It can be pretty hard for me not to think about energy. It probably has to do with my job but the topic itself is fascinating. In some sense, ‘energy’ could be a subject itself that draws on science, mathematics, economics, engineering, law and many more disciplines to help us make sense of it. While we learn a lot about it in science, most of those fundamentals just remain where they are in our minds and do not connect with the wonders of modern technology and everything that we are so immersed in.
Electricity of course is the most fascinating of it all. It is the energy form that we have been able to manipulate with great precision and even enable energy to take on so much more new roles in life that it would not have been conceived to take on centuries ago even when electricity was first discovered. Electricity of course is a form of energy manifesting and needs to have various mediums, and the best carrier of electricity remains to be chemical batteries.
There are many other energy carriers as well and typically these are fuels; they are released through combustion. That produces heat energy which then can be transformed into kinetic energy, and in turn that tends to be then transformed into electrical energy with appropriate mechanisms such as some kind of motor and generator.
Carriers of energy are themselves interesting and fascinating because there are losses that results from going through the carriers and the various different forms of them. They also come in different forms, shapes and stability, influencing their functionality. Coal is a solid fuel; oils are liquid while natural gas is gaseous. Their state allows them to be conveyed differently and also affects the cost of transporting them.
Last century, the world was afraid of running out of them. Because they are commonly known as non-renewable energy. We use them faster than we can replenish them. Fossil fuels are created through millions of years. This century however, we begin to realise we will end up changing the climate of the world even before we run out of fossil fuel so we’re in a race to phase it out as quickly as we can. Alright it isn’t actually a race because many countries, organisations, assets are stubbornly using it.
But the point of this piece here is to help us recognise that fossil fuel does not have the monopoly in carrying energy and there can be more ways for us to obtain and use energy. Ways that can lead to sustainability and circularity in the world.