1
0.45
1.36
1.36
1.8
0.3
2.1
USA
2.13
0.09
1.0
0.58
0.32
0.32
6.9
1.8
8.7
EU27
1.56
0.06
0.4
0.56
0.51
0.51
3.2
1.1
4.3

*For India, biomass includes dung cake (0.04 GToe) used extensively for cooking energy and which is a non-market good.


Table 2 Commercial TPES and biomass energy supply by type

Region
Commercial TPES + Biomass
Supply %
Gtoe/Yr
Oil
Coal
Gas
Nuclear
Hydro
Biomass
Renewables
World
12.72
34
25
20
5
6
7
3
India
0.75
24
44 
    8 
1  
5  
17 
1
China
2.43
20
  57 
  2
1 6
12
  2
USA
2.2
  36 
   20   
  26   
8 3
4
3
EU27
1.62
35
16
26
13
negligible
4
6

Table 3 Ratio of NPPS to total energy

Region
Total Energy
NPPs
Sustain ability energy index 2
GToe/Yr
GToe/Yr
NPPs/Total energy use
World
18.47
5.75
0.31
India
1.28
0.53
0.41
China
2.88
0.45
0.16
USA
2.78
0.58
0.21
EU27
2.18
0.56
0.26

Frontier
Vol. 46, No. 37, Mar 23 - 29, 2014