ELSI in Detail: Energy and Materials

1.2.2 Object level in detail Object indicators are the most common form of sustainability indicators. They index and measure the performance of an object in its systemic context. Examples of object indicators are energy efficiency, environmental impact, cultural value, carbon footprint, material recycling, cost, or ease of use. Object indicators describe a relationship between an object, other objects, and the system as a whole, and their value is dependent on the context. Each project will have a focus on a different set of objects and impacts. For example, when looking at a hospital, the amount of beds it offers and the recovery rate of patients may be a primary focus, while working on a marketing project it may matter how many people are reached, and its impact on behavior. Because each project has its own needs, we discovered it’s impossible to make a standard set of object indicators for every purpose, as you’d end up with an impossible amount of indicators to work through each time. Nevertheless, you want to take into account the full spectrum of societal impact. To resolve this, we use a standard framework of categories, to use as guidelines to map indicators for each project. If the categories of this framework are in the full spectrum, we can develop specific indicators that fit each project, while also working covering each area of the spectrum. In the early days of sustainability science, the ‘People, Planet, Profit (PPP)’, or triple bottom line, framework was used to categorize the various aspects that are important. We ran into problems when trying to use PPP as a categorization system, because it doesn’t cover all the areas we feel are necessary, nor does it provide a logical relationship between the 3 P’s. Because of this, we set out to develop a more complete and sensible framework. The result is the SiD ELSI categorization system, shown on the left. With this, you can quickly develop areas of interest and indicator sets for each challenge, while also being sure to work in the full spectrum. Let’s look a bit deeper into ELSI.

1.2.3 ELSI categories in depth In this section, we’ll review each ELSI8 category, looking at various aspects that may be of interest for each. We provide some resources that may be useful during SiD sessions as well. If you read this book from beginning to end, and don’t want to go too deep before getting a good overview of SiD, you can skip this section for now, and read on about the network and system in detail in the next paragraph. Energy Includes: Radiation, chemical, electricity, heat, motion, wind, solar, geothermal, magnetic, etc. Reflects on: energy storage, smart grids, renewables, fossil fuels, insulation, etc. Energy is the basic building block of our universe. It exists on a galaxy level down to the tiniest particles, and forms all the matter and phenomena we see around us. It is vital for our survival, but also imminently available in many forms. Energy consists in different states, each with its own characteristics and potential. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it can be transformed from one type to another, and flows from a ‘high’ energy state to a ‘low’ energy state if isolated and left alone (second law of thermodynamics). The different characteristics of higher and lower energy states makes some forms more useful than others. For example, when converting electricity (a high state) to heat (a lower state), it cannot be easily turned back into electricity, only with great transformation loss. Energy transformations Energy can be transformed from one form to another, for example, radiation from the sun can be transformed to electricity using PV panels, or into thermal energy by simply striking an object. Similarly, a piece of wood, which has stored potential chemical energy, releases this into heat when it’s burned. When going from one state to another, we have to deal with efficiency losses, so the trick is to use the energy type that matches what is needed as much as possible. For example, to heat up a house, it’s more efficient to use the heat from the sun with solar collectors to heat up a house directly, as opposed to first converting sunlight to electricity with PV panels, and then using electric heaters to heat up the house. Energy is never truly lost, but it can be converted into a state where it’s no longer useful. For instance, if heat dissipates from a house, the energy is dissipated into the atmosphere where it makes such a small difference that it can’t be regained (laws of entropy). Fossil to renewable For most of our society today we rely on fossil fuels to deliver the majority of energy we use, including oil, gas, and coal (see diagram on the left). We know that burning this fuel counts for the majority of CO

concentrations that impact climate change. The big quest therefore is to find renewable sources that cause little to no environmental damage, and that we can rely on to supply the energy we need for society. Sources of renewable energy There is an abundant amount of renewable energy around us, primarily from solar radiation which we can convert directly, and which sets in motion our climate system (giving us wind). Other sources are hydrological (including ocean wave energy, and hydropower from dams), geothermal (utilizing the heat of the earth’s core), and biomass (storing solar radiation in carbon structures). All of these technologies have a cost associated with them, financially, environmentally, and culturally. Creating a healthy balance between the different renewable energy solutions we have is a challenge we face now. A characteristic of some important renewable sources is that they fluctuate, such as wind and solar energy. These can compensate each other to a degree, but for an effective and reliable renewable energy grid, we need to be able to ensure that there’s always enough energy available. Currently, we constantly generate a standard amount of energy using non-fluctuating sources (such as fossil sources) to compensate. This is called a ‘base-load’, and a high base-load is detrimental to attempts at reducing our energy use. To help alleviate this, we can store energy temporarily to smooth out the fluctuations. Electricity is expensive to store, but research into promising new battery types, for example using salt water, are under way. In the meantime, biomass can be easily stored, which makes using this renewable energy type an important contribution to a sustainable energy grid. We can also try to balance supply and demand, running energy intensive processes that are not time critical only when there’s surplus energy available. Another solution is a ‘smart grid’, which connects all of the suppliers and users to balance out the fluctuations, explained below. Energy Storage Energy can be stored, but depending on which form it is in, this can be done more or less effectively. Storing chemical energy is usually easy, as it’s often embedded inside fuels such as oil or wood. Storing electricity is more difficult and requires great efforts from science and technology to achieve, and cannot be done without losses over time. In many cases, this requires an energy form conversion. For example, rechargeable batteries found in cars and products convert electricity into chemical energy to store it, and convert it back upon release, which leads to significant losses. Electricity can also be stored in other ways. For example, excess electricity can be used to pump water up a mountain. When you need energy, you can let the water run down again, driving a generator, and get part of the electricity back. Energy storage is at the forefront of technological innovation, and each year new discoveries are made. Often though, there are ways to resolve energy challenges using simple low-tech solutions. Using systems analysis and mapping to keep track of the areas surrounding the challenge will help find these where possible. Smart Grids Smart grids are an example of an energy solution on the network level. Smart grids are the generic term for technologies where the electricity network can manage the balance of power between a variety of users, producers, and storage devices. It helps resolve issues with the fluctuating nature of renewable energy sources, which at the same time paves the way for individual households not to just consume but also produce energy. By connecting many solar, wind, and other renewable sources such as geothermal and hydropower together with a bi-directional network for energy consumers, fluctuations can be evened out. For example, while it may not be windy in one area, it may be in another, causing a smoothing of the energy supply. At the same time, energy demand fluctuates, and connecting this over large networks also flattens out these fluctuations. Connecting local energy storage systems such as electric cars, combined with self reliant homes that can generate electricity, for example with PV’s on the roof, a reliable renewable energy infrastructure is achieved, and a lower base-load energy infrastructure can be used. Materials Includes: water, fertilizer, metals, wood, ceramics, plastics, textiles, fuels, VOC’s, greenhouse gasses, etc. Reflects on: bio-based & circular economy, supply chains, toxicity, availability, appropriate use The atoms from the periodic table of the elements, combined in diverse molecular structures, form the physical world around us. There are some materials we rely on heavily to sustain our existence on this planet, including fresh water, food, oxygen, the potassium and phosphate in our fertilizers, construction materials, and so on. Some materials we rely on are sourced from fossil sources, including oil, which we not only use to create energy but as a basis for most artificial materials such as plastics. Fossil and mineral resources are finite, and some of them are running out. Some of the most critically scarce materials on earth may surprise you. This includes fresh water, but also phosphate, a critical component in fertilizer and essential to life, is dwindling. Furthermore, we are running out of specific types of sand, which we use to make microchips, and rare earth materials we use to make electronic components. Many of modern society’s critical material flows have existed for less than 100 years. Our society grew from natural roots, where cycles of waste, food, building materials and water kept each other in balance. The industrial revolution allowed us to increase materials flows on a scale never seen before. Many materials lost the value they once had, because of this scale increase in extraction and production. Because of this, it became cheaper to just discard these materials after a single use than to try to reuse them. That pattern has changed little today, although the awareness of the problem has increased. A challenge before us is to start closing resource cycles of use and waste, production and use, and create a renewed appreciation of the value of material resources. It’s not just the materials themselves that are the problem. The energy use, land use, water use, and CO

emissions associated with these resource flows also carry a heavy impact. We’ve also mined materials that have laid still for eons without our ecosystems coming into contact with them, and artificially altered materials into forms that are not known in nature. Life has not built up a tolerance against them. Exposing life to these substances is causing huge future consequences. Radioactive substances are a good example, but there’s many other biological and chemical substances as well. Plastics, for example, are an enormous source of environmental and health damage. When thrown away, plastics lead a life of destruction around the planet (witness the plastic soup, for example, or microparticulates). When burned, plastics create dioxins in our air, some of the most toxic gasses known to mankind. Unfortunately, we have treated these flows like any other waste material for the most part. Only in the last few decades we sometimes consider their harmful impact, and attempted some efforts to reverse the damage these inflict. Yet, at this point, many of these materials are now wandering loose in our ecosystems, and can be found in everything we eat, drink, and breathe. Our challenges therefore include: Switching from a society that relies on finite sources, to one that relies on bio-based materials benefitting ecosystems during production (bio-based economy). Changing our linear production pathways of mining, use, and discard to circular, closed loop life cycles that retain the quality of materials, and delivers the services we’re used to (the circular economy). Stop utilizing the harmful and toxic materials we’ve spread around our ecosystems as much as we can, and start collecting them. Dematerializing our economy to provide essential services using ecosystem services, and service based product-service systems rather than heavy material systems. Tools and examples In sustainability practice, a way of looking at the impact of materials on the world around us is through a tool called Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA is a generally accepted, standardized practice that looks at the impact of materials from their inception to the end of their life. It is a complex and intensive process that can only be executed by experts, but the results can be used to compare material impacts. As an example, there’s a simlified LCA table of materials to the right. An example of an extreme material impact, and society’s way to deal with it, can be found in the documentary movie ‘Into Eternity’, which shows the planning and construction of the Onkalo nuclear waste bunker in Finland, to remain there for thousands of years. It shows the impact of our decision to use a solution (nuclear fission energy) to cover our short term needs, with incredibly long term impacts on society.