Imagine you are a KhoiSan living in early South Africa. The days are blazing hot and the deep dark nights are strewn with thousands of twinkling stars. Your only source of energy at night is the fire from the wood collected during the day and the food sitting in your belly. Bear in mind you had to use your muscles to chop wood, gather fruit and hunt a springbok to power your muscles to do it all over again the next day. This is how most cultures throughout the world have powered their communities for centuries. As societies became more complex, we moved from hunting and gathering to farming and producing. The more we produced, the more energy we consumed. The humble fire pit was not going to cut it anymore. We needed something revolutionary. Enter, Electricity.
In this post, we will look at our current global energy consumption and how we got here. We will also examine ways to provide clean, efficient energy for all humans and look at how we can manage energy in our ideal future timeline. Buckle up because this ride is going to get intergalactic!
Image by Jarrod Kyte
What is electricity?
From the 1870s electricity was developed to enhance communication with the telephone, automate manufacturing and power households. This industrial revolution freed us from the laborious tasks of hunting and farming. This created a middle class of professional workers with better health, education and living standards.[1] Something we can all be grateful for. Electricity works on the basis of tiny charged particles called electrons, flowing through a wire like a current of water. In an electromagnetic generator, the current is induced by rotating a magnetic shaft as first discovered by Michael Faraday.[2] The blades of this magnet can be rotated by steam, water, wind or even a thousand children pushing on them…anything really. These are methods used by utility companies like Sasol, Exxaro and Eskom (when they work). The steam used to rotate the turbine blades is usually generated from heating water via non-renewable fossil fuels like coal, oil and petroleum.
Image by slideshare.net/kdennis/generating-electricity
The problem
Fossil fuels are plant and animal matter that got compressed under high temperatures and pressures for millions of years and you can only use them once. As you can imagine the combustion of these fuels produces harmful gases like CO2 (carbon dioxide), SO2 (sulphur dioxide ), NOx (nitrogen oxides) and PM (particulate matter).
How harmful are they? Well, SO2 causes acid rain, which leaches essential nutrients from the soil and changes the pH balance of water. This kills vegetation and aquatic animals. Not to mention that SO2 also causes heart disease in humans. NOx increase ground-level ozone that damages the lungs. PM causes smog and can contribute to bronchitis and lung cancer.[3] CO2 is a greenhouse gas that heats up the planet. As temperatures rise on land, we see the expansion of deserts, global wildfires, melting glaciers and extreme weather. All these changes threaten people's homes, food sources and have forced many animals to go extinct. The World Health Organisation considers climate change the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century.[4]
As we can see, this process of electricity generation has lifted our civilization into modernity but as useful as it is, it is currently harming us and the only planet we call home so far. The situation gets worse when you think about how much we use to satisfy our civilisation's energy needs. As of 2021, electricity demand grew by 6% globally or 1500 TWh (Terawatt hours). For example, using a normal household iron for 1 hour consumes 1000 Watts of energy (1 Kilowatt hour).[5] So basically, we needed 1.5 trillion irons worth of energy just last year. For perspective, the sun produces that amount of energy over a surface area the size of South Africa every second! As I'm writing this post in 2022, we are still burning old trees to charge our cellphones! I'm not impressed. Surely we can do better? Well, we can. Enter, Renewable energy.
Renewable Energy
Also known as 'clean energy', renewable sources are many and share the fact that they can be replenished in our lifetime and are independent of the 'dirty' fossil fuels. Here, I will highlight 3 types of renewable energies including: sunlight, wind and geothermal heat. I will also describe the benefits and drawbacks of each.
Solar power is the generation of electricity from sunlight either using photovoltaic cells (solar panels) or concentrated solar power (mirrors). The benefits of solar power are that it is renewable, clean and a potentially complete source of power for Earth, if done right. Like I mentioned earlier, it would take an efficient collector the size of South Africa to meet the world's demand. Some drawbacks with solar power are that the materials needed to make the panels are rare-earth metals (cadmium, indium etc.) whose mining process creates radioactive waste that is toxic to the environment.[6]
Wind power uses wind turbines to generate electricity and is a great alternative to fossil fuels. Actually, in 2021, wind power supplied 1800 TWh of electricity which would have been enough for global demand.[7] If only the infrastructure could accommodate the energy transmission. The minor disadvantages are that the turbine blades are currently not recycled and they produce noise pollution. Not to mention that the turbines also endanger birds and the surrounding habitat.
Geothermal heat is another promising source of power. The extreme temperatures from the core of the planet rise to the surface where power stations extract this heat to generate electricity. Countries like Kenya, New Zealand and Iceland currently use geothermal energy, even supplying 90% of demand in the case of Iceland. A report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) estimates that 5.6x107 TWh (That's 56 000 000 TWh) could be extracted which would be enough to satisfy the world's energy needs for millions of years![8] The current issue we face is that most of the heat is spread too thin making it difficult to use.
These sources of energy give us hope for a cleaner future and with the right industrial and political will, including technological advances, they can supply all our energy needs indefinitely.
Free Energy
Image by greentech-news.org
Given the drawbacks that renewable energies have, one has to wonder if we can do even better. I think we can. Imagine a system of energy production as clean, efficient and harmonious as nature itself. Nature is abundant and strikes the perfect balance between production and consumption without leaving anything to waste. What if we could tap into the fundamental energies of the universe and align ourselves with that. Well, many researchers and inventors have come up with systems and machines to do just that.
Zero Point Energy
One of the fundamental energies that might lead us into the next industrial revolution is called zero-point, quantum vacuum energy or simply put, free energy. You may have never heard of this type of energy and if you have, you might think it is impossible. Without going into much detail (because, I don't know much of it myself!) if you were to remove all the air and atoms in a space, you would get a vacuum. For a long time, scientists thought the vacuum was just empty space, until German physicist Werner Heisenberg showed that even at the temperature of absolute zero (T = 0K) a vacuum has fluctuating energy, also known as zero-point energy. It has been calculated that a small cup of this energy is enough to boil all the oceans on the planet![9] If we could harness this energy we could power the whole world indefinitely. Some non-commercial inventors have constructed working zero-point machines. These include: Tom Bearden (Lt. Col ret. M.Sc) who built a Motionless Electromagnetic Generator (MEG) that extracts magnetic energy from the vacuum to replenish the device's permanent magnet.[10] The MEG has been reproduced multiple times by independent researchers, most notably by French researcher Jean-Louis Naudin who achieved electrical output 100 times the input power. Parahamsa Tewari (Executive Director ret. of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India NPCIL) who invented the Tewari Reactionless Generator (T-RLG) with an output efficiency of 238%.[11] A video of his machine is shown below. Adam Trombly, a scientist who co-invented the Homopolar Generator that produces 4 times its input power.[12]
RLG Testing from Toby Grotz on Vimeo.
Radiant Energy
Another form of natural free energy that has also been investigated by my favourite inventor, Nikola Tesla, is the so-called radiant energy. This type of energy exploits the fact that the Earth herself is bathed in electromagnetic radiation and electrical potential. The electrical potential from the surface of Earth increases by 100 volts for every meter up to 400 000 volts at 50km, so one can imagine just plugging in some wires and tapping into this energy.[13] Well, some researchers and engineers did just that!
If we could produce electric effects of the required quality, this whole planet and the conditions of existence on it could be transformed... We could irrigate arid deserts, create lakes and rivers and provide motive power in unlimited amount!
A Zimbabwean inventor named Maxwell Chikumbutso taps into the radio frequencies in the atmosphere and converts it into electricity using his Microsonic Energy Device. With his technology he is able to power homes, a car, a drone even a helicopter![14] This is shown in the video below. Another device which draws power from the air is the Free Electron Pump (FEP) by Stefan Hartmann. Also replicated by independent researchers, the FEP extracts free electrons from the atmosphere or ground to power an electric circuit.[15]
In this section I've only highlighted two types of free energy but there really are a lot more, each with their inventors, devices and even ancient historical applications. That's an aspect I will touch on in a later post. Some of these technologies were presented to then President of the US Barack Obama, by MD and Director of the Orion Project, Steven Greer, in a document summarising new breakthrough technologies which need support, research and commercial rollout.[16] These technologies include variations on the following:
- plasma arc reactors,
- - water combustion,
- - solid-state electromagnetic generators,
- - Kowski-Frost Anti-gravity,
- - Stubblefield Earth Battery technologies and many more.
- With devices like these existing, even for decades now, one has to wonder why each of us don't have one in our homes. That would surely cut the electric bill and save us the headache that is loadshedding! As you come to know, much of this technology is either downplayed or downright suppressed by the petro-chemical industry that tries to keep a monopoly on electricity generation. Not to mention the gag orders and threats placed on these inventors' lives if they dare go commercial with their devices! But that's also a post for another day. For now, just be aware that these technologies exist and imagine a world powered by the very fabric of reality. If you want to contribute further, a good way would be to educate yourself on these technologies and even support those who develop them.
To infinity and beyond
As a final measure to this discussion on how to power the world, I would like to consider what the ideal human civilisation looks like in terms of its energy use. Drawing upon the work of my second-favourite Nikola, Russian atrophysicist Nikolai Kardechev, he proposed a hypothetical scale to measure the advancement of a civilisation by its energy use.[17] The Kardechev Scale ranges from civilisation type I to type III with the following characteristics:
Type I Civilisation
This type is defined as a civilisation that harnesses all the natural power of it's planet and that from its host star including: solar, wind, ocean, volcanoes, and earthquakes. No natural terrestrial force can disturb a type 1 civilisation. Interestingly, humanity is currently at type 0.73 on the scale by scientist Carl Sagan's calculations. We are not even at 1, which shows how far we still need to go!
Type II Civilisation
A type 2 civilisation is one which can harness all the power produced by its host star. This can be achieved with advanced technologies like the Dyson sphere which totally envelops a star and uses all of its output energy. An image of a Dyson sphere is shown below. With power like that, no extraterrestrial force such as asteroids or cosmic radiation can harm this civilisation. Not to mention the technological application that can be achieved with such energy. We could easily travel in the solar system between planets and stars, opening up quadrillion-dollar economies with the resources that can be found. (If we are still into that kind of thing!)
Image via worldofweirdthings.com
Type III Civilisation
With the power to travel between stars, now consider using all the energy output of all the stars within a galaxy! Now that is a type 3 civilisation. For perspective, our Milky Way galaxy alone contains 100 billion stars. It's hard to imagine who could use that much energy and for what purpose, but such a civilisation would conceivably understand and manipulate the very laws of quantum mechanics, gravity and even travel through time!
As you can imagine, attaining such power and actually using it in a sustainable way without blowing ourselves up and our extraterrestrial neighbours will require a very mature humanity. In as much as we develop technologically, we will also need to develop spiritually or at least ethically. Living at such a grand stage with literal star power will require us to be in harmony with nature and the universe.
Coming back to Earth
As we've seen in this post, there are quite a lot of ways to actually provide clean and sustainable energy to everyone without ruining the planet and our health. I implore the reader to look beyond the current state of energy production and help create a better one. We can do this by educating ourselves, contributing where we can and pressuring our local governments where possible to expediate the transition to renewable and alternative energies. With a conscious and collaborative effort I think we can power the world and empower it's citizens to create an abundant and beautiful future for all.