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December 06 2020
Review of: Transition Engineering: Building a Sustainable Future [0]
by Susan Krumdieck - (c) 2020
Routledge / CRC Press ; 254 pages
ISBN 9780367341268
I first learned of Susan Krumdieck a few months ago when I came across
an interview of her on the Happening Films podcast [1]. Krumdieck
is a professor of mechanical engineering [2] at the University of
Canterbury, New Zealand with a focus on energy systems as they pertain
to sustainability. Clearly she has also been a student of the limits
of growth and peak oil/minerals, eventually leading to her attempt to
forge a new engineering discipline focused on sustainably transitioning
the developed world away from it's currently untenable ways of living.
Krumdieck has written several books, mostly of an academic nature. This
book, Transition Engineering, seems written for STEM students [3] as
part of an electives course. I noticed it's also the listed textbook
for a self-paced webinar offered by the Global Association of Transition
Engineers (GATE) [4], an organization Krumdieck helped form.
On to the book. For an engineering book, particularly an engineering
textbook, it's not bad. And while there are some maths, charts and
tabulated data, it manages to mostly stay readable and engaging even if
one has little understanding or interest in working through the examples.
Transition Engineering begins with the familiar tale of the sinking of
Titanic, or rather an alternative scenario of the lead-up to the tragedy.
The point of the story is to convey Krumdieck's conviction that, given
technologists build industrial civilization and best understand how it
actually works, they are thus best positioned to initiate the needed
transition. Engineers holding the fate of the world in their hands.
I've mixed feeling about that statement but it's hard to argue with the
understanding bit.
The first couple chapters lay out the crux of the predicament: industrial
civilization with a growth economy largely powered by fossil fuels and
minerals that are both depleting rapidly (many past-peak extraction rate)
and largely responsible for the build-up of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the
atmosphere along with a variety of environmental issues given all the
creative ways humanity has found to utilize this one-time bonanza. The
author then goes on to explain in engineering terms why a transition to
100% renewables-driven growth economy is not achievable. Krumdieck
includes quite a bit of material along with a worked example of what
happens to primary energy production if the US embarked on such a scheme,
as some versions of the much ballyhooed Green New Deal suggest; basically
it's a reversion to 1950s levels -- not exactly a driver for growth, and
as she explains later on in the book, it still doesn't achieve the 80% cut
in GHG emissions needed and is highly dependent on mining and the current
infrastructure which was built around fossil fuels.
Speaking of primary energy flows, towards the end of the book Krumdieck
references something called a Sankey diagram, something I'd not heard
of. Turns out the International Energy Agency (IEA) has a fantastic
interactive Sankey diagram [5] for many countries as well as the whole
world. You can see how the various energy inputs changed historically,
where it gets used, were the losses are, import/exports, etc. Definitely
worth checking out.
However, this is not just another depressing chronicling of the impending
doom facing humanity, this is a book for engineers and, dammit, engineers
are problem solvers, or at least they really like trying. Krumdieck is
very much of that mold and so, after evidently many years of studying the
usual alternative energy system proposals -- wind, solar, geothermal,
hydrogen, biofuels, etc. -- and eventually concluding they are largely
incapable of replacing our carbon-based primary energy systems, the
only viable path is fairly significant reductions (80+%) in energy use,
along with similar reductions in non-renewable minerals and those that
are used are sourced from recycling of what's already in use.
Engineers love process and the subsequent chapters lay out the basic
tenets of Transition Engineering and the Interdisciplinary Transition,
Innovation, Management, and Engineering (InTIME) framework for formulating
"down-shift" transition projects. It's actually fairly comprehensive
and this is where the book gets very "engineery", with maths and decision
matrices, even some financial calculations. It also makes it a hard to
write a meaningful review so here are some highlights:
- the goal is changing existing systems via redesign and/or redevelopment
via down-shift to ultra-low energy, mineral, natural resource consumption
while uplifting quality of life, the environment, and real value.
- EROI [6] should be used to evaluate feasibility of any proposed project;
current economic models are flawed in that they discount future value.
Real value does not change with time.
- we are at a transition point and the future will not resemble the past;
many things are going to change.
- the past should be studied but not necessarily emulated in the forming
of down-shift transition projects.
- transportation is likely the biggest "wicked problem"; there really is
no viable sustainable future that still features massive use of personal
automobiles. A real-world transition assessment of Christchurch, NZ
is used to illustrate such a transition away from a car-centric urban
arrangement via public transit and a reworked housing market.
There is a whole chapter just on InTIME and many examples of how to apply
the methodology. The author seems to use several of the examples to drive
home how many of the popular schemes like replacing ICE vehicles with EVs
don't actually make sense from an energy, material and emissions point of
view. By far one of the best options is conservation which has huge EROI.
Some closing thoughts.
In general I liked the book. Both Krumdieck and I have a shared
disappointment in last chapters of similar books; most books do
a fine job chronicling the predicaments but fall flat with their
proposed "solutions", either exhibiting a bias for one or another
"green" technology, or calling for unrealistic changes in behavior in
individuals, corporations, or government. This book makes a different
request, that technologists become the drivers of the change needed.
Based on my limited experience working with engineers, I have doubts
about the plausibility of that scenario.
Krumdieck spends a bit of time comparing the transition engineering
movement with the formation of prior engineering disciplines such as
fire and safety, automotive and structural, many formed response to
what was then perceived as unacceptable levels of accidents and loss
of life. That analogy may be somewhat flawed in that the feedbacks are
vastly different; it's the people in the developed world that need to
transition but the fallout from delaying it falls largely elsewhere,
mainly the arctic and the global south. And even when it doesn't --
the mega fires in the US and Australia for example -- it hasn't seemed
to triggered calls for for a radical remake of living arrangements.
Perhaps the main flaw in Krumdieck's call for a geek uprising is that many
technologists are well-paid tools of the System and thus more inclined to
defend rather than criticize it. Upton Sinclair summed up the phenomena
well: "[i]t is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his
salary depends on his not understanding it."
That said, Krumdieck seems to be aiming her message at younger folks
who generally are not overly invested in the System, are very aware of
these existential risks and are willing to re-think prior assumptions
and to try new things. And that really is what's needed - the future
will not resemble the past, at least not the recent past.
For those interested in learning more about the author and transition
engineering without reading this book I'd suggest checking out some of
Krumdieck's presentations and interviews on YouTube; the following seem
to capture much of general thrust of her book minus the maths:
Transition Engineering: The Big Do (YT; 43min)
https://youtu.be/eSPVBbIztWk
Confronting the Status Quo (YT; 32min)
(presentation made to a NZ business group)
https://youtu.be/M9YRNqewGIY
Susan Krumdieck Global Warming, Economics & Transitional Engineering (YT;42min)
(presentation made to the NZ Minerals Forum, a mining industry trade group)
https://youtu.be/PZrPDKTo-50
- -
Refs:
[0] https://www.routledge.com/Transition-Engineering-Building-a-Sustainable-Future/Krumdieck/p/book/9780367341268
[1] https://youtu.be/4mzRbEJfjPA
[2] https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/engineering/contact-us/people/susan-krumdieck.html
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STEM_fields
[4] https://www.transitionengineering.org
[5] https://www.iea.org/sankey/
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested