36
economical use of fuel is equivalent to diminished consumption. The very contrary
is the truth” (Jevons 1865). This point has been debated since he first published it
but highlights the importance of considering what it takes to create and support any
individual system (product or process) in the context of the larger ones in which it
operates. This means that all the incremental efficiency improvements successfully
designed into goods and services intended to reduce overall energy consumption
will likely fail at the largest scale.
2.11 Design’s Role
Design is, essentially, a “negentropic” act in a universe that tends toward dissolution, homogeneity, and chaos. Design as a process, along with its products, channels
exergy to create concentrated local pockets of order and complexity. These activities
run in parallel with the multitude of natural processes doing the same thing as they
harness the enormous solar primary energy supply that supports all living beings. In
the absence of a continuous source of exergy, nature moves to form more stable
chemical and physical structures using the same elements. These atomic scale
arrangements that require less exergy to maintain allow the constituent elements to
assume an equilibrium with one another and with their environment. It takes added
external thermal, chemical, electrical, or other kind of exergy acting on a selforganized stable compound to break it back down into its constituent parts.
For twenty-first-century designers and consumers, there is an enormous amount
of solar “free energy” to harness. This super abundant electromagnetic energy
reaches us daily. It is stored in the living tissues of plants and plant-eating animals
including us. The remains of ancient organisms carried this solar energy and chemically stored it underground as their bodies were covered by dust, mud, and rock over
the last 300 million years to form coal, oil, and natural gas. The byproducts introduced into the environment from converting these ancient stores of chemically
sequestered solar energy into mechanical motion to power farms and factories,
transport, and increase living standards are numerous. The ever-increasing release
dosage and rate at which they are released into the environment raise concerns separate from those of running out of energy. Many researchers and scholars have that
for the near and even midterms, there is no energy crisis, but if we are to minimize
or altogether avoid future negative byproducts connected to past industrial practices, our relationship to abundant available energy must evolve.
Practical challenges – The energetic throughput and the associated inevitable
losses of complex and highly ordered exergy with the simultaneous increase of loworder, random, entropy are important to monitor. Civilization thrives with abundant,
well-ordered, high-quality energy sources available and becomes more difficult to
maintain without it. But equally important is the damage produced in the meantime
through their transformation. Environmental systems, both natural and augmented,
are increasing, unable to meet the needs of a growing population. We measure ecological degradation by both what is added and what is lost. We can record the
2 The Energy Essential: Physical Forces Animate All Things
economical use of fuel is equivalent to diminished consumption. The very contrary
is the truth” (Jevons 1865). This point has been debated since he first published it
but highlights the importance of considering what it takes to create and support any
individual system (product or process) in the context of the larger ones in which it
operates. This means that all the incremental efficiency improvements successfully
designed into goods and services intended to reduce overall energy consumption
will likely fail at the largest scale.
2.11 Design’s Role
Design is, essentially, a “negentropic” act in a universe that tends toward dissolution, homogeneity, and chaos. Design as a process, along with its products, channels
exergy to create concentrated local pockets of order and complexity. These activities
run in parallel with the multitude of natural processes doing the same thing as they
harness the enormous solar primary energy supply that supports all living beings. In
the absence of a continuous source of exergy, nature moves to form more stable
chemical and physical structures using the same elements. These atomic scale
arrangements that require less exergy to maintain allow the constituent elements to
assume an equilibrium with one another and with their environment. It takes added
external thermal, chemical, electrical, or other kind of exergy acting on a selforganized stable compound to break it back down into its constituent parts.
For twenty-first-century designers and consumers, there is an enormous amount
of solar “free energy” to harness. This super abundant electromagnetic energy
reaches us daily. It is stored in the living tissues of plants and plant-eating animals
including us. The remains of ancient organisms carried this solar energy and chemically stored it underground as their bodies were covered by dust, mud, and rock over
the last 300 million years to form coal, oil, and natural gas. The byproducts introduced into the environment from converting these ancient stores of chemically
sequestered solar energy into mechanical motion to power farms and factories,
transport, and increase living standards are numerous. The ever-increasing release
dosage and rate at which they are released into the environment raise concerns separate from those of running out of energy. Many researchers and scholars have that
for the near and even midterms, there is no energy crisis, but if we are to minimize
or altogether avoid future negative byproducts connected to past industrial practices, our relationship to abundant available energy must evolve.
Practical challenges – The energetic throughput and the associated inevitable
losses of complex and highly ordered exergy with the simultaneous increase of loworder, random, entropy are important to monitor. Civilization thrives with abundant,
well-ordered, high-quality energy sources available and becomes more difficult to
maintain without it. But equally important is the damage produced in the meantime
through their transformation. Environmental systems, both natural and augmented,
are increasing, unable to meet the needs of a growing population. We measure ecological degradation by both what is added and what is lost. We can record the
2 The Energy Essential: Physical Forces Animate All Things