I would suggest that there are three most likely ways that the change to renewable energy can develop. Because renewable energy is dependent on storage and because hydrogen would appear at present to be the most efficient and convenient storage system, all major changes are likely to depend on hydrogen. The other storage systems, batteries, heavy flywheels. compressed air, elevated water reservoirs, hot water or even super conducting circuits could well find niche situations where they have an advantage, but for any degree of standardisation hydrogen would seem the most likely.

Energy Remains the Monopoly of Energy Companies

if we give the energy companies about 20 years for the transition from fossil to renewable energy, they will be able to make the change without losing control. All new generators would be batteries of fuel cells of around 1 or 2 Mw capacity sited close to wherever supply is outstripped by demand. (Utility companies in America are already installing these for peak demand at $400 $500 per Kilowatt-hour.) They would in the first instance be fuelled by natural fossil gas converted to hydrogen via the steam reforming process and the electricity fed directly into the grit They would develop the electrical grid to a global network and continue to invest in pipelines for oil and gas transport. This would put in place an infrastructure that would seamlessly be able to convert to renewable hydrogen.

As fossil gas becomes more expensive they will have the capital to build large off-shore wind-farms and wave generators that will extract hydrogen from the water and pipe it ashore, they will be able to do the same with large arrays of photo-voltaic panels in unused desert areas of the world. The hydrogen will then be fed into the oil and gas pipelines for distribution to the fuel-cell generators and the domestic gas consumers. As hydrogen fuelled transport becomes more popular, petrol stations will be supplied with fossil gas, which they will convert to hydrogen on site until the supply is changed over to hydrogen. The advantages of scale may well keep the price low enough to discourage private investment in generation particularly if intensive lobbying of governments results in good development subsidies. This scenario will keep the power of the energy companies intact, still giving them a monopoly of the supply and manufacture of hydrogen and electricity.

Privately owned Energy

At the other extreme, if energy companies don’t get in first, there is an energy changeover system where all energy users make their own independent supplies. To do this, research into small generation plants of renewable energy and its storage would have to be encouraged without delay by giving heavy subsidies to individual householders wishing to try any kind of renewable energy system that they wish to purchase for their business, home or transport.

There would be some confusion to start with, and quite a bit of money wasted in blind alley systems, while the advantages of wind, wave, tide, photovoltaic, solar thermal, geo-thermal, biodigestion and bio-cornbustion generation, combined with batteries, elevated water storage, compressed air, heavy flywheels, hydrogen and even super-conducting circuits as storage systems in different applications were tried out When fuel-cells become more available they will store electrolytically separated hydrogen rather than use chemical batteries and either install a fuel cell to cope with their domestic needs including their transport needs, or they may just supply hydrogen to their cars’ fuel cell, which will plug in when not in use to charge storage batteries for domestic use.

This option would suit the richer members of a community with capital to develop their own energy, but it would leave the poorer members of a community in a difficult situation. It would in the end produce a very democratic system, freely available to all who could afford the capital outlay. I am afraid however that it would be a rather slow transition and would end up with a lot of the privately owned plant, being under-used. It would result in maximum autonomy but at the expense of efficiency.

The Co-operative Way

A third way that makes better use of resources and is more socially cohesive is a compromise between the two extremes. Jeremy Rifkin calls it a distributed energy network, and it depends on the selling up of a community non-profit organisation to co-ordinate the community energy network. In America there are between 3,000 and 4000 Community Development Corporations originally set up to administer community social housing, which have also started to develop distributed energy networks in their communities. They could also be community co-operatives funded by a Credit Union or in the case of new communities, common interest developments where all residents share ownership of common property and make plans before building starts. In larger communities the Council could take on the job. These community organisations could also act as a foundation for many other economic, social and cultural institutions that will be needed to bring about the sustainability revolution. As well as energy and social housing they might run the schools, the water supply, the waste and recycling of resources and the community hall or small theatre

In a distributed energy network nearly every household and business would be both a producer and consumer of energy. I expect that fairly early in the process the community would take over the natural gas supply and convert it to hydrogen via the steam reforming process. At the same lime it would change all gas appliances in the community to run on hydrogen and encourage and help many householders and businesses to install power-cells that would provide their normal needs.

The community would then be in a position to take over the local grid or form a partnership with the local electricity distributor so that all power cells are linked. It could now increase the community’s energy supply by building a bio-gas plant, which could provide some of the gas for its gas conversion plant. Perhaps in combination with changing the sewage works into a reed bed purification scheme and taking over the waste collection so that it had its own supply of organic waste and sludge for the bio-gas plant.

As the price of gas, and therefore fossil hydrogen increased or because households and businesses wanted more independence they would use small wind or water turbines or incorporate photo-voltaic cells into the structure of their buildings so that they could produce their own hydrogen electrolytically. They would store enough for their own average needs but would be able to feed surplus energy back to the community. In this way full use of all the community’s energy sources would be assured by individuals giving or taking energy from the community network either as hydrogen or electricity.

Some communities that had large resources of renewable energy such as hydro-generation or favourable conditions for a wind farm might encourage some high-energy business to start up, such as aluminium production.

Sustainability is unlikely to be achieved globally until wealth is much more evenly distributed. One of the main ways of fostering this will be to have universal global electrification, which has been set as a goal by international development agencies for the year 2050. To achieve this, which ever way is chosen. 100,000,000 people a year would have to get electricity. This could mean producing a further 10,000,000 megawatts of capacity, which is 4 times today’s consumption. With the likelihood of fossil hydrocarbons running out within this lime-span, this will be a tough target to reach.

To my mind neither of the extreme scenarios are satisfactory. Timing is of vital importance, because it nothing is done, the first scenario will have evolved by the time fossil fuel has reached its peak production. Alongside it as soon as hydrogen fuel-cell cars are available in 5 to 10 years time many households will start to become energy self-sufficient I believe that the cooperative way has the best chance of managing to reach the 2050 target of global electrification.

Michael Gill, for the Dorset Local Agenda 21 Forum