Energy Should Be Free
[Music]
[Music]
[Applause]
energy
should be free and by energy i mean the
energy we use
to heat our house cook our food
and power our cars
technically energy is free already
isn’t it or you need in some way to
capture it
like a solar panel or a window mill or a
water turbine
but then you need some way to store it
because when you capture it might not be
when you want to use it
but technically that’s already free as
well
you could use unwanted car batteries
a large body of water like a lake or a
water tank
or even a large thermal mess to store
heat
now when i say energy should be free i
don’t necessarily mean for everyone
but for those who really need it those
who are struggling right now
by not being able to afford to pay for
energy to meet their basic living needs
for many people they can’t afford to pay
for energy
it’s not a big part of their budget but
for some people
it’s not like that some people can’t
afford to pay for energy to
heat their house cook safely
or provide life after dark
for these people not being able to
afford to pay for energy
will affect their opportunities in life
for these people energy being free
would change their lives
so why when we already have options for
free energy
do we still have people experiencing
energy hardship
where they’re unable to pay for energy
to meet their basic living needs
this seems a little bit odd a little bit
counterintuitive
i believe we can make energy free for
those who really need it
and use this to reduce energy hardship
and there’s three key things that we
need to do to make this happen
first we need to involve those very
people who would benefit the most from
free energy
when coming up with energy solutions we
need their perspective
second we need to look at this problem
from both a social
and a technical perspective
and third we could open source the free
energy solutions that work
so people around the world could benefit
so i’ll talk about each of those ideas
but first i want to explain what
motivates me
to talk about this topic so i worked
with teams of electrical engineers
at the local power lines company unison
and while unison’s a very
forward-thinking company these ideas i’m
talking about are not necessarily the
views of unison
but i do feel very privileged to have
been part of some very robust
discussions with some very smart people
both at my company and others about what
the energy systems of the future will
look like
and more importantly what our society
needs from their wider energy landscape
now it’s clear to many people that are
on the cusp of some major changes
in the way we generate store
and use energy what got me interested in
working in the electricity industry
with the exciting new technologies
things like electric vehicles
solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells
these things really interest me and
these are the things that i felt would
change the world for the better
but what i’ve come to realize is that
these aren’t the really important energy
problems that we need to solve
the really important problem we need to
solve is energy hardship
energy hardship is where a house or
family
can’t afford to heat their home to make
it healthy and safe
and in some more extreme cases it
prevents people providing light after
dark
or cooking safely an energy hardship is
particularly concerning
as it leads to health issues things like
increased asthma rates for children and
increased winter death for the elderly
in new zealand over a hundred thousand
households
can’t afford to adequately heat their
homes
and that’s according to the electricity
pricing review conducted by the new
zealand government last year
worryingly children live in many of
these homes
the result is unhealthy living
conditions that disproportionately
affect children
this will affect these children’s health
their education
and their employment opportunities in
life
according to the international energy
agency over a billion people
don’t have access to any electricity and
many who do
can’t afford to use it they also
estimate
around 3 million people die prematurely
every year
from smoky environments caused by
cooking with
solid fuels like wood and coal
and women and children suffer the worst
effects of that
and this is despite new energy
technologies emerging every year
and some existing ones like solar panels
and batteries having significantly
decreasing cost over the last decade
so where is the disconnect why can’t we
as a society harness these technological
improvements
to solve energy hardship
and the irony of the situation is that
some of the exciting new technologies
actually end up making electricity
cheaper for the rich
and more expensive for the poor and this
is because
most of the costs associated with
supplying electricity are fixed
and don’t change based on how much
electricity you use
the network and infrastructure required
to bring electricity to your home
doesn’t change based on how much you use
and therefore
those who can afford to install solar
panels can reduce their contribution to
those fixed network costs
leaving it for those who can’t afford
solar panels to pay for
i believe the underlying reason why
these promising new technologies
aren’t helping to address energy
hardship
simply comes down to perspective
we all have our own world view our way
of looking at the world
our values and beliefs and that’s why i
think the first thing we need to do
to tackle energy hardship is to involve
those people who would benefit the most
from free energy when we’re coming up
with energy solutions
there’s a saying that you need to walk a
mile in someone’s shoes to really
understand what they’re going through
and i believe that applies to this
problem of energy hardship
if we’re going to make energy free for
those who really need it
we need the perspective of those who
need it most
but i’d also argue with a little bit
more than that we need to take a wider
view
of the problem we need to look at it
from both the social
and the technical perspective so if we
look at energy hardship as a
socio-technical system
we can see on the one hand we’ve got the
promising new technologies
and on the other the needs and
perspectives that people bring to the
problem
there’s this potential synergy between
the technology and people’s needs
but only if we can combine those
technical capabilities
with the needs and perspectives of
people who understand and have
experienced energy hardship
and this is because our perspective is
laden with assumptions
many of which we’re completely unaware
of
and that makes it hard for us to
understand how people different to us
live their lives and what’s important to
them
if we have people coming up with energy
solutions whose values
and assumptions are different to those
experiencing energy hardship
then those energy solutions aren’t going
to solve that problem
for example in new zealand we know that
many of the
families experiencing energy hardship
are mary and pacifica families
so these are the cultural values that
will matter if we’re going to address
energy hardship we also know that many
of the homes
where there is energy hardship include a
solo mother bringing up a family
so it’s her perspective it will matter
if we want solutions that will work
so to tackle this problem of energy
hardship we need the engineers and the
business leaders
but we also need these other views
and when you get people working together
from different backgrounds
something very interesting happens they
don’t just bring a better understanding
of what people really need
groups that are diverse are actually
much better at solving complex problems
they’re better at coming up with a wider
range of ideas
sort of thinking outside the box
i’ve seen in my own research where i’ve
seen firsthand how teams that are
diverse
really are better at solving real world
problems
the team that i was looking at were
using technology to
innovate and solve complex problems and
where there was diversity in the teams
they were better able to come up with a
wider range of ideas
sift out the bad ones as well as having
a better understanding of what outcomes
were needed to be successful
and that brings me to my third point if
we’re going to help people experiencing
energy hardship on a larger scale
globally we need to open source the free
energy solutions that work
so open sourcing is about making
knowledge freely available to people
to use and enhance and the idea
originally comes from the software
development industry but it’s been used
really effectively in other domains
things like sharing creating clothing
patterns to share
so they can be used for free and
creating designs for people to use for
3d printing but for free
so if we’re going to solve this problem
on this larger scale we need a way of
freely sharing knowledge about these
free energy solutions
you need a way of connecting up some of
the great energy projects that are
happening in communities around the
world
but in isolated pockets
so for example here in hawke’s bay
there’s a um
a great project to build a solar farm to
power 400 low-income households
power to the people is a charitable
organization which is building the solar
farm and flaxmir
the solar panels still have to pay their
own way but it’s about giving the
profits back to the people
in the form of cheaper power the group
says
it’s really about tackling health issues
which flows onto school attendance
and employment opportunities the local
community worker says there’s many
examples of families that are unable
to pay their bills and these solar
panels could be part of the solution
depending on the cost and looking a bit
further afield
another great energy project is the blue
skin energy network
and this is a solar sharing venture set
up by a community in the southern part
of new zealand
and this works in collaboration with a
peer-to-peer trading platform
from a company called emh trade that
allows people to buy and sell power from
each other
so in this project 60 households have
joined together
and they can sell solar power solar
power they generate to others in their
community
in the same way they might sell produce
to others in the community
and looking further afield this time
globally another great example of a
community energy project
is in bangladesh so in bangladesh i
think there’s around 29 million
households and about
17 million can’t connect to the
electricity grid
the company’s sole share set up this
solar sharing platform so
houses with a solar panel on their roof
can sell to others in their micro grid
and this has created a new business
model that um covers areas where there’s
mobile coverage but no electricity net
network
and it works by providing low-cost
energy services to the poor
but at the same time as improving the
energy services that they experience
so these community projects are great
but they’re not the whole solution
each project works well for the
community within which it operates
but it doesn’t help those experiencing
hardship in other communities
if we are going to help those
experiencing hardship in other
communities on that larger scale
we need a way of capturing what works
sharing it and then enhancing it
we need a way of organizing the energy
future it’s like a self-learning system
that breaks in this collaboration and
learning
and this sort of approach has been
called a cybernetic system
so a cybernetic system is one that uses
feedback to continuously improve
so using this approach we could
continually improve the free energy
solutions
from feedback so the overall energy
model becomes more effective
and every now and again there’s
breakthrough ideas or
a new technology emerges on the energy
landscape and that allows
a step change in the energy for engineer
solutions which allows a new energy
model to emerge
which is then continuously improved
until the next big breakthrough occurs
and finally a cybernetic energy system
would need
a central hub a centralized knowledge
repository
open sourced and shared for free
like a knowledge network built on the
principles of free exchange
and including diversity by incorporating
ideas from different communities
now every community is different the the
values
and the needs of the people involved
differ
but the ideas from one project can
always be applied to other communities
to other projects
and that’s the value of diversity ideas
from different
sources and perspectives brought
together to produce an optimal solution
so just to wrap up i’d like to just
leave you with one last idea
and that is that energy can be compared
to water
so with water you have tap water which
is free
or almost free
or you can have bottled water always
available when you want it
you can install a water filter at your
home for pure water
without any of those unwanted chemicals
like a guaranteed level of quality
well likewise for energy free energy
can be made available to those who
really need it
but for people who want a guaranteed
level of quality and availability
they can pay for it free energy is
already typically possible the
opportunity that we have is to use that
to help those who need it most
thank you
[Music]
you