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Strategies to increase flux.
Economists will be tempted to try to solve the energy security problem, of course, by simply assuming increased solar radiation. Conjectures about positioning mirrors at stable points in outer space, explored by some scientists, seem impractical. But it is not impractical to acknowledge evidence, reported in (Singer 2007 p. 118), showing that solar radiation has, indeed increased by .05% per decade since the 1970’s, an amount roughly equal to total human energy consumption that will increase crop yields through increased photosynthesis.
Strategies to increase our ability to capture solar energy
This is an area of research with great promise. Research areas include:
- Large-scale collection of solar energy in desert regions, used to produce hydrogen,
- Developing new varieties of chlorophyll to increase the ability of plant matter to harvest more energy from the sun (Atkins p. 216),
- Genetic engineering of crops to suppress the photorespiration that wastes as much as half of the carbon fixed by photosynthesis, increasing crop yields by allowing plants to process carbon dioxide more efficiently (Atkins p. 224),
- Research on the beneficial effects of higher recent temperatures and increased carbon dioxide levels on crop yields (Singer, p. 119),
- Research on environmentally safe fertilizers, insecticides, and fungicides to increase crop yields and reduce manpower needed for growing food,
- Genetically-engineered seeds that improve crop yield, resist drought, insects, and disease, and increase protein and amino acids critical for human nutrition, like the Quality-Protein (QP) maize developed at Mexico’s International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (Singer 2007),
- Biotech –modified corn, cotton, and soybean crops, like the new pest-resistant hybrid cotton that has been genetically engineered in China, freeing up 600,000 hectares of land for growing food (Singer, 2007 p. 125).
- Infrastructure projects to improve irrigation and control flood damage, improving crop yields.
These research topics increase our ability to store solar energy in the form pf plant life. All increase productivity of agricultural labor, freeing manpower to grow the energy-friendly service sector.
Strategies to increase our ability to mine stored solar energy
The oil, gas, and coal reserves reported in official statistics only reflect the amounts that can be economically extracted at known prices. This leaves out vast amounts of resources in economically depleted fields and low-yield tar sand deposits. Asian nations have a wonderful opportunity to use their most abundant resource—human capital—to develop technologies for improving recovery yields. This can be done in partnership with the governments of the Gulf Region in countries that are rich in fossil fuels but do not have sufficient populations to conduct the research by setting up joint research laboratories at leading Chinese and Indian Universities. The same human capital resources can be used to solve the Feynman problem from page 6, by investing in research on economically producing hydrogen, controllable nuclear fusion, and other forms of energy.
Strategies to attract stored energy
Another strategy for increasing energy security is to become a destination resort for stored energy in all its forms. Like a photon, a capital good is a quantum unit of stored energy. The same is true for a scientist, an R&D lab, or a scientific discovery. Government policies can alter the likelihood that existing stores of stored energy located around the world will migrate to their countries. Like the bacteria that once lived as parasites within our bodies but decided to stay as mitochondria, foreign capital, foreign-developed technology, and foreign-born human capital improve our energy security.
- Policies to attract foreign sources of stored energy include:
- Political and social stability,
- Rule of law, methods for enforcing contracts and settling disputes, property rights, intellectual property protection,
- Legal and accounting environment, trust in public institutions and public officials, lack of corruption,
- Tax laws, infrastructure, education,
- Visas and immigration restrictions,
- Communications networks,
- Stable currency, inflation, growth
- Capital markets,
- Media access.
In each case, when deciding whether to welcome foreign stores of energy, there is a simple test—do they bring more energy into the country that they will consume, i.e., will doing so result in a net increase in our supply of stored energy.
Strategies to increase our ability to convert energy into economic activity
The final strategies I will mention are perhaps both the easiest to achieve and have the most impact, policies that make a nation more efficient at converting energy into economic activity. These strategies increase worker productivity and increase incomes for a given supply of energy. In doing so, they make a nation more energy independent.
Primary industries, such as mining and agriculture, use a great deal of fossil fuel per unit of output. Secondary industries, manufacturing, use less energy. Tertiary, or service, industries use least of all. For this reason, strategies that improve productivity in agriculture, mining, and manufacturing, leading to the redeployment of manpower to the service industries, reduce the amount of fossil fuel needed to produce each unit of output, making a nation more energy independent.
These policies are based on the notion that human capital and technology can, and should, be viewed as sources of energy.
Conclusion
The 20th century was the century of dinosaur energy; the 21st century will be dominated by human capital, Asia’s most bountiful resource. Investing in human capital is the only path to rising incomes, energy security, and truly sustainable growth. To tap that resource, Asian governments need to invest in educating their people to the highest level, especially in math and science, and in building the fiber-optic communications networks that will allow the work produced by their human capital to be distributed quickly and inexpensively to end-users around the world. And Asia must be at the forefront of research and development in new technologies. In the end, the productivity of the Asian people is the only true path to energy security.
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