Read Online Long Way Down by Michael Sears - Free Book Online Page B

steam engine, or explode some gasoline in the engine of your car. All energy systems are similar in that energy needs to be both stored and released again when needed. And every system is limited by its own parameters. Efficiency, as we view it in the twenty-first century, must also address refuse, be it dross, residue, or effluvia.”
    “Batteries? Aren’t batteries clean?”
    He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Filth. Poisonous semiprecious metals that cannot be intelligently recycled. Acids leaking into groundwater. Batteries are forever. You’re better off with nuclear waste. At least that has a half-life.”
    “I see.”
    “And the damn things are heavy. You can’t change that. You may be able to make them marginally more efficient, but don’t expect to fly to Tokyo in a battery-driven commercial airplane. You would need to rewrite all the physics books first.”
    Haley led me back down the corridor and out to the elevator. “Will it be green?” I asked. “I mean, sustainable? Clean?”
    He spread his fingers and waved his hands. “Buzzwords. Pop media. Listen. I will make it simple. What are the two main problems with solar energy?”
    “I don’t know. It still costs too much to be competitive?”
    He shook his head. “One. Once you have collected the energy, you still need to store it. You need to turn lights on when it’s dark outside. You still need to run your microwave on rainy days. We’ve already covered batteries. They are not the answer.”
    “I can see that.”
    We didn’t have to go through the same security measures on the way out. Haley pushed a button and the elevator door slid open.
    “Two,” he continued. “Solar energy is limited. Only so much of it reaches the earth’s surface. Much of it is reflected off our atmosphere, which is a good thing. Otherwise we would all have been baked into ashes before we evolved beyond seaborne amoebae. But the amount of energy that actually reaches the ground is a limited figure—quantifiable, but definitely limited. The closer to the poles you are, the less solar energy hits the surface. Smog deflects it and absorbs it. So does dust. The Sahara gets an average of more than twice what we get here in New York. So efficiency matters, but only up to a point. Chemical or mechanical systems will only be able to reach a certain level of productivity. After that, modifications to improve efficiency will, almost by definition, become too expensive to pursue.”
    “Are we back to nuclear?”
    He ignored me. “And much of the energy comes in a form that we can’t use. It comes in wavelengths—colors—that do us no good. It is not readily transferable. The usable band is less than half the total.”
    “Infrared?”
    He nodded excitedly—his pupil had said something intelligent.
    “This is why algae makes so much sense. You agree?”
    I didn’t see, but I kept it to myself. “I’m still listening.”
    “Algae grow with sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. One of your ‘greenhouse gases’ according to the popular press, though carbon dioxide is quite natural and very necessary to life on this planet.”
    Someone had made an attempt to make the office rooms a bit more presentable, clearing the conference table of litter and straightening some of the chairs. My bet: It wasn’t the ice lady.
    “There you go,” I said. “Water. Another limited resource.”
    “Yes, but algae actually love dirty water. Briny is best. Clean water is a limited resource. Salt water constitutes over seventy percent of the surface area of the planet. Not a problem.”
    I was starting to see it. “And carbon dioxide is fairly abundant.”
    “Well, yes. Not always in optimal concentrations, but, yes. Algae remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, takes briny, undrinkable water, and mixes them together to form an oil that is combustible and that requires little processing to turn it into biodiesel. The algae also create proteins that can be used for animal feed, and