A Solar Manifesto

Hermann Scheer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781317709848
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Tecnología e ingeniería
• Subtopic: Recursos de energía renovable

In the decade since the 'Earth Summit' in Rio de Janiero, the response of the world's governments and authorities to the threats to the global environment has been to enforce the reduction of energy consumption and harmful emissions - solutions primarily based around conventional energy resources and conventional thinking. The question is, though, whether this strategy is radical enough to address the key challenges how facing the environment, and whether it can be effective in avoiding catastrophe on a global scale. For Herman Scheer, the answer is a definite no.

In this fully updated edition of A Solar Manifesto, he once more attacks the lack of political will to find answers outside a conventional frame of reference. Climate change, pollution, deforestation, destruction of the ozone layer, poverty and the population explosion are all problems created or exacerbated by the use of conventional energy. Seven years after the first edition of this book, answers are now more urgently required that ever, as current policies serve merely to alleviate the escalating symptoms rather than attempting a cure for what could become a terminal affliction. Herman Scheer shows that this crisis may yet be reversed– but it can only be made to happen through a fundamental change in political and economic strategies, paving the way towards a global solar energy economy sustained by new social principles.

A Solar Manifesto champions the replacement of fossil and nuclear fuels with solar energy, as a real solution to the threat to the environment and associated social consequences. Scheer constructs a radical yet innovative political and economic model and argues the case with passion and conviction for the global solar economy as the route to a sustainable environment. Thought-provoking and profoundly challenging, this book will be an inspiration to anyone concerned with energy and the global environment.

1

The Industrial Revolution: Turning Away from the Sun

Energy statistics generally cover the consumption of commercially produced primary energies such as oil, coal, natural gas and biomass, and their utilization as fuel for the production of electricity, with nuclear power listed separately. ‘Non-commercial’ energy forms are sometimes listed as well – vegetation-based fuels used directly without a commercial detour as long as the supply lasts and is within reach. However, all these statistics are incomplete and, at the same time, symptomatic of the limited understanding of energy. They do not take into account, for example, the passive use of solar energy – in other words, the use of solar energy without reliance on technologies, which in the summer, or in warm climates, renders heating energy unnecessary. Nor do they cover the most essential and most primary energy sources and energy converters: food for humans and their domestic animals, as well as their ability to convert biomass into energy, which are therefore also forms of solar energy. Human energy usage and consumption and, with it, the solar share are larger than indicated in any energy statistics.

The exclusion of food from energy statistics reflects two factors: that mankind sees itself only as a user and no longer as an integral part of the energy system, and that the energy system is no longer regarded as an integral part of nature’s cycles. This shows an alienation from the elementary foundations of life as well as a lack of historical perspective in contemplating energy supply systems. For these reasons, humans generally are no longer conscious of the significance of energy systems for the development of human society as such. The times are long past when human labour and technical energy utilization were regarded in a sociological and energetic context, a mode of observation exemplified, for example, by Serge Podolynski in 1883 in his essay ‘Human Labour and Unity of Power’.¹¹ Those ideas, which are being rediscovered by science today under the generic term of ‘Ecological Economics’, represent a dimension that has been ignored, forgotten or neglected by the science of economics in the course of the 20th century, but which is nevertheless the most significant one affecting economic activity. Essentially, it is a way of contemplating the energy flow and its short-, medium- and long-term economic, social and ecological consequences.¹²

Energy Conversion and the Transformation of Civilization

Earth is, in its totality, an energy conversion system. Jean-Claude Debeir, Jean-Paul Deléage and Daniel Hemery have clarified those linkages, central to our future and of which we have to be aware today more than ever before, in their book Energy and Civilization through the Ages.¹³ Among living energy converters they differentiate between ‘autotrophic organisms’ (plants that are able to store solar energy in their structure as chemical energy after conversion, typically green plants) and ‘heterotrophic organisms’ (man and animals that feed on plants and other heterotrophs). Mankind develops methods for more effective energy generation, from plant cultivation to agriculture, from raising livestock animals to the use of ‘artificial converters’ such as tools and machinery. Energy consumption of plants and animals is limited by the volume and size of their bodies. Man, by being able to create aids for energy utilization, takes steps that lead to ‘domination of the earth’.

For a long period mankind itself was the most efficient energy converter by means of its own muscle power, and this is still the case today in many regions of the globe, when no other energy source or technology is available. Even today, people are still the most versatile such converter. By developing tools, they were able to create mechanical energy using their bodies. They hunted and gathered as far as their feet would carry them, then later shifted to agriculture and animal husbandry, which necessitated the formation of societal systems of human order. Two features characterize this development: first, the actual influx of solar energy continued as primary energy; second, human settlements could only spread as far, and their population could only grow as large, as local energy potential permitted.

The next stage consisted of the development of chemically bound ‘inactive energy’, beginning with the discovery of fire and the possibility of burning wood, making available for the first time fairly large amounts of energy. Men realized the value of this energy conversion to save labour or to perform work that it was impossible to achieve with humans or animals as energy converters. These early phases of the history of civilization show that they are already closely linked to the energy supply structure, without which no further societal development is possible. These phases are long: it was about half a million years ago when man first managed to keep alight the fire started by a bolt of lightning. The first tools came into use about 35,000 years ago. Later, between 4000 and 3500 B.C., after the first sailing ships and windmills were developed and the use of hydropower began via dams, irrigation systems and machinery using rivers and creeks, cultural development began to accelerate.

The first centres of civilization arose in places where irrigation techniques were used. Food production – plants as ‘biological solar collectors’ – was increased, requiring an increase in the ability to organize society and, correspondingly, political stability. The population could grow. Sailing ships permitted long-distance transport of foodstuffs at low cost, as did wheeled vehicles and the use of draught animals. A phenomenon began to develop that has increasingly characterized civilization to this day: transport infrastructures and means of transport make people independent of the food supply produced in the immediate vicinity; energy production and energy consumption become uncoupled.

As human labour was still the most versatile type of energy converter, acquisition of slaves began to expand over an increasingly wide area, resulting in the establishment of corresponding hierarchical forms of culture and motivating warlike expansion. This kind of energy service controlled the rise and fall of societal systems and political power relationships for a long time. As long as slaves were cheaper than energy conversion techniques, they formed the foundation of the supply of labour and food energies. Seen against this background, the slave rebellion led by Spartacus rattled the very foundations of the entire political and economic order of the day.

Because of unrestrained clearing of forests and soil erosion, many humans lost the basis of their existence, triggering mass migrations. With the invention of windmills and watermills – in different societies at different times – it became possible during the past 2000 years to perfect irrigation techniques for the production of food energy, including grain processing. Smelters were built for iron production, causing excessive forest exploitation; water-powered foundries then improved productivity. Coal deposits were discovered and used for iron smelting or for heating, but this was initially hampered – as was the use of the forests – by the difficulty of transporting bulky fuels.

These individual development phases were not identical in different regions of the world, though, in terms of the chronology and discovery of conversion techniques. There are many examples of how some societies had an advantage in energy technology – and thus a general developmental headstart – but remained at a standstill for too long, only to be caught up and surpassed by other societies with even more advanced energy-technological innovations of their own.

The decisive breakthrough that made possible the wealth of the industrialized societies and which, at the same time, explains the shift from earlier regional wars to the present global war against the environment began with the development of the steam engine and, shortly thereafter, with steam navigation. This was the real Industrial Revolution, the basis for the rise of industrial societies. Until then, industrialization had been held back by two bottlenecks: the inability to transform heat into motion, and the limited means of energy transport. By overcoming these restrictions, energy consumption and industrial development accelerated rapidly. This occurred in stages, from the effective exploitation of coal deposits to oil and natural gas fields on a global distribution scale; from the development of steam-powered shipping to railways, cars and trucks and finally aeroplanes; from the use of coal tenders (for railway locomotives) to the construction of oil and gas pipelines, and the introduction of oil tankers. It became possible to transport primary energy anywhere. Then, with the advent of electric power generation and the construction of electricity grids, the energy supply system became even more flexible, and power transport accelerated further. Finally there was nuclear power. The Industrial Revolution was a revolution of energy technology; it launched the apparently final abandonment of direct and indirect use of existing solar energy.

Human and animal muscle power were replaced by modern energy conversion techniques where it was cheaper for users and operators, where primary energy was readily available, and where capital could be utilized. The accumulation of capital and, with it, the creation of large metropolitan industrial regions began around traditional energy centres and, later, near refineries, shipping and rail lines, pipelines and long-distance power transmission grids. These developments caused labour shortages and increases in real income, and launched in turn mass migrations to these centres, resulting in the creation of cities with millions of residents and causing misery and poverty in rural regions. The increased productivity of labour, which primarily increased energy productivity, also increased the surplus per worker and thus contributed substantially to the creation of economic class strata.¹⁴

Energy efficiency was further increased when social movements occurred in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. The successful fight for shorter working hours, higher wages and better working conditions increased costs and contributed to the accelerated replacement of human labour by mechanical energy converters. The constant technical improvement of energy conversion techniques continuously reduced the cost of energy and in turn accelerated industrial growth and the consumption of raw materials and energy in a steeply rising curve. Trends in productivity, which in the increasingly internationalized economy became the prime factor determining the stability of political systems, were characterized mostly by increases in energy efficiency. We can only understand the full significance of this if we consider not only ‘exosomatic agents’ – tools and machinery – and their energy requirements, but also the continuing process of replacing human labour energy by electronic data processing, computer-assisted production and communications technologies. Time and again short-sighted economic interest groups who persist in maintaining the status quo fight such developments because they do not immediately recognize the medium-term advantages for the national economy.

Energy Supply and Migration Movements

Generally, the Industrial Revolution and population growth can be equated. But the reason for population growth in industrial centres had more to do with migrations from the country to the city and with international migrations to the centres of mass production and labour than with the growth of the native population. These movements also masked statistically another sociological process that is just as fundamental: having secure and cost-efficient energy sources and technologies at ones disposal gradually led to a stagnation in population growth! While it is difficult to unearth the link between meeting the energy demand and demographic trends in the many analyses of the population explosion, it is statistically obvious and is the inevitable conclusion to be drawn from experiences with the social effects of energy systems. Table 1, derived from the World Energy Atlas, indicates clearly that in the countri...