Are development policies fundamentally flawed - flawed based on technical analysis of what is feasible and what can not be achieved hidden behind rhetoric and technical arrogance? Are our policies based on exceptions to fundamental laws of science? Sanat Mohanty writes.

“Is there anything technology cannot do?”. Ask most people – especially in this era of high performing technology gadgets and major technology achievements – and the answer will be “No”. The popular understanding is that there is no limits to what technology can achieve. Even many scientists and engineers would agree that there are no limits. That technology can achieve anything it aims to achieve. Perhaps, sometimes, the cost may be high. Initially. But technology can achieve anything it wants.

Economists, bureaucrats and politicians feel that way. “The Common Man” also feels that way. No wonder, the world continues to operate as usual despite major indices showing the strain of such economic activity – financial, human and ecological indices are showing that the system is under severe strain and close to collapsing. However, besides implementation of some minimal and incremental policy changes and some superficial regulatory tools, we continue business as usual, quite confident that we will have the technology to solve all problems that arise. After all, we have achieved so much in the last 3 decades in development of technology. And various analysts are suggesting that the rate of technology development will only speed up.

Thus, when few technologists – such as myself – argue that there are limits to technology, it bothers people. Often such views are held as being anti-developmental, ludditic or worse – anti-people. It is necessary, however, to address whether there are indeed limits to what technology can do? And the technical answer is “Yes, there are limits”.

Most technologists and scientists will not appreciate this since the historic and scientific analysis for this answer comes from thermodynamics – an area that is not sexy any longer and often is not taught in some 'career focused' colleges that focus on electronics, computer science, biotechnology. In fact, numerous physics, mechanical engineering or chemical engineering departments have de-emphasized this area or taken it out of the necessary set of courses taught in graduate programs. No wonder, then, that many scientists or engineers graduating have little understanding or perspective of the importance of thermodynamics.

However, lets go back a few centuries to understand the importance of thermodynamics. Since 12^th century AD, engineers and thinkers from around the world have been interested in a machine that could run for ever or work without any additional energy. Large amounts of money and significant effort was expended especially in sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe building perpetual motion machines. While in the early years this was an intellectual or fantastical pursuit, with the advent of what became the industrial revolution, and with the growing need for energy and more efficient engines (machines that could convert energy to work), the search for a perpetual motion machine was driven in real earnest. Successful scientists of that era including Bernoulli, Robert Boyle and Bessler dabbled in this effort.

In 1824, a French Scientist, Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot presented the first key theories about the conversion of energy to work. In 1850, Rudolf Clausius recognized the implications of these theories in the context of the law of conservation of energy (which is now recognized as the first law of thermodynamics) and formulated what is today understood as the second law of thermodynamics. Its first implication was that energy cannot spontaneously (or by itself) flow from a cold body to a hot body. It also meant that there was a limit to the conversion of energy into work (which defined the efficiency of an engine). It thus provided the death knell for perpetual motion machines. It meant that perpetual motion machines are impossible – that technology is limited in that we cannot ever invent a perpetual motion machine. So behold, a key limitation to technology.

A key learning from that work was the definition of entropy. Entropy was seen as a property of any system (that was made up of matter and/or had energy) and described (in ordinary language) the extent of disorder in the system. A generalized version of the second law of thermodynamics held that for any closed system (one where there is no input or exit of energy or material), its entropy can never decrease (or its disorder can never decrease).

While initial criticism of this theory suggested that this may be an anthromorphic construct applied to macro-systems, research showing that quantum phenomena also follow thermodynamic laws proved that these laws of thermodynamics were valid universally. No entity in the universe could disobey these laws.

Today, it is established beyond doubt (except among those who continue to search for perpetual motion machines) that the second law of thermodynamics holds true and that perpetual motion machine is impossible. No funding agency will fund any project seeking to build perpetual motion machines. In fact, the US Patent Office has an exception for those seeking to patent perpetual machines. While in other patent applications it is enough to describe the idea and show on paper how it works, any patent application seeking to patent perpetual motion machine must send a working replica of the machine.

So why is the second law of thermodynamics relevant today? It is only about engines and what engines can be built, is it not? No! The second law of thermodynamics dictates what material and energy states are feasible within a certain system and whether such states can be accessed. In today's environment – with both the energy crisis that is already threatening growth as well as sustenance in most of the world as well as the ecological crisis that threatens climate change – the second law of thermodynamics assumes great importance.

The disorder condition of the second law is quite important and in fact applicable in our lives and in understanding the reality in which we find ourselves. The laws of thermodynamics apply to all industrial processes. We understand that any closed system – let us say an industry along with the energy and materials it uses – cannot lower its entropy (level of disorder). However, all industries make goods by taking raw materials and bringing more order to these raw materials. So the ostensible output from any industry is a good that is more highly ordered. In fact, we pay higher price for the good and we want it because it is more ordered than the raw material components. Does this not violate the second law?

It is consistent only when we understand that there are other output streams from the industry that we choose to ignore that are in much higher states of disorder. These are generally waste streams. To follow the second law (and knowing that one output stream is a much more highly ordered 'good'), these waste streams must be much more disordered than the raw material streams. This implies that besides the 'good', the other outputs are much less useful than even the raw material streams.

There are numerous scientifically driven policy implications of this conclusions. For one, much more energy must be spent on this waste stream to get any more 'good' from it. And any unit that attempts to do so much produce even more disordered waste streams. In addition, where ever these waste streams are stored or disposed, the community around (people, ecology) will have to deal with a highly disordered entity that is not only of little us but may in fact harm. In reality, these waste streams are often hazardous and toxic – thus these communities are negatively affected in their health, livelihood and quality of life. This is the crux of the energy and environmental quandary we find ourselves in.

In the current context, one particular waste stream that has drawn much attention is carbon dioxide. It is a result of industries, of transportation, of families cooking food. The carbon cycle is unable to deal with the amounts of carbon dioxide being spewed and thus the carbon dioxide now affects climate. In addition, the intensive use of energy in the above activities is also taking us towards the end of supply of the most preferred energy source for our economic development – fossil fuel.

Within this context, it is becoming increasingly accepted that we need to live more sustainably. While there are numerous perspectives of sustainable (a company is focused on economic sustainability, a political party or a community may be on political sustainability, those looking at diversity and connectivity of flora and fauna may be focused on ecological sustainability and so on), from the scientific perspective, we need to recognize, measure and control thermodynamic sustainability. This implies that we need to measure and control the growing extent of disorder in the system.

Entropy – or the degree of disorder – is a key aspect of both climate change and energy. As this parameter increases in any material system, it becomes more difficult to sequester or use parts of the system that could otherwise be valuable. More energy must be expended. For example, it is much more difficult to use trash that is mixed than trash that has similar plastics or similar other components. Similarly, as reservoirs of energy become cooler (or more dissipated), it becomes less useful. For example, water at 100C is more useful (you can do more with it) than a larger volume of water at 60C (even though the total energy may be the same).

However, this aspect of sustainability has not influenced policies being made by various funding agencies or even those who develop plans for carbon trading as a means of dealing with climate change. These agencies remain quite oblivious of such facts.

Soon after the formulation of the second law, Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell proposed a thought experiment – now called Maxwell's Demon – to question the universality of the second law. He proposed two chambers separated by a wall. Both chambers have the same amount of gas at the same temperature and pressure. He suggested that there was a demon sitting on the wall separating the chambers and every time a molecule in the left chamber at a speed that was higher than average came towards the wall, he let it pass to the right chamber. Soon, you would have molecules that were on average faster in the right chamber. Since the temperature of a gas is proportional to the average speed of the molecules, the gas in the right chamber would be hotter. Thus, you would have transferred heat from the left to the right and disproved the second law. However, numerous scientists found that if you include the demon in the system – and account for the energy spent in calculating speeds of molecules and opening the valve to let these molecules pass, you would have spent energy to move smaller energy from the colder to the warmer chamber.

Sustainable policies today are often supporting such Maxwellian demons. For example, billions of dollars have been spent in building devices (photovoltaic, algae based, and many others) that concentrate solar energy to provide energy streams with intensity that industries would require. While the concentrator, if successful, is designed to provide such intensity, the building and maintenance of these devices requires enough energy as well as entropy (or disorder) generating materials processing to make these processes thermodynamically unsustainable. And this is not surprising since we already know that the second law holds. We have known it for almost two centuries now. And yet, we continue to believe and fund such efforts.

The most recent one that saw billions of dollars being spent was the one on biofuels. Researchers argued ad nauseum about the amount of energy required to generate one unit of bio-based ethanol and compare it to petro-fuels. Massive shifts in agricultural practices were proposed and significant shifts were implemented globally. These shifts saw significant changes in the price of corn and increase in price of food – we were willing to push millions of people who could not afford food at current prices to starve with shift in production. And people did starve. What is appalling is that these policies were implemented with no thermodynamic perspective to this question. Where there were numerous studies (and at best they were good approximations, often non repeatable across labs) comparing energy values of bio- versus petro-fuel, there was no thermodynamic study done. A thermodynamic analysis would have shown whether certain processes were thermodynamically sustainable and hence whether they would truly solve the energy crisis while recognizing the constraints from climate change.

Thus, various agencies representing governments from around the world are willing to fund billions of dollars in proposals to build modern day perpetual machines. These proposals essentially claim that they can develop processes that use more energy more effectively with lower disorder. When they are more discerning, they say that there will be higher disorder but the disorder (or the waste stream) will not be carbon dioxide. None of these agencies have means, methods or interest in thermodynamically analyzing these processes to ask whether they are truly sustainable.

Now, it is possible that they will produce less disorder than current processes – and that itself would be a key technology advantage. Or they could produce modes of disorder that are not carbon-dioxide based. Since the world is most concerned with carbon dioxide today, perhaps that might be a feasible alternative. However, the alternative must be understood within the context of the other dangers it may expose us to. In any case, a thermodynamic analysis is needed. Right now, however, we are on the way to a situation where we are funding perpetual machine proposals by trillions of dollars.

What is more bothersome is that plans for resolving climate change also depend on such strategies. The current strategy is based on carbon trading. The idea is that we will incrementally reduce carbon emissions over the next 2-3 decades, bringing down CO2 concentrations by about 10% (which requires reduction of emissions by about 30-50%) while at the same time continuing economic growth at 7-12% (after all we do not want to slow down our levels of consumption or rates of growth). And we will do it by 'clean' technology.

So what is this clean technology? Various entities (governments, companies, labs) have used numerous methods to label their efforts as green – from going to bio-based, or by re-using 'waste', etc. Some have claimed green credits by reforesting areas that they first deforested. Thermodynamically, however, green processes would be ones that produce less or no change in entropy (disorder).

Given that this initiative is carbon based, it will result in two kinds of technical development. One, entities will claim technologies that sequester carbon. At best, carbon sequestration can be measured in a lab setting. There are no reliable or reproducible methods or processes to measure carbon sequestration in real world situations. Even if carbon is sequestered, given the second law, other forms of disordered material streams would have been created.

Second, technologies will shift to waste streams that are non-carbon-dioxide based. Such technologies could be nuclear, for example. While they will produce less carbon dioxide, the increased entropy of these streams would be hundred to thousand times higher (by some estimates) since the activation energy and the extent of contamination is so much higher. Thus, they are certainly not sustainable – and in fact much more harmful to communities that have to deal with these waste streams.

There are technologies that are cleaner than current technologies without employing Maxwellian Demons. However, which ones are these, it is hard to say based on current methods of analysis and discrimination. As a result, we expect to see a plethora of 'clean' technologies evolving from immense funding that will certainly provide function but not meet real parameters of sustainability that will alleviate current conditions of climate change – that is the real problem with this approach.

Going forward, then, it is not to say that technology cannot solve any problem. That would be no different from the current claim that there are no limits to technology. However, it is necessary to first recognize the limits to technology. The laws of thermodynamics provide a real limit – describing the costs to be paid (in terms of disorder and waste streams) to achieve certain states of order. Technology and development policies must recognize these in planning.

Second, funding of cleaner technology programs must be based on clear understanding of thermodynamic principles. While those with an understanding of thermodynamics will point out that it is difficult to measure entropy and hint at the problems of exergy based approaches, they will also recognize that entropy from processes can be calculated in lab situations and estimated within order of magnitude approximations in real situations at current levels of knowledge. This is as good as current processes estimating energy used to produce a good or estimates of carbon sequestration.

Finally, it is also necessary to recognize that the current focus on carbon may be valid – that carbon pollution levels are high and threaten earth processes as we know them today. However, it would be foolish to ignore other waste stream (or other modes of disorder). If solutions to the problems of high carbon dioxide would build high levels of radioactive pollutants or toxic metals in waste streams, they would be far more dangerous at much lower levels of contamination. We have already seen results of radioactive contamination around Chernobyl as well as in communities around poorly managed radioactive waste sites (in India, for example). We have also seen the impact of the presence of toxic metals such as mercury, arsenic and cadmium compounds in the water table. We do not want global technology directed along those paths.

Thus, a big aspect of the solution has to come from levels of growth and consumption. Can we expect to grow at 5% (or 12%) annually? Is that healthy or sustainable? Are our current levels of consumption appropriate, healthy and sustainable? Who gets to consume at higher levels and who gets to deal with the waste streams? How can it be made fair? These are questions that must be answered by policy makers who lead national governments. Given, however, that we live in a global rat race, perhaps (as we saw with climate change) this has to be policy made at the international level. It requires a significant shift in seeing the problem and hence a significant shift in solution. At this time, however, it is clear that the opinion of the international elite (i.e. those who are important to those who make policies) does not see this as a problem; carbon trading is good enough.

- Sanat Mohanty