How do you define magic? As we get older and more and more cynical, we become harder to impress. We see magicians at parties, and we think we have seen it all before. We fail to see the magic that a child can see. We become accustomed to the norm and accept the status quo.
In many ways electricity suffers the same fate. We have become accustomed to it, expecting the lights to turn on with the flick of a switch. We have become dependent on it to run our homes and our factories. We have become habituated to turning on our TVs and expectant on immediate Netflix entertainment oblivious to the fact that this service is driven by some datacentre across the world.
We, especially in developed countries, forget the magic that is electricity and how important it is to our lives compared to people in the past using whale oil or kerosene for light to keep their productive day going.
But like any good magician, or really the best magicians, there is the initial trick to bring you in and then a subsequent sleight of hand that blows you away. This is why electricity is a great magician. Not only has it brought unbelievable prosperity and productivity wherever it has gone, it is now going to be the vehicle for the energy transition as we look to decarbonise our societies. Electricity, the magician that keeps on giving.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) and IPCC have both highlighted the importance of electricity to reach our global warming targets. The IEA in their Net Zero Roadmap: A Global Pathway to Keep the 1.5 °C Goal in Reach highlight that by 2050 electricity should make up 53% of our final energy consumption globally. It will provide the best use of our energy requirements. Fossil fuels may have been outstanding in bringing us the modern world we enjoy today but approximately 30% of its valuable energy is lost in wasted heat. Electricity reduces this waste significantly, especially when created with carbon free sources such as hydro, nuclear and renewables.
Electricity is also findings its way into other sectors such as transportation and heating. China has clearly seen the strategic value of Electric Vehicles (EVs) from a geopolitical, supply chain and a knowledge-based perspective. The advantages that Germany and the US had with the manufacturing of the internal combustion engine (ICE), creating behemoths such as Volkswagen and Ford-China is looking to replicate for EVs. A special by the Economist highlights this – 8million EVs have been bought, 60% of the global market with the main manufacturers outside Tesla residing in China (1).
The US is seeing the value too with the Inflation Reduction Act and the efficiency of EVs can be seen by the study done by Yale Climate Connections (2). Whatever way you cut it, whatever is the source of electricity it is a better use of energy resources to have EVs compared to ICE. Unfortunately, as with everything in America this too seems to be a party-political issue, even if the physics says otherwise (3) .
The same can be said for heating. Heat pumps literally give you more energy than you put in. Driven by an electric pump the technology is ever expanding. Michael Liebreich points out that electric heating will be the next half a trillion-dollar industry (4). The most amazing figure in this report refers to a Potsdam Institute study whereby 78% of Europe’s industrial energy demand could be electrified- excluding where gas is used as feedstock or reducing agent. The size of the potential market is gigantic.
Looking closer to home, Ireland is flagging seriously behind the rest of Europe in terms of deployment of renewables in the transport and heating sector (Ireland generally seems to be at the extremes in these European reports, the best person in the class or propping up the rest) (5). These sectors in Ireland need electricity to work its magic, and it is happening (slowly).