Sustainability and Future

The Thermal Sector: A Hidden Giant # Heating and cooling buildings accounts for approximately 27.2% of final energy consumption in industrialized nations. In Austria, this amounts to roughly 300 PJ annually—most of it provided by natural gas, oil, and biomass. Unlike transport, where complete decarbonization requires entirely new vehicle technologies, the thermal sector can be addressed through a combination of demand reduction and efficiency improvement.

Transport: The Hard-to-Decarbonize Sector # Transport accounts for about one-third of final energy consumption in most industrialized economies, and it remains overwhelmingly dependent on petroleum fuels. In Austria, the transport sector consumed 361 PJ in 2020—virtually all from oil-derived fuels. Decarbonizing transport is therefore essential to any serious climate strategy. But which technology pathway makes the most sense from a physics standpoint?

The Baseline: Human Energy Needs # Before examining modern energy consumption, we should consider the baseline: how much energy does a human body actually need? The answer is approximately 7 MJ per day (about 2,000 kcal), assuming moderate activity. This represents the absolute minimum energy throughput required for human survival.

A quantitative series on replacing fossil fuels with green electricity and green hydrogen — production, storage, and application.

The Role of Science in the Energy Debate # If we were guided by science, there would be a lot less hot air and more informed debate around energy. Nothing in society is possible without the availability of sufficient energy. Nothing. Energy is a fundamental prerequisite of life and represents a particularly important factor of everyday life.

Modern global food systems are controlled by multinational corporations and international financial institutions that prioritize profit over subsistence. Explore how trade, debt, and aid weaponize hunger.

The 'Green Revolution' promised to end hunger through high-yielding seeds and modernization. Instead, it concentrated land and wealth among elites while displacing millions of peasant farmers.

Famines are not inevitable natural disasters—they are engineered by political and economic systems. Explore how colonial cash crops created vulnerability and how societies that prioritize food security avoid famine.

Exploring how inequality, colonialism, and corporate control have engineered hunger despite global abundance. A critical examination of why the world's poor starve in a world of plenty.

Hunger is not caused by food scarcity or population explosion—it results from the concentrated control of food production resources by a wealthy elite. Explore how inequality fabricates artificial scarcity.