From molecules to electrons: how the economy is changing
Did you know that 40% of global shipping movement is simply moving fossil fuels around the world? That’s an incredible statistic, but even that is not the whole picture. 20 years ago the Prof and I took the Trans-Siberian/Mongolian Railway between St Petersburg and Beijing and we were constantly being passed by or passing impossibly long trains of Yukos oil wagons heading to and from China. The news is full of stories about oil and gas pipelines whether from Russia to Europe or from Canada to the USA. We shift a humungous amount of fossil fuel around the world every day, burning fuel to do so.
But the world is electrifying. Electric cars, bikes and scooters don’t need fuel hoses, they need a cable. They also need many fewer replacement components over their lifespan, an additional headache for the traditional motor industry which sees spares as a major income stream. Heat pumps, likewise – once they’re installed, they require electrons, not molecules. This is why we see the process industries continuing to push hydrogen and carbon capture and storage, despite their cost and inefficiencies. The sector is set up to handle molecules, not electrons, and the electrification shift poses an existential threat.
I have a medium-large CD collection, but its growth has slowed to a crawl. I used to be the archetypal £50 man who would drop into HMV on a Friday lunchtime to see what CDs were on offer. Some I might only listen to once or twice before they retire to the rack to gather dust. Now if I fancy listening to, say, the concert where someone really did shout ‘Judas!’ at Bob Dylan, I just stream it. When the kids were small, we went through a DVD box set phase: West Wing, The Sopranos, The Wire etc, but by the time we got to Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and Better Call Saul, we were fully into streaming. The shelf of DVDs stops around 2013 as we started buying electrons, not molecules.
I show my age on certain stuff: I still buy a newspaper everyday as it gives me a much more rounded view of the world than dipping in and out of news websites. Looking at the dwindling number of copies of papers at my cornershop each morning, I expect this is a habit that will die with me. Real books are another passion – I’ve never found reading off a screen relaxing in the way paper works for me (I do buy a lot of second hand books in my defence).
Obviously there are products which will never be replaced: we still need to build buildings and make cars, but both require a fraction of the energy input in their manufacture than they do in their use. Clothes cannot be replaced by electrons, unless (satire klaxon!) you are Bianca Censori or spend too much time/money on Fortnite, neither can furniture or, more fundamentally, food. But huge chunks of the economy are shifting from stuff to electrons and given electricity is relatively easy to produce from renewable sources, that is a very good thing.