Energy Efficiency: Facing the Facts and Learning to...

The boiling frog litany

p r e - p u b l i c a t i o n Energy Efficiency: Facing the Facts and Learning to Cooperate.

A joint project of Brussels Capital Region, CROSSTALKS VUB, Flanders District of Creativity, VITO, UGENT, IBBT, 3E and Buro II.

With the support of the Sustainable Energy Europe Campaign and event sponsorship of Philips.

Edited by Marleen Wynants

Introduction

We enter the last stage of the energy era and the problems have become bigger than the benefits.

At least four substantial crises manifest themselves: (1) the reliance of cheap labor, logistics, global economy and food on energy (2) the location of the oil production in political instable countries (3) reaching peak oil, meaning that pretty soon now half of the global oil is used up and the second half will become unaffordable (4) the highly underestimated feedback loop of the climate change.

The frog indeed is boiling and the global economic crisis might just be the golden opportunity to tackle these issues in a sustainable way.

The Energy Efficiency project started in 2008 with a series of science & industry lunches to navigate the complexities in an interdisciplinary way and to look for new and changing paradigms on various key levels: industry, science, socio-fiscal models and corporate governance of ALL stakeholders, including policy-makers.

Our aim is on the one hand to fill in the gaps and to stimulate the development of models and evaluation models for the various (hybrid) forms of solutions. On the other hand, we want to explore the interdependencies, opportunities and trade-offs with regard to policymaking and the corporate world. In that sense we value highly cases and methods that were presented in the previous science & industry lunches and those that will be discussed during the workshops to come.

Being halfway in the project, we want to offer you this pre-publication with a highly relevant sample of articles - from the first science & industry lunch on November 12, 2008 - and a series of visions and quotations that will be part of the final book, to be released in 2010.

Many thanks to the people who contributed to this booklet, to Linda Van de Vondel and Karel Van den Keybus for their energetic and efficient work, to Angelo Vermeulen for his never failing original perspective and to VUB R&D for being supportive in all things CROSSTALKS.

The Editor

Marleen WynantsOperational Director CROSSTALKSVrije Universiteit Brusselhttp://crosstalks.vub.ac.be

May 14th 2009

3

ACCOMPANYING COMMITTEE

Salvatore Bono, Pascal Cools, Frank Deconinck, Jacques De Ruyck, Filip Descamps, Dirk DeSmedt, Sara Engelen,

Peter Goethals, Cathy Macharis, Geert Palmers, Gerrit Jan Schaeffer, Joeri Van Mierlo, Sebastian Verhelst, Nico Verplancke,

Marleen Wynants

Transcriptions: Sara Engelen and Marleen Wynants

Editor: Marleen Wynants

English Editing: Melissa Larner

Layout & typesetting: Karel Van den Keybus - Gekko

Printing: Gekko

Cover Picture: Garden Statue in Villa Paradiso (Joe & Judy Lovano), Newburgh, New York (2005) by Marleen Wynants

All full page pictures by Marleen Wynants except p.28 and 29

4

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 03

The Car, the Cook and the trash bag, Palermo, 2005Energy, Efficiency And Life: A Very Special Relationship by Nicolas Glansdorff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Home brewery, Kayamandhi Township, Cape Town, South Africa, 2006Life Support In Spaceflight And Planetary Stations: The Role Of Microbes For Energy Efficiency by Max Mergeay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Artistic Intervention by Angelo Vermeulen & Kristina Ianatchkova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Homeless Person - Le Clochard de la Rue Saint Martin, Paris, 2004Urbanism vs. the Growth Paradigm: Shrinking Cities by Elke Beyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Rural renovation, Murcia, Spain, 2006Driving The Sustainable Ambition of Developers by Geert Palmers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Tokyo Subway, Japan, 2006Necessity, the Future and the Impact of a Sustainable Energy System by Gerrit Jan Schaeffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Heavenly Garden by Kathryn Gustafson in Corderie dell’Arsenale, Venice, 2008Pre-Publication Digital Roundtable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

5

Part 1

Paradigm Shifts in Energy Efficiency

Perspectives

7

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Energy, Efficiency And Life: A Very Special Relationship

N i c o l a s G l a n s d o r f f

Why is it important to understand the relationship between energy and living organisms? How efficient is this life/energy coupling?

Basically, energy is what enables the performance of work, so it is obvious that living organisms are in constant need of energy. Most obviously, we need energy to walk or to run around in search of food or of a mate, to keep our hearts beating, to keep warm – since mammals must maintain their body temperature. Less obvious is the need for energy while sleeping or, in the case of non-motile organisms like plants, the need for energy to pump nutrients across cell membranes, to renew cell constituents through biosynthesis (lipids, proteins), and to synthesize nucleic acids, the depositories of the genetic code. (At this level, energy is linked with information.) Even in an apparently quiet organ like the brain, the energy consumption is considerable.

How can we obtain energy?

Where does it come from? The campfire is one of the least efficient ways of obtaining energy for basic needs like keeping warm and preparing food. And it would certainly be non-sustainable for 10 billion people to continue what our Stone Age ancestors did when they numbered only a few hundred thousand. Yet this picture, besides recalling pleasant memories, illustrates a basic concept.

Wood, just like the pages of this book, contains a good deal of cellulose, which is essentially polymerized glucose (C6H12O6), the energetic nutrient par excellence. When we respire, it is to obtain energy from glucose. The reaction can be expressed as follows: C6H12O6 + 6O2—6CO2 + 6H2O. We speak of “burning calories” because the process is in fact a combustion; actually, to a chemist it

11Nicolas Glansdorff


is an oxidation, since electrons (together with H atoms) are being transferred to oxygen (O2). Of course, this does not happen spontaneously. To make the molecules of glucose react with O2, we have to excite them (raise their energy level) by providing what chemists call “activation energy”. We can do that with this book by setting fire to it with a match; in a few minutes, the book will be calcined with a rather wasteful dissipation of energy under the form of heat. The large amount of energy liberated during this combustion shows that it has a spontaneous tendency to occur, but the actualization of the process requires activation first.

Then how come we use the same reaction to sustain life?

In many of our machines (a steam engine, or a car) we couple the energy released by the combustion of carbon compounds (wood, coal, petroleum) with a mechanical performance (like pushing a piston). The heat is thus used directly, in general with a rather low yield, usually not more than 10 or 20%, because of friction and heat loss from the system. But we are not motors made of steel and we do not breathe fire. Indeed, every transformation within living cells takes place under constant T – temperature – or within a limited range of T. What we do instead, through a series of intermediate reactions, is to transfer a hydrogen atom between one molecule and another, ultimately to O2. These reactions also require activation energy, despite the inherent tendency of the reductant (glucose) to transfer electrons to O2, the oxidant par excellence. However, we do not use a burning match. The activation energy is provided by proteins, by the so-called enzymes. These are small balls of polymerized amino acids, each one the product of a gene, that can capture small molecules in the anfractuosities of their craggy surfaces and, by forcing them into immediate proximity, make them react with each other, something they would not do spontaneously. This is catalysis. These enzymes are extremely specific; each one usually recognizes only a narrow range of very similar molecules. And it is in the course of these transformations that energy is harnessed from the oxidation of glucose, not as a burst of heat, but by a much more subtle process.

In fact, living organisms do something that none of our sophisticated motors do: living cells harness part of the so-called free energy of the oxidation under the form of a chemical bond, which is then used in metabolism as a kind of energy currency. Now, by definition, the free energy of a chemical reaction is the amount of energy that you can obtain from this reaction in order to perform work of any kind at a constant T and pressure. This is always less than the total energy that you could derive from the reaction because, whatever you do, there is always a loss of energy, degraded as heat. This contributes to the general tendency of the universe to increase in entropy, a randomized state of energy that is no longer available to do work. The tapping of free energy as chemical energy is thus crucial for organisms living at more or less constant T.

Let us use an analogy in order to avoid a lengthy biochemical discourse: the kinetic energy generated by a wasteful process of releasing heat through falling rocks could be used by paddle wheels to lift a bucket that could further be used to drive a variety of hydraulic machines by pouring the water from an elevated position. In cells, the paddle wheels are the enzymes that link the burning of glucose, or other foodstuff, to reactions that generate the energetic currency


of the cell: adenosine triphosphate or ATP. Why is ATP usable as an energy currency? Because this molecule stores energy in the form of a high-energy chemical bond that can be used to drive many reactions of cell metabolism that require energy through the inherent tendency of this phosphoryl group to be transferred to other molecules.

Most reactions leading to the biosynthesis of macromolecules require energy to take place. Very schematically, energy-requiring reactions are coupled with the release of the terminal phosphoryl group of ATP as follows: consider the reaction A + B---A - BFirst B + ATP---B - P + ADPThen A + B - P---A - B + PhThus (1) A + B---A - B, that is, the synthesis of compound A-B, which requires energy, is coupled to the reaction (2) ATP---ADP + Ph, the first reaction being forced to occur by being directly coupled to the second reaction, which releases energy originally acquired during the oxidation of glucose.

Now, to understand the biosphere, and to refer to the article by Professor Max Mergeay later in this booklet, we have to generalize the concept of the free energy of oxidation linked to the harnessing of chemical energy under the form of ATP. Were you to meet an extraterrestrial visitor who asked you: “How do you obtain energy for your vital functions?”, what could you answer in a nutshell?

Well, as we have seen, we couple an oxidation (more exactly, an oxidoreduction) with the synthesis of ATP, or, to use more generalized jargon, we couple the transfer of electrons from a high level of energy to a lower level, to the synthesis of ATP, an energy-rich compound. An important point in order to understand all that is going on in our biosphere is that the final oxidant can be something other than O2; it can be, for example, the nitrate ion (NO3

-), or sulfate (SO4--). Similarly,

the reductant can be a variety of organic molecules, not necessarily a sugar, but it can also be an inorganic substance, such as H2S (hydrogen sulfide) or H2 (hydrogen) itself. The only important thing, from the energy point of view, is that the free energy of the oxidoreduction is large enough to be coupled to the synthesis of ATP.

A particularly interesting case is when the electron to be transferred to the oxidant is first raised to a high level of energy by light, the photons from the sun, our only external source of energy, on which life on this planet ultimately depends. Hence this glimpse of our ultimate energy provider in the full glory of an arctic midsummer night. Now, there are some microbes that can develop at the expense of oxidoreductions deep in the Earth’s


crust or at the ocean floor and, therefore, at first sight at least, appear to escape this primary dependence. However, their metabolism is driven by reactions that are connected to the rest of the biosphere and it is not certain that they could be considered independently. It is of course very important here to recall a basic fact: plants and also many bacteria can actually use this energy, this ATP, to synthesize sugars (and the rest of their biomass, through a network of reactions) by reduction of CO2 (carbon dioxide) with the hydrogen (H) of water, a process that is called photosynthesis1.

What is the efficiency of energy consumption?

What is the yield in terms of biomass being produced? If you want to express it in terms of vegetal biomass being produced by reference to the total amount of light-energy provided by the sun, I am afraid the answer is rather sobering: something like two tenths of one percent! And it is even lower for animal biomass if you consider that animals consume plants and that some animals, like us, eat other animals as part of their diet. Further sobering considerations can be gathered from the e-mail news letter of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel: 40% of the world’s grain harvest and 90% of the soy harvest is actually fed to cattle, while to produce 1 kg of meat you need 10 kg of this high-quality vegetal material that could in part be fed to people directly, since we are not obligate carnivorous animals. And I just mention another problem with ethical connotations: namely, the use of biomass to produce bio fuel for our beloved cars through industrial fermentation. However, apart from these considerations, it is interesting to focus on some individual cases where we can better appreciate the real power of natural processes as they have been refined by aeons of natural selection.

First, if the yield is about two tenths of a percent, that is for wild vegetation. It is good to keep in mind that natural selection, which acts on a complex network of ecological interactions between different types of microorganisms, plants and animals, will not necessarily prime the biomass yield as a unique objective. Now, if we turn to agriculture and want to know the yield of a field of corn, for example, it can be as high as 2%, and for sugar cane as high as 8%. There are many factors to consider that explain these numbers, on top of the inevitable degradation of energy to increase the entropy – the randomness and disorder – of the universe, but one of these factors, well known to plant physiologists is photorespiration. This occurs in many plants when an important proportion of the sugar produced is degraded but without energy gain. Photorespiration is practically absent in corn and sugar cane, which explains the relatively high yield. It may be an evolutionary relic or a safety valve minimizing the production of noxious molecular free radicals that can arise when O2 produced in photosynthesizing green

1 Some bacteria can even make sugar from CO2 by taking H and electrons from a variety of molecules, such as H2S or organic molecules. Even if you cannot integrate at a glance all these possibilities into a grand scheme, you can already feel that the biosphere functions in mighty cycles: classical respiration burns (that is oxidizes) sugar with O2 and produces CO2, but plants and many bacteria use CO2 to make sugar with light energy. On the other hand, if we have O2 in our atmosphere, it is because when plants use their ATP to synthesize sugar, they take the necessary H from water (H2O) with a concomitant release of O2. You will find this knowledge applied in Dr Mergeay’s contribution on the engineering of a contained mini-biosphere for the spaceships of the future.


leaves reacts with molecules involved in H transfer. Whatever the explanation, this shows that knowledge of the biochemistry of metabolism can be useful, in order to choose the appropriate plants whenever possible or even to modify them genetically to minimize energy waste by unwanted biochemical processes. Again, this is full of ethical implications that I won’t go into here.

La vie sans air

Let me reflect further on the yield of energy use by living organisms. The immediate efficiency of the use of photon energy – the so-called quantum yield of the light energy captured by chlorophyll and other associated light-harnessing pigments to reduce CO2 for the synthesis of sugars – is about 40%. Not bad. Actually, one can calculate that the efficiency of energy recovery from the respiration of glucose with O2, in terms of ATP being synthesized, is also about 40%, or even higher, depending on the conditions. By contrast, if you consider fermentations rather than respiration, the yield will be much lower. Indeed, in fermentations, such as alcoholic or lactic fermentations, the oxidation of the sugar you start with remains incomplete since you do not go all the way to CO2. Hence the growth yield of a fermentation is always lower than a respiration. However, the ecological advantage of a fermentation is clear, since it can occur in the absence of O2 and thus allows growth in the absence of air. Louis Pasteur, with his genial intuition, had already declared, well before the biochemistry was known, that fermentation was “La vie sans air”. It was probably through fermentation energy that life began on Earth some four billion years ago, before photosynthesis by green bacteria and then by plants produced the O2 that we respire today.

Let us complete this survey with the following remark: life can use different strategies for the mobilization of energetic resources and this is very apparent among the different types of fermentation. Escherichia coli, for example, a common bacterium in our intestine and a model system for molecular biologists, is an inhabitant of the colon. This organ has a meager supply of unabsorbed sugars and other growth factors and this environment perfectly suits bacteria like E. coli, which have no specific growth requirements and extract as much energy as possible from their fermentation. In contrast, other bacteria that grow primarily on vegetation can ferment large concentrations of sugars but with a less efficient energy yield. We are talking here about the microbiological equivalent of long-distance runners and sprinters, or of cars of the new generation, with a low and thus efficient consumption, completely different from the Buicks and Cadillacs of the previous generation.

The meaning of life in the universe

Free energy is extracted from chemical reactions and recovered as ATP. Now, you can tap the free energy of a chemical reaction as long as it is far from equilibrium. When reaching its equilibrium, the system is energetically dead since the concentrations of the reactants (substrates and products) no longer change. Cells exploit this fact to optimize the efficiency of resources utilization by controlling the rate of these reactions so that neither too much nor


too little of particular substances is available at any time. A classical mechanism – but not the only one – is the familiar negative feedback. Imagine a chain of reactions A—B—C—D, each one mediated by an enzyme. Now let’s suppose that compound D exerts a negative influence on the rate of the reaction catalyzed by enzyme E1 (the A to B reaction) by directly inhibiting enzyme E1. The result is that too much of D will automatically slow down the synthesis of this compound starting from A.A—B—C—D E1 E2 E3

You have here one of the cybernetic principles familiar to engineers who want their machines to run smoothly, without local accumulation of fluids, gases or energy, or without running out of it at one of the steps. The machines controlled in this way are in a so-called steady state, with a well-balanced input and output. It is important to realize that this kind of control can operate only if the reaction to be controlled is still far from equilibrium. Once the equilibrium is reached, the concentrations of substrates and products cease to change, and there is nothing left to control.

This is actually what living cells do all the time: they finely regulate the rate of their key metabolic reactions, so that a healthy organism is constantly under fine control, depending on key reactions running far from equilibrium, whether it is a bacterium or a human being. Relaxing these controls and therefore attaining equilibrium means death.

The second law of thermodynamics

Thus we are smoothly running pieces of biochemical machinery that optimize themselves automatically to remain in a steady state. There is therefore a good deal of order in a steady state, thus a minimization of entropy production. Now you may remember, or at least you have heard, that there is something called the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This law stipulates that the ultimate driving force of all chemical and physical processes is the spontaneous tendency for the universe as a whole to evolve towards a state of maximal disorder and randomness, in other words towards a state of maximal entropy, towards equilibrium. The paradox now is that we have been presenting living organisms as delicately organized systems, depending on finely controlled reactions operating far from equilibrium and, moreover, capable of self-organization (think of cell division, of cell differentiation and embryogenesis). Do living organisms therefore use energy in a way that challenges the Second Law? The paradox is in fact only apparent because the Second Law allows localized systems to minimize their entropy production provided that the entropy of the system plus its surroundings (the universe) continues to increase; in other words, the living organism must be seen not as a closed, isolated system but as an open system, open to all kinds of exchanges with its surroundings.

The following quote from Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time will give you a startling and amusing appreciation of what our contribution to the general rise of entropy can be when we consume energy just by thinking:


The progress of the human race in understanding the universe has established a small corner of order in an increasingly disordered universe. If you remember every word in this book, your memory will have recorded about two million pieces of information: the order in your brain will have increased by about two million units. However, while you have been reading the book, you will have converted at least a thousand calories of ordered energy, in the form of food, into disordered energy, in the form of heat that you lose to the air around you by convection and sweat. That will increase the disorder of the universe by about twenty million million million million units – or about ten million million million times the increase in order in your brain – and that’s if you remember everything in this book.2

To summarize what we just discussed, I want to cite Aaron Katschaksky:

Life is a constant struggle against the tendency to produce entropy by irreversible processes. The synthesis of large and information-rich macromolecules, the formation of intricately structured cells, the development of organization – all these are powerful anti-entropic forces. But since there is no possibility of escaping the entropic doom imposed on all natural phenomena under the Second Law of thermodynamics, living organisms choose the least evil – they produce entropy at a minimal rate by maintaining a steady state.

The universe was pregnant with life

There is, however, one major question that the previous quote does not address: how could such wonderfully organized systems arise spontaneously? In other words, what is the process that gave rise to systems that are apparently so delicately “designed”? Let me just point out the major lines of the answer.

First: during the early phases of the expansion of the universe, matter and energy were not distributed in a homogeneous way. Just look at the Milky Way and you can see this literally written in the sky. Either as a heritage from an earlier universe, before the expansion of the present one, or as the result of fluctuations occurring after

2 A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, Bantam Dell Publishing Group, 1988.


the birth of our universe, a certain heterogeneity was created. Clumps appeared through the action of gravitation, agglomerates of matter were thus formed and in the newly developing galaxies a more and more complex chemistry developed. This happened everywhere in the universe, not only on a few planets, and gave rise to series and networks of reactions that explain how molecules such as polypeptides (thus primitive proteins), nucleic acids (future genetic polymers) and lipids (constituents of cellular membranes) could have been formed spontaneously. Stephen Hawking formulates it as follows in A Brief History of Time:

In an expanding universe in which the density of matter varied slightly from place to place, gravity would have caused the denser regions to slow down their expansion and start contracting. This would lead to the formation of galaxies, stars, and eventually even insignificant creatures like ourselves.

Second: according to a still recent idea, for which we must credit people such as Freeman Dyson, Stuart A. Kauffman and Daniel Segrè, the most characteristic property of living organisms – their capacity to self-replicate – would not have arisen from scratch through the laborious and progressive development of self-replicating nucleic acids – despite what you can still read in many textbooks – but rather by virtue of a mechanism that today remains a hypothesis but is also a mathematical prediction. It is a mechanism of catalytic closure, by which mixtures of polymeric molecules such as proteins, nucleic acid and lipids would automatically start to replicate as a whole if they became sufficiently diversified to form a network where they would exert mutual catalytic interactions on the synthesis of each other while becoming enclosed in lipid vesicles. Such auto-replicative, very primitive cells, would of course undergo merciless Darwinian selection for efficient use of energy resources. Consequently, the most efficient possible mechanism for self-replication – the use of a molecular blueprint giving faithful instructions, a genetic code – would be bound to emerge.

In conclusion, I respectfully disagree with Jacques Monod when he writes in Le Hasard et la Nécessité that “the universe was not pregnant with life”. I think one of the most philosophically important results of modern science is that it WAS. And what is more, what has been at work here on this planet will have occurred elsewhere too, at least in the main lines. To deny this would be just another anthropocentric illusion.

Nicolas Glansdorff is Emeritus Professor of Microbiology and Genetics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels and Honorary Director of the Jean-Marie Wiame Institute for Microbiological Research in Brussels. He received MSc and PhD degrees in Biology from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles. He was for several years postdoctoral fellow of the Belgian National Science Foundation; this period included a one-year visit in 1967 to the Institute of Genetics of Glasgow University, directed at the time by Professor G. Pontecorvo. He made several visits of a few months each to the Department of Microbiology of the New York University Medical School in the laboratory of Professor WK Maas. At first, his research interests resided mainly in molecular genetics and mechanisms of gene regulation, using pyrimidine and arginine biosynthesis as a model system. In recent years, his interest has become more and more focused on the molecular physiology and evolutionary relationships of micro-organisms adapted to extreme conditions (such as high and low temperatures, high hydrostatic pressure) and the origins of life.


21Max Mergeay

Life Support In Spaceflight And Planetary Stations: The Role Of Microbes For Energy Efficiency

M a x M e r g e a y

MELiSSA is a bio-regenerative life-support system designed by the European Space Agency (ESA) for the complete recycling of gas, liquid and solid wastes during long-distance space exploration. The system uses the combined activity of different living organisms: microbial cultures in bioreactors, a plant compartment and a human crew. The artificial ecological model – still in development – that is inspired by Earth’s own geo microbiological ecosystems serves as an ideal study object on microbial ecology and will become an indispensable travel companion in manned space exploration.

It may sound very science fiction, but what follows is actual work that is being undertaken within the European Space Agency. The MELiSSA project deals with the prevention, detection and counteraction of safety and health or bio-safety assessments in which microbes play a major role; hence we talk about space microbiology. Our basic research concentrates on microbiology, genetics and molecular biology.

The role that microbes could play in energy efficiency will become clear towards the end of this article, but the main pillars of the ecosystem I want to focus on are people, the habitat and the planet. Between these agents we have a recurrent process of regeneration and contamination to be watched. As far as space microbiology is concerned, we have to take into account the early detection of undesired microbial contaminants (pathogens and biocorrosion agents) and the preventive countermeasures, as well as the use of “good” microbes for bio-regenerative purposes. Planetary protection is another field of research in space microbiology. We have, on the one hand, to take care not to infect the planet with what we bring back from Mars or elsewhere, and on the other hand, not to infect the other planets and destinations with what we bring along from our planet. Another aspect is the more scientific or the more speculative astrobiology/exobiology.

A manned space mission

A basic space mission is a mission of three years, so we have to take into account a life-support system. Why? Let’s consider a trip to Mars, which will take 1.5 years to get there and a year to get back. The risks involved for the crew, for their health and for the material itself, in terms of corrosion etc, is pretty high. Yet the conditions of the life-support systems – waste recycling,

22Max Mergeay

including feces and urine – and the production of O2 should be optimal. Let’s imagine eight astronauts going to Mars. What does that mean? At least €10,000 in fuel to launch one kg! Plus, per person per year, you need 1 ton of food and 9 tons of water. In the meantime, you get the production of 10 tons of waste. The detailed calculation is as follows:

Needs(30 kg/person/day)

Hygiene water 78% Potable water 9% Food 9% Oxygen 3% (1kg/person/day)

Waste produced

Liquid wastes 81% Respiration 10% Solid wastes 5% CO2 4% (1.2 kg/person/day)

If we know that to launch1 kg costs €10,000 in fuel, we cannot escape the need to recycle a maximum. What is more, we need a closed ecosystem to recycle water, oxygen and food. Of course, this recalls the principle of sustainability. I don’t want to spend too much time on the concept, just to note that it was invented in 1713 by Hans Carl von Carlowitz; notwithstanding the hype about it now, sustainability is a very old concept! The idea is that we should not produce at a rate that is higher than the growth rate of a tree. Mining companies, smelters, ship builders and others should keep this in mind. In space, sustainability is sine qua non, but it could also become a creative constraint. And the result should be obtained through closed ecosystems. The first model ecosystem is an ecosystem between two photosynthetic organisms; one produces oxygen, and a second one respires. But of course, this closed ecosystem is not enough to reach the goal of the recycling we want to achieve. And so another ecosystem has given us much inspiration and that is the lake ecosystem, one of the models for natural bacterial waste conversion on Earth.

23Max Mergeay

The lake ecosystem

We have different layers here. At the bottom of the lake we have the anoxygenic fermentation to destroy or liquidate the micro-molecules that have dropped to the bottom. The micro-molecules have become volatile fatty acids that in the next layer – photoheterotrophy – are transformed to CO2 and through nitrification become ammonium, nitrites and nitrates and in the next layer – photosynthesis – algae, to become food for the local population. This ecosystem inspired us in 1988 to develop the MELiSSA concept for microbiological support-systems alternatives. The MELiSSA concept is a multidisciplinary approach with energy efficiency as a major constraint, with the consumer producing waste that is transformed to small molecules and minerals, further transformed to nitrates and minerals, and the nitrates becoming a food source to higher plants and edible microorganisms as spiruline (a popular food additive).

We brought together the lake ecosystem and the MELiSSA loop in the ESA loop concept: waste liquefaction at 55°C, a carbon transformation, a nitrogen transformation and the production of food and water: from food source to food source.

Some preliminary observations: • The use of separated compartments for composting, as on Earth, will allow the permanent

and accurate (remote, if possible) monitoring of the bacteria (to control genetic stability), the biochemical processes and the effluents (micropollutants coming from the crew and biological contaminants).

• Biomethanization should be avoided at this stage because methane is explosive and its storage in spacecrafts may be a source of major problems. Further oxidation of methane to make biomass would consume lots of precious oxygen.

• The first compartment should be colonized by thermophilic organisms for an easier elimination of fecal pathogens and undesired contaminants.

• Rhodospirillum rubrum in the second compartment is used, since it employs light as an energy source in the absence of oxygen, converts liquefied material (fatty acids) in CO2 and biomass, and is a possible food source.

• The nitrifying compartment oxidizes ammonium to nitrate (a fertilizer for Arthrospira and plants) at the expense of CO2 and O2 and allows an efficient nitrogen cycle.

• The Arthrospira compartment regenerates oxygen via photosynthesis and is an excellent and well-accepted protein-rich food source (better known as Spirulina); high pH counteracts contaminants and purifies water.

• The plant compartment provides a vegetal food source rich in carbohydrates: wheat, lettuce, sugar beet.

So we are trying to make the system as closed as possible. It is one example of the different life-support systems developed in the different space agencies. The one used by the European Space Agency is the closest to microbes and plants.

24Max Mergeay

The MELiSSA concept loop

There is a series of challenges that we need to address in an interdisciplinary way to guarantee the MELiSSA concept loop: control of the stoechiometry, connecting the compartments, mastering kinetic parameters, and the effect of micro-pollutants coming from the crew (hormones, medicines).

The ESA/MELiSSA concept loop consists of four compartments: (I) Waste Liquefaction (II) Carbon Transformation (III) Nitrogen Transformation and (IV) Oxygen & Food Producers. Every compartment has its own challenges, apart from general challenges like the long-term stability of the cultures, monitoring and replenishing, technological challenges etc. We will just list a few essential ones:

• Control of the stoechiometry • Connecting the compartments • Mastering kinetic parameters • Effect of micropollutants coming from the crew (hormones, medicines) • Challenges related to the first compartment of MELiSSA: primary liquefaction of a waste

mixture; from a black box to an identified consortium • Long-term stability of the cultures • Monitoring, replenishing • Technological challenges

Space adaptationThe conditions that challenge genomic and metabolic stability during space missions are the temperature (shock, prolonged incubation), water deprivation (drought, physical/physiological water stress), UV radiation, light (intensity, absence), supernatans of the previous compartment, oxidative stress, cosmic radiation, microgravity and long-term culturing accumulation of mutation, which could be a source of entropy and jeopardize the system. Controlling these conditions means stability. What about the behavior of the MELiSSA organisms in space-flight conditions? We need to study bacterial evolution and bacteria under simulated microgravity on Earth. On the other hand, we have been able to study them during five real flights and we look forward to a close collaboration with the Russian space agency.

Technological developments and modelingA very fundamental aspect is the modeling of the system, or the development of an example of a mass-conservation model for a crew member. Furthermore, researchers at the Université Blaise Pascal have made equations from one transformation to another and from one compartment to another. It’s an enormous and complex undertaking, but the modeling is taking shape.1

1 B. Farges, L. Poughon, C. Creuly, J.F. Cornet, C.G. Dussap, C. Lasseur, “Dynamic aspects and controllability of the MELiSSA project: a bioregenerative system to provide life support in space”, Appl Biochem Biotechnol, 2008 151: pp. 686–99.

25Max Mergeay

Pilot plant/engineeringThe pilot plan is being constructed in Barcelona, and will be inaugurated in June 2009. It will be able to house the final experiments and directives for the gestation of the life-supporting planetary station.2

Integration of the system

The final part is the complete integration of the system and this is brought together under the term ALISSE or ‘Advanced Life Support System Evaluator’, an overall simulator for life-support strategy. The process departs from the aim to provide a suitable evaluation procedure for any Life Support System, taking into account everything that exists within a planetary system and is hence configured of physical/chemical units, bioregenerative units and in-situ resource utilisation, interface with other systems etc. A group of engineers has developed ALISSE in a search for the best solution, since ESA needs an operational evaluation process, procedures and tools to help managers to choose LSS in a multidimensional and complex world.

The ALISSE objectives are to help ESA for the evaluation of: • different technologies of three main LSS loops (food, air, water)• different architectures and sizing• different control strategies or operational conditions.

Another objective is to compute the compromise between the recycling and the taking on board of food, air and water for a long-term flight (there is an optimum in the function of each mission).ALISSE is only a part of the global decision multidomain process: economical, technical, political, historical. The idea is to provide some tools and to integrate the fundamental indicators to support and to help ESA in justifying their choice for the “best technical solution”.

The selected criteria to take into account are the mass (the cost to transport payload from Earth to space is proportional to the mass of this payload), crew time (this is a limited resource), energy (energy and power are important criteria to define the feasibility), efficiency (static and dynamic performances of the LSS), reliability (of a subsystem or for the global LSS) and the physical, biological and chemical risk to humans. In that sense, you have to consider the advantages and disadvantages of microbes and the role they can play for energy efficiency. Hence, we are studying microbial processes in waste treatments, in Life Support Systems and also in terrestrial sustainable development. Energy efficiency is central to circumvent the drastic space constraints. Some challenges in MELiSSA microbiology deal with the evolution of long-term cultures, research for new microbes for LSS purposes, terraforming on Mars. Yet

2 F. Gòdia, J. Albiol, J. Pérez, N. Creus, F. Cabello, A. Montràs, A. Masot and C. Lasseur, “The MELiSSA pilot plant facility is an integration test-bed for advanced life-support systems”, , Advances in Space Research (2004) 34, pp. 1483–93.

26Max Mergeay

the microbiology is only part of a much larger multidisciplinary approach and the saga of self-supporting planetary stations will involve two generations of scientists, engineers, modelers, dieticians, physicians, designers and decision makers … from 1988 to 2035?

Max Mergeay retired in 2008 as Head of the Radiobiology & Microbiology Sections at the SCK CEN. He completed his PhD thesis at the ULB under the guidance of Profs. Glansdorff, Piérard and Wiame. Honorary professor of genetics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, he now works as a consultant. He joined the SCK CEN in 1968. From 1974–75, he was visiting scientist in the laboratories of Professor Charles Yanofsky (Stanford University) and Professor Eugene Nester (University of Washington, Seattle). His main experience is in environmental and soil microbiology (anthropogenic or industrial harsh environments) and bacterial genetics. His interests are in space biology, horizontal gene transfer, genomics and gene responses to environmental stress. Mergeay is one of the founders of the project MELiSSA (Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative) that is currently being developed by the European Space Agency. MELiSSA has been conceived as a micro-organisms and higher plants-based ecosystem intended as a tool to gain understanding of the behavior of artificial ecosystems, and for the development of the technology for a future regenerative life-support system for long-term manned space missions, such as a lunar base or a mission to Mars.

Artistic Intervention

A n g e l o V e r m e u l e n & K r i s t i n a I a n a t c h k o v a

27Angelo Vermeulen

31Elke Beyer

Urbanism vs. the Growth Paradigm: Shrinking Cities

E l k e B e y e r

The point of departure for the urbanist and cultural research project “Shrinking Cities” was the dramatic developments in many East German towns and cities after the GDR became part of the FRG in 1990 – and the apparent difficulty in solving the emerging problems with the existing tools of planning.

A rapid de-industrialization in the wake of privatization deprived the regions of hundreds of thousands of jobs. This process was accompanied by an exodus towards the West, as well as a halving of the birthrate. Short-sighted state support for suburban developments in trade, industry and housing were snatched up in a developers’ bonanza and further aggravated the cities’ economic and demographic losses. With vacancy rates higher than 30%, empty windows and demolition crews became a common feature in prefab estates and New Towns as well as in inner city districts with Wilhelminian or older structures, for example in large cities like Leipzig and Dresden, but especially mid-size towns. Cities and regions are subject to a continuing fragmentation and social polarization.

Shrinking

This development was not a historical accident, nor a singular phenomenon. A trend towards shrinking has taken hold in old industrial societies over the second half of the twentieth century. In those of capitalist orientation, the shift came some decades earlier than in the former state socialist countries while – globally speaking – the long era of demographic growth and urbanization has still not come to an end. Of course, there are examples of declining cities throughout human history. But the current trend of shrinking cities worldwide follows historically new and specific patterns or pathways of

32Elke Beyer

shrinking: • historically unprecedented low birthrates and aging of societies • equally unprecedented individual mobility, suburbanization and sprawl • an ever-declining demand for labor because of automation and the global relocation of

industrial production in Post-Fordist economies.

Shrinking cities are with us to stay. The German debate on shrinking cities was dominated by the large housing corporations and limited to questions of the real-estate market and housing policies up until the late 1990s. Shrinking is not just an economic challenge, but questions most common assumptions about the nature of cities and urban development. In order to make the shrinking of cities as a social and cultural process a subject for a broad general public, the German Federal Culture Foundation initiated the cultural and urban research project “Shrinking Cities” in 2002. New approaches for analysis and intervention were sought, combining methods and means of communication from the social sciences, architecture, planning and arts. Cities were not to be conceived as built matter, transport infrastructure and potential growth machines, but as spaces of practice and negotiation, places of multiple realities and everyday survival. “Shrinking Cities” was neither a strictly academic research project nor a planning workshop for particular cities, but in itself a discursive intervention on many levels: a series of intensely frequented exhibitions and of publications, accompanied by many public events and discussions.

Long-term inequalities – analysis and interventions

The first phase of the project analyzed the causes and effects of shrinking, both on a global level and on the micro level of local realities in four urban regions – Detroit Metropolitan Region in the USA, Manchester/Liverpool in the UK, Ivanovo region in Russia, and Halle/Leipzig in former East Germany. Social scientists, architects and artists researched and documented how people live in a situation conditioned by unemployment, emigration and abandonment. They compared the current social, economic and spatial development of the case-study regions and looked at local strategies for dealing with the specific problems arising – individual and official, successful and less successful. A special focus was given to cultural production in shrinking cities, for example new music, and the images and aesthetics of urban decay in our culture in movies and music video clips. An Atlas of Shrinking Cities analysed the global phenomenon of shrinking, its causes and related processes.

The main issues emerging from the comparative research became working grounds for the development of interventions in the second phase of the project by about thirty interdisciplinary teams and individual artists. Several works engaged with the issue of spatial disparity on the regional and national scale, and the sometimes very close juxtaposition of shrinking and growth. Some conceptualized these long-term inequalities, for example by exaggerating and reinforcing the implications of transnational work migration and cultural transfer (Inverse Seasonal City, Michael Zinganel et al.). Other projects proposed an intervention in the general framework of legal rules, changing the direction of social and economic development, for

33Elke Beyer

instance, by proposing an experimental enclave of redistribution of resources and political participation based on the idea of general income in the town Forst (Special social welfare zone, Jesko Fezer, Stephan Lanz, Uwe Rada). Other artists developed tools of empowerment in the economic or cultural/media realm in order to strengthen marginal groups (A monument for the women’s center Wolfen Nord, Isa Rosenberger). Participatory film and photo projects aimed at a production of images complementary or opposed to dominant images of city marketing or catastrophe (The secret of LE, Anke Haarmann, Irene Bude). New uses for vacant and underused spaces were suggested in order to give them a new meaning within the city (Sportification, Komplizen).

The role of art and culture

Proposals for interventions largely employed strategies that one could broadly define as cultural. Few of the proposals were about urban hardware or urban design in the physical sense – the majority focused on soft factors such as legal rules, image production, organizational structures, patterns of occupation and use. Most worked on the virtual or symbolic plane, as provocations for thought, irritations or utopian visions. As such, they could have an effect only upon discursive practice, challenging dominant patterns of thought and practice in shrinking cities. Beyond this project, this seems to confirm a common trend towards a “culturalization” of planning and urbanism – in Germany and (Western) Europe. Partly, this follows the logic of funding programs (booming in this field). This mirrors not only more openness, but also the aim to find less costly ways of maintaining social interaction and innovation than the conventional tools of planning. Cultural producers (the creative class) are increasingly called upon to give a city’s image a facelift, enhanced attractiveness and spectacular value. In Manchester, Bilbao and Barcelona, for example, creativity is touted as a valuable location factor in the global competition for attention and visibility. However, cultural projects may do no more than preparing the path for entrepreneurial, competitive and growth-based urban policies. Sometimes against their will, they serve as a colorful but superficial step-in or compensation for the withdrawal of the state from its responsibility, helping to transmit an imperative of self-help that seems to apply only to the economically excluded.

What, despite these problems, can art and culture achieve in shrinking cities? Cultural actors can divert attention to places and potentials within a city. They can instigate new activities or convert the use of buildings/places. Art allows us to reflect on and to rethink crisis-laden situations; visions and desires can be expressed beyond the limitations of convention and common sense. Cultural production

© Nikolaus Brade

34Elke Beyer

can show and communicate strategies for how to cope with or alter situations, and it may trigger emancipation and social change. Its professional instruments can be used to challenge the dominant image production and modes of representation of cities and of people, which are of major importance in today’s economy of attention. It doesn’t have to yield immediate results; there’s no measure for its efficiency – and that may be the best thing about it.

For further reading: Philipp Oswalt (ed.), Shrinking Cities, Vol. 1: International Research and Vol. 2: Interventions, Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2006.

For six years, a large number of international researchers, artists, architects and planners addressed the topic of processes of urban shrinking in the framework of the initiative project “Shrinking Cities”. For the results see: www.shrinkingcities.org.

Elke Beyer , born in 1974, holds an MA in History and Slavic Studies, having studied in Cologne, London and New York. Since 2000, she has worked freelance on the development and realization of events, city walks, film programs on urban history and a temporary archive for staatsbankberlin. From 2002–06 she was a research associate for the project “Shrinking Cities”, Office Philipp Oswalt, Berlin. From 2004–05 she was guest editor of the journal An Architektur for a special issue on the eastern border of the EU for the exhibition Projekt Migration, Cologne. Since March 2006, she has been assistant at the gta (Institute for History and Theory of Architecture), ETH Zurich, undertaking a research project on planning, production and current transformation of 1960s city centers in Russia and East Germany.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. Oscar Wilde

37Geert Palmers

Driving The Sustainable Ambition Of Developers

G e e r t P a l m e r s

3E was established in 1999 as a spin-off company of the photovoltaics RD&D unit of IMEC – Europe’s leading research centre in the fields of micro- and nanoelectronics, and nanotechnology. Thanks to the association of experts from the wind energy RD&D group of the Vrije Universiteit Brussels, the company subsequently broadened its horizons. Nowadays, 3E is recognized as a leading independent authority on renewable energy, energy efficiency and energy strategy. Its clients include major technology manufacturers, project developers, energy utilities, architectural offices, construction companies and maintenance teams, as well as regional and international public authorities.

The following article is based on the experience and work of the 3E team in advising architects and developers on investments in the urban environment. During our first years, the focus was mainly on Brussels and Belgium; later, we extended our scope and started working on an international level due to the founding of 3E offices in Toulouse and Bejing. The company’s drive to invest in expertise and cultivate creativity powers its aspiration: not facing but shaping the changes. And as the title of this text indicates, we particularly want to drive the sustainable ambitions of developers.

Boundary conditions impose high ambitions

The first condition with which the developers are faced is the zero-emission share required. Indeed, the boundary conditions for architects and investors in the market are severe and impose high ambition levels. According to the International Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) reports, the required emission reduction imposed is between 80 and 50% of all emissions. What this means for Belgian developers is an improvement in the energy-efficiency level by 1% a year on average. In some regional societies, this can go up to 2 to 5%, depending on how strong the government campaigns and incentives are. If you take the IPCC assumption that we must reach between 80 to 50%, and knowing that it’s hard to go beyond an efficiency improvement of 2%, that would mean that we would have to reduce our complete energy-supply system from its current level to zero emission. This has to be done by 2050, so in three to four decades we will need to change more than half of our existing supply system, which is a very great challenge indeed.

38Geert Palmers

A second issue is that the geopolitical challenges have been known since 1974, yet strangely, it seems to have taken many shocks and much misery to become aware of it. In more recent years, we have seen clear signs of the day-to-day pressures on our society. On the one hand, there are all the societies who are unfortunate enough not to have these fossil fuels, and on the other there is an almost worldwide and increasing dependence on the few countries that do have them. The needs of the US, for example, are going far beyond local production and, to a large extent, that is also what is happening in the European Union. So a geopolitical concentration is developing. As a consequence, 50% of natural gas and oil reserves is controlled by a few countries that are not known as the most stable partner countries in the world. Of course, that is a biased Western point of view, but it should be a challenge for these controlling countries to find a better balance in their societies through increasing political pressure from the rest of the world.

Another boundary is that we have great inertia regarding change in our building system. The lifetime of the systems in which we invest is on average thirty to forty years. When an investor invests, the average becomes forty to sixty years. If an infrastructure company, a distributor or transmission-system operator decides to invest in an electricity infrastructure with a lifespan that is typically forty-five to sixty years, the consequences of urban planning decisions will continue for centuries. Nevertheless, investment decisions are mostly taken in line with economic boundary conditions that are currently in place. A private investor will look at the financial conditions and at the oil prices today and base his conclusions on these. This is completely irresponsible, since the reality of the energy supply will have completely changed by the time the investments take full effect. The IPCC panel estimates that the supply of energy will no longer be accessible, nor available at reasonable prices, even long before the end of the lifetime of buildings that are currently being built. Photovoltaic electricity is still very expensive, but will be cost-competitive before the end of the lifetime of these buildings. I am not referring to the Kyoto commitments and the post-Kyoto commitments here, but it’s a fact that the very serious commitments we are making now will be judged at the beginning of the lifecycle of these buildings.

Why is the building sector so crucial in this challenge? We know that 40% of the equivalence of CO2 emissions in the European Union are building-related. Looking at all the other sectors, it’s easy to see that the lowest cost can also be realized in this sector. Reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions is in most cases cost-effective. Hence the challenges imposed on a macro-level are very great.

The economics are no longer causing the bottleneck

This statement is less easily accepted, but we need to understand that one should add to the energy consumption of a building the total actual costs, including the investment cost and the operational cost during a period of seven to eight years. Only then will we get an indication of the actual cost of a building.

39Geert Palmers

With regard to Brussels, we can take as a reference building what is now being built spontaneously in the Brussels office market, which has 100% total primary energy consumption and 100% total actual costs. What we have been doing on a large scale over the last four or five years is to look at the price of any investments that can improve the energy efficiency of that building, and at different types of buildings. In this way, you can start to combine measures, and the interesting thing is that one measure will impact on the effectiveness of other measures. When you look at the packages of measures for these buildings you can see what changes should be made in comparison to the reference case. If you just take a decision based on rational arguments, it’s interesting to see that with all the simulations we have done on combinations of layers and measures in these buildings, if you take the economical optimum you easily come to 70% of the reference building primary energy consumption. Although developers and architects often state that they are hindered by economics, the fact is that they are taking decisions that are not at all economic. Of course, this implies higher investments, but in most cases we see that these start to rise only when the level is above 70%, and that this is a financial issue that is easily dealt with in the private market.

The technology is no longer causing the bottleneck

Renewable energy technologies and energy-efficiency technologies have made great progress in performance, applicability, esthetics and costs. The latest solar technologies cost half as much as they did a decade ago, look esthetically pleasing, and in ten more years will no longer even be visible on the roofs; they will have become part of the building’s skin. We have advanced technology of micro CHP heat networks, cold networks, developments in solar cooling – and the best solution lies in combining these technologies. At the same time, one must consider the freedom required by architects to think about conceiving a functionally and esthetically interesting architecture. But more opportunities are arising with which to achieve model solutions than in the past.

Traditionally, building markets went to architects, stated their functional requirements, and the architects came up with a design that in its turn was handed to an engineer with the brief to design an energy system that would provide the required comfort level in the different zones. This is a far from optimal process; there should be a trust relationship between the architectural office and the engineers from the early stages of thinking about a building or an urban development. University research labs and companies like ours have developed models that allow you to model geometrically complete buildings, even sites, where real meteorological data can impact on the user profiles you impose in the different zones. That way, you can calculate the exact heating and cooling demands and the necessary technical solutions with an eye to the level of comfort. Feedback loops allow you to recalculate the impact on primary energy consumption with every adjustment that the architect proposes. Formerly there was less freedom and the extra costs were high. But the technology exists and using it at an early stage will save a lot of money.

40Geert Palmers

The market rapidly transforms

Although we have the idea that the building market, just like the energy market, is a pretty traditional one, the last two or three years have seen a change. The ambition level of our clients is shifting rapidly. Three years ago we had mainly clients who were interested in exotic projects like having solar panels on their roofs for image reasons. From time to time we could convince some clients to take on really interesting projects, but we had to chase them. Now we see that the management of the project developers who have in the past realized some of the worst examples of buildings in Brussels and elsewhere, has changed and that they are going far beyond the current regulations. Of course, the Belgian regulations are not very severe, but at least private investors are now taking the lead in this program.

On the other hand, it’s great that the European Union is a promoter of Energy Efficiency, since without that policy Belgium would be a desert in this area. One of the most practical measures taken by the energy sector was the White Paper of 1997.1 This was the first time that statements were collated on objectives for renewable energy, and the Paper gave rise in 2001 to a first directive on electricity, and somewhat later to a CHP directive, as well as a biofuel directive; soon, they will all be integrated.

But the most important directive is the energy certification. This is an obligation to certify the energy performance of your building and to show this certificate when you rent or sell. It is a very smart way of embedding the energy performance of a building in the market price. We were contacted last year by all the big offices that were building, renting or developing buildings in Brussels; they wanted to know what the price per square meter per year would be of office buildings that are more efficient compared to the traditional ones. This attitude will finally kill the superficial buzzword “sustainable” and make it real and tangible. If you drive through Brussels in your 4 x 4, you cannot fail to notice all the nice façades with their nice promotional ‘for rent’ signs promoting sustainability. But most of the time, only one technology has been applied for the building’s energy performance. The overall design is hardly ever sustainable. The energy certification, however, provides objective information for people buying or renting buildings. A side effect is that companies that have never really been interested in energy-performance investments are now starting to panic, since they have a large portfolio of buildings in big cities in France and Belgium and are realizing that their building stock is performing badly on an energy level, which is very difficult to change in the short term.

1 “Communication from the Commission – Energy for the future: Renewable sources of energy – White Paper for a Community strategy and action plan – COM(97) 599”, November 1997.

41Geert Palmers

Ambition level increases more rapidly than regulations

We are currently seeing:• a growing share of project developers opting for higher ambition • the embedding of energy performance into the market price through the energy

certification• the first visible signs of market-price effects • the fact that building portfolio owners are becoming conscious of the challenges.

A last but significant sign of the changing reality regarding sustainable concerns can be found in some high-end cases that might determine the direction of the mass market. An example of a project that 3E supported is the St Elisabeth polar station in Antartica, which is probably the most optimized building in the world. A team has been working for two years on the detailed designs, and although this remains an exotic example, the building industry is very interested in what its performance will be and whether it can be used in a practical down-to-earth context in our own climatic environment. Even more interesting is the Montrose Wine Chateau in France. This evolved when we did a very low-energy performance office design in Paris for the Buick group – the largest project developer group in France – and the director of this company invited us to discuss another project. They wanted to have the first positive-energy wine chateau in the world. The building is listed, so we couldn’t touch the outside; everything was refurbished from the inside. The heat pumps, solar energy and a small winter veil were realized in such a way that the whole vineyard and chateau produced more energy than it consumed. Of course, the budget was higher than the average, but again, this example is indicative of what the market is trying to do. Rich people are setting the trends by showing what a positive energy approach can achieve.

But that’s only part of my conclusion. Also important is the realization that the reason why things are not going faster, is that there is a high level of inertia in people’s minds. It will take another decade before every project developer has the right mindset. On top of that, there is a high level of inertia in the building stock itself, because of the slow renewability of the stock of buildings that are already in place.

Geert Palmers holds a Masters degree in Electrotechnical Engineering (KU Leuven, 1991) and in Environmental Sciences (FUL, 1993). He was a member of the R&D unit Photovoltaics in IMEC, Inter University Micro-Electronics Centre. From 1994–98, he conducted the management of EUREC Agency, the European R&D federation on renewable energy . Subsequently, he worked as an expert in the Cabinet of the Federal Minister of Energy J.P. Poncelet on the position of renewable energy in the liberalization of the energy markets and the initiation of the offshore wind-energy policy. He is General Manager of 3E, which he co-founded in 1999. 3E is an independent company specializing in renewable energy and Energy Efficiency, having fifty-five experts in Brussels, Toulouse and Beijing.

43Gerrit Jan Schaeffer

Necessity, the Future and the Impact of a Sustainable Energy System

G e r r i t J a n S c h a e f f e r

The real urgency of the global situation is often expressed in acronyms. The best known, coined by the European Commission two years ago, is “KLM”, meaning “Kyoto” (representing the environmental aspect), “Lisbon” (standing for the economic aspect) and “Moscow” (geopolitics).

A more recent phrase is the one coined by the US author and journalist Thomas Friedman who, following his book The World is Flat, recently published a new one: Hot, Flat and Crowded.1 The world is indeed becoming more crowded. Friedman predicts that the population will reach nine billion by 2050. How many people were there in the world when we were each born? For those born in 1960, let’s say, there were about three billion people. So between the moment that they were born and 2050, the total population will have tripled. That’s a lot of people. On the one hand, some cities will be shrinking, while on the other many will keep on growing to accommodate all these people.

The world has also become “flat”, meaning that the economy has become a global one – we are moving towards a service-oriented society and the shrinking of (industrial) cities is a consequence of that. As we go from an industrial society to a service-oriented society, people begin to move away. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, we started using the same kind of global economic language, while the rise of the internet resulted in a globally oriented economy.

More people also means more middle-class people: people living less densely together, in more apartments, in more buildings and houses, richer people who want more convenience, who want cars, houses, clothes, food etc. That is good news on one level: the capitalistic economic model seems to be successful in reducing poverty levels. At the same time, as a planet, we cannot really afford it. And that is what it is all about: in the meantime, the planet is becoming hotter, climate change is inevitable and something has to be done.

1 Thomas L. Friedman (2008), Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, ISBN 978-0-374-16685-4


No silver bullet

The European commission defined three pillars in our economic energy policy: • one concerning the environment, called “Kyoto”• one concerning competition in a free but regulated market, called “Lisbon”• and one concerning geopolitics, summarized as “Moscow”.

The reality is, and this is stated several times elsewhere in this booklet, that only a few countries have oil and gas and these are the countries of which we in the West like to remain independent. This is a true “Moscow” aspect. There is a correlation between the price of oil and the amount of freedom enjoyed by these countries, not only an independence from common resolutions upon which the rest of the world agrees, but also on the level of human rights. When oil prices dropped in the 1980s, that was the moment when the Soviet Union was forced to break down. In recent years, the prices have gone up and some of those countries have started to behave like dictatorial states. In that sense, to state it in a very simple way, we would like to have very low oil prices because the higher these prices, the more dangerous some of these countries become. On the other hand, for the environment, we would like to have very high oil prices because only then can the alternatives become more competitive. So we are entering into a very difficult balancing act.

For instance, if you look at where the fossil fuels can be found, there is a lot of coal in the US, India, China and Australia. But coal is the dirtiest fuel that we have. So switching to coal would be an option from the “Lisbon” and also from the “Moscow” point of view but not at all from the “Kyoto” point of view. Before that, there was an inter-dependency: you had oil- and fossil-fuel-producing countries and one big consumer, which was the Western world. They were as dependent on us as we were on them. Today, that is no longer the case, and the market has enlarged to a global scale. The urgency of the challenge is to make a transition towards a clean, affordable and secure energy system – in other words, a sustainable energy system for everyone. And what is very important with an eye to Energy Efficiency is a maximal rational use of energy, or energy savings. The next step is to use clean, cost-effective, widely available – and preferably EU domestic – energy sources. But there is no silver bullet as yet.

trias energetica

• the maximum rational use of energy • ambitious targets for renewables • transition technologies: clean fossil fuels (and nuclear power?)

In this transition period, we can only try to be as energy-efficient as possible. In the meantime, the European Union has set some targets. In fact, these are too low to handle the problem, but for society they seem tough and fast. Again, it’s a balancing act. So what is the 20-20-10 EU policy for 2020 about? The target is 20% more rational use of energy in 2020, a 20% share of


renewables (today it’s about 6%), 20% fewer CO2 emissions (30% if the rest of world – the US for example, joins us) and a 10% share of bio and alternative fuels in transport.

Critical issue 1: Integration of renewables and local generation into energy grids

In the long run, there is in fact a silver bullet, and maybe even two. Firstly, there is a good deal of potential solar energy – every hour, the Earth receives enough solar energy for us to live on for a whole year. Thus, if we were able to catch 10% of that, which is roughly the capacity of solar panels today, that would mean that in ten hours we would already have all the energy we needed. Secondly, there is a good deal of heat inside our planet that could also be used. What we are seeing is that the growth rates of renewables are very high and the critical issue is that this is totally different from our current method of producing electricity. Now we produce it in big power plants and issue it down to the consumer. In the future we will get electricity when there is wind, or whatever source we rely on, and for a large part, we will produce energy at the consumer site. So we are talking about pro-sumers, rather the con-sumers, and a more internet-like electricity system, which is radically different from the system we have today. That’s a major challenge, and the current electricity system is not able to handle this fast-growing amount of renewable and decentralized energy production. It’s a ‘boiling frog’ situation – a popular management analogy – if you throw a frog into boiling water, it will jump out immediately, but if you put it in cold water and heat it up gradually, the frog will stay put and boil. We have to act quickly, or we will enter into a situation where enormous shifts in power are created by the instability of the system; sooner or later, we will experience a backlash of some force.

Critical issue 2: Sustainability of biomass

Biomass is a very important renewable energy source because it can be electricity, it can be heating, it can be fuel. It can replace energy very quickly and it isn’t necessary to change the infrastructure of the fossil fuels to achieve it. But the main issue is about the sustainability of biofuels. Today they are not so sustainable. They involve interference in the food-supply chain and rising food prices as a result. With regard to the use of land, biofuels also increase deforestation, the disappearance of ecological habitats and are the cause of additional CO2 emissions due to land clearance. There is a need for a policy in which sustainability criteria are aligned with the technological possibilities. The second generation of biomass promises to be more sustainable.


Critical Issue 3: Transition technologies

Even though matters are evolving and developing rapidly, we will need several decades to solve particular problems. Thus in the meantime we are going to have to use fossil fuels and/or nuclear energy, whether we like it or not. Other issues here are the safety and the proliferation of nuclear waste, as well as the technical and social feasiblitity of carbon capturing and storage. We need adequate capture technologies and a determination to create sufficient storage sites. A final question is: can CO2 be re-used to grow algae? Can we capture the CO2 from the air and use it in combination with sustainable hydrogen to produce synthetic fuel?

Critical issue 4: Energy efficiency

Energy efficiency is a crucial factor. Its importance for the building and construction sector has been elaborated on by Geert Palmers elsewhere in this publication. With regard to the industry, we can state that if you improve Energy efficiency gradually at this level, you are actually improving a process that might be outdated within ten or twenty years. The other option is to switch to radically different technologies such as membrane separation instead of thermal separation, new combinations of separation and product conversion. However, these technologies are not that easily tried out or implemented because of downtime avoidance. Again, a cautious balancing act is required.

Critical issue 5: How to clean up energy for transportation

Another issue is the fact that we urgently need to clean up energy for transportation. Transport is the fastest growing CO2 emitting source of all sectors; it’s about 20% right now, and growing. Technically, there are possible efficiency gains, but they are not easily implemented in the market since what we really need are standards, and even if we had them, we wouldn’t yet dare to impose them. The European Commission will have to stand up to the car industry and face the fight. There are alternatives like biofuels, a lot of talk about hydrogen, and yes, hydrogen is clean, but its total cycle is very energy-intensive and inefficient. Over recent years there has been a real improvement in batteries because of the enormous market for laptops and mobile phones, so now we can start to imagine batteries that are cost-effective, that have a very long life and can be charged quickly. In that sense, coupling the electricity sector to the transport sector is an interesting area and could enhance the research, testing and implementation of Plug-in (Hybrid) Electric Vehicles.

Critical issue 6: Another governance model?

The last critical issue is adequate policies; these have to be market-based and regulatory-based. I firmly believe that we have to move to another model of governance, in the sense that we need to involve all the key actors, we need to create new actors and we need to define new roles


in this novel context. Such a new governance model will not come out of the blue and nor will it come from one of the involved sectors or stakeholders alone. We need to learn from each other and to learn how to learn. In that sense, the projects and experiments by the artist-biologist Angelo Vermeulen (www.angelovermeulen.net/) can truly inspire us, and are an example of a multi-actor approach such as elaborated by the proponents of “Transition Management” by another CROSSTALKS’ speaker Jan Rotmans (http://www.janrotmans.com/).

Conclusion

The following basic issues should be considered with regard to a conclusion based on the right arguments and a common plan of action emerging from it:

• the actual global and European energy system is not sustainable, but this needs to and will change

• a large portfolio of energy options is the most robust strategy • there is no ‘silver bullet’, although in the long term there are at least two: solar and

geothermal power • several critical issues need to be taken into account: – integration of renewables in the grid (smart grids, distributed energy storage) – sustainability of biomass (second generation) – CO2 capture and storage (possibility of reuse?) – several possibilities to clean up the transport sector – implementation of energy saving measures – adequate policies • a major transition is necessary: new processes, players, roles, legislation, business

cases and infrastructures • there are plenty of opportunities to choose from and doing nothing is not an option.

Gerrit Jan Schaeffer has fifteen years of experience in energy research. He started his career at the Energy Research Center of the Netherlands (ECN) and completed a PhD in 1998 on the analytical study of the dynamics in the history of fuel-cell research. He has published on fuel cells, renewable-energy policy issues, technology learning curves, energy models, the integration of distributed generation and renewables and “Smart Grids”. He has coordinated several EU-wide projects on these issues. Currently, he is Director of the Energy Group at VITO, the Flemish Institute for Technological Research, concentrating primarily on developing and stimulating technological innovation and policy research.

PRE-PUBLICATION digital roundtable To feed the interdisciplinary debate we aim at during The Atomium Session on May 14th 2009, we contacted our former speakers and actual partners to reflect upon the following quotes and questions. We thank those who responded in time and shared their perspectives and replies with us.

1. Choose one of the two quotations below to comment on:

A. (...) “in investigating the roots of our current environmental dilemma and its connections to science, technology and the economy, we must re-examine the formation of a world-view and a science which, by reconceptualizing reality as a machine rather than a living organism, sanctioned the domination of both nature and women. The contribution of such founding ‘fathers’ of modern science as Francis Bacon, William Harvey, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes and Isaac Newton must be reevaluated.” - Carolyn Merchant in The Death of Nature, 1980

or

B. “Our progress, then, has been largely a rational and intellectual affair and this one-sided evolution has now reached a highly alarming stage, a situation so paradoxical that it borders insanity. We can control the soft landings of space draft on distant planets, but we are unable to control the polluting fumes emanating from our cars and factories. We propose Utopian communities in gigantic space colonies but cannot manage our cities. The business world makes us believe that huge industries producing pet foods and cosmetics are a sign or our high standard of living, while economists try to tell us that we cannot “afford” adequate health care, education, or public transport. Medical science and pharmacology are endangering our health, and the Defense Department has become the greatest threat to our national security.” - Fritjof Capra in The Turning Point, 1982

2. Choose one of the questions below (or all of them) to answer:

A. What are the first 2 or 3 steps or incentives you would advise – from your own perspective – to governments worldwide in order to make this world more sustainable and to restore the respect nature deserves?

B. What are the first 2 or 3 steps or incentives you would advise – from your own perspective – to corporate managers and CEO’s worldwide in order to make this world more sustainable and to restore the respect nature deserves?

C. What are the first 2 or 3 steps or incentives you would advise – from your own perspective – to academic and corporate researchers worldwide in order to make this world more sustainable and to restore the respect nature deserves?

49Digital roundtable

Hans NilssonChairman of the International Energy Agency DSM-Programme, Sweden

Reflection on Quotation B - Fritjof Capra in The Turning Point, 1982

Our progress is largely built on a theoretical structure of fragmentation. If individuals pursue their own individualistic “happiness” it will benefit everyone in the end. No-one has to consider the whole and no-one has to take the responsibility for it. The society (as a whole) will be automatically happy if I am. Do not bother, do not care and everybody will be satisfied.1 All choices in life are turned into individual consumer’s choices. This thinking is mainly based on the idea of the perfect market which assumes economically rational behaviour of people with perfect information. And yet it has been proven that these assumptions, and the outcome of individual choices as a machine that creates common bliss, are in doubt to say the least. Amartya Sen did so in his paper “Rational Fools” already 1977. It has also been proven in “Behavioural Economics” that people, even given the perfect information, make the “wrong” choices.2 Most of all it has been proven that humans are more complex than the simple economic theory care to admit. We have however managed to live well by the theory of fragmentation since we have not had to take the non-industrialised world into account and we have chosen not to consider the physical limitations of growth. The developing countries were not part of our “whole”. They delivered cheap products and cheap labour, not demanding much in return. Our theory worked for us because they where a safety-valve to our system. Now they have however started to demand! They want to copy our way of living – and that is not sustainable. Now it becomes obvious that there are limitations to growth.At the same time in our part of the word the economy has turned away from the reality of industry economics and into the surrealism of financial economics. More young people are attracted to the financial sector than to engineering. No wonder since the financial sector allows an opportunity of risk-taking and reward by using other people’s money.3 The latest events have hopefully removed most of the charm and the spell from this shift in economic life. We are in bad need of an improved economic model.A crisis is too good a thing to waste, they say. We now have the chance in our life-time to get real again and to encounter the challenges Capra lays out for us. To create a world that takes on the issues of sustainability in the full context. Too eradicate poverty. Not necessarily by a growth of production to distribute, but also by revaluation of the concept “wealth”. To do so we just to lift our eyes a bit, to the horizon, take in the full picture and take full responsibility, not hoping that bliss is automatic. It is just like green driving; you have to look further ahead, anticipate what could be around the corner, ease the push on the accelerator and understand that what you do with the driver’s wheel has an impact on the ride.


1 This way of thinking reminds a bit of Erica Jong’s; “Pure no-guilt, no-baggage sex, a dreamlike encounter where “zippers fall away like rose petals”. http://www.ericajong.com/articles/teaser.htm

2 E.g. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky 3 See Nassim Taleb “Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world”, Financial Times April 7 2009.


Answer to question A

A real change will require leadership. Sweeping the stairs is best done beginning from the top. Essentially the government action should aim at starting processes that eventually might be self-sustained and change the minds as well as the market place, “creating Markets for Energy Tecnologies”.4

Governments (on all levels) have to begin by showing that all activities under their responsibility are “greened”. Federal, state, municipal governments have to issue ordinance that their purchases and behavior should be from the Best Available Technology (BAT) and the Best Known Practices (BKP). Once so done it will be possible to benchmark and require better performance also from other parties, be it companies, associations or individuals. Many stakeholders would prefer such requirements to be watered down or claim that since they are cost-conscious business entities they have already done everything that is in their might. Help them to find the better solutions and help them to plan for the implementation by giving pro-active advice, monitoring changes etc. A special case is the investigations made by the administration that ever so often tries to prove that changes are not cost-efficient. Either not at all, or not now, or not here - but somewhere else. There is an urgent need to develop the Stern-review methodologies to enable judgments and comparisons about costs to be made between BAU and an alternative action case (AAC). Economic methodology used within countries and companies normally assumes that the outside world does not change (ceteris paribus) instead of the opposite (mutatis mutandis). In the end this will result in that the alternative action case (AAC) is compared with Business as Yesterday (BAY). Doing so mostly results in in-action to be the preferred solution. This will require that some painful questions have to be put and answered:

• What replacement is there for GDP to measure wealth and well-being?• Can costs be internalized and how far can we go with monetization and discounting?• What value has an eco-system and how do we compare if monetisation does not

work?• How can we reorganize education and R&D to be more comprehensive and holistic?• How do we manage social compensation and transition for unsustainable industries

like coal-mining fishing.• What models do we have to make North and South come together? The North has a

debt to the South, but what if continued growth with present and emerging technologies is un-sustainable, how can we ever settle the account?

To begin with!!

4 See http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2000/creating_markets2003.pdf

Cathy MacharisProf. Mathematics, Operational research, Statistics and Information systems, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium


Indeed, research and public investments have been wrongly allocated. More comprehensive evaluation methods should be used. Instead of using cost-benefit analyses we should go towards “social” cost benefit analyses and multi actor multi criteria approaches where the different stakeholders in society are represented. This would lead to a better allocation of resources. Answer to question A:

1. Work together on a worldwide scale: nobody is wanting to make fundamental steps if they have to do it alone. At this moment, everyone agrees that something should be done to come to a sustainable evolution. However national goals are still preserving. Sub optimization at country level lead to wrong policy measures.

2. Make sustainability something that everyone wants to invest in, not something negative

3. Radically make the change towards environmental friendly ways to produce energy and to use it. Change the way people are moving (more public transport and electric and hybrid cars) by changing the fiscal system (road pricing, no advantages for company cars but a stimulation of alternative mobility patterns).

Answer to question B:

1. Use conference calls for external meetings2. Look at the complete logistics external costs and lower these by shifting towards inland

waterways, railtransport and by a better bundling of flows, possibly in cooperation with other companies.

Answer to question C:

1. Insert in all evaluation methods the idea of sustainability so that it is always taken into account.

2. Focus on that research that can create breakthroughs in terms of sustainability on a world scale.



Bart Vandeput the artist known as BARTAKU, Belgium

Reflection on Quotation A - Carolyn Merchant in The Death of Nature, 1980

In 1903, E. Richardson of Ontario (US), introduces the lightweight electric iron. A boat-shaped piece of pointy metal that transfers the electrically produced heat by pressing and sweeping over the intimate cloth of the husband, surpassing buttonholes and creating smooth topologies. Afterwards the toaster came, the dust cleaner and other time-saving appliances, inviting the housewife to prove herself on other work floors. The appliances were AC, since Edison’s Direct Current lost the ‘War of the Currents’ despite the attempts to disparage the AC-system by executing unwanted stray cats’n dogs, cattle, horses. And also men, since the anti-AC campaign led to the invention of the electric chair, the ultimate anti-men machine:

In the 2nd half of the 20th Century more personal devices were introduced that intimately respond to the movements of body and fingertips. At first for time and math calculation, and later with focus on communication. Significant were the solar (photovoltaic) calculator and the solar wrist watch that besides their practical use clearly demonstrated the advantages of on-site, stand-alone, clean and safe (low-power) DC energy production. With the increasing amount of DC devices, the ‘natural’ DC output of renewable energies (solar/wind) and new developments in DC transportation (HVDC) it seems as if Edison’s DC will reverse the order: DC/AC instead of AC/DC. The flagship for the DC-movement might become the DC-solar powered water pump, as it could become the key peace-keeping/war prevention device for the Water Wars.

As for the digital intimate electronic apparatuses, they require seemingly exotic resources that have to be dug up from within the rich, dark Earth in the heart of Africa. After decades of digging [the interaction between] men, women and children, gorillas, and the microherds is fundamentally disturbed and destroyed.On a day’s walk, westbound, women dig with their hands in the darkest of dark soils, mix it with water and transform it with the help of the Sun’s radiation into flower pots, tiles, cutlery. ‘Vulnerable’ they are called, to the armed men that are hiding in the bushes at smelling distance, symbolically protected by the armed men with blue helmets residing in the adjacent compound. With the help of the rich black soil, foreign good intentions hope to restore some of the intimacy and reintegration in the family and local community.But in the meanwhile, after dusk, the diesel generators malfunctioned, again. On the wings of the silent darkness the armed men do their thing, again. With their pointy metal objects, transforming radically the topology of the most intimate of tissues. To the extent that only one man -due to a a lifelong built up unique vertical specialisation, is capable of restoring some bits and pieces. Simultaneously, in the capital, an electrical wire is connected to the colonial AC-grid. Pending on the ground, providing electrical power to some families, until the next downpour floods the urban jungled sprawl transforming the controlled energy in the wire into an extended

electrocution field which awaits the bare foot of pedestrians trying to get home amidst the heart of darkness.Homo homini lupus est (T. Hobbes)

Answer to questions A, B & C

Time for a reset of mankind. Time for drinking the liquor of bliss/salvation [LOB], the wine of the souls leading mankind back to the Fundamental Insight, and his role within. The LOB, will create a gland, the gland of bliss [GOB], which will produce lifelong the LOF, esp. as soon as he/she gets into overdrive. LOF enables mankind to enjoy max. empathy and dialogue with plants and animals.Gentech is necessary to enable: personal local floating; heliotropic capacities (Sun awareness); xerophagie: sober but tasty eating for an optimised metabolism.Daily aimless wandering guarantees a lifelong impeccable functioning of the Gland of Bliss. insufficient aimless wandering causes a GOB-deficiency causing the skin to become turquoise colour. Man, plant and animal will respond to this to the extend that the individual will start aimless wandering on the spot.



Claire Grandadam 3E, Belgium


The fact that we can control soft landing of space-crafts on distant planets actually shows our extraordinary capacity of imagination and innovation. These are the capacities required to practically change our system and approach our environment today. Renewable energy and energy efficiency should be the fuel for creative reinvention, here and now.

Answer to question A

In the short term, governments should initiate the dynamics toward a new energy infrastructure, virtual or physical:On the one hand, the backbone for a strong intercontinental grid needs to be developed, integrating offshore wind resources and including neighboring regions, in order to link high resource areas with high consumption areas. On the other hand, there needs to be a push towards an ICT enabled market of predominantly renewable energy based supply - safe, affordable and sustainable, in which consumers will actively take part, consciously or unconsciously. Eventually, groups of consumers and appliances will no longer be grid connected, as optimized design, long lifetime batteries and the use of renewable ambient energy will make them autonomous (merger of supply and demand), or semi-autonomous. It will take several decades for the required shift in system paradigms to be carried out fully. Considering the challenges ahead, governments should start taking the major decisions to move forward in this respect in the next five years. In addition, governments worldwide should direct massive private and public investments into the next generation of renewable energy technology: thin film solar cells, dedicated offshore wind turbines, next generation bio-fuels…

Answer to question B

Consortia of private players will be developing the required changes in the coming decade towards more sustainability. Visionary corporate managers worldwide must take the lead! Answer to question C

Researchers and students need to dream beyond the existing concepts and framework. We should teach students the ability to imagine and invest in leap-frog progress, instead of letting them limit themselves to fine-tuning and optimization of existing processes.

LINKING THE LEADERS

This webpage is part of “ENERGY EFFICIENCY - Facing the Facts and Learning to Cooperate” and presents a collection of Belgian expertise and CROSSTALKS’ connections on energy efficient R&D and planet sustainable acting. See: http://crosstalks.vub.ac.be/past_events/2008_energyefficiency/linkingtheleaders.html

If you know about initiatives or organizations that should be presented here, send us the link!

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