Sustainability and Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is playing an increasingly important role in sustainability solutions over the world in a variety of applications. In recent years, economic, political and social pressures have made sustainable development a central focus in technological research and development in many countries. Rapid advances in the development of nanotechnologies and improvements in research and understanding of potential sustainable applications are promising. There are great expectations in industry and among scientists and policymakers for nanotechnology to significantly contribute to both economic growth and sustainable development. Fleischer et al. write that, as well as potentially helping to limit the environmental impact of conventional production processes through reducing energy consumption, “nanomaterials show great economic potential, e.g. by substituting other materials or by making available new functionalities and thus enabling new products and creating new markets” (Fleischer et al., 2005).  They do, however, point out the difficulty in identifying and fully understanding the “sustainability potential” of the many types of nanotechnology that are still at early stages of research and development.

©flickr/PNNL

In a 2008 paper, Fleischer and Grunwald identify four key issues such technologies need to address as part of contributing to successful sustainable development: limited availability of natural resources, limited carrying capacity of the environment, intra- and intergenerational equity and participation in decision making (Fleischer & Grunwald, 2008). They emphasize that the real impact of new technologies on sustainability is “a product of both their technical parameters and the way of their social ‘embodiment’”. Continuing from what I discussed in my last post, this constitutes a broader, holistic view of sustainability and “an extended notion of innovation, which includes technical aspects and also social and institutional aspects” (Fleischer & Grunwald, 2008).

Examples of nanotechnology in use include nanostructured photovoltaic devices, nanostructured semiconductor catalysts converting water into oxygen and hydrogen (for use of hydrogen as a source of energy), carbon nanotubes, use in high efficiency devices for lighting, fuel cell catalysts, new materials for transportation, construction and electric power applications (Fleischer & Grunwald, 2008).

The increasingly widespread application of hydrophobic coatings and various new products using nanotechnology to provide different materials with water-resistant, self-cleaning, anti-corroding properties has been well documented. Hydrophobic coatings are already being used in construction, communications, electronics, clothing, medicine and aviation. However, the application of nanotechnology to insulation, the cooling/heating of buildings, is only just being fully explored (Ebert & Bhushan, 2012; Telford et al., 2013). Nanoparticle products are now being used to coat panels and surfaces in HVAC systems, or even the windows and walls of buildings, acting to emit radiation and cooling water or air that can be pumped throughout buildings, replacing the need for traditional air conditioning. The implications of using such technology include vastly limiting the environmental impact of traditional air conditioning systems over the world. There is huge potential for transforming heat exchange systems in buildings globally, especially in developing countries with warm climates. Development of superhydrophobic and superhydrophilic coatings or surfaces that will improve efficiency in the condensing/evaporating systems of power plants and desalination plants is already underway.

Global efforts to improve clean water access are now looking at nanotechnology solutions, for example in water purification and desalination. New magnetic nanoparticle tracers are replacing current fluid tracing methods, helping determine whether water supplies have been contaminated with pollutants. FracEnsure http://www.frac-ensure.com/ is a company that uses such magnetic nanoparticles to effectively ‘fingerprint’ fracking fluid used at specific fracking sites through creating unique signatures that can be detected in water samples. Although designed to help determine pollution of groundwater with fracking fluid, such technology could be used in the future to determine the precise source of contamination of polluted water. Recent research has looked into the use of silver nanoparticles to improve water quality (Kallman et al.,2011).

Nanotechnology has huge potential for use in sustainable solutions in rural and poor regions of the world. It seems a major obstacle to overcome is the need for such technology to be implemented in a way that considers the broader social factors involved and allows for industry, government, unions, environmental groups and other players in society to take collective, cooperative action (Helland & Kastenholz, 2008).

Long-term sustainability: is a holistic approach the answer?

Having looked at the expansion of solar power in rural India in previous posts, it would be useful now to get a broader picture of the sort of impact rural electrification projects are having globally and what sort of challenges these are having to cope with in different parts of the world. Specifically, in this post, I’m going to consider just how effective rural electrification projects are at promoting sustainability in the long term. Referring to literature on the co-evolution of technology and sustainability, Musango and Brent (2011) state that there is no deterministic relationship between technology and sustainable development, instead remarking that the relationship is “a complex one where technologies and the sustainable development sub-systems mutually influence each other, involving many different factors” (Musango & Brent, 2011: 88). They argue this co-evolutionary approach is necessary when understanding interactions involving energy technology. Some of the “different factors” involved in the relationship between energy technology and sustainable development are shown below in a diagram demonstrating the interrelationships between energy technology systems and sustainable development sub-systems (society, economy and environment).

Source: Millennium Institute

More than ever, rural electrification projects are incorporating renewable energy systems, largely as a result of rising fossil fuel prices and recent developments in renewable technology. However, the majority of rural electrification projects are not assessed for sustainability after installation, and studies of those that have been assessed emphasize long-term economic and technical challenges (Chakrabarti & Chakrabarti, 2002; Jenny et al., 2004). Byrne et al., while discussing the effectiveness of small-scale renewable energy systems in Western China, suggest that many such challenges could be overcome by increasing the availability of microfinance services (Byrne et al., 2007). Urmee et al. point to problems with a solar home system program in Fiji as originating from a lack of appropriate maintenance and after sales service, which they argue could be at least partly resolved by giving locals greater responsibility over the program (Urmee at al., 2009).

However, the common cause of failure in efforts to bring renewable energy to rural areas that I’m going to discuss in this post is difficulty in measuring and controlling social factors, leading to a “mismatch with the people and the project” (Hong & Abe, 2012: 55). As shown in the diagram above, there are a host of social conditions influencing each other that comprise the “society” sub-system of sustainable development. These are often ignored during the development of renewable energy technologies that are intended to be part of rural electrification programmes. As I will describe in more detail throughout this post, failing to realize the significance of social factors often leads to the failure of such projects and programmes. Social, environmental and economic dimensions are of equal importance and all relate to each other and to new developments in energy technology in different and complex ways. Understanding this is crucial to the long-term success and sustainability of renewable energy projects in rural areas.

Hong and Abe (2012) recently completed a sustainability assessment of a rural electrification project using renewable energy systems (RES) in an off-grid small island in the Philippines. They investigated the long-term challenges affecting the sustainability of the Pangan-an Island Solar Electrification Project, looking at five key aspects: technological, economic, social, environmental and institutional. In their assessment, Hong and Abe stress the need for a holistic approach when developing and assessing RES projects, taking into account social as well as technical and economic aspects. Using multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) of users’ attributes relating to social conditions (income, education, occupation), which in turn correspond with patterns of energy consumption, it was determined that, when the local community has better education and business opportunities, higher income and higher consumption of electricity usually follow, which consequently improves the profitability of the solar project.

Shore of Pangan-an Island ©flickr/cebuliving

Addressing this relationship could work to the benefit of most of RES projects in rural areas. When assessing the viability of any RES project, long-term sustainability would be better ensured if the receptiveness of local communities were considered in a broader way, integrating economic and technical perspectives with social ones. When planning such projects, this kind of approach would help to establish a better system of energy provision that complemented and encouraged both economic and social development according to how these limit and relate to each other in the short and long term.

Hong and Abe acknowledge the many benefits of using a solar power system, such as higher available power capacity and access to safe, clean, renewable energy that contributes to climate change mitigation efforts. However, they note in their assessment that, although the solar system demonstrated reasonable cost per kWh when compared to private generator sets, this didn’t translate into lower cost per household. They also found that the Pangan-an project was very reliant on external support and required intensive long-term system maintenance. In Pangan-an, it was found that there were few electricity-dependent economic activities available for people to be involved in; fishing was the primary source on income. Developing inclusive programmes that target rural people and foster the spread of income-generating activities for which electricity is essential would increase the number of connected users, reducing cost per connected household.

In an analysis of the viability of an integrated renewable energy technological system in Lucingweni, a rural village in South Africa, Brent and Rogers (2010) point to an initial disregard of non-technical factors as causing the overall system to become unsustainable (Brent and Rogers, 2010). They argue a breakdown of trust and understanding between locals and technology developers was a major problem. Emphasizing cooperation between “people” and “project” would have vastly helped overall sustainability, as would “a holistic understanding of energy needs” (p.264). They add that it is crucial such systems are made to be flexible and able to adapt according to traditional societal structures. Interestingly, they argue that uncontrolled connections were a significant issue, leading to a system overload. This suggests that increases in the number of connected users, although essential in some areas for the purpose of lowering costs per-household (as in Pangan-an), should nonetheless be carefully controlled by those managing such RES projects.

Mini-grid at Lucingweni © Telecom Techniques

Adaptability in the management of renewable technology is essential, as is flexibility in allowing rural societies to adapt to sustainable solutions and technological interventions according to changes in the ecological and technological capacity of that society over time (Brent and Rogers, 2010).

There is a need for a holistic approach when developing and assessing RES projects, taking into account social as well as technical and economic aspects. Hong and Abe identify high costs, capacity issues and technological complexity as key challenges that the Pangan-an project had to deal with (Hong & Abe, 2012). It seems that such projects should strive to create appropriate power capacity according to economic and social needs and ensure that prices are suitable for the specific community. The latter could be achieved by encouraging greater energy dependence in the local community generally. It would also help to stipulate that centralized RES projects always accompany efforts to improve local education and business opportunity, perhaps through stimulating the development of local enterprise that itself builds upon the spread of renewable energy (I discuss this further in my post “Business, renewables and rural development”).

Hong and Abe make the interesting point that there is a distinct difference between energy that improves living conditions and energy that enables productive activities. Economic and social transformation usually only accompany the latter. Several studies have found that once rural areas are electrified, the majority of electricity consumed is used to help improve immediate living conditions, such as lighting, and often only a small fraction is left for productive activity (Zomers, 2003). It is important that RES projects take this into consideration when determining the amount of power that will be available and projects should aim to ensure that specific patterns of usage in local households and communities are catered to.

Addressing all these issues would help bolster the long-term sustainability of renewable energy projects and initiatives in rural areas.

M2M connectivity, clean energy and local enterprise

©flickr/kailash mittal

Continuing my last post, it seems more and more charities and private businesses are building the case for investing in renewable energy for the rural poor. A critical feature of many of these efforts is the attempt to tie in the environmental benefits of supplying clean energy with the economic benefits potentially available to investors, local entrepreneurs and whole rural communities. Village Infrastructure is one such social enterprise attempting to tackle energy poverty. The organisation engages with debt finance investors to provide 1-3 year energy loans that are used to build solar power infrastructure in villages without access to electricity, ensuring an affordable, renewable supply of energy. Local entrepreneurs are then recruited to manage this infrastructure and are paid by members of their community wanting access to it; some of this money is paid to a micro-finance organisation to repay the original loan. 

Encouraging local entrepreneurship in this way can have a cascading effect of stimulating economic transformation across whole communities and villages in the deprived regions of developing countries (Kirubi et al., 2009). Aside from the economic gains, alleviating energy poverty by introducing clean, renewable supplies of power to these areas improves the health and safety of rural people by reducing the need to use polluting and dangerous fuels such as kerosene and biomass (I discuss the health implications of fuelwood and biomass burning in my post “Greening off-grid power in rural India”). So it is important that successful models of social enterprise, like Village Infrastructure, are being replicated worldwide – especially when considering that 1.3 billion people, nearly 20% of the world population, are living in energy poverty. 

Interestingly, research carried out by the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA, 2013) has pointed to the positive influence of mobile phone infrastructure in deprived rural areas. According to the GSMA, 75% of new mobile phone subscribers live in the developing world and there is a growing population of people living in off-grid rural areas around the world without access to energy and other basic necessities, who own mobile phones. The GSMA report links the wide distribution of mobile phone infrastructure – specifically through ‘machine-to-machine’ technology (M2M) – with the potential for providing clean energy to the rural poor. Globally, the expansion of mobile phone usage to these areas has now exceeded growth in electrification rates and access to water/sanitation (see graph below). The now-widespread distribution of off-grid mobile phone towers means there is an opportunity for charities, NGOs, private organisations and governments to implement a system of clean energy provision in previously inaccessible areas.

Source: GSMA, World Bank, IEA 2012

The key issue I initially had with this was the implication that mobile phone infrastructure could be exploited as part of the continued, yet generally ineffective, grid expansion programmes that are underway in the rural areas of many developing countries. As I have explained before in this blog, centralised systems of grid energy expansion are often expensive, unavoidably associated with fossil fuel exploitation and environmental degradation, prone to failure and, above all, increasingly unnecessary (Kaundinya et al., 2009).  However, efforts are now being made to build upon existing mobile phone infrastructure in innovative ways that incorporate decentralised renewable energy provision. These efforts are now combining elements of both “grid-connected systems” and “stand-alone systems”, as compared in this review by Kaundinya et al. (2009).

According to the GSMA, M2M technology can be used to wirelessly connect mobile phones with renewable energy sources, such as solar power stations and units, providing a unique way to monitor and manage the supply of clean energy according to individual consumer needs in remote areas of the world. Information about operational problems, individual consumption and photovoltaic production could be more effectively communicated. Pay As You Go microfinance solutions allow consumers to purchase energy access at a reduced price, repaying the full amount in small instalments. Effectively, consumers can pay for energy products, such as an individual solar panel for home use, as they use them, increasing affordability and accessibility (Pueyo, 2013). The GSMA paper notes the cost decrease of M2M technological solutions in recent years and the wider potential to incorporate such technology into smart mini-grid systems in rural areas. Mobile phone towers converting electricity into radio waves that already exist or are being built could be adapted to generate excess capacity that allows on-site charging and the supply of local communities with clean energy via mini-grids or transportable batteries (Clark & Pavlovski, 2010; Min et al., 2011). 

©OMC

Rural people without access to centralised financial systems can carry out microfinance transactions using their mobile phones to support such schemes, and there is an obvious economic incentive for mobile phone companies; the more people in poor and rural areas have access to energy, the more available consumers there are to charge and regularly use mobile phones. The possibility of a solution that offers financial inclusion using mobile phones means financial services ranging from “bill payments, social welfare payments, salary payments (and) micro-insurance products” (p.5) could be more effectively delivered to rural populations (GSMA, 2013). This could be incorporated with the growing number of social enterprise efforts being made in developing countries that attempt to encourage local entrepreneurship. Successful efforts have already been made in countries such as South Africa, Mali, Uganda, Haiti and Tanzania. In India, the country’s largest mobile phone provider made a deal with OMC Power last year to use off-grid mobile phone towers to provide renewable energy, encouraging global efforts to bring Community Power systems in rural areas to scale.

A recent paper by Glemarec (2012) uses the growth of the mobile phone industry as an example to demonstrate how off-grid clean energy technology could be rapidly commercialised in developing countries. Glemarec points to the statistic that almost 80 million mobile phone subscribers had no access to the electrical grid as of 2012, and notes that the dramatic uptake of mobile phones in developing countries in recent years itself “shows how quickly decentralised services can develop on a commercial basis under the right conditions, and raises the prospect that private finance could also drive decentralised energy access for the poor” (Glemarec, 2012).

©M-KOPASolar

However, as acknowledged in the GSMA report, there are significant challenges that will likely impact efforts attempting to increase energy access using M2M technology for larger rural populations. The main difficulties in replicating ‘mobile money’ services and incorporated clean energy provision in other countries would likely include regulatory delays over concern for consumer protection, reluctance among mobile phone companies and financial institutions uncertain of the full benefits and potentially high operational costs in some areas. 

Nonetheless, costs have been falling steadily and the M2M market is currently growing. It seems to me that greater standardisation and simplification of M2M technology would reduce current barriers to different forms of application and probably reduce overall costs. Many of the problems that have been encountered so far would be resolved by wider expansion: more widespread infrastructure and technical knowledge means operational failures would be more easily fixed and, as greater expansion would make the technology available to more areas, there would be less need for those in the most remote areas to spend time travelling to access energy in other neighbouring villages, which is currently a significant problem. 

In any case, it’s exciting to see that efforts have already been made over the world to combine ‘smart’ mobile technology with delivery of microfinance services and clean energy access in poor and rural areas. If these could be further integrated with efforts to encourage local entrepreneurship, such as those being made by social enterprises like Village Infrastructure, the transformative effect on rural communities would be even more remarkable. M2M technology is just one of many new sustainable solutions that are being brought to scale globally, leapfrogging centralised power generation in providing rural communities with renewable energy and vastly improving the resilience of decentralised systems of energy provision. 

Follow this link to a presentation on M2M global market development published by the GSMA in November. 

Here's a TED talk I came across by Steve Howard from Ikea that relates to my last post on business and renewably energy!