TED Conversations

Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.

  • P C

    • 0
    Jun 26 2012: First and foremost, Shell and other oil companies need to redefine themselves to tap into larger market opportunities across the whole energy sector. This means consolidating your stake in coal, nuclear, solar electric, solar thermal, wind, geothermal, ocean thermal, etc.

    Second, in the same way that we put energy into extracting, processing, and shaping resources across the industrial spectrum, we need enough energy to close the resource utilization loop and to help these industries more efficiently use the resources we already have in circulation. Throwing away materials into landfills that could, with a little refining, otherwise be reused is the perhaps the single greatest cause of pollution in the world today. If you want to be friendly with the environmental movement (I'm in the Sierra Club), nudge the global economy towards economic sustainability by closing resource utilization loops. If we did that, we could actually increase the amount of consumption we have, accelerate economic exchange velocity, and increase wealth.

    Third, it is imperative that we address climate change. We cannot stop using oil right now, we all know that. Our agricultural and transportation system, and therefore our survival, depends on it. But fossil fuel waste is creating an unplanned terraforming project that also undermines our survival. In the short term, if Shell could figure out a carbon sequestration system we can put on motor vehicles, that would be a step in the right direction. Better still is that in the long-term, it further develops solar. There's an average of 1366 W per sq. meter. There's also an awful lot of unused space on top of buildings. If Shell took the lead, it would earn far more than it would otherwise in the oil business.

    Finally, we need taller and denser cities with buildings designed to tap into ambient energy and efficient embedded transportation systems to avoid automobiles altogether.

    Profits goes to those who grab the initiative.
    • thumb

      Nick Allen 100+

      • 0
      TED Attendee
      Jun 26 2012: Philip, thanks for the ranging thoughts. Let me try to build on one of them specifically.

      I personally believe the resource utilisation loop is key to the cities challenge - and within this the mind set of "integration" - integration of industries that can increase resource efficiency.

      If I had to try to pin it down more specifically, I'd say some of the opportunities are around the smart use of energy in industrial parks through to co-location of appropriate industries, the role of waste-to-energy plants, the whole challenge of water efficiency (including waste-water treatment), and potentially cracking the food waste opportunity...but this is probably only scratching the surface.

      Thats the "what". The "how" is at least as important - through collaboration and dialogue, between companies, institutions and city planners. In addition, the approach will be different for new builds vs. retro fits.

      • P C

        • 0
        Jun 26 2012: Industrial ecosystems that incorporate industrial process waste is a good start but such relationships are often short-term and unreliable given the nature of planned product obsolescence. Part of the problem with energy demand forecasting is that it's often limited to early-to-mid stage resource utilization (mining, extraction, industrial processing, and transportation), and virtually nothing is considered for end-of-life reintegration. Closing the loop requires planning and diverting the necessary amount of energy from the economy. To do an accurate calculation, we need to consider what the true market costs of the extraction industries would be without externalizing economic costs, and then to consider the energy requirements of those industries and compare the same requirements for an efficient recycling program.

        I sense that not only is it more energy efficient, there's a market opportunity to introduce disruptive technologies and capture substantial market share. Extraction industries have to mine resources out of the ground (as you probably already know it's becoming more difficult to reach), which accompanies a lot of waste rock, while you'd have the opportunity to pull resources out of landfills which may have as much as 50-100x what's available in mines and all of which have gone in some shape or form into usable products. You could also capture post-industrial/agricultural/consumer wastes at the mouths of rivers. Imagine recapturing nitrates & phosphates and then endlessly selling them back to farms? That's just the tip of the iceberg.

Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.