Welcome to 21st Century Energy Transition. How do we make it work? My name is Brad Hayes. I'm an adjunct professor in earth and atmospheric sciences at the University of Alberta. And together with a diverse team of experts from all over the energy world, I'm going to introduce you to the 21st century energy transition. [MUSIC] We've all heard about transitioning to new energy sources, whether it be solar, tidal, wind or something entirely new. We know that humanity has to develop and use more diverse energy sources. But making the transition from today's energy systems to those of the future is not going to be easy. In fact, it's the global challenge of our time. Imagine prehistoric humans living short harsh lives, relying on hunting and gathering for food and living in primitive shelters. They had only the energy of their own muscles and simple tools to survive. Today we use a tremendous amount of energy in our daily lives and without access to that energy, we would be living the lives of people thousands of years ago. We use energy and everything we do. Growing our food, building places to live and work, powering industries that make our clothing and all the goods we use in everyday life. And fueling our transportation by road, rail, water and air. We produce energy from a variety of sources, but more than 80% of global energy consumed today, is still produced by fossil fuels, oil, natural gas and coal. Can we keep producing so much energy from fossil fuels? Is that sustainable? The short answer is no. [MUSIC] And so the primary global challenge is how do we provide enough energy to meet the needs of everyone on the planet in a sustainable manner. The World Commission on Environment and Development was thinking about sustainability as far back as 1987. And to find sustainable development as development that meets the needs of current generations, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. That means we have to create energy systems that will support the energy needs for everyone on earth far into the future, but we can't ignore the energy needs of everyone in the world today. Imagine, living in a town where people want to create new alternative energy systems, perhaps a new solar array or wind farm for electricity and biofuels plant to produce liquid fuels. They do their research and economic analysis, decide that these are great ideas and get to work. They bring in experts to design the facilities, they make deals to acquire the necessary lands and bring stakeholders onside. They engage in environmental and geotechnical studies to ensure that the new infrastructure can be built safely. They line up financing, after a year or so, everything is going well. Workers break ground on the new projects and everyone visualizes the success of their new energy systems. They found the answers to replacing their existing energy supplies, so they terminate contracts for electricity from the regional grid, which relies on natural gas. They also shut down natural gas supplies and convert the gas stations to biofuels only. Then winter comes, electricity and heating demand skyrockets. The people find that some of their new equipment doesn't work as advertised, and that there are long periods of time when there isn't sufficient sun or wind to provide electricity. People can't heat their houses or cook their food. Many cars can't operate on 100% biofuel. The reality is that we have to think about next winter and all the other winters to come, while we're creating new energy infrastructure. We have to think about all the issues and consequences because people's lives depend on the decisions being right. We have to put something better in place before we can shut down the energy sources we are using now for us to reach sustainable solutions. The United Nations has quantified sustainability by defining 17 Sustainable Development Goals, including no poverty, zero hunger, quality education, clean water, decent work, peace and justice. The 2020 sustainable development goals report, launched the decade of action to deliver the sustainable development goals around the world, despite the covid 19 pandemic. sustainable development goal number seven is access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all. None of the other goals can be attained on a global scale without achieving SDG number seven. Because modern energy is needed to deliver the goods and services underpinning each and every one. No poverty, zero hunger, good health, sustainable cities, peace and justice. The energy for growth hub, an energy think tank based in the United States has built upon you and sustainable development goal number seven, to make the case that every human being requires a certain minimum amount of energy for modern living. That means sufficient energy to power our homes to power our work and industry and to enable us to move around in our daily lives. We'll hear from the energy for growth hub later in the course as they explain the modern energy minimum. So how much energy will we need to achieve our goals? There are many different scenarios estimating how much energy the world will use in the future and which sources will produce that energy. This graph shows global primary energy supply and how it's delivered in terms of fuel composition for 2019. It also projects energy supply using three different scenarios for the year 2050, it's from BP's Energy Outlook for 2022. The latest in a series of annual reports tracking energy supply and projections for the future. There are many such energy supply projections, this one by BP is one of the best known. In 2019 the world used just under 600 extra jewels of energy, most of it delivered by oil, gas and coal and lesser amounts by nuclear hydro and renewables. BP 2022 envisions three quite different energy supply pictures for 2050 each relying on different assumptions about people's behaviors, technology, economics and government policies. In all three scenarios, the total amount of energy delivered rises, reflecting increasing world population. In the new momentum scenario on the far right, oil and coal energy decreases significantly while natural gas rises. The big increase in energy supply is through the growth of modern renewables, including wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels, biomethane and modern biomass. We'll talk more about all these later in the course. In the accelerated and net zero scenarios, BP sees a much more dramatic growth of modern renewables in our energy supply as well as nuclear and hydro, with far less energy coming from oil, gas and coal. These two scenarios also envision considerably less energy demand because of better efficiency and changes in people's behaviors. The potential variations in future energy supply and demand are immense and depend upon many assumptions and judgments about what people will do in the future. As we move ahead in the course, will explore some of these energy demand scenarios, there's an elephant in the room, greenhouse gas emissions and climate change studies of climate indicate that adding greenhouse gasses, primarily carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere warms the earth over time and can change long term climate and weather patterns that we've become accustomed to. In other words, meeting the sustainable development goal of energy for all means we must do so while addressing the critical issue of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, humanities production of carbon dioxide. The primary greenhouse gas has increased continuously throughout history as we burn more and more fuels like wood, coal, oil and gas in all sectors of our lives to generate electricity to produce industrial products, especially cement and steel, to heat and cool our buildings and to transport both ourselves and all the goods we consume. We're not going to debate climate change and its causes. In this course, we're going to assume that greenhouse gas emissions are important drivers of changing climate and that it's very important to reduce anthropogenic human made emissions as quickly as possible while still meeting sustainable development goals. So how will we address this global challenge in this course, we will look at energy production, consumption policy and pathways to reliably and affordably meet the global challenge of energy supply enough for all with sustainability protection of the environment and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Let's have a look at what we're going to talk about. Humanity has been transitioning between energy sources for thousands of years, for example, from horsepower to oil powered transportation, history can guide us in our future actions. There are many different sources of energy, oil, gas, coal, nuclear wind, solar, tidal geothermal and others. Each brings its own benefits and challenges. So we'll look at those as well. We will require many new resources to build new energy technologies, what economists call supply chains. We'll examine those as well. Large scale energy storage is a critical component of alternative energy systems. There's lots of talk about batteries, but batteries alone cannot meet the immense range of challenges for energy storage as well. Find out pumped hydro as pictured here is actually the leading energy storage technology today. What other types of energy storage do we need? And can hydrogen play a role? There are many things we need to understand about today's energy systems and what might change tomorrow will address some of the many questions that need answers in order to move forward with the energy transition. Today is a polarizing time. People have different worldviews and politics, social and economic issues and energy is no different. The different needs and opinions of different people are called energy realities. The energy reality for some people is that we must undertake gradual transformation of our energy systems to ensure economic stability. The reality for others is that energy transition is an urgent process required to forestall a climate crisis will examine these seemingly competing realities as we look ahead to making the energy transition happen. Many governments and organizations have announced goals for future alternative energy production and emissions reduction. But are we putting the right policies into place to support those goals? And if the goals are to be realized, we must create realistic pathways or mechanisms to achieve them. Part of creating realistic pathways is to consider economics and project management. How do we decide which technology to pursue, where to build new energy projects and how to pay for them? We'll conclude the course by discussing how to generate the right policies and create realistic pathways to achieving the energy transition as soon as possible as you can see we have lost to talk about. So let's get started in Lesson two, we'll be talking about energy transitions past and future.
