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How to Save Humanity in 17 Goals: ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all (SDG 7)Your browser does not support the audio element.Download MP3See transcript
Julien Harou''s career started in geology in his current role as a water management and infrastructure researcher now straddles economics and engineering, with a particular focus on using artificial intelligence (AI) to measure Ghana''s future energy needs.
Harou is relatively upbeat about progress so far towards achieving sustainable and reliable energy for all by 2030, the seventh of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by the United Nations in 2015. He points out that from 2015 to 2021, the portion of the global population with access to electricity increased from 87% to 91%, and last year about 30% came from renewable sources.
Harou''s research at the University of Manchester, UK, incorporates computer modeling and artificial intelligence design algorithms to balance Ghana''s long term renewable energy and infrastructure needs. But AI also helps to address the environmental and human health impacts. For example, Ghana''s Volta River was dammed in the 1960s to create the Akosombo dam. But its arrival depleted fish stocks and increased weed and algae growth, providing habitat for vectors of waterborne diseases. It''s all about compromise and trade-offs, Harou tells the seventh episode of How to Save Humanity in 17 Goals, a podcast series that profiles scientists whose work addresses one or more of the SDGs.
Episodes 7-12 are produced in partnership with Nature Water, and introduced by Fabio Pullizi, its chief editor.
doi: https://doi /10.1038/d41586-024-01316-w
Hello, this is How to Save Humanity in 17 Goals, a podcast brought to you by Nature Careers, in partnership with Nature Water.
I''m Fabio Pulizzi, chief editor of Nature Water. This is the series where we meet the scientists who have been quietly incrementally working towards the global development targets set by the United Nations in 2015.
World leaders pledged to solve a range of economic, environmental and social issues, and the package of 17 Sustainable Development Goals were born.
Since then, in a huge effort, thousands of researchers all over the world have been tackling the biggest problems that the planet faces today.
In episode seven, we look at Sustainable Development Goal number seven: how to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.
And meet an engineer who uses artificial intelligence to help Ghana design its renewable energy future.
Okay, hi, my name is Julien Harou. I''m a professor in water management and infrastructure systems at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.
But very quickly, because of hydropower, I moved into joint water and energy systems. And water is also used for food production. So I somehow grew from water to water, energy, food. The United Nations General Assembly in 2015 developed a series of goals. And goal number seven is the one related to energy. So the formal goal is to ensure access to affordable, reliable and sustainable modern energy for all.
Well, actually, the news is relatively good. From 2015 to 2021, the portion of the global population with access to electricity increased from 87% to 91%.
The other, the other thing that was mentioned was that these goal wants sustainable energy. And what that generally means is renewable energy. So energy that doesn''t require burning fossil fuels. And in 2023, about 30% of the global energy generation was from renewable energy sources.
These have much lower carbon dioxide emissions. And so this is also a pretty big success, especially since the year 2000, so just less than 25 years ago, it was 18%. So the news for SDG goal number seven is actually pretty decent. And things are progressing rapidly.
And then slowly I started working in the in the water field, and then got drawn to civil engineering because I just saw the problems in the world created by infrastructure.
Recently, I work mostly in Africa and Asia. And looking at how to better manage human natural systems.
So, my focus is on countries where the water, the energy and the food system, and the environment are interconnected and interacting and so when you act in one, you affect the the other.
The big turning point in my career is I was working on a project for the World Bank evaluating dam investments. So these are reservoirs, hydropower dams in in Nepal. And it occurred to me and to our research group that it was just not possible to evaluate the value of an investment in a hydropower dam if you didn''t consider what it was contributing to the to the wider energy system.
So that''s where I stopped being a pure water engineer and moved to, you know, water, energy food systems. Because I found you couldn''t, you couldn''t evaluate how valuable a water asset was an infrastructure asset like a hydropower dam, if you didn''t consider how it was contributing to the energy system at national scale.
You have to flood certain areas, you have to change the way the water regime works. And so there''s some environmental sacrifices there, and potentially human sacrifices.
Surprisingly, even though I started my career as a geologist, and I really had no interest in computers whatsoever, I very quickly realized that these human natural systems are very large and very complex. And your brain just can''t wrap itself around the problem. You need computers.
Finally, this led to artificial intelligence. It turns out, you can connect these simulators to these new artificial intelligence design methods.
And you can find really clever ways to develop human natural systems that get lots of benefits and don''t have too many negative impacts. So yeah, that was my career in a nutshell. Starting in geology and finishing in economics, engineering and artificial intelligence.
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