Sri Lanka needs to seize economic opportunities and rectify anomalies

We need to find out ways and means of exploiting sustainable energy and
 saving foreign exchange and reduce our public debt

Part 2

Fast vs Slow
Ever since I saw that advertisement/cartoon in the Fortune magazine, may be thirty years or so ago, wherein an executive tells a colleague returning from lunch that while this colleague was at lunch, a new printer model came into being and went out of fashion, I have been convinced about the future of been very fast.  That, I thought, was a very fast rate at which equipment models to change.  

Then I read that interesting book by Bill Gates on “Business at the speed of thought”, again depicting the ever increasing speed at which this business world changes or customers want themselves to be serviced.  So how fast are things changing and are there any examples for things which happen slowly.  If one wants to see both these at the same sphere of activity, you need to look at Climate Change, a subject dealt with in Dr. Dixon’s book.

Climate change is happening very, very fast – at an unimaginable speed.  I say this especially for those deniers, disbelievers.  From where has this computation come?  Obviously from the country which spends most money in climate change related measurements and what do I use to measure this speed?  One of the most natural speedometers – the cycle time for one complete orbit by the earth around the sun.

How do I measure it?  In around September, 2016 when Louisiana was struck by floods, New York Times carried an article which said that since May, 2015, i.e. during a 16-month period – USA has experienced eight events which are normally once-in-500-year type events.  So what does it mean?  To experience once-in-500-year type events eight times we would have to live 4000 years.  So this implies that Climate Change makes us go around the sun at an incredible speed of 4000 orbits in 16 months or 3000 orbits per year.  Is this fast?

Unfortunately, we experience the slowest things also in respect of climate change.  Our speed in responding to these climate change events are the slowest.  We took nearly seven years for 55 countries to ratify a common agreement against climate change and bring down CO2 emissions.  It is anybody’s guess as to how long it would take for this ratified agreement to be adequately implemented and yield results.  But there is one thing sure about these climate change related things.  Before we reach this much feared, unwelcome 20 or 2.80C rise in temperature or before we reach this much dreaded 560ppm CO2 concentration, we would get washed away by disastrous rainfall and related flooding.  This is what I want to emphasize by the 3000 orbits per year statementwhich is derived from a set of events which are all water related.

“Quick route to reducing emissions” 
Then I come to Dr. Patrick’s recommendation on page 237 on the “Quick route to reducing emissions”.  He says “The fastest and cheapest way for any nation to reduce carbon emissions is to switch from coal to gas”.  He goes on to say that “Replacing five coal power stations with gas is the equivalent of installing 9000 Mega Watts of wind power. In America, emissions fell by 12 percent from 2007 to 2013 primarily because the shale gas boom drove more than fifty coal fired power stations out of business.” 

When I was talking to some Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) Engineers in the Transmission Division in 2007 or so on some consultancy work, one CEB engineer told me that at CEB you need to be an engineer even to become the medical officer.  That seems far less harmful to humanity, at least in my mind, than this Cambridge (Kings College) trained Physician giving advice on renewable energy to a worldwide readership under duress due to climate change threats.  

I beg to disagree with both Dr. Dixon and any others who promote this idea for the following reasons based on the facts of science I have studied.  All the books I read on these subjects were of British or American origin with the latest being “Sustainable Energy – Choosing Among Options” by Prof. Jefferson W. Tester, Croll Professor of Sustainable Energy Systems at Cornell University and five other professors and researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I give below the facts behind my conclusions.

Natural gas is methane with formula CH4.
When energy is obtained by the combustion of methane, Carbon & Hydrogen in a molecule of methane will combine with Oxygen from the atmosphere to form one molecule of CO2 and 2 molecules of Water Vapour (H2O).

These two molecules of water vapour is formed due to the combustion of 4 atoms of hydrogen which was originally in methane with 2 atoms of oxygen from the atmosphere and hence is not a part of water which was already in the water cycle.

The last book I referred to has a Plate bearing No. 16 depicting a MIT Integrated Global System Modelling Framework called IGSM2. Although this is said to be an updated version bringing in the water resources system as well, it does not include water vapour freshly formed from hydrogen in gas or oil and oxygen in the atmosphere during the human activities; but includes CO2, CO, N2O, CH4, etcformed from the same combustion processes during the human activities.

This water vapour comes to the atmosphere – unlike water vapour from trans-evaporation or from water body evaporation – at a much higher temperature than the atmospheric temperature.

Unlike CO2, the other gas formed during combustion of methane, which brings only sensible heat with it, this water vapour brings to the atmosphere latent heat as well.  This is a fivefold increase.
Viscosities –the physical characteristic of constituents of air which determines the atmospheric shear forces,lower the viscosity, lower the shear force– of O2, N2, CO2 and H2O are in the ratio of 25:22:19:14which implies that factors 3,5,6 above & 7 will lead to the fulfilment of 5 of the key factors required for the formation of a tropical cyclone.  These factors are (i) Lower wind shear, (ii) Water temperature more than 26.50C up to 50 m from surface of ocean, (iii) Rapid cooling with height or higher temperature closer to the surface and, (iv) Higher humidity in lower-to-mid troposphere, (v) Pre-existing system of disturbed weather often created by low-latitude, low-level westerly wind bursts, (vi) Been beyond 555 km or 5 degrees of latitude away from the equator.

Water vapour when in the atmosphere is a far more dangerous greenhouse gas than CO2
Water vapour precipitates – unlike CO2 - and when it is coming down could lead to snow storms, cyclones, hurricanes, etc.  See point 7 above.

When this water vapour comes on to the ground it could lead to all sorts of water related disasters like floods, landslides, earth slips, etc.  Even weeks after cyclone Mathew has had the landfall in Florida in September, 2016, people living around the water ways are still experiencing tremendous hardships from water related disasters due to Mathew. Carbon Dioxide would not do any of these things.

Generally, a water molecule in the atmosphere does about 40 trips up and down during one year.  Yes, I know it is not the same molecule. 

In the year 2007, water vapour generated from gas and oil burnt in USA - when calculated using data in “Sustainable Energy”- was 2.54Gt and if this new, additional water vapour came down only once, well distributed in 9,472,000km2 land area of USA it would explain 65% of the increase in evaporation in USA as quoted in US EPA; i.e. 0.15 inch per decade.  What a seemingly harmless figure! Solution: Scrap the EPA?

But the issue is that this water vapour generated over the year & over the whole of USA by gas and oil powered vehicles and power plants do not come down well distributed over the year of 365 days nor over the entire land area.  It undergoes what I call spatial and temporal accumulation and when the foci of such accumulation coincides with the normal extreme rainfall days and locations- there are more reasons for them to coincide than for them not to - the result would be one of those one-in-500 - years type events

Please remember that this is what would happen if this new water vapour does only one trip down and just imagine what would happen if this water vapour does a second trip up and down - only a second trip - bringing about the corresponding hazards while been up in the air, while coming down and while it is down on the ground.

Another key aspect that needs to be considered is that while there is at least one natural process – photo synthesis – which would convert CO2 back to oxygen, there is no natural process to convert H2O formed in this fashion  back to Oxygen and the outcome will be that Oxygen concentration in the atmosphere would get depleted and one day in the future someone from Dr. Dixon’s fraternity will have to use electricity from a Solar Panel, Hydro plant or a Wind Mill – please note there is not enough Oxygen to combust the fossil fuels - to get energy to electrolyze water and get Oxygen to enable his/her patients to breathe.

This is the other side of Dr. Dixon’s story of reducing that 12 percent of CO2 emissions - by switching from coal to gas - which would not have led to any of the disasters I have mentioned here.  Dr. Dixon’s readership or audience should evaluate his suggestions bearing all these things in mind.
I strongly urge the organizers of Dr. Dixon’s presentation in Colombo to get this part across to him so that he can study this further and take appropriate corrective/preventive action to prevent well – meaning readers of his book implementing his advice.  In case he finds a different set of viewpoints on each and all of the above points, I wish he would share those with the Sri Lankan papers so that we could change our opinions.

In fact, since some data in this part is based on data given in that last American Book I read on the topic – “Sustainable Energy – Choosing among options” by Prof. Jefferson W. Tester, et al, I sent some of these facts to Professor Tester and he wrote back to me and said that he is awaiting feedback from his climate change experts.  Even last week he has replied to me saying that he is yet to receive that feedback.  I am even copying this part of the article also to him.

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) graduates we send out every year
Dr. Dixon also talked about 85 percent of new STEM Graduates over the next two decades been from Indian & Chinese Universities, the implication been that these STEM Graduates can bring about significant development in related fields in these countries.

Regarding STEM Graduate supply-demand balance in US there are differences in opinion.  The inadequacy of the supply situation is very much highlighted by the corporate leaders like Bill Gates, Chad Halliday, Jeff Imelt, Ursula Burnes, etc. who were founder members of the American Energy Innovations Council.  They were concerned about this inadequacy as they thought that lack of adequate innovations in the energy field in USA was due to this lack of STEM graduates.  But the academics dispute this by saying that there is a large percentage of STEM graduates working in non-STEM positions in USA.

We send about1000 STEM graduates of different seniorities every year to countries in the west.  Each of these STEM graduates is worth about US$ 5 million if it is to the US.  To obtain a STEM graduate today, they should have nurtured somebody for about 22 years in the past and their cost of food, lodging, education, transport, health care, etc. totaled and adjusted for inflation and the probability of one student entering grade 1 and graduating as a STEM graduate will lead to this cost in the American situation.  

As such this export of STEM graduates worth US$ 5 billion never get recorded nor compensated.  Sometime back, I gave a note to a Senior Deputy Governor at the Central Bank suggesting that we bring this free export of STEM graduates to the notice of USA and requesting them to write off SL Rs. 50 billion we were owing to USA at that time.  

He was of the opinion that since we have always been honoring our commitments in respect of loan instalment and interest payments this might disturb that reputation and we will suffer when it comes to getting new loans.  He also said that Malaysia has had a similar arrangement with Australia and a proposal about similar Sri Lankan arrangement with Australia had been suggested and turned down earlier.

But the issue is that in order to benefit from or even to execute these very aggressive development plans we have projected for the next 5 years we need such STEM graduates very badly.  We can ill afford to send so many of them away with or without a corresponding substantial return.

What solar energy could do to our future
As I had mentioned in my article to Daily FT on 22-04-2016 on our public debt, in one year we waste about 12000TWhrs of solar energy and this amount of solar energy even at Rs. 10.00 per kWhr is worth Rs. 120 trillion rupees/year.  We need to find out ways and means of exploiting this energy and saving foreign exchange and reduce our public debt.  

This can be done by using green technologies, green products and green services.  What do we need to achieve this objective – of course intense research and innovations supported by capital investments.  For these intense research and innovations we need those STEM graduates. So our future depends on how successfully we can mobilise and blend the most valuable export we do every year without receiving a red cent and the most valuable asset we receive every day without spending a red cent.

What would be the outcome of such a mobilization?  More than ten trillion rupee addition to our GDP even at a 10 percent yield and thus more than doubling our GDP.

We whole heartedly wish the present government all success in this respect, because we absolutely don’t have any time to waste as even one single month or year could make a difference to the manner in which we get battered by climate change.

Please remember 3000 orbits around the sun every year is the speed of Climate Change, whether you like it or not and whether you agree with it or not.

 (K.C. Somaratna is Managing Director of Somaratna Consultants (Pvt.) Ltd)