We don't need to electrify everything.

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(Edited)


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Our obsession with electrifying everything may bring more perils than good. We influence to electrify everything to curve climate change as our activists, academics, and politician promote. But the cold reality is it's contradicting to what we need to curve climate change. Our option is always to stop burning fossil fuels and convert everything in our lives to run through sole electricity, with the vision to run them on renewables.

Our attempt to electrify everything directs all the risk to our energy grids, which are currently at the brink of collapse due to our unfathomable increasing demands. In one snap, our grid can collapse when electric cars hit the road for mass adaption. Energy demand will soar to an unfathomable rate, and it is only time that we hit the threshold in our energy capacity. Electrifying everything is not the best solution unless we regeneratively create an energy source that can meet demands and has zero carbon footprint and less waste. Until then, we can't electrify everything, and that is the right thing to do.

Electrifying everything sprouts from our deep concern to revert climate change, and we continue to find an optimal solution to minimize it. A degree higher in our global temperature can create an adverse effect on our living conditions. All of our actions, including electrifying everything but not limited to it, answer the call for climate change action. Even at the height of the pandemic, we are still finding ways to address climate change.

Countries bought electric buses and rolled out some renewable power plants. But we can't deny that as we acquire more electric-based technology, we need to meet more energy demands. Renewables are not there yet to meet the demand. We are still relying heavily on fossil fuels while some are on nuclear plants. We still have one course of action, to electrify everything. Are we out of options? I think we aren't.


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The central policies and approaches decarbonize electricity, transportation, and buildings since these are primary contributors to carbon emissions. We invented electric buses and erect renewable plants. Most of us look at it as the best option to decarbonized. We need to make the grid that charges them sustainable, better regenerative before we go with full electrification of most of our sectors. The issues arise if we push through without tackling our energy resources first.

We tried to make everything run on electricity, and it is not an optimal solution cause it introduces new problems in the energy sector arise to meet the growing demands. Our energy sector is not ready for electrification of all industries. We need to design a better system that is efficient and less waste. That is the first step. We build efficient and reliable electricity grids.

Our solution for an efficient and clean electricity green is fully renewable, but it will not work. We knew how renewable works and what it can bring, but it has its drawbacks that we often overlook. Renewable energy is seemingly replenishable. It requires a lot of resources, and it is not as clean as we thought it is. One megawatt needs enormous land to set up, and our batteries are still not as effective as we dream they should be. Our energy storage technology is not capable of bulk storage like megawatts of energy. We had a hard time deposing and recycling renewable wastes.

Renewables seems not an optimal solution but one of the solution. We still have nuclear energy, and we need to address people's perceptions associated with it. Nuclear energy fission plants can meet our energy demands, but we need to tackle radioactive waste disposal. We also have its bad reputation, referencing Chernobyl and Fukushima, to name a few. In contrast, nuclear fusion may address radioactive waste but is still not fully developed yet. Theoretically, nuclear fusion is one of the possible efficient and clean electricity resources for our grids, but we are still comprehending drawbacks when fully adopted. It is still in the blurry lines.


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Fossil fuels still the cheapest energy source we have, but it has the highest carbon emission. We can design innovative carbon capture for our fossil fuel plants and continue burning fossil fuels. Would this be a better option since it is cheaper? I think it isn't. We can lower the carbon emission to some degree, but we are still producing a sizeable amount of carbon emission. There is another means if we continue using fuels. We can uses fuels with ultra-low in hydrocarbons, renewable natural gas like biomethane.

The carbon emission of renewable natural gases can reach below zero during the production process. We can get renewable natural gases from food waste and manures that have a net carbon-negative emission when we burn. Biofuels can address the need for a clean source like solar and wind, but we still need a lot to burn to meet demands. Hydrogen is also good fuel for our electrification needs. It is relatively cheap and clean. It is a reactant to ammonia and petrochemicals that can substantially reduce heat in industrial processes.

Our current electricity grid has instances that it struggles to meet our energy demand. For example, The Philippines' Luzon grid was on a critical level earlier this year and enunciated automatic load dropping or some rotational brownout to keep the areas that critically need it, despite still in the pandemic. Countries during winter also have problems in meeting energy demand when most of the population needs a heater. How much more when we have a mass adaptation of electric cars and when everything runs with electricity.

Electrifying everything may not be the solution to our climate change problem. It just diverts to putting the energy grid at risk. Unforeseen events and disasters proved that we need a resilient and robust electrical grid. If electrifying everything is not the optimal solution, then what is should be the solution? We need a balanced mix of energy resources, which meet our growing needs with carbon emissions to a healthy threshold. Zero carbon emission is a dream and will continue to be unless we find miraculous energy resources, which are efficient, and no waste. For the time being, we don't need to electrify everything.


Check out my previous post on Energy and Sustainability

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Readings

  1. Robert Bryce, This Blizzard Exposes The Perils Of Attempting To ‘Electrify Everything’, Forbes

  2. Claire Berlinski, Why we can't electrify everything
    The faulty assumptions behind renewable enthusiasms
    , The Cosmopolitan Global

  3. Tyler Lancaster, Electrifying Everything: The Key to Decarbonization and A More Sustainable Future, Medium

  4. Kris Crismundo, Rotational brownouts hit parts of Luzon as red alert extended, Philippine News Agency

  5. Jonathan Mingle, Could Renewable Natural Gas Be the Next Big Thing in Green Energy?, Yale School of Environment

Photo Description and Credit: (arranged in order of appearance)

  1. Background image on post cover | Photo from Jürgen/Pixabay

  2. High-speed EMU train EVS | Photo from Shilpy Arora/Wikimedia

  3. Several electric cars next to charging stations. | Photo from Ride and Drive/Wikimedia

  4. A futuristic-style electric bike designed by Hussain Almossawi & Marin Myftiu | Photo from Hussain Almossawi and Marin Myftiu/Wikimedia

  5. Coal power plant in Datteln (Germany) at the Dortmund-Ems-Kanal | Photo from Arnold Paul/Wikimedia

  6. 67 kW photovoltaic array at the Mesa Verde Visitor and Research Center in Montezuma County, Colorado. | Photo from Dennis Schroeder/Wikimedia

  7. Wind farm in the California Desert | Photo from Tom Brewster/Wikimedia

  8. Shiva laser, 1977, the largest ICF laser system built in the seventies (Nuclear fusion) | Photo from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory



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Electrifying everything may not be the solution to our climate change problem. It just diverts to putting the energy grid at risk. Unforeseen events and disasters proved that we need a resilient and robust electrical grid. If electrifying everything is not the optimal solution, then what is should be the solution? We need a balanced mix of energy resources, which meet our growing needs with carbon emissions to a healthy threshold. Zero carbon emission is a dream and will continue to be unless we find miraculous energy resources, which are efficient, and no waste. For the time being, we don't need to electrify everything.

Dear @juecoree, I think electrification means automation.
What will our future hold if we choose manual over automation?

I think we should partly give up automation and opt for manualization.😄

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I think electrification means automation.

Electrification indeed synonymous with automation, but what I am trying to relay is that we don't need to electrify everything since it will put more pressure into our grid.

What will our future hold if we choose manual over automation?

Manual and automation should co-exist in the future. We should not pick one. There are processes or systems that is better done manually. Automating everything seems good but is it optimize and efficient? For some, yes, and for a few things, it isn't.

I think we should partly give up automation and opt for manualization.

I don't think that we need to give up automation. Electrifying everything means running everything on electricity. As per my whole argument, electrifying everything is not optimal unless we find a better energy source. People are too fond of automating and electrifying everything that often they overlook consequences in doing so. We forgot that our primary solution can induced more problem. We can't mitigate risk when we have a system continue creating one.

Enjoy some !PIZZA

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