Our future climate will rely on today’s innovation
Italian engineer and inventor Enrico Forlanini built the first hydrofoil 115 years ago, speeding across Lago Maggiore at an astonishing 40 mph.
Powering his vessel was a 60-horsepower steam engine, which spun propellers mounted in front and behind the cockpit. He launched his boat just three years after the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.
The early 20th century witnessed one of the most profound technological revolutions in human history. The early 21st century is proving quite similar, with energy playing a defining role.
In 1898, the U.S. fought Spain with horse cavalry and cannon, but for the first time, infantrymen used repeating rifles. By 1917, tanks fueled with petroleum rolled across France, fighter planes soared overhead and both carried machine guns.
More than a century later, Swedish boat builder Candela Speedboat is offering test drives of its new hydrofoil, made of carbon fiber and balanced by computers. An electric motor can sustain the speedboat at 20 knots for 2½ hours.
The transformation from steam to electric-powered hydrofoils was neither steady nor guaranteed. Biologists will tell you evolution is also neither slow nor steady. Change comes in fits and starts, often triggered by a sudden environmental shift. Technological change follows a similarly zigzag path.
Forlanini, for instance, did not dream up the hydrofoil. The British granted a patent to a Parisian named Emmanuel Denis Farcot in 1869. The Italian, though, applied new technology to Farcot’s principle, commercializing his research the way the best business people do today.
More importantly, though, Forlanini’s hydrofoil addressed a societal challenge: how to cross a lake, river or ocean quickly and efficiently. He had a significant total addressable market, and today, thousands of hydrofoils transport passengers every day.
The most important innovations in this century involve energy, not only to get from one place to another, but to make our shelters comfortable, to communicate across great distances and, as the recent Texas Blackout proved, to meet the necessities of life.
The challenge we face is how to deliver those things to everyone on the planet without making the climate inhospitable.
I think about addressing challenges, I think about how we drafted battle plans in the Army. The first step is to determine the desired endstate. Do you want to capture an enemy position, destroy a militant base or take over the entire country? One requires a few missiles, the other a few infantry divisions.
I brought this up while discussing climate change with Maynard Holt, CEO of the energy investment bank Tudor, Pickering & Holt, on his company’s podcast. We both want to find a way to turn down the partisan rhetoric and begin making progress.
Recent commentators have demanded that I unreservedly support Texas’ oil and gas industry. They insist our economy relies on energy jobs, or they argue cheap fossil fuels are necessary for economic development in emerging countries. Holt usefully asks that we spend more time doing cost-benefit analyses.
Let’s start then with the desired end-state of energy policy. Most would agree that we want affordable, reliable energy that will lift humanity out of poverty and stabilize the climate. That is the goal that drives my analysis.
Undoubtedly, achieving that goal may take centuries, but let’s be clear: We won’t have centuries to address our challenge if we do not stabilize the climate first. The climate is changing faster than most people expected, and we’re not doing enough to slow it.
The United States has done a
great job switching from coal to natural gas, and the electric power industry has done amazing things in the absence of federal regulation. But higher natural gas prices this year means U.S. coal use will go up in 2021 and 2022, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Transportation fuels have become the nation’s largest
contributor of carbon dioxide emissions, despite the rise in electric vehicle purchases. Emissions dipped due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but transportation emissions are expected to rise above 2019 levels next year.
Meeting the Paris climate accord will not keep the planet from warming more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-inwhen
dustrial levels, most studies tell us.
Looking outside the U.S., the picture is no better. China, the world’s largest emitter, has set emissions reduction goals, but President Xi Jinping has not released a realistic game plan.
The same is true of the fossil fuel industry.
The oil and gas industry is full of geniuses. If we focus on
the desired end-state and worry less about sunk costs and stranded assets, the quicker we’ll be quietly flying across the water in a boat we never imagined possible.