Today I joined some middle school teachers on a tour of Argonne National
Laboratory. We heard about cutting-edge research at the laboratory:
nanotechnology, various forms of X-ray imaging, and of course, solar,
wind, and other renewable energy technologies. Throughout this
discussion, the tour leaders discussed limitations of renewables, and the need
for increased nuclear energy and fracking to make the transition to a renewable
energy future possible.*
What struck me throughout our four-hour stay at the facility among all
the discussion of electron accelerators, limitations of solar arrays, and
developing drugs that use nanotechnology to target cancer, they missed talking
about the most sustainable energy:
The energy that you do not have to use.
Argonne has many examples of energy efficiency, energy storage and
passive design technologies. However,
when showing a group of middle school teachers the best approaches to solving a
future of energy and resource limitations, our guides did not mention this most
sustainable way to improve our energy picture.
Using natural daylight instead of artificial light, thermal mass to
reduce the size of heating and cooling systems, and earth tubes to treat
ventilation air, we can create new – and retrofit old – buildings to require
less energy. We can eliminate coal- and
nuclear-based electricity, and let renewables take on new loads that result
from adding another one-hundred-and-twenty-five million people to our country
over the next forty years.
Argonne has one of the best examples of using natural forms of energy
flow instead of relying on fossil-fuel-based energy sources to provide solutions
to problems. In an area where previous
activities had deposited metals and other environmental contamination into soil
and eventually groundwater, the damage threatened to spread to the surrounding
forest preserve. The standard method of
containment includes concrete barriers and a pumping system to continually
remove groundwater and treat it. This
method would have cost nearly seven-million dollars over twenty years, and only
provide containment. A more natural
solution, phytoremediation, uses plants to harvest contaminants, break them
down in the plant or soil, trap them in the root structure, or transpirate organic
contaminants in a harmless form. The
specific site uses willow and poplar trees – because of their fast growth times
– with casings to force root growth down into groundwater twenty-five feet
below the surface. Phytoremediation will
cost only four-and-one-half-million dollars, and not only prevent the spread of
contaminants, but will extract a significant amount…all with a minimum of
conventional energy sources.
The research at Argonne will allow us to find ways of harnessing energy
and employing materials. Since a person
living in 1950’s America used an average of about ninety-five million Btu a
year to power their life, and today, the average American uses about
one-hundred-and-sixty million – even with major advances in vehicle and
refrigerator efficiency, there is much to do about our relationship with
energy. We need to maintain our quality
of life, but change our technologies, behaviors, and expectations to maximize
the use of the most sustainable energy…
The energy we never have to use.
*(We can talk another time about what a transition based on nuclear and
fracking means for long-term quality of life.)
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