I had meant today to post on probable limits to large-scale renewable energy, but that write-up needs a bit more time. So in the meantime, the following piece is timely — because it highlights some of the exciting prospects in the ‘green’ liquid fuels arena; provided that we can get our act together and should the R&D ‘gaps’ be closed [part of which simply requires more $$ -- something not obviously forthcoming in the CPRS cap-and-trade model for Australia, alas].
Below is a preface article I did for the most recent installment of Issues magazine, an Australian popular science that looks in-depth a key topics in the public arena. From their blurb: “Each quarterly edition is devoted to a single topic, providing extensive background information and opinions drawn from a variety of perspectives on themes of scientific, environmental, medical, legal, social and political significance.” The December 2008 issue is all about biofuels. Here’s my opening article:
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Prospects Beyond Peak Oil (original printable PDF can be downloaded here – it’s one of the two free articles available at the Issues website [along with Ian Lowe's])
As the world glimpses the bottom of the (oil) barrel, Barry Brook ponders alternative fuels.
The modern world depends upon a vast legion of invisible energy slaves – the equivalent of 200 human workers per person for developed countries [h/t to Michael Lardelli on this]. Like servants of the kings of old, they service our every whim. From the food we eat to the cars we drive, our lifestyles are propped up by cheap, readily available energy. Oil.
But what if that multitude of energy slaves started to slip away into the night? What if the river of black gold started to dry up? The dire consequences for the continued prosperity of civilisation hardly bear imagining. Yet that’s just what’s happening – right about now (give or take a few years).
It’s called “peak oil”. That’s the time when oil production reaches its maximum rate, despite the pull of the market demanding ever more supply. It’s the natural consequence of the ongoing depletion of any finite, non-replaceable natural resource. Exploitation of it can’t grow forever – it’s physically impossible. At some point, you start to run out.
Roughly speaking, peak oil is also the point at which we’ve used half of the world’s total extractable oil supply. At this stage, there is still have half left. But it’s the tough half. The light, sweet crude has basically all gone, and it’s time to suck out the heavy, sour stuff. That takes longer, costs more money and takes more energy inputs. That’s bad for growth.
Global oil production is currently stuck at about 85 million barrels a day. Serious energy analysts don’t expect it to ever climb much above that level. A method of supply projection known as “Hubbert linearization” (named after the analyst who successfully predicted the peak in American domestic oil production over a decade before it happened in 1970) suggests that there are about two trillion barrels of useable oil on Earth. That’s the reserves of oil that yield more energy from their use than it takes to extract, pipe and refine them.
We’ve used about one trillion barrels over the last 150 years. It will take a mere 50 years, if that, to use up the rest.
At this point, a peaking of oil-based energy supply (which is now), we have a few choices before us. We can watch modern society regress to a poorer and less productive state, as energy runs out. We can continue to burn up that remaining one trillion barrels and take the climate system on a rollercoaster ride the like of which humanity has never witnessed. Or we can find an alternative energy supply. Fast.
I’m optimistic that there are plenty of alternatives out there. For instance, in theory, we can run most anything off electricity. That includes land-based vehicles, though not aircraft. We can make plastics and pharmaceuticals out of plant-based products instead of petrochemicals. We can store unused renewable energy in compressed air “batteries”, molten salts, and in chemical forms such as hydrogen.
Filed under: Emissions, Future, Renewables | 18 Comments »
