COSTS AND CHALLENGES OF ENERGY TRANSITION
Andrew McKillop
Former Expert-Programming, Div A-Policy, DG XVII-Energy, European Commission, Brussels
Submission to FINSIA for JASSA journal, Version 3.1, Jan 2009
ABSTRACT
Costs for moving away from fossil fuels, on a worldwide base, can be quantified and estimated in various ways, using different hypotheses on methods, targets, technology and policies to be applied over various periods of forward time. Most scenarios compare existing energy systems and infrastructures, on the upstream, and downstream economic and social energy needs and uses, with hypothetical future supplies, systems, and specific energy needs per unit GDP. To be sure, varying scenarios for GDP growth or change through the forecasting period are also utilised. These include other measures or yardsticks, such as ‘environment wellbeing indices’ incorporating various targets for reduced CO2 emissions, and scenarios for energy demand under ‘constant economic structure’ – which for estimates covering 25 or 30 years forward are necessarily approximate and unsure. Due to the many factors in play, it is therefore difficult to set fixed estimates of the cost for this process of Energy Transition. However, simply taking the case of oil and gas substitution needed due to geological depletion of reserves during the 25-30 years forward period we cover, very approximate Energy Transition investment costs in 2008 US dollar terms may well be as high as, or above 450 Billion USD-per-year, for a total investment amount, also expressed in 2008 USD terms, of about 12 000 Bn USD. This amount can be compared with recent OECD International Energy Agency (IEA) cost estimates for needed global oil and gas sector investment through 2008-2035, of about 26 000 Bn USD in 2008 USD terms.
Rather obviously, these two spending amounts cannot be considered cumulative, generating around 1350 Bn USD-per-year requirements on a ‘straight line’ annual basis, for the simple reason that global energy sector investment, depending on data source and coverage of the estimate, is running at well below 750 Bn USD/yr, including all forms and types of energy, both fossil and ‘alternate and renewable’ (ARE), both upstream and downstream. Of this approximate total, we can note, oil and gas took about 400 Bn USD/yr, in 2006-2007, but will take considerably less in 2008-2009, due to global economic crisis, the collapse of oil and energy prices, and massive falls in investment of all kinds. Using various sources of data (including Thomson-Reuters, Clean Edge, the US IEER and remaining US investment banks such as Goldman Sachs) total economic activity in 2007-2008, in the very loosely defined ‘cleantech and ARE sector’, of which more than 50% concerned asset refinancing, start-ups and IPOs, M&A activity, LBOs, etc., was approximately 150 Bn USD. Estimates for the year forward (2008-2009) suggest a large fall in this ‘cleantech and ARE sector’ investment and spending. Put another way, global investment in the energy sector is falling more rapidly and radically than world energy demand, which in the absence of very serious oil-saving and gas-saving in the economy, will ensure spectacular rebound of energy prices, shortly after any economic recovery starts, if it starts.
The Goals and tasks of Energy Transition
Energy intensity (average demand per capita): The main goal of Energy Transition is reducing fossil energy intensity of the economy and society in OECD countries, developing all feasible sources of renewable, non-fossil energy to substitute oil and gas, and eliminating or reducing CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHG) produced by current fossil fuel burning, and future, probably increased dependence on coal and lignite. This last point, to be sure, is already ‘controversial’ due to the absence of economically-viable clean coal, carbon capture and sequestration technologies and methods (CCT, CCS), but increased dependence on coal and lignite is probably certain, due to their larger remaining world reserves, relative to oil and gas. At present, about 55% of world electricity is coal-based, and only about 11% of world electricity, or 6%-7% of world commercial energy is renewable hydropower based, using US EIA data indicating about 1.8 PWh of world total hydroelectric production, and total electric power demand of about 16 PWh in 2007. Electricity accounts for about 20%-40% of final commercial energy demand, depending on country and economic structure.
Energy Economic structure: Due to extreme high growth rates for electricity consumption in many countries, specially the Emerging Economies, with around 55% electric power demand growth in the Mid East region, and 100% growth for Vietnamese, 110% for Chinese, and 120% growth for Thai electricity consumption in 1998-2005 (UN source data), renewable hydroelectricity’s part of global commercial electricity, and therefore global energy demand has in fact tended to decline in recent years. Other renewables, specially the ‘new renewables’ such as fast-growing wind electric power, and emerging solar thermal and photovoltaic account only for another 1.25% of world total commercial energy, in 2008, according to the OECD’s IEA. One major problem with substituting the approximate 55% of world electricity presently supplied by coal burning (more than 75% of Chinese electricity, 2008), by non-coal or non-fossil primary energy sources, is electric power demand growth. This is very closely linked with GDP growth. The ‘electricity coefficient’, or percent growth of power demand per unit GDP growth, for current structure economic growth, is well above unity ( 1 ) in many countries, while oil and gas coefficients are much lower, and in recession can even turn negative, that is GDP can weakly grow in some quarterly periods, while oil and gas demand continue to fall. The steady and long-term shift to higher electricity intensity of the economy on a worldwide basis presents as many problems, as solutions– for example the claimed advantage of electricity-dependent economic growth for developing the ARE, because many renewable energy sources are converted only to electricty, as the final commercial energy output. Study by this author of relatively electricity intensive, versus less electricity intensive OECD economies during and after the 1980s economic recession (France and Germany versus Japan and Italy) clearly shows that electricity demand in the economy operates a kind of ‘ratchet effect’, increasing overall or total commercial energy dependence of the economy, coming out of recession. As recent (2005-2007) global economic growth trends clearly revealed, conventional economic growth is obligatorily oil-intensive, suggesting energy economic structural change is needed to reduce this dependence. Quantities of fossil fuels to be substituted : Taking the fossil fuels of oil, coal and natural gas it is sometimes not understood that coal and lignite, which have the highest ‘carbon footprint’, that is CO2 and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and heavy metals, radionuclides and particulate emissions per unit commercial energy delivered, have demand growth profiles far higher than oil. Also due to simple cost difference – natural gas is ‘historically’ cheaper than oil – global natural gas demand has grown much faster than oil. Gas demand more than tripled (to about 2800 M tons oil equivalent, including losses) through 1969-2008, but oil demand ‘only’ doubled (to about 31.9 Bn barrels, including losses) in the same period.Only during recession, we can note, is oil intensity reduced, with a contraction of global oil demand of about 9.6% through the 3 most-intense years of economic recession in the 1980s (1980-1982). Conversely, due to price, world gas demand showed no contraction at all in the same period ! Coal and lignite, which are even cheaper than gas, now supply about 28.5% of world commercial energy demand, and demand for these fossil fuels, at least until the onset of global economic recession in late 2008 was growing fast. In approximate terms and excluding the petrochemicals and coal-based or gas-based chemicals, the weight of energy hydrocarbons burnt each year is around 11 Billion tons, roughly 5.5 Bn tons for coal and lignite, 3.5 for oil, and 2.5 for natural gas. About 1.4% of world energy is also supplied by capital intensive nuclear power, using non-renewable uranium, thorium and other rare minerals, with unknown “end of cycle” or decommissioning costs, and ultimate (ie. permanent) waste disposal risks and costs.
Climate change mitigation : CO2 and other GHG emissions from fossil fuel burning and release of unburnt methane (natural gas), probably total about 28 Bn tons annual. These emissions are vastly higher than all natural volcanic, tectonic, seismic and geological sources of GHG, which likely total less than 0.5 Bn tons annual. This estimate, of around 28 Bn tons CO2 equivalent, annual, is certainly underestimated for one reason because of massive natural gas losses throughout the chain “from well to final user”. At least 10% of world nameplate natural gas capacity is simply vented and flared into the sky, or lost in transmission along the world’s estimated 175 000 kilometres of gas pipelines, needing gas-fueled compressor stations at regular intervals along each line. These gas losses are rivaled, in sheer resource wastage and climate change impact, by loss, venting, and flaring of ‘associated gas’ in oil production. This was estimated by the World Bank at around 160 Bn cubic meters in 2006, equivalent to world total LNG trade the same year. Equally intense in climate change impact, coal production and transport losses, worldwide, total at least 90 – 150 M tons-per-year, much of it lost in underground fires, in abandoned mines, with inevitable and massive CO2 emissions. While having less impact on the world’s climate, but massively polluting the world’s oceans, and some land areas, at least 1.4 Million barrels-per-day (Md) of oil is lost “from well to wheel”, and this rate is increasing much faster than production, due to extreme depth offshore production, tar sand based ‘syn crude’ production, and production in what are called ‘hostile or extreme’ environments. Few persons, economic or consumer interest groups, or political parties today still reject the link between fossil fuel burning and climate change – although it has taken at least 16 years since the 1992 Rio conference to arrive at this open acknowledgment. Despite this “late awakening”, the reality of near-unlimited risks and economic damage from runaway climate change has now penetrated public opinion and political decision making, usually concerned only with attempts at increasing personal consumption and economic growth.
Reliance on ‘Free Market’ mechanisms: Reports such as the 2006 report by Lord Stern (UK) present various economic methodologies, and costing for not avoiding, or not mitigating climate change sufficiently, or in a relatively rapid forward timeframe. One of Lord Stern’s scenarios suggests that economic losses due to insufficient or absent climate change mitigation, could climb to around 50 000 Bn USD/year (2006 USD value), by around 2040, this being approximately equivalent to world total GNP in 2007. This ‘avoidable cost’ could be utilised for estimating rational spending and investment targets for ARE and non-fossil energy through the next 30 years. However the Stern report, like others, gives major prominence to what is the only present and market-based process for supposedly ‘reducing or limiting’ GHG emissions. This process, it is implied, will lead to ‘spontaneous’ or ‘market induced’ growth of the ARE or non-fossil energy supplies and systems, under various cost and time horizon scenarios. This ‘market-based process’ is the European ETS (emissions trading scheme), which apart from being a very small market, relative to other markets such as equities, currencies, government paper, raw materials, etc, is remarkable by its opacity and volatility. Operating since 2005, the European ETS has manifestly had zero impact on fossil energy consumption in Europe, with many EU ratifying countries ‘robustly’ increasing their oil, gas and coal burn through the 2005-2007 period of fast economic growth, and only trimming their fossil energy demand with the near collapse of their banking systems and entry to global economic recession, from 2007-2008 ! One clear impact of European ETS, we can suggest, has been to accelerate the construction of gas-fueled power plants, as well as wind electric plants, making the ETS a process for increasing gas demand and developing one major ARE, in a context of growing electricity demand and consumption, often accompanied by growing total commercial energy demand.
Dimensions of the Problem
Substituting oil, then natural gas, and preferably coal and lignite, presents huge challenges including massive, long-term financial mobilization and global-scale effort to achieve Energy Transition without catastrophic economic impacts, or further geopolitical conflict, specially in the Middle East, central Asia and Africa. Adding the pressing need to quickly develop, and utilise CCT and CCS (“clean coal”) to reduce impacts from coal and lignite burning worldwide, the rising problem of world car fleet energy and fuel supply, and very serious challenges for at least maintaining, if not increasing world food supply, the immense challenge of Energy Transition becomes clearer.
Unfortunately, the current financial mechanisms to achieve this end remain vague, volatile, speculative and insubstantial. To date in early 2009, speculative ‘investment’, that is asset creation and trading, and ‘financial engineering’ activities including private venture start-up and debt refinancing of alternate energy companies, M&A activity, LBOs, etc, has already led to collapse of the so-called ‘biofuels boom’. Financial instruments linked to carbon finance trading, mainly European ETS CO2 credits and derived instruments, and CDM (clean development mechanism) operations in Associated Countries (mostly nonOECD), are all typified by extreme price volatility, highly speculative and opaque trading, and very small market size. Due in part to the ‘success’ of European ETS, to high electricity prices in Europe, and early investor enthusiasm for wind power, this has helped create a large and growing overcapacity of wind electric installations in several European countries, followed by a sharp fall-off in new orders. Efficiently using wind energy resources will necessitate large infrastructure spending on electric power grid interconnexion, sometimes called ‘smart grids’. Featured in the 825 Bn USD Obama program to restore US economic growth, grid interconnexion investment on a huge scale is unlikely, to say the least, by speculative free market ‘players’ seeking a quick rand large return on their play. The potential for a similar free market ‘boom-and-slump’ with solar PV (photovoltaic) electric power production is now also growing quite rapidly. World effort to develop renewable, and low-carbon energy sources and systems are currently concentrated in the OECD countries, despite the very large resource potentials in low-latitude countries. As noted above, the ‘boom-and-slump’ sequences that have already taken place, with biofuels, with wind electric power development, specially in Europe, and probably soon with emerging solar photovoltaic electric power, current global investment in alternate and renewable energy is hostage to the whims of private market players, and victim to their very classic financial, short-term oriented, profit-maximising behavior. This strongly suggests the need for urgent attention to creating automatically funded multilateral frameworks, with adequate planning, regulation, and control, in a truly global and necessarily long-term process. This requirement for state intervention, and state funding can be compared with the vast ‘injections’ of public money into the world banking and finance system, to limit the catastrophic economic damage resulting from ‘exuberant’ free market trading.
CONCLUSIONS
Various data sources, including the IEA and ASPO suggest that due to oil and gas depletion, potential
continued energy demand increase, rising costs of ‘new oil and gas’, climate change mitigation, and other factors such as increased environment protection, imply that about 25 Mbd, oil equivalent of ARE or alternate and renewable energy supplies may be needed by 2035-2040. Again using IEA estimates, the cost of its projected ca. 63 Mbd of “new, replacement or additional” oil supply capacity needed by about 2035 comes to about 26 000 Billion US dollars, 2008 value. Assuming similar costs for alternate energy, and perhaps only 25%-40% of this oil equivalent energy supply being derived from the ARE, this would suggest total financing needs for the “alternatives” at about 12 000 Billion US dollars, 2008 value in the period of about 2009-2037. On a “straight line” annual basis, in 2008 dollars, this would amount to about 400 – 450 Bn USD/year. The above ‘modest contribution’ from the ARE, not attempting to project complete transition to the ARE over the period to around 2037, will necessarily assume very large energy savings being made, mostly in the OECD countries. Using data and forecasts from sources such as McKinsey & Co, world energy saving or ‘Negawatts not Megawatts’ could or might represent a new industry with spending and turnover attaining about 30 to 40 Bn USDper- year by the period 2025-2030. At that time, oil, gas and coal substitution due to energy saving may in fact reduce world total energy consumption relative to today – unlike IEA and other forecasts assuming continued, if slower growth. However, costing what is in effect a massive Energy Transition effort, far bigger than changes in world energy in the previous 30 years, encounters the difficulty of integrating a myriad of decisions that will be made, at all levels from final users to government deciders, concerning energy saving versus energy supply substitution, and the type of energy used to substute present demand.
Under any hypothesis, however, it is necessary to assume that large energy savings, or demand side management will occur. In an economic and social context where “only the market will decide”, as we have found through 2005-2008, outright and massive economic recession is the sole guaranteed way to obtain real cuts in oil and energy demand !
Using a reference target of 25 Mbdoe of ARE for oil, coal and gas energy substitution by about 2035, and comparing this with recent performance in the world oil and gas industry (outside the OPEC NOCs and Russia) we find that about 400 Billion USD/year of investment delivered supply increments of about 2.1 Mbd oil equivalent/year (about 1.1 Mbd oil, and 1 Mbdoe gas in 2006 and 2007). This suggests an apparently lower cost for ARE fossil energy substitution, than 12 000 Bn USD to 2035, perhaps less than 6000 Bn USD through the period – but these investment costs relate to oil and gas supplies with a far lower cost per unit delivered energy, than the ARE. Performance in substituting 25 Mbdoe of oil and gas energy, we can at this stage conclude, would rather conservatively imply a spending need of up to, or more than 400 Bn USD per year in the period 2009-2035. Expecting that current financial structures and systems, and operating methods can cope with long-term Energy Transition is at best foolish, and at worst disingenuous or cynical. For this reason it is wise to start,
very quickly, to consider multilateral frameworks and mechanisms for energy transition. To this end, this author has made numerous proposals. These address the central questions of targeting a fast but orderly reduction in the oil and gas intensity (average consumption per capita) of the OECD countries, and the worldwide, automatically financed, transparent and regulated development of all alternate and renewable energy sources and systems, using an Energy Levy on multilaterally controlled oil and gas supplies and their pricing.
Copyright Andrew McKillop and FINSIA,
Category Archives: Opinion
[caption id=”” align=”alignnone” width=”550″ caption=”Have you walked in …
There was a time when I used walk extensively- from my college to the office and home and to almost everywhere else. I remember always looking forward to those walks to reflect, think and relax. I am nostalgic about those times in my favourite city – Mumbai.
But, have you had a ;look at our streets recently? Have you seen how many people walk on the road as compared to the footpath? Look closely, no one actually seems to be walking on the footpaths- A majority are literally in the middle of the roads.
Over the years – we have managed to drive pedestrians out of the pedestrian-ways – first came the informal vendors, at one point municipalities started building toilets in middle of the footpaths, then there were milk booths and more squatters. To top it all, neighbouring societies started putting repulsive flowerbed on the ground so as to get rid of all of the above. Even as the footpaths of the older part of our cities have dilapidated, they have disappeared in the newer part of our cities!
The departure of the institution of walkability in our cities is one of the fundamental refection of the complete failure of our cities. Think about it – the great cities of the world are all by nature essentially great places to walk. Walkability is the most critical element of a good city. Creating walkable cities is a great way to address the environmental crisis of our era. Also, more people on the streets mean a more superior opportunity for social interaction and thus an excellent way to create a socially inclusive community. A walkable city will also add to the aesthetic, sense of character and vibrancy of a city. So at this point in time, as we try to address the challenges of our urban centres, it’s critical that we address and invest time in enhancing the pedestrian culture of our cities.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="460" caption="Auto-dependent cities"][/caption] After the …
After the Second World War, North American built its cities around the automobile in what is often termed as auto- centric / sprawled / suburban development. Evidently this developmental model was driven by the availability cheap gas and massive investments on highway infrastructure. These new suburbs lacked density, pedestrian scale, public transit and mixed-use developments. The result – everyone had to have his/ her own car; and today in many of suburban American households, the average transportation cost is more than healthcare or food costs. America is already starting to pay a price for this developmental model. Sprawl and the dependency of oil is often said to be one of the causes of America’s current economic crisis. They built their cities when oil was cheap; but these sprawled cities are coming to become redundant in the era when energy costs are going to be sky high. It has also been detrimental to their economy by rising living costs as well as costs of running businesses.
So it is alarming when I see that we are currently following a similar sprawled development model here in India. There is a tendency to build satellite towns and encourage suburban model of growth. We are developing several townships and communities all over the country and one of the things that I see is that the city authorities have no understanding of principles of good urbanism. If anything our zoning regulations and developmental laws make it difficult to build what is today recognized as good urbanism (high density & mixed-use). We need to address these issues and adopt the right regulation so as to drive the right kind of development; or we will be killing our economy in the long run.
Who was Laurie baker? It is difficult to …
Who was Laurie baker?
It is difficult to put him in the category of just an architect as
most people do. Neither had he lived like just an architect. He was admired by people of
many walks of life. But still architectural fraternity claimed him as one among them
though many did not know him enough or his ideas enough. What makes Baker an
important phenomenon of recent Kerala? It is not the fact that he started work as a
missionary and did everything in that zeal, not even that he touched many lives and
influenced the opinions of policy makers and ordinary people, nor that he could create
dream houses for many who could not even dream; all that is known and written about by
media. His significance is that he was an agent of change in architecture at a turning point
in Kerala. But still I feel that he was most misunderstood architect.
History will remember Baker for making a generation of architects of Kerala think of
their past in whatever little way and make them understand the relevance of building
materials as well as appreciate the texture and aesthetics of ordinary materials. It is more
significant to note that modern architecture came to Kerala too late, or may be it is true to
say, it never came. All we have seen before the 60s were the insipid PWD stuff and the
occasional works of Bombay or Madras architects. And Baker created some thing new in
this vacuum. Though with the single minded idea of cost reduction. That was first
ridiculed and then accepted and then was eulogized and even worshipped and followed.
His kind of architecture was slowly kept aside today or if followed, done so only in form,
like Gandhian ideas are today. Yet Baker will remain a turning point in Kerala’s
architectural history; the history of modern Kerala and Indian architecture.
To eulogize is to forget the real content and keep only the form. Baker’s also might
follow the same pattern. The ideas will get corrupted if not already by the followers who
may not understand the spirit of enquiry Baker started with in architecture.
Baker’s architecture is largely misunderstood. People have used his ideas to suite their
ends. Some followed his brickwork and some his tracing of tile roof shapes in concrete,
some his jallis and some his cost cutting measures and a few followed him to make
ecological sense of his works, which, in my opinion, was the most sustainable of his
teachings.
Baker’s architecture is read erroneously and simplistically as “Kerala style”. I think it
was not that simple. The so called “Kerala style” is itself a questionable notion. (this is
not a place to write about it). But the irony is that by labeling it that way, the critics and
followers in Kerala as well as outside have belittled the importance of his work. His
works, – homes or institutions or religious buildings-, had an idiosyncratic stamp typical
of his and were molded by the firm belief in Gandhian frugalism and the conscious
attempt at eliminating the unnecessary, may be of cost cutting. To do so it was inevitable
to build climatically suited structures and use skills locally available. When this was a
philosophy, it was inevitable to result in an architecture that we now know as that of
Baker’s. But we took it as vernacular and labeled as an adaptation of “Kerala style”. He
never claimed so.
Baker did question the logic of plastered makeup as an unnecessary paste on unlike
anybody before in Kerala. He bared his walls of beautiful brick works or stone masonry
and made us admire the beauty of materials. None did that in Kerala before except
Architect Chisholm and his ilk in the 19c or early 20c. He used plans and sequence of
spaces, which were contemporary and modern (least the way Kerala planned
traditionally). He used openings and windows which were simplified modern. None of
these could be called Kerala Style. His jallis were neither an adaptation of the past. Baker
rejected past’s follies and adapted relevant and significant ones from anywhere
But true, he made tiled roof and sloped concrete roofs resembling the roofs of traditional
Kerala as well as some wood joinery details, railings, etc. more like the “post modernist”
way, yet very ingeniously and beautifully. And to that extend he was using an easily
recognizable architectural vocabulary and signifying certain accepted meanings of forms.
He was thus rebelling against the accepted principles of modern architecture as well. I
think, that to him was just a way to get more latent ideas of architecture, – of lower cost
and frugal living and ecological building – acceptable to people, more like the way
Mahatma Gandhi clothed his ideas in simple mass appeal. Baker’s architecture will be
and is significant beyond these scenographic formalisms. At the techtonic level and in
technological innovation and spatial creativity, his architecture was universal, modern
and had the significant spirit of adventure and objectivity. Modern scientific spirit of
enquiry was the basis of his architecture. And it happened at a significant point in
Kerala’s architectural and political history.
Let us remember not to reduce this significance of Baker to that of a mere technician
(even if a masterly one) or just a low cost architect. Let us not disgrace his masterly
adaptations with cheap imitations as seen in Kerala’s recent scenography of questionable
and insipid adaptation of sloping roofs. A serious study of Baker’s architecture is
required. I hope some one will do it. May be that only a European will be destined to do
that!
Baker was admittedly a Gandhian in ideas and yet like Gandhi he is understood more
superficially and because of his eminence, would be followed more in form than in real
spirit and content of ideas.
Here is the link to the original article:
Click to access bakerbhushan.pdf
Heritage is a deep sense of values. And, …
Heritage is a deep sense of values. And, for those values to set in there must have been a time tested process-by which human beings have over time a deep sense of respect for each other. That respect for one another is expressed through a bond. This bond which is spiritual involves human mind and sets a pattern. The spiritual is something one feels as a bond together because of certain values or a sense of achievement. It essentially echo’s the human spirit. This “spiritual” is achieved by a ritual-a manner of repetition to give strength and permanency to those spiritual values. This “spiritual” permanency of human thought and action can be frozen and experienced by the realm of architecture-in its built form. Therefore it is the ultimate stage where the process becomes a product which is acclaimed, celebrated and accepted.
Heritage reflects a society or community that has sustained certain values over a period of time for it to have become significant enough to be turned from spiritual to ritualistic. Ritual stimulates emotion but the spiritual is linked to a reason. But a reason in the ritual brings about a new platform. This reason is intended for justifying rather than understanding. As a result, wisdom looses meaning in ritual over a period of time.
When ritual originates, the initial reason for the setting in of the ritual was the spiritual. But in due course when the culture changes, people evolve and time elapses the spiritual is forgotten and the ritual alone becomes important that’s when decadence sets in. That’s because when values are repeated time and again the meaning not only changes but it becomes mundane. When certain values are passed down through generation-we don’t have the patience to pass on the truth but we have the patience to pass on the rituals or obedience. That’s when the degeneration starts. Decay sets in when human spirit of achievement and heroism dies. It happens when the human being does not understand the true reason behind the ritual or he does it out of force rather than a conviction. When the phenomenon only becomes a ritual and looses the spiritual, then the true values disappear. Decadence sets in. A new set of ethos is born and the change happens. The “same” is no longer the same. This metamorphic change over time becomes today’s modernism which should decay in time.
In modernism, the sheer pleasure of technology becomes important. But in truth, Technology can only enhance the value of the past. The past always tried to touch edge of technology. But technology is not a deterrent of the past. The deterrent is our inability to comprehend to use the present technology to its edge. Furthermore, today Architecture seems to be directly derived from technology. Art has been set aside. Art isn’t able to comprehend technology. Art should always be beyond technology. Philosophy comes ahead of technology. At present in modernism heritage is lost because it does not even in the sense of symbolic value to the past. It doesn’t give an attendance to the past and it doesn’t even give a presence to the past.-it simply cuts it off. In essence, at the moment “modernism” follows the heritage of the rationalization: a belief in the logical method, a notion that there is a truth that can be determined by applying data and the scientific method. On the other hand, when art pretends to follow values, the values made by the ritual rather than the spiritual- it’s another web of pretense. Heritage or values of the past is a consensus and a complete collection of memories. But the imperative point is that you should understand the memories and not get drowned in it. You must be able to use the memories to create new ideas. The true responsibility of tradition is not the acquiring the past, but the ensuring of a future. Only when we know how the story has run to this point can we responsibly decide how the plot might unfold.
