The Hindu Business Line : Energy security: An urgent priority

Energy means the ability to do work. The word, though, is getting energetically overworked, if news headlines are any indication. For instance, "Russian deal will bring Iran nuclear energy," says www.iranmania.com. "EU Wants Energy Companies to Split Power Supply, Transmission," informs Bloomberg.

"Egypt developing nuclear energy programme," alerts San Jose Mercury News. "Low-energy appliance buyers will get tax holiday," announces Palm Beach Post. "Energy hogs will pay more," cautions Shanghai Daily. "India and China that are avidly seeking new energy sources," writes Keith Bradsher on www.nytimes.com. And, "We're Short of Energy," says AllAfrica.com. Worthwhile, therefore, to spend some energy and study the word in depth, even as lack of energy continues to daunt whole nations.

Energy is "the strength and vitality required for sustained activity," defines Concise Oxford English Dictionary. "The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary," advises Charles Caleb Colton. "A leader's role is to raise people's aspirations for what they can become and to release their energies so they will try to get there," declares David R. Gergen.

The word is from "Latin energia, from Greek energeia activity, from energos active, from en in + ergon work," says Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. "1599, from Middle French energie," supplements Online Etymology Dictionary. "Used by Aristotle with a sense of `force of expression;' broader meaning of `power' is first recorded in English 1665. Energise `rouse to activity' is from 1753; energetic of persons, institutions, etc., is from 1796. Energy crisis first attested 1970," adds www.etymonline.com.

The root `ergon' finds mention in an entry for urge, which in turn is from Latin urgere, meaning `to press hard, push, drive, compel.' Related words are erg (`a unit of energy'), ergonomics (`scientific study of the efficiency of people in the workplace'), allergy, synergy, surgeon and organ.

"In 1807, Thomas Young was the first to use the term `energy' instead of vis viva to refer to the product of the mass of an object and its velocity squared," educates Wikipedia. "Gustave-Gaspard Coriolis described `kinetic energy' in 1829 in its modern sense, and in 1853, William Rankine coined the term `potential energy.'"

Potential energy is the capacity for doing work that a body possesses because of its position or condition, explains www.hydrocut.com in `Explosives' glossary. "For example, a weight lifted to a certain height has potential energy because of its position in earth's gravitational field. Kinetic energy, the energy a body possesses because it is in motion."

While the scientific use of the word has a precise, well-defined meaning, the many non-scientific uses often do not, rues http://en.wikipedia.org. For example, to William Blake, `energy is an eternal delight.' Sex is energy, says Beatrice Wood. `Love is an energy which exists of itself,' asserts Thornton Wilder. "I believe in energy like dark energies," frightens Ryan Reynolds. "When a family moves into a house where six murders took place, there's going to be some bad juju in that house." And to Annie Dillard, `There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.' Energy can be boundless, indefatigable, inexhaustible, or unflagging, states Oxford Collocations. Energy can also be `surplus, nervous, restless, youthful, or creative'. You can be `bursting with' energy, which can then be devoted, directed, or channelled.

The most important property of energy is that it is conserved, says www.bartleby.com. "That is, the total energy of an isolated system does not change with time. This is known as the law of conservation of energy. Energy can, however, change form; for example, it can be turned into mass and back again into energy." In short, energy can be neither created nor destroyed.

Energy is a property associated with a material body, elaborates A Glossary of Frequently Misused or Misunderstood Physics Terms and Concepts on www.lhup.edu. "Energy is not a material substance. When bodies interact, the energy of one may increase at the expense of the other, and this is sometimes called a transfer of energy." You can't `intercept' energy in transit and bottle some of it, says the glossary.

"Where is our time and energy going? How much is left after the daily grind," wonders Kevin Eubanks. He may find an answer on http://scienceworld.wolfram.com, which says that energy is "an abstract quantity of extreme usefulness in physics because it is defined in such a way that the total energy of any closed physical system is always constant." According to the concept of `conservation of energy', the total energy E is equal to K+U, that is, `the sum of kinetic energy and potential energy', a constant.

"It is important to realise that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is," concedes Richard P. Feynman, the famed physicist. He had participated in the development of `the formula for predicting the energy yield of a nuclear explosive,' as the National Science Teachers Association (www2.nsta.org) informs in a page on `Energy Luminaries'. Importantly, Feynman popularised science with his characteristic straight talk such as this: "There is a certain quantity, which we call energy, which does not change in the... changes which nature undergoes."

In contemporary usage, energy is whatever can be efficiently converted into heat or motion to provide power to run machines and vehicles and to supply heat and light, is plain-speak on www.hydrocut.com. "Energy sources are of two basic types, renewable and non-renewable." The latter dominates our use, worryingly, in the form of fossil fuels and other finite resources.

What are the renewable energy sources? The site lists the following:

Water and wind, which can be tapped using turbines, water wheels and windmills.

Geothermal energy, the earth's internal heat that is released naturally in geysers and volcanoes.

Tidal energy, that is, the power released by the ebb and flow of the ocean's tides.

Biomass, which involves the use of certain crops (including wood) or crop wastes either directly as fuel or as a fermentable source of fuels such as alcohol or methane.

Solar energy, which can be stored and used directly as heat, or transformed into electricity, using photovoltaic cells.

We are increasingly realising that we are fast depleting the finite sources of energy, and therefore feverishly trying to exploit the renewable avenues. But a big hurdle is that `huge advances in technologies' are needed before renewable energy sources can replace fossil fuels.

Oxford Dictionary of Business has no entry for `energy', between `endowment mortgage' and `Engel's Law.' Yet, energy is big business. `Orb Energy to Launch Asian Solar Energy Business,' says http://renewableenergyaccess.com. "We work in all areas of the energy industry including coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear energy, as well as with renewable resources such as water and wind energy," announces www.gepower.com. `Hydrogen project touted as future energy, business generator,' predicts Brunswick Times Record. "What, exactly, is an `energy company'?" asks Joel Makower in his blog Two Steps Forward (http://makower.typepad.com). "There are now `energy companies' emerging from a variety of decidedly non-energy sectors, from electronics to chemicals to aerospace to agri," he writes. Makower cites as examples Dupont and 3M, Boeing and Corning, IBM and Cisco. "It may not be long before we're asking, `Who's not an energy company?'" he concludes.

Quite aptly, www.ameinfo.com has a posting `4 hours ago' with the headline, "IBM delivers breakthrough `Energy-Smart' business computing systems with AMD Opteron processors." The story speaks of IBM PowerExecutive software that allows clients to `meter' actual power usage and heat emissions, and cap the amount of power used by a single server or group of servers at any given time. There is also `Thermal Diagnostics technology' to periodically scan `datacentre equipment to collect inventory, performance and temperature metrics'. Energy is an urgent priority.

The President Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam's address to the nation on the eve of the 59th Independence Day, last year, was titled `Energy Independence'. Speaking on energy security, he highlighted that India has 17 per cent of the world's population, and just 0.8 per cent of the world's known oil and natural gas resources.

Energy security rests on two principles, explained the President. First, use the least amount of energy to provide services and cut down energy losses. And second, "secure access to all sources of energy including coal, oil and gas supplies worldwide, till the end of the fossil fuel era which is fast approaching."

For, the alternative to energy security can be frighteningly insecure, something we may never be able to come to terms with.

ComingToTerms@TheHindu.co.in

D. Murali

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