Germany-based Siemens introduced an environmental portfolio in 2011 to help reduce gas emissions by 317 million tons. According to Peter Loscher, president and CEO of Siemens, climate change has been affecting people's lives and it is crucial to find non-depleting ways to develop sustainable energy. Technological innovation is the key to finding the solution to this problem.
Q: What is corporations' role in saving energy and reducing carbon emissions?
A: To create a cleaner environment for the next generation is everyone's responsibility, not just the responsibility of corporations. Nevertheless, corporations can do more. One of the biggest challenges for the industrial sector is to transform itself and become a part of the low-carbon emission economy. This requires massive changes including raising efficiency of individual components and developing more efficient solutions to transform the sector from head to toe.
There are two strategies to transform the business to fit the low-carbon emission economy: one is to save energy and the other is to create energy. For saving energy, firms can increase energy usage efficiency by using innovative equipment to increase production efficiency and reduce wastes.
Q: What are some of the criteria for development of sustainable energy?
A: In the past, humans did not have the concept of saving and using energy carefully. Now, the awareness has been gaining attention but human consumption of energy is close to 50% faster than the recovery of natural resources. If humans continue to use natural resources this way, by 2050 humans will need another two to three Earths to support demand.
To strike a balance between economic needs and environmental protection, economic growth needs to stop relying on energy consumption and humans' ecological footprint must be reduced. In addition, almost all products, services, and production processes need to improve efficiency. Development of sustainable energy is the irreplaceable energy in the future, hence clean energy, using thermal energy to generate electricity, smart grids and efficient supply an ddemand are all important issues.
Q: How to increase energy usage efficiency?
A: The European Environment Agency (EEA) announced recently that in 2011, the total greenhouse gas emissions in Europe was 2.5% lower than 2010, showing a growing consensus on the need to reduce carbon emissions.
We are currently at the starting point of a new era of electricity. In the past, electricity was generated by burning fossil fuels, which are low in efficiency and high in carbon emissions. In fact, electricity can be generated in a very environmental ways such as using renewable energy and building high-efficiency fossil fuel plants.
In transportation, we can use electric power to replace fossil fuels, which will reduce carbon emissions and reliance on imported energy. Also, using innovative lighting systems can save up to 80% of electricity and electric motors are three to four times more efficient than internal combustion engines. Drinking water can also be putrified and recycled using thin-film technology, which is over 50% more efficient than the current technology.
Another example is Germany is currently conducting plans to switch to renewable energy. The plans include abolishing nuclear power plants completely by 2022. The mid-term goal for the plans is to have 50% of electricity generated by renewable energy sources by 2030. Germany also plans to reduce the current level of carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050.
Q: What is your view on the future of energy?
A: To build a cleaner environment, we have to try everything possible and integrate all technologies. We have to take measures such as finding all competitive renewable energy sources, electricity highways and smart grids, energy storage devices and high efficiency solutions for traditional power plants. Furthermore, measures such as smart and efficiency ways to use energy for buildings, transportation and industries have to be taken into consideration.
These energy-saving and carbon emission-reducing plans are to increase people's quality of life and strengthen the economy for countries. Nevertheless, there are many challenges that need to overcome such as choosing the right balance between using renewable and fossil fuel energy, and building scattered small-size power plants versus having large-size power plants.
The future of energy is a global focus, especially finding sustainable ways to generate, allocate, and use energy. But for future energy systems to be sustainable, we need many different strategies and fit them together into a perfect piece.
Q: Which technologies are efficient and energy-saving?
A: Take Germany for example, if the government wants to achieve its goal of having 50% of energy generated from renewable energy sources by 2030, and 80% by 2050, then renewable energy will no longer require subsidies to be competitive. This goal can be achieved through wind power, especially for today's technology, which is able to make wind-generated electricity economical.
As for Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait has been recognized by international agency 4C Offshore for its wind power resources. Taiwan can choose offshore wind power as one of the options.It is foreseeable that in the near future coal will continue to be the main resource for generating electricity in the world. The world's coal reserve is still very high and generating power using coal is very economical. But fossil fuel plants need to use innovative technologies to make them cleaner and reduce carbon emissions.
The current technology can separate carbon dioxide from exhaustion and store it underground for industrial uses. This type of R&D has been showing effective results such as using fucales to transform carbon dioxide into biomass and form materials needed to make biomass fuels or plastic.
Q: Wind and solar power is affected by changes to the environment. How are we going to make it more efficient?
A: True, different weather conditions will affect the production of electricity by wind or solar power systems. This is why in the near future, we need facilities that can store extra energy for hours, days or even weeks. Germany's electricity storage plants are close to full and have been difficult to expand capacity. Hence, the large amount of energy generated from renewable energy sources can be used to in an environmental way to produce hydrogen by electrolysis. The hydrogen can be sent to the gas grid, stored in underground storage facilities, and transformed fuel cells for automobiles. In addition, cells installed in buildings and electric cars can also be used as temporary storage locations. Scientists and corporations have been eager to conduct these kinds of studies.
The situations are difficult to predict, and that is why we need to piece things together to find the best solution. When winds subside suddenly or clouds block the sun, the fluctuations in power output must be corrected. Under such circumstances, gas-fired power plants that can be quickly switched on to generate electricity will be helpful. With support from steam turbines, this type of power plant can be very efficient.
For every 10kWh of electricity generated in Germany, 1kWh is from wind power, but the price of such electricity is usually higher than the price of electricity generated by burning coal. To change this, engineers have been developing new technologies such as modifying the shape of fans for gearless turbines.
Also, large amounts of investment are needed to construct low-power loss electricity highway and smart grids to smooth out the fluctuations in output from by wind and solar power systems, as well as transmitting electricity to distant locations. In addition, traditional power generating plants are still needed because they play an important role in the global energy scene, but we need to improve their efficiency. With the help of various solutions, we can decrease by about four billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year. This figure is also the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from all EU member countries every year.
Q: What are some of the other ways to reduce emissions and save energy?
A: To prevent power loss during transmission, we can adopt the high-efficiency electricity highway systems that use high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission technology.
HVDC systems can connect two independent and distant high voltage systems with overhead or undersea powerlines. HVDC systems can also connect different grids. The latest technological improvement to HVDC systems is that the voltage during transmission can reach 800kV, with transmission capacity up to 7GW. There is also another type of technology called HVDC Plus, which can effectively connect offshore platforms and offshore power plants.
Smart grids are also a kind of infrastructure to improve the efficiency of electricity transmission and usage. Take Germany for example, 15 years ago, only a few hundred energy producers were connected to the national grid. In the future, with the government encouraging the use of renewable energy, there will likely be millions of energy producers generating power through solar, wind, biomass and small gasoline-electricity cogeneration units. Today's consumers will become "prosumers," both producing and consuming electricity. With more users, the management of the smart grid will become more important.
According to studies conducted by Taiwan's Bureau of Energy, by 2025 electricity demand in Taiwan will account for 55.7% of total energy consumption needs. But Taiwan lacks the resources for generating power in traditional ways, especially the energy-related materials needed to maintain economic development; Taiwan has been importing more than 99% of the materials. For Taiwan, the future development of energy should place its emphasis on secure supply, as well as improvments to efficiency during electricity generation and transmission.
The cleanest energy is always the energy that is not consumed. So when everyone talks about how to create new energy sources, we should also consider how to reduce the amount of energy we use.
