Energy is
Everything
Everything we do starts with energy. It is arguably the most critical aspect of critical infrastructure.
We tend to think about particular aspects of energy as separate things – keeping the lights on, heating, transportation and so on. But energy is at the root of all of these – it determines the way we live, work, travel, build, rebuild, protect our communities and our countries, wage war and keep peace. Producing and using energy enables us to get anything, and everything done.
No matter how it is produced or stored, energy is always the same – it is measured in calories or Joules. Whether it’s expended by a fire, a yoked beast of burden, a steam engine, an oil furnace or a nuclear reactor, it’s still energy. It’s important to understand energy in this way, as the means we have to get anything in the world done.
When we think about energy in that context, it matters to consider where the energy comes from, for lots of different reasons. Do we have enough? Will we need more? Can we keep producing the energy we need using the materials and equipment we have, and if not, what should be looking for and using?
This is where thinking about energy as an integral part of a system of critical infrastructure comes in. Ultimately, we need access to the most efficient forms of energy that we can transform into work. Ideally, it's going to be clean energy: efficient energy that has as few side effects as possible.
The Myth of the Whale and the Marketplace
It’s important to think systemically about energy as the foundation of critical infrastructure today. There is a myth about energy in the 19th century that’s instructive for us to understand why. It’s the myth of the whale.
The myth is that in the mid-19th century, North Americans and people in other developed civilizations relied on whale oil for lighting, but supplies were finite because there are only so many whales in the world. In the nick of time, the story goes, “rock oil” was discovered in Pennsylvania, and kerosene made from petroleum products saved the day and allowed progress.
What is mythical about this story is a belief this switch in energy sources was only a matter of market forces saving the day. Ultimately, scientific advancement, government policies, changing industrial priorities and new regulations were just as important, perhaps more important, than the market in picking a winner (petroleum products) over a loser (whale oil).
The combination of taxation and increased production as new oil producing infrastructure grew made the newer fuel more accessible and cost effective. All these forces together were the underlying ones that helped determine what happened. The marketplace is important, but the idea that the market alone decides the future is a myth.
Market forces don’t exist in a vacuum. The ebb and flow of supply and demand is controlled by a complex network of decision making that involves governments and industry together. Sometimes they work together, sometimes they are adversarial. But they are never alone; they always work as a system. This is why it’s important to apply systemic thinking to building and maintaining the critical infrastructure we need for 21st century energy.
The marketplace is important, but the idea that the market alone decides the future is a myth.
Change is Coming
We're now at a place in history where a similar kind of shift is inevitably going to occur — we have to decide what forms of energy will prevail in the future. It’s not an either/or proposition. Many forms of energy, including fossil fuels, will be important as the world transitions to a lower carbon and perhaps a zero carbon-based economy.
The need is imperative to make decisions, through policy and investment. We have to deal with climate change. We need to move towards cleaner, less carbon emitting, less greenhouse gas emitting energy sources. The elimination of fossil fuels is not the goal, but the elimination of dependency on fossil fuels is. In a future energy strategy that includes systemic thinking, it is likely that targeted fossil fuel use would be a small part of a much larger, well-networked adaptable supply of clean energy choices.
There are already new energy technologies that could work. Some are more attractive than others, for different reasons. Ultimately, whatever direction we head toward with energy will provide the foundation for all other aspects of our critical infrastructure. Everything about the way we will live and work in North America will depend on the decisions we make.
There is no consensus on many of these decisions, but they are decisions that are best made through collaboration, not adversarial relationships. Industry, governments and the administrators who ensure that policies are followed will have to cooperate to enable energy winners to emerge that provide the fuels, delivery systems and solutions that best meet our needs.
Energy Sources are Different, but Energy is the Same
We should expect some overlap between current and traditional forms of energy production and new and emerging ones in the foreseeable future. When it comes down to it, all energy is the same – it comes from a source, and then it’s harnessed to do work, inevitably the source must produce kinetic or thermal energy forces to spin or move something (like a turbine, a flywheel, a crankshaft, a projectile) that can be deployed to work for us. This is true whether the energy is stored in calories of corn, or not yet unleashed in fossil fuels that need to be burned, lying in wait within gas tanks or on route in pipelines, in uranium processed for fission, in water about to tumble through a turbine, or the wind, the sun or the tides.
Some energy technologies are cleaner than others, and some are more efficient. In my own field, steel making, there is considerable interest in using hydrogen as a reduction agent for the production of primary steel from the reducing of iron. This would be a lot cleaner than using coal, which produces carbon emissions. Hydrogen can be produced using technologies that don't have emissions, such as hydro, wind or nuclear power, but the electrolysis is itself energy intensive. Emission reduction efforts like this will also require other technologies and raw materials. To achieve hydrogen production at a scale and quality allowing it to be used in steel production instead of coal will demand realignment or existing supply channels and development of new ones.
Society and industry need to talk together now about the infrastructure we need to achieve this kind of massive change. We need to talk about how to plan and design it, who will pay for it, how to build and maintain it, and we need to understand why working to get these supply chains transformed is essential to our way of life in North America.
In fact, a lot of the skilled and technical expertise to produce new forms of energy already exists in North America, and so does much of the basic infrastructure to make it viable. The capability and know-how from petrochemical industries’ infrastructure is translatable to a hydrogen economy. If industry, finance and government work together, hydrogen could become a dominant and important replacement for carbon-based fuels.
This is the kind of breakthrough that could allow for the low and zero carbon era we aspire to achieve. Fuel cells may make it possible to have hydrogen powered electric vehicles. These are different than the current battery-based electric vehicles, but soon we will be seeing a mix of vehicles on our roads and highways. It’s not a great leap to expect to see hydrogen vehicles sharing the roads with battery-powered cars and trucks. But this will require a huge shift in energy infrastructure, and it will have knock-on effects in other sectors, including steel, plastics and those supply chains that are fed by these, including the defence sector.
Overcoming Obstacles
We have an unusual opportunity to spark change. Call it an unintended consequence of COVID-19. Under the circumstances of the pandemic and with oil prices lingering low for roughly half a decade, some of that creative destruction that can lead to change has already occurred.
Part of the role of systemic thinking about new energy is to look for ways to ease and manage the pain. Systemic thinking requires leadership – it’s important to communicate the long-term benefits that will grow after short term adjustments and in some cases, short-term pain.
The Grid is Still Needed for Critical Infrastructure
Some energy analysts predict that the continental electricity grid will become an anachronism because of distributed power. Distributed power produces electricity from localized sources such as a local wind turbine, and stores and supplies power to a local area. The idea is that if power is distributed in this way, it doesn’t have to travel through transmission towers from large power plants.
While this is an attractive idea, it’s not entirely realistic. Distributed power will become more significant to our energy supplies, but a distributed grid still requires to be networked. This is partly to manage the distribution so that everyone gets the power they need, and it’s partly to be prepared and resilient in the face of emergencies.
Quebec, for example, has experienced several severe ice storms that devastated that province’s electricity supplies for extended periods. The lessons are that distributed generation would have helped – local supplies wouldn’t necessarily have gone down – but this distributed power should also be connected to a network, so power can be shared when it’s needed. North Americans want to be self-reliant, but this doesn’t mean living in independent isolated cells that have no ability to help our neighbours.
After all, it’s not as though the Eastern Seaboard of the United States has enough power generation on its own to supply itself and be clean today. The U.S. buys power from Quebec; this enables northeastern states to avoid having to burn enormous amount of gas and coal that they would otherwise require. If they want to be green, the most logical way to do it is to buy power from Quebec. That’s why a huge amount of private investment is going into critical energy infrastructure – expanding the transmission line network from Quebec to New York State.
Work Together Now
We need to work together now to enhance North America’s critical infrastructure because we no longer have the luxury of slow change – the world is moving too fast. We’re living through a climate crisis that is arguably getting worse, combined with geopolitical instability that shows no signs of abating. All this is happening in a time of unprecedentedly fast technological change, a Fourth Industrial Revolution and the advent of artificial intelligence. And now, COVID.
Collaboration is critical, more than ever. It comes when as industry, we recognize the interconnectedness of our separate businesses and look beyond our own immediate business interactions. We need to understand the supply chains that we participate in and what is required to make and keep them strong. We need to know how they relate to each other – how supply chains are the key building blocks of our critical infrastructure. We need to respect the importance of critical infrastructure as the maintainer of our safety, security and prosperity.
We all have to work together, fast and now. Industry and the public sector will need to cooperate, but industry should not wait. Industry can take the lead, and it should prepare to do so.
Collaboration among industrial sectors and government to ensure safe, secure and clean energy doesn’t hurt competition. It enables it. We can be competitive and pursue our individual self-interests, but it’s in everyone’s interest to pull together to secure a strong, resilient critical infrastructure. That starts with energy and the ability to distribute it across the continent to where it’s needed and when it’s needed. That time is now.
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A lot of the skilled and technical expertise to produce new forms of energy already exists in North America, and so does much of the basic infrastructure to make it viable.
Robert Dimitrieff
As President of Patriot Forge Co. and Niagara Energy Products, Robert Dimitrieff is in a unique position to share insights into the many ways Canada’s advanced manufacturing industry is building a solid foundation on which Canada’s economy can grow – locally, provincially, and nationally.
Robert provides relevant and real-world perspectives on how issues like tariffs, taxes, and economic policy can help or hinder the progress being made by advanced manufacturers. Most recently, he’s worked closely with government policy-makers and has spoken to industry and business groups on the topics of trade and tariffs.