Energy and social transition

Three out of four CO2 emis­sions have en­ergy as their ori­gin. There­fore, if we are re­ally se­ri­ous about tack­ling cli­mate change and want to achieve zero emis­sions by 2050, we need to rad­i­cally change not only how we pro­duce en­ergy, but also how we con­sume it. “This will be a key issue dur­ing the com­ing decade. And there will prob­a­bly be a dis­rup­tive trans­for­ma­tion, changes will not be grad­ual,” says Pep Sales, who holds a PhD from the UPC and is an ex­pert in en­ergy tran­si­tion.

The first ques­tion that comes to mind when con­sid­er­ing a re­duc­tion in CO2 emis­sions is: Can we still have cars but with­out petrol? “It?s not so much that but more not using the fuels we have avail­able. If they re­ally ran out, there would be no de­bate. The real chal­lenge is to stop con­sum­ing fos­sil fuels with­out it ac­tu­ally run­ning out. And be­cause so­ci­ety has been struc­tured in the image and like­ness of fos­sil fuel, we find that strange,” Salas says.

We must come to un­der­stand that tak­ing a cheap flight to spend the day in Paris is an en­ergy lux­ury that we can­not af­ford. “In the fu­ture we will look back and think we were crazy, be­cause this model re­ally can­not sur­vive and it has only been pos­si­ble be­cause we’ve had a very cheap and boun­ti­ful en­ergy sup­ply. It is now clear that the habit of con­sum­ing prod­ucts and ser­vices across the world will have to be changed.” In­deed, en­ergy tran­si­tion goes be­yond the field of tech­nol­ogy and touches on is­sues of aware­nesss and phi­los­o­phy to change so­ci­ety. “We are wit­ness­ing a de­bate that will not only be re­solved by en­gi­neers. It’s not a mat­ter of re­main­ing the same and just chang­ing fos­sil fuels for solar en­ergy. The chal­lenge is to un­der­stand that this change that is to come does not nec­es­sar­ily have to be for the worse. We are at an early stage, in which the tech­no­log­i­cal ques­tion still has far to go, but at the same time the de­bate on the model of con­sump­tion, growth, so­cial or­gan­i­sa­tion, trans­port, etc. must be ad­dressed,” says Salas, who is the Di­rec­tor of In­no­va­tion and Reg­u­la­tion for km0 En­ergy and a mem­ber of CADS (the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Ad­vi­sory Board).

With re­gard to the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, Eu­rope is see­ing a clear en­ergy tran­si­tion, and Spain is also break­ing records with the in­tro­duc­tion of re­new­able en­er­gies. Cat­alo­nia lags far be­hind, how­ever, and a re­pealed de­cree in No­vem­ber has greatly re­stricted the de­ploy­ment of green en­ergy. “We are start­ing from a worse point than the Span­ish state av­er­age. And none of the im­por­tant pro­jects on the table are for Cat­alo­nia. We con­sume 20% of the state’s en­ergy, but don?t even re­ceive 1% of the solar power in Spain. The gap is so wide that it can?t be ex­plained,” Salas says.

The cur­rent en­ergy sys­tem in Cat­alo­nia does not work, ac­cord­ing to Salas, and new leg­is­la­tion is needed. If using less in­fra­struc­ture does not re­sult in lower costs, then every­one will end up buy­ing the cheap­est en­ergy, which comes from large power plants. There­fore, we will sim­ply be ex­chang­ing oil en­ergy for sun en­ergy, but not fos­ter­ing a model of dis­trib­uted gen­er­a­tion: one whereby many small en­ergy sources close to the places of con­sump­tion and con­nected to each other flex­i­bly man­age sup­ply and de­mand. Ac­cord­ing to ex­perts, this is the model that is needed: value needs to be awarded to nearby, and not just green, en­ergy sources. And that means more in­volve­ment by in­di­vid­u­als. By way of ex­am­ple, if large in­fra­struc­tures are made to have green en­ergy and sell it, then cit­i­zens be­come mere pay­ing con­sumers. How­ever, if dis­trib­uted re­sources are used, the cit­i­zen plays an ac­tive role, not only being a con­sumer, but also a pro­ducer and a par­tic­i­pant in the elec­tric­ity mar­ket. As we are now see­ing in Eu­rope, the tran­si­tion is not only a change in the en­ergy mix, it is also a so­cial tran­si­tion. Until now the con­sumer was the in­di­vid­ual fac­ing the sys­tem, but now in­di­vid­u­als are be­gin­ning to group to­gether to make en­ergy com­mu­ni­ties. And that is a very nec­es­sary and pos­i­tive change.

If things go as planned, in the next decade we will see the Cata­lan nu­clear power plants shut down. Be­yond the issue of waste and se­cu­rity, which should be the pri­or­ity, they will be closed for eco­nomic rea­sons be­cause op­er­at­ing a nu­clear power plant is very ex­pen­sive. Right now there is an agree­ment to close them be­tween 2025 and 2030, but an­other ac­ci­dent like Fukushima could ac­cel­er­ate their clo­sure. How­ever, more than 55% of the elec­tric­ity con­sumed in Cat­alo­nia cur­rently comes from nu­clear en­ergy. “If the nu­clear plants are closed with­out hav­ing the re­new­able al­ter­na­tive ready, we will lose ei­ther cov­er­age or have to burn gas, which would in­crease CO2 emis­sions,” says Salas.

“This is no triv­ial mat­ter,” he adds. ?Im­por­tant de­ci­sions need to be made. The in­vest­ment re­quired for the en­ergy tran­si­tion could amount to at least 10 bil­lion.” There­fore, re­new­able en­ergy will be­come a sig­nif­i­cant eco­nomic sec­tor in the Cata­lan econ­omy in the com­ing years and the right de­sign and fore­sight are re­quired.

It will take re­search to de­ter­mine what role elec­tric­ity com­pa­nies will play and how the dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work will be man­aged. Salas warns that every­thing can­not be left in the hands of the mar­ket be­cause we the eco­nomic fu­ture of sev­eral gen­er­a­tions of Cata­lans is at stake.

“The en­ergy ma­trix de­fines the frame of mind of a coun­try very well. There has al­ways been a very close re­la­tion­ship be­tween the so­cial, eco­nomic and en­ergy mod­els. So when we talk about the en­ergy model we are talk­ing about the model of so­ci­ety we want. To leave it only in the hands of the mar­ket would be a reck­less de­ci­sion,” he re­marks.

An­other im­por­tant issue, ac­cord­ing to Pep Salas, is a fair and eth­i­cal en­ergy tran­si­tion: “How does it make sense to ban older cars to re­duce emis­sions when you don’t take any mea­sures on sea or air trans­port? Why do we take it out on the weaker seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion?” This is the basis for his call for eq­uity to be the foun­da­tion of the tran­si­tion. “If not, we run the risk of cre­at­ing first and sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion cit­i­zens: those who have ac­cess to an elec­tric ve­hi­cle will live in the best pos­si­ble world, but will leave the bulk of the pop­u­la­tion be­hind, and this is nei­ther de­sir­able nor ac­cept­able. We can ill af­ford it as a coun­try,” Salas con­cludes.

dossier Cli­mate Change