On energy, and of course Earth Hour

2 years ago, I had an article on Earth Hour campaign, about how it failed to provide the truth and how it succeeded in luring all the young and energetic people who were always eager to contribute. Now, fortunately (for me), I have more evidence about the so-called environmentally-friendly campaign.

The base of the event is to encourage people to turn off the using-electricity device, especially light-bulb, to save energy and therefore reduce CO2 emission. The idea seems to make sense: if we do not use electricity, then no CO2 emits. However, there are some mistakes and problems with the campaign.

To begin with, it actually does not reduce the CO2 emission. Worse, it does increase that. How is that possible? First, all the engineers know that a small decline in electricity consumption does not necessarily translate into less energy being pumped into the grid, therefore will not reduce emission. Second, the cozy candle lights. Among many household devices which consume electricity, Earth Hour focuses intensively on the light bulb. It is undeniably good marketing idea. No one will notice that Earth Hour is on the air if we just turn our wash-machine off. In the modern world, darkness catches our eyes faster than the light. However, there is a unwanted consequence of this brilliant idea. In order to make our eyes not just a decoration (and perhaps to make the event more observable. Who knows?), the campaigners of Earth Hour have used the cozy candles, which seems so natural and friendly to the environment, to bring back the light. Make no mistake, candles are still fossil fuels, and almost 100 times less efficient than your light bulbs. Using one candle cancels out even the  THEORETICAL CO2 reduction, using two candles means you are doing more harm than good (Not to mention the effect of CO2 on global warming is still on dispute)

Secondly, Earth Hour gives a false conception about global warming. Tackling global warming is absolutely not that easy. It needs more effort than just turn off your bulbs. If everyone in the entire world cut all residential lighting, and this translated entirely into CO₂ reduction, it would be the equivalent of China pausing its CO₂ emissions for less than four minutes. Switching off lights will only cause it harder to see.

Thirdly, the worst thing about Earth Hour is how it ignores the fact that electricity has been a miracle to humanity. Without the stable and decent light made when electricity burns vonfram, we cannot have an active and productive life after sunset. Without the ion running through the tube, there will be no computers, no cars, no air-conditioners. Electricity has raised the human’s productivity to a new level. We need more of it, not less.

However, I am not here today just to talk about Earth Hour. There is something else I want to share with you, in case you are still confused.

The next revolution on energy will not be on whether we can find another oil well, or another source of energy, or we can make those recent renewable energies such as solar and wind energy cheaper and therefore available. The next revolution will be on the efficiency of using and storing energy.

If we have some modest knowledge about physics, we may know that electricity is a very special product because it is very difficult to store energy. For example, in the rain season, hydro power plants work at their largest capacity, and produce lots of electricity. Sometimes, the supply is bigger than demand for energy. However, we cannot save that surplus energy for the dry season. The best thing we can do so far is to get rid of that tragic to store those powers into battery. Those batteries work as inventories for electricity. The only problem with battery is again, efficiency. We still produce surplus energy and those batteries still are not able to store all of them. If we can, in a near future, discover a better way to make battery, then searching for another source of energy will make sense.

It is undoubted that no matter how much energy we can have, we will run out of it sooner or later if we do not know how to use it efficiently. One of the most famous example of how efficiency matters runs along with technology race in smartphones. Recently, the smartphone market is divided mainly into 2 big competitors: iOS from Apple and Android from Google. If we have a chance to look the information of the devices running those systems, we may notice that iphone, which runs ios, always has a smaller battery capacity than those from Android. However, the customers who complain about battery life are usually the ones who use Android. Apple does not need to make a big battery, which will lead to bigger phone, to keep their phone last as long as those running Android because they know how to make their OS use battery more efficiently. I still remember 4 years ago when the first Ipad was introduced, an expert claimed that if iPad still used the old technology from 20 years before, it would require the whole Hoa Binh hydro power plant to supply the energy.

Efficiency, not Earth Hour or solar energy, will save the Earth.

kz (and Slate.com)