argia.eus
INPRIMATU
Energy and territory
Mikel Otero Gabirondo @otero_mikel 2022ko azaroaren 10

Fossil resources have been an energy treasure. Because of the forces patiently applied by nature, for millions of years plants and micro-organisms were condensed and collected in the form of coal, oil and gas energy from the sun. Easy to transport, versatile, energy-dense, ultimately cheap. To understand the scale, a single liter of diesel has the same power as a horse can develop on a continuous work day of thirteen hours (or a healthy adult in 100 hours of activity). So we've built our civilization on these energy giants, and today 85 percent of the world's energy is fossil.

What's more, the massive use of fossils broke the relationship between energy and territory. Before fossil resources become masters of the energy system, our ancestors understood that to meet energy needs a significant part of the territory had to be allocated. Biomass for cooking or obtaining heat, fields and crops for feeding animal tensile, grinding mills for grain or water jumps and plant carbonery to allow steel, the territory was linked to energy uses. Not today. Today, fossil fuels come from all over the world (four-fifths of the energy we use) and we believe that obtaining energy is not related to land use. It's a temporal fiction.

I say temporarily, because although fossil fuels have many virtues, there are two main reasons that force us to abandon. Aside, finite character. It's convenient for us to leave fossils before they leave us. On the other hand, climate emergency. The carbon we release when we burn fossils is, for a long time, primarily responsible for climate chaos and, if we do not want to completely stem it, it is essential to overcome as soon as possible the era of fossil resources, spreading renewable energies.

It is clear that the immense amount of energy that fossils offer us will not be able to be acquired with renewables and that the waste we have had so far (according to the best research, if we get half, agree), the satisfaction of the energy needs of the three million people living in Euskal Herria for a dignified life will not be slow. And it's necessarily going to require connection to other essential uses of the territory, starting with food. However, if we take into account that, on a small scale and with facilities of general taste, 10-15% of the maximum energy we use can be obtained, I believe that it is not in our interest to fill the territory with red stripes if we are not to achieve a state of blockage. In addition to clarifying what needs to be done, it is up to us to design what needs to be done. The debate will be delicate, but without delay.