Sustainability

A Way to Abundance

Corrado Sommariva

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367840068
• eBook ISBN: 9781351115803
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

The book describes mechanisms whereby the Earth naturally thrives towards energy and resources abundance and how unsustainable industrial practices alter this trend.

Introduces the concept of earth energy and associates this to the conditions of the biosphere and emphasizes the possibilities with inexpensive wind and solar energy

Provides a good quantification of the concepts of sustainability and its effects on the environmentn and critical analysis and updates to the relationships between the environmental impact, affluence and technology

Chapter 1

Energy and Sustainability

1.1A Natural Cycle of Energy Abundance

The leading point in this part of the book is related to the Earth energy level and the balance of energy in the Earth as an indicator of the sustainability.

It is relatively common knowledge that the Earth receives abundant energy from the sun and that this energy is, in theory, more than sufficient to support today’s and tomorrow’s projected energy requirements for anthropogenic activities.

This is surely good news. Undoubtedly, sooner or later technologies will be developed, and these will be capable to harvest as much clean energy as it is required for humanity from renewable sources at affordable cost. Sooner or later, technology will be reaching a point where this renewable energy will be flowed down to all sectors of human activity: transportation, manufacturing, etc. Eventually we will cease the dependence upon fossil fuel.

While that will be a great achievement for humanity, the issue of energy and sustainability will not be completely solved.

It is not commonly understood, in fact, that the energy (it will be later defined as exergy) of the Earth is strictly associated with our biosphere and to the chemical state of the elements that compose the planet. In the biosphere, the elements that are composing the Earth are come together in different chemical and biological forms, and these forms are the results of endothermic reactions that are occurring thanks to the sun energy.

Biosphere can be defined as the system comprising all living organisms on the earth with the exception of modern man: Plants and animals consequently belong to the biosphere (Smil V., 2017).

Modern man and all anthropogenic products belong to a system that can be called the techno sphere; therefore, buildings and machines belong to the technosphere.

In more technical terms, the exergy of the Earth is associated with the chemical potential of the elements that compose the biosphere and the techno sphere: the lower their chemical potential and the higher their level of oxidation the lower the energy of the Earth.

This chapter of the book proposes a link between sustainability and the exergy level of the Earth. In particular, non-sustainable practices lead to a decrease of the exergy of the Earth (Figure 1.1) and eventually to the exergetic death of the planet, while sustainable practices would lead to a gradual increase in the Earth energy, to a state of abundance.

Figure 1.1 Distribution of the exergy flows above the earth surface. (From Szargut, J. T. 2003. Energy. 28(11): 1047–1054.)

The sustainability challenge is therefore related not only to the elimination of fossil fuel dependence but also to the recovery and management of the exergy levels in the biosphere. Unfortunately, these have been gradually reduced because of the pollution caused by anthropogenic resources and because of the gradual shrinking of the biosphere volume.

The energy of the Earth is composed both by the energy associated with the fossil fuels and other non-renewable sources in the lithosphere, but also by the energy associated with the chemical potential of elements such as carbon and nitrogen.

In particular, when carbon or nitrogen, for instance, are present in form of biomass, soil organic carbon, or ammonia fixed in the soil, their chemical potential and therefore their energy is higher than when these components are in the CO2 or free nitrogen form in atmosphere.

In the same manner, the energy of the Earth is associated with the energy of other elements such as mercury, lead, iron, etc. recovered and stored in the technosphere in the form of accessible and further usable prime material or technical nutrients, (McDonough et al., 2013) in opposition to being spread as waste in meadows woods, rivers, and ecosystems linked to the natural humanity cycle.

This makes the sustainability challenge slightly more complex, but it offers an enormous opportunity: this opportunity is to tap in into the sun’s renewable energy abundance to create other abundance all the way downstream. The opportunity that is offered is to use this energy to satisfy anthropogenic demand, restoring the biosphere and, in a second stage, to increase the exergy level of the planet, creating an energy and resource store for humanity well-being and for future generations.

1.2Return to Nature Energy Abundance and Build More

The day-to-day phen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• What If?
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• Going through the Book
• Acknowledgments
• Author
• Chapter 1: Energy and Sustainability
• Chapter 2: Resources and Sustainability
• Chapter 3: Technology, Affluence and Environment: A Misconception to Change
• Chapter 4: Create an Economy of Abundance
• Chapter 5: Water: The Path to Sustainability and Abundance
• Conclusions
• References
• Index