Four For Friday | April 26, 2024
Four For Friday | April 26, 2024
LF120 | Bold ideas from Ministry of the Imagination, California's energy independence month, rising global energy and new battery tech
Welcome to Looking Forward’s Four For Friday. Four things that have piqued my interest this week. Enjoy!
Ministry of the Imagination
A delightful report on big, bold ideas that could revolutionize our well-being and our world. A few of the ones most relevant to the Looking Forward agenda of human and planetary health:
Free, locally tailored systems of care. Redirect funds from ‘carceral’ systems to create free, community-based care networks offering 24/7 interdisciplinary healthcare, accessible housing, and robust home care support systems.
A shift to relational medicine. This is patient-centered care that prioritizes the individual's and their network's involvement in decision-making.
Create a care society. Emphasizing care for young children and caregivers fosters healthier attachments and balance, reducing violence and consumerism. Prioritizing care work reshapes societal values and behaviors.
Universal Basic Income: This can support healthy ageing to ensure everyone has financial stability, reducing stress and improving overall health during aging.
Researchers should follow the ‘One Health’ principle. Animal health, human health and planetary health should all be incorporated into one, forcing doctors, vets and farmers to work together.
Legal Rights for Nature: Advocates for granting legal personhood to natural entities like rivers and forests, enabling them to "own" themselves and be represented in court, ensuring their protection and conservation.
‘Imagination houses’ in every city. An imagination house allows people to work on bold stories and projects involving imagination with everything you would need to do that: books, videos, collaborators, with weekly presentation nights about big ideas.
Decommodify Housing: Calls for transforming housing from a commodity to a guaranteed right, ensuring everyone has access to affordable and dignified housing without the pressures of market forces.
Cities designed for and by women. Women are leaders, are involved in leadership, are involved in engagement, and are designed for on a street level, so we’re thinking about how women experience the city and designing for them.
Artistic Leave from Work: Proposes that individuals should be entitled to take leaves of absence from their jobs for artistic pursuits, similar to maternity or paternity leave, to foster creativity and mental health.
Rewilding Urban Spaces: Encourages the integration of green, wild spaces within urban areas to promote biodiversity, improve mental health, and reconnect people with nature in their daily lives.
Carbon coins and a carbon tax. Creating a currency as a cooperative model to support decarbonization, while taxing the negative externalities of fossil fuels
The So What? A broad-ranging document that pushes our ideas of what is normal, which may be useful to help navigate a world in chaos.
Hurrah, renewables are growing…
California hit a milestone recently with renewables meeting more than 100% of its energy demand over a period of 30 days. In the past there have been moments when renewables met the State’s energy needs, but never over a sustained time period like this. The state has a net zero target for 2045, but on this trajectory, it could meet that target by 2035.
The So What? As renewables become more consistent and affordable they’ll be seen as more of a reliable option for businesses and policy makers.
…wait, what the…?
It’s great to see the growth of renewable energy. The unfortunate reality is that total energy growth is growing too, and renewables are not going to be making a big dent in the near future unless we massively transform our industry. Noted energy expert Vaclav Smil makes the case in this JPMorgan letter and the graph below shows the trajectory.
The So What? It’s not been too painful yet because renewables has come on top of fossil fuel use, not as a replacement. Changing that will require major policy ambition.
Your next battery could be made of salt
To end on some good news… Rapacious energy needs of data centers fuelled by data centers, AI, and, life in general needs to be met. Seems there’s some intriguing new battery solutions emerging that simply use energy to heat basic raw materials like salt, sand, even air. The heat energy is then converted to power when needed. Salt can be reheated thousands of times with a life of decades, bricks only lose 1% of energy a day and according to McKinsey, heat pumps in general can deliver energy at $15-$25 per megawatt hour, compared to $65-$100 for the cool kid, hyrdrogen. Bonus: Sam Altman just invested in a startup that both captures energy and converts it.
The So What? A key challenge with renewables is energy storage; now there’s a new set of players that seem cheap and effective.
That’s all for this week. As always, feedback welcome. Feel free to share insights or links of interest.
- Stephen