SIEMENS

It sounds like science fiction. Asteroids are drawn into orbit around the moon, and then machines and equipment land on them to extract raw materials such as iron, platinum, and rare earth elements. People around the world were flabbergasted when a largely unknown U.S. company first presented this business model in April 2012. What sounded at first like an April Fools’ Day joke is actually a serious plan. The company that has declared its dedication to achieving this goal is called “Planetary Resources.” And feasibility studies from several institutes show that a project of this kind could be realized as early as 2025.
The underlying intention seems logical. The think tank “Global Footprint Network” has calculated that we will need two to three Earths by 2050 if we don’t curb our current rate of resource consumption. At the same time, huge deposits of metals and ores are passing by the earth in the form of innumerable asteroids. Would mining them mean the end of our resource shortfall? Maybe — but it’s more likely that it would be too expensive and too complicated. The far logical and natural thing to do is to use existing resources more economically.

But for many countries, that will be a mammoth task. The reason this is such a big challenge is that ultimately the two biggest challenges of our age will have to be overcome at the same time: climate change and resource scarcity. Accomplishing this will be possible only through a huge reorganization of our economy and our energy system with the aim of achieving more sustainability. The reorganization of the economy requires greater reuse of raw materials, recycling, and closed-cycle waste management. The reorganization of the energy system requires a large increase in the proportion of renewable and, whenever possible, use of zero-carbon energy sources. In addition, the production and use of electricity must become much more efficient. And all of these measures have to be taken not by 2025, but as soon as possible.

What a sustainable energy system of this kind would look like is becoming apparent in Germany. Following the nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011, Germany became the first country to set itself ambitious goals for a sustainable energy supply. In addition to forgoing nuclear energy entirely by the year 2022, the German plan calls for a massive expansion of renewable sources such as wind and solar energy (to account for 80 percent of power generation by 2050) and the reduction of greenhouse gases (an 80 percent reduction by 2050 relative to 1990). “The realization of a sustainable energy supply is the project of the century for Germans. It is right, and it is important,” says Michael Süß, CEO of the Siemens Energy Sector. “People abroad are closely watching how Germany goes about it.”
Accomplishing this project will require not just the right political conditions but also, above all, the right technical solutions. “It involves innovations in every field: energy efficiency, power transmission, generation, and storage,” says Jochen Homann, President of the Federal Network Agency for Electricity, Gas, Telecommunications, Post and Railways, in an interview with Pictures of the Future. “German industry is one of the guarantors of a successful transition to a sustainable energy supply.” Moreover, if the reorganization of the energy system in Germany is successful, the solutions used here could become major exports on the global markets.

The good news is that successfully realizing a plan as ambitious as the transition to sustainable energy doesn’t mean the technological wheel has to be reinvented. Many of the required technologies and solutions are already available for the most part, or are now being developed. The steps that must be taken to make energy systems sustainable come from nine different fields and fit together like the pieces of a puzzle.
Renewable energies are one example. “At this point, renewable energies are no longer a niche technology; they are an important factor in the power market. So over the short to medium terms they’ll increasingly have to compete on equal terms in the market,” says Homann — particularly if the bulk of the power is supposed to come from renewable energies. In the case of wind power especially, this economic viability can be attained relatively quickly. Thanks to innovations currently being developed in Siemens’ Wind Power laboratories, wind-based electricity is expected to become as cheap as coal-based power in the medium term, even without subsidies.

Electricity Highways. But because power from renewable energy sources is mostly generated in the places where they are found in abundance — the sun in sunny areas, and the wind on the open seas — transport grids will have to be expanded into highways for electricity, both nationally and across international borders. Here, high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) transmission is ideal for this purpose. Over long distances, HVDC lines can transmit electrical power much more efficiently than classic high-voltage three-phase lines.
At the end of May 2012, the German government and the country’s largest power companies published a Grid Development Plan, which outlines the basic parameters of the reorganization of the long-distance transmission networks and envisages 3,800 kilometers of new lines. “We’re experiencing a boom in renewables. To bring wind energy to consumers, we urgently need new highways for electricity from north to south,” says Michael Süß.
In this context, however, it’s important that citizens aren’t left with the feeling that the transition to a sustainable energy supply and the expansion of transmission networks is being decided without any regard to them or their views. “The shift to sustainable energy has to take place in the minds of the people too,” warns Süß. “We can’t have a situation where every electrical pole is fought over. People do want to increase the use of renewable energies, but it can’t be done without additional infrastructure.”

The heavy use of renewable energy requires more than just an expansion of the electrical grid, however. That’s because power from the wind and sun fluctuates according to weather conditions. Over the long term, therefore, there will be a need for power storage systems that can hold excess energy for hours, days, or even weeks, if necessary, and feed it back into the grid during calm periods. Examples of such systems include the hydrogen electrolysis and storage plants currently under development as well as the Siestorage power storage technology of the Siemens Infrastructures & Cities Sector. Siestorage is a modular system based on lithium-ion batteries that can store 500 kilowatt hours (the average daily consumption of 50 households) and serve as a buffer against short fluctuations — for seconds or minutes — in the power from renewable sources. But a massive expansion of storage technologies won’t be enough either. At the same time, conventional power plants have to be available to provide a certain base load and serve as a backup solution, quickly feeding power into the grid when there is a deficit. Fast-starting, high-efficiency gas-fired power plants are particularly suitable for this function.

Millions of Energy Producers. Whether it’s solar, wind, or biomass plants, small-scale combined heat and power plants or large conventional power plants — in the future, millions of generators will feed power into the German grid, rather than just the few hundred of 15 years ago. The people who used to be consumers of energy will increasingly also become producers of it, or “prosumers.” This fact, as well as the fluctuating feeds of renewable energies, necessitate intelligent electrical networks or “smart grids” that keep distribution networks stable and enable clever power management.
The big pictures also includes smart management of demand. For the reasons mentioned above, regenerative energy sources demand smart use of available energy. There are many ways of lowering power demand. One key lever is real-time pricing. If prices rise with demand, consumers will cut back on non-essential demand. It makes little difference, for example, if refrigerated warehouses, air conditioning systems, or household appliances are powered down for brief periods.
This shows that the cleanest power is always the power that isn’t consumed. Efficient use of energy is therefore one of the most important pieces of the puzzle for a sustainable energy system. This applies especially to industry, which can increase its competitiveness by achieving a high level of efficiency that reduces its energy costs.
Transportation and buildings have to become more efficient too. The latter are responsible for 40 percent of global energy use, but this could be reduced by approximately one fourth through simple energy-saving measures. Siemens is equipping buildings with energy-efficient technology in many countries and is thereby creating some of the most sustainable structures in the world.
When Siemens modernizes buildings, it often finds that important increases in efficiency can be managed only with the help of smart financing options. That’s especially true for cities and municipalities, which may want to lower their energy demand despite tight budgets. One form of smart financing is the energy-saving contracting used by Siemens. In such cases, customers don’t have to make any initial investments in the modernization of their buildings. Instead, they pay for improvements in installments using nothing but the money they have saved on energy costs.

Top Objective: Reliable Supply. In all the steps that have to be taken for a sustainable energy system, one objective must always have very high priority: security of energy supply. In the future, energy will have to remain reliably available and affordable. “We can assume that grid charges, and therefore electricity prices, will increase,” says Jochen Homann. “But the costs have to be kept as low as possible; distribution networks have to be expanded only as much as needed to ensure a secure supply. Furthermore, costs have to be transparent and distributed fairly among customer groups.”
At the same time, the energy supply also has to be reliable under all circumstances — especially in a highly industrialized country like Germany. The competitiveness of German business and industry would be jeopardized by an energy grid that was prone to breakdowns or major blackouts like the one that occurred in India in July 2012, during which approximately 600 million people went without power for as long as two days.
All measures must therefore fit together like the pieces of a puzzle. Within the appropriate framework — that is, with the right political support for renewable energy, energy efficiency, expansion of the distribution grid, network charges, and R&D — this can result in a harmonious overall picture. That’s how the transition to a sustainable energy supply can be achieved — and the products developed for it can become major exports on global markets, because sooner or later other countries will have to find their way to a sustainable energy supply as well.
One example of a sustainable energy system is now being implemented and tested in the Harz Mountains in Germany. Renewable energy dominates in this region, contributing over 60 percent of the power supply. But how can sustainable mobility be achieved at the same time — while maintaining very stable electrical grids and the economic viability, reliability, and security of the distribution system?
The Harz.EE-mobility research project is supported by several German government ministries and includes among its participants Siemens, cell phone service provider Vodafone, the utility company E.ON, and the German rail system. The participants are studying how regionally-generated renewable energy can be used for electric vehicles and integrated into a smart electrical grid. Although geographically limited, the project is demonstrating how transportation can be integrated into the broader sustainable energy picture — without any help from space ships or asteroids.