Energy is found in many, many forms, many of which we make the rhetorical mistake of naming after substances, or thinking of them as substances. We often call things like oil, coal, natural gas, etc. energy. We call the companies that extract these substances “energy companies.” But these substances are not energy and the companies that extract these substances are not energy companies.
To think of energy more correctly you need to use a different set of observations. Have you seen a shake-it-up or crank-up flashlight? Ever walk barefoot on sand that was so hot it burned your feet? Ever watch a sailboat move across a bay? Energy is equal to the movement of your hand, it is equal to sun shine beating on the sand, it is a breeze flowing through the air. Energy is energy and it cannot be created nor can it be destroyed. Our observance of energy is merely energy being converted from one form to another. We don’t lose energy as we use energy; energy becomes dispersed, entropy. It goes from being directed and useful like with electricity flowing through a wire, to being spread out and less useful, like the heat coming off an old incandescent light bulb. (Incandescent light bulb is a heater that gives off a little light) But, that energy is only waste if it is not contained or recaptured. This energy stuff is hard to understand because we have wrapped language around it that is more metaphor than a correct understanding of what energy actually is. And this is totally understandable because we don’t think of things like gasoline storing energy and only releasing it when combined with a catalyst (a spark or fire) and oxygen. We think of the internal combustion of gasoline as being the creation of energy, when oddly enough it is not.
Let’s focus on energy in forms where we can see it more clearly for what it is. Bear with me as I try to break the stereotype concepts of energy we have in our head without using physics. Movement is energy that can be converted into other forms of energy. A good example of this is the movement of water through a water mill. The movement of the water spins the mills wheel that turns a shaft that spins the grinding stone to make flour. In a hydroelectric dam that energy is used to spin a generator to produce electric energy. In much the same way the movement of your hand in a shake-up flashlight accumulates electrons in a battery and then the electrons/electricity move from the battery through the light circuit and are converted into light energy. Movement = energy, energy = electricity, electricity = light.
In the hydrocycle the sun heats up water that converts it to water vapor, vapor becomes less heavy than the air surrounding it and travels up in the atmosphere where its heat energy is dissipated. It eventually condenses back into water and ice crystals around small particles of dust, once heavy enough with water or ice it returns to earth in the form of rain or snow. This rain or the water from snow melting is funneled downhill across the land as runoff and collects into streams by the force of gravity. We capture gravitational energy based on the pressure of its mass and velocity now in the movement and weight in the water and convert it to mechanical energy as in the form of a flour-mill or in the turbines that produce electricity in hydroelectric dams.
Have any of you gone on to your roof on a sunny day? Were the roof shingles are hot? Where did that heat come from? You know it. It came from the sun. We build roofs to protect us from the sun as well as wind, rain and other weather. When the sun hits our roofs it turns sunlight energy into heat energy. That heat energy radiates through the rafters into our attics and ends up heating our houses. We spend energy like that from burning substances like coal, oil and natural gas to remove that heat energy from our houses through the use of air conditioners. Instead of fighting energy with more energy and pollution, why not use the roof’s surface to make electricity and hot water, and provide some shade from the direct hot sun? Photovoltaic solar panels are one of the more benign ways to capture energy. They capture energy from sunlight and turn it directly into electricity. The sunlight energy is hitting our roofs anyway, why not use it.
Ever go out in a storm and see the trees whipping around? That movement is a sign that there is energy out there applying force to the branches to move them around. What is making the branches move? Oh, wind, of course. Wind power makes sense since the wind blows trees, leaves and dust around. Why not put it to use generating electricity? Wind has been used for thousands of years as a source of energy. In farms across America windmills on top of towers were how farmers pumped water out of the ground for their livestock were a staple of the rural landscape. In Ocean City, Maryland the trees are all bent over in one direction because most of the year the wind blows constantly in one general direction. Going to the beach in the winter is amazing. All the flags are tattered because of that constant, heavy wind. I looked at the power lines stretched along the highways of the ribbon like islands along the coast coming from some far away power plant where literally tons of coal are burned every day to produce electricity for these sea shore towns, all the while there is wind traveling through and over and around the buildings. Thousands of watts of wind power only being used to provide the flapping motion in flags. We should use this wind in a more local and distributed way. Again, no need for giant, centrally controlled wind turbines for the purpose of concentrating money into a few hands.
There are other sources of energy that have minimal environmental impact and have gone largely unused such as geothermal, wave action conversion systems, tide conversion systems, systems to take advantage of the steady ocean currents, ambient temperature delta conversion systems and many more. Even personally generated energy, with solar powered wearables and devices that capture energy from your regular movements.
We’ve powered mechanical watches where the natural motion of the wearer provides all the energy to wind the mainspring for quite some time now.
WE LITERALLY ARE BATHED IN ENERGY. As Obi-Wan Kenobi said of the Force the same can be said of energy, "It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together." We don’t have to burn a single thing to get useful energy from our surroundings. With greater efficiencies now being achieved and new battery technology we can convert or capture all that energy that surrounds us and turn it into electricity. Electricity being the cleanest and most universally useful form of energy. It simply is a no-brainer. We can convert various naturally accessible energies to electricity, store it in batteries, and then we can use that electricity to produce heat, light, radio waves, microwaves, electron beams, motion and on and on.
Another example of this is the solar powered vehicles of the World Solar Challenge held in Australia. These solar powered vehicles today run for more than 30 hours during the race at average speeds greater than 60 miles an hour, powered only by sunlight hitting the surface of the vehicles. Thirty hours is only the length of time of the race. These cars vehicles can travel continuously on the power of the sun. What this proves is that we can make vehicles that can get their energy to move from their surroundings alone. This is quite a radical departure from the standard that we think of when we think of personal transportation; however, it is one that can help us think of energy in a different way.
Most of us would assume that driving cars powered by the sun in our everyday life would be impossible. The reality is that we are on the cusp of making this a reality. See Lightyear https://lightyear.one/lightyear-2, and Aptera Motors aptera.us
It used to be that we couldn’t think of a vehicle that used anything other than gasoline or diesel. Then came ethanol, first as a blend as gasohol and then, with the advent of the flexible fuel vehicle, we were able to get vehicles that now can take up to 100% alcohol. We subsequently learned that we can have vehicles that can be fueled by natural gas and liquid petroleum gases like propane. Ford, before gasoline became so widely available, made Fordham tractors that ran on kerosene. Kerosene being something that farmers already used for lighting and heat and so was readily available to them. There are both hydrogen combustion engine vehicles as well as fuel cell hydrogen vehicles. Now we have electric vehicles in the mix. So the idea that vehicles have to run on gasoline or diesel based fuels has been broken. All these new ways of “fueling” vehicles have emerged to allow us to think of automobiles as possibly being fueled differently. Electric energy generation can be thought of in this way as well, and there is where the connection to electric vehicles changes the entire paradigm. If electricity can come from all sorts of renewable energy sources and electric cars use that electricity, electric cars become renewable energy vehicles. Yes, Mitt Romney, you can power a car with the “fuel” made on your roof.
The usefulness of electricity has proven to be far more world changing than any other form of energy. It has given us the digital age. However, we are largely still generating electricity just one step up from the caveman burning wood. Our thinking surrounding energy had not changed significantly for 100 years. Now, with the pressures demanding we change caused by our climate emergency, we are being forced, delightfully so, to consider non-polluting renewables in a serious way, and we are implementing renewables very fast. Will it be fast enough remains to be seen.
Electric vehicles allow us to think of energy differently too. For example, our braking systems in cars had not evolved that much from pressing a piece of wood against a wheel to get it to stop. We referred to the heat energy given off by friction brakes as waste heat. With regenerative braking we have an example of out of the box thinking. Before stopping a car meant converting momentum energy into heat energy and transferring it to the air, now it means taking momentum energy and converting it into electric energy to slow down and storing that electricity in batteries. That energy captured through regenerative braking now in the batteries can be used to overcome inertia, which then deposits the energy in momentum energy again. When I look at the Metro rail trains around Washington, DC the most evident feature of their undercarriage is their huge disk brakes. When the all-electric trains slow down to stop at a station, part of the sound that you hear is the braking noise coming from those monstrous disk brakes. I look at those disks and think what an absolute waste. The Metro trains using regenerative brakes could send the electricity generated over the third rail to help power the trains going up hill. The engineers who designed those trains just didn’t get it.
To get it you need to think of energy in a different way. For example, the idea of one central location providing the energy needs for a wide area, especially by using fossil fuels, when we think about it, should seem ludicrous. Nikola Tesla made the big electric power plant possible with AC power originally to move the energy harnessed from Niagara Falls to Albany, New York, but energy is abundant and all around us. We don’t need to do it that way anymore. The water movement in your pipes when you are taking a shower has energy in its motion sufficient if captured to power a clock. (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TBuF5R42Uc&t=52s) We see the heat of the day move mercury up the thermometer, ambient heat turned into the motion energy of an expanding metal liquid. That expanding metal could push a piston that would turn a crank that would turn a gear that could spin a turbine that could produce electricity. When you start thinking out of the box like this, you discover that the number of ways to produce electricity from the energy around us are innumerable.
To solve the concentration of electric production being put into only a few hands problem we need to arrive at a more distributed or autonomously produced form of energy generation. This new way of thinking of energy can be for all of us. It is only a matter of investment, smart design and strong political action.
Where do we start? When it comes to our personal vehicles, we can make a difference. Trying to wring out greater efficiencies, and lower and lower pollution standards out of millions of internal combustion engine cars on the road is quixotic. It is well known that as internal combustion engine cars get older they become less efficient and much more polluting until they become super polluters. It is infinitely easier to put renewables on our power grid than trying to regulate the emissions of millions of mini wheeled power plants on our roads. And realize another thing about EVs, as the grid gets cleaner, they get cleaner right along with it. One more thing, electric cars, even when being powered by fossil fuels at the power plant, are far more efficient than gasoline powered cars, that whole momentum energy, potential energy and regenerative braking thing, and therefore pollute far less.
The renewable electricity that I purchase for my home through my utility also powers my EV. The energy I put into my car when going uphill comes back to me when I am going down hill. The energy I put into getting up to speed comes back to me when I am braking with regenerative brakes. Energy is momentum. An object in motion remains in motion. Energy is potential as a rock high on a mountain. It is not the rock, it is what happens to the rock when it breaks loose and travels down the mountain with great force and speed. An EV at the top of a hill is a potential energy battery that uses all that stored energy as it drives down from the hilltop. Energy is the movement of wind. Energy is heat on a hot day, the movement of waves, the tide coming up and going down, the warmth that you feel when you hug your loved ones. Energy is sunlight knocking electrons around on a solar cell and those electrons traveling down the attached wire into a car battery where it can be used later to move the car through an electric motor. If we concentrate on what energy really is we can find energy enough for all we wish to do without ever having to burn, pollute, fight wars for, or pay extortionist prices to get. All we need to do is think of energy in a different way.
