Energy

 

 

The following paper was written back in 2007.  Since that time the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) struck and oil prices have not risen as projected.  But we are now hearing about peak oil again and there have been two programmes on radio and TV in the last fortnight floating the prospect of peak oil again. 

At the end of 2006 the documentary film A Crude Awakening warned that peak oil, ‘the point in time when the maximum rate of petroleum production is reached, after which the rate of production enters its terminal decline’, is at hand. 

Perhaps the most important argument in A Crude Awakening is that energy, including oil, replaces human labour and does so very efficiently.  It is the harnessing of energy that has allowed human civilisation to free people from slavery and serfdom and it is the harnessing of energy that has fuelled technological progress. 

It has also fuelled an increase in human population from less than a billion in 1800 to over six and a half billion today.

The most obvious defect in the documentary is that it represents oil as the only source of energy available to mankind.  This is not the case.  Until quite recently coal was the dominant energy source.  Coal fuelled the industrial revolution.  In some parts of the world hydroelectric power was also an important driver of industrialisation before oil and, where available, is still the most environmentally friendly and least expensive energy source we have. 

It is true that petroleum (oil and gas) has recently taken over the leading position as principle energy source; and contributor to carbon dioxide production.  Petroleum is more convenient and has higher energy density than most other options (see below) and produces less carbon dioxide per unit of energy than coal. It dominated transport and chemical production for the last two thirds of the 20th century and will continue to do so for at least the first half of the 21st.

The following diagram shows the sources of energy (for all purposes) in Australia in 2007/8[1].

 

 

 

 

 

It was oil that made the Second World War possible, oil that provided a car to every family soon after and oil that opened the world to inexpensive air travel. 

A Crude Awakening makes the point that we have already half used this amazing resource, in a shockingly spendthrift way, over an extraordinarily short period of time.

 

 

 

A personal view 

This chapter can now be read at:  'Getting About'

 

 

Peak Oil - When?

 

 

According to A Crude Awakening the world may have already passed ‘peak oil’. 

This chart (like the next, from Wikipedia) shows various competing predictions of peak oil:

 

 

 

 

 

Critics of the Peak Oil argument point to the very large deposits remaining in tar sands and deep ocean deposits like those in the Gulf of Mexico and Timor Gap that were previously uneconomic and technically more difficult to extract. 

It can be seen that the most optimistic scenarios show peak oil disappearing off the chart.  These are based on the availability of oil from oil sands.  These reserves are believed to be very extensive.  But they’re also very expensive to extract and the process released additional carbon dioxide.  These will become increasingly profitable as the price rises and their exploitation may delay the ultimate depletion of oil, perhaps by decades.

They will do nothing to lower the cost of oil and indeed the conversion of coal to oil (discussed later) may be less expensive in money and resourced terms.

Petrol prices are going to rise. The current price (17 Feb 2008) is $ 95.69/Barrel and the one year futures forecast is for $124.40/Barrel (oil-price.net ) this compares with a low (1999 price) of just over $10. Based on the 1999 pump price, and in the absence of government intervention to keep prices low, petrol prices should already be approaching $7.00 a litre.

 

 

 

 

Although we will still have petrol, or a petrol substitute, for many years to come, the price will be much higher than it has been in the past.    And prices will continue to rise steadily until they reach the point at which sustainable energy becomes economic.

 

 

Impact of higher oil prices

 

 

As indicated above we are not about to run out of transport fuel anytime soon but over a third of total energy demand is for transport as shown in the following chart[3] and the price of the major source of this energy is  about to rise very substantially.  Some elements of our present transport intensive lifestyle are likely to become progressively untenable for people on average incomes.

 

 

  

 

 

But going back to a more 1950s transport style would not be the end of civilisation as we know it.

We will need some more ‘fast electric trains’ and even, perhaps, more trams and other mass transport. We might have to think about using ships and trains rather than planes for long distance travel.  Cities may need to become more compact to shorten journeys to work, and businesses may need to locate near to public transport.

Of course we are never going to return to the world of the 1950’s.  World population has more than doubled since then.  Women have jobs in the workforce.  Children go to pre-school. Retail is a centralised in shopping malls.  But some relatively minor changes to city planning could accommodate our city to lower car usage.  All new shopping malls could be required to locate over or near to railway stations, as many are now, with bus interchanges. 

New rail lines could be built to link existing large shopping malls and relatively dense communities.  Local resistance to new rail lines is likely to lose support.   The unfinished Bondi, Maroubra, Randwick loop and the long needed northern beaches rail line in particular, might at last be completed.  Other service industries could be encouraged to locate their businesses in and around the new rail station precincts.  Higher density residential precincts would be located within walking, or cycling, distance of railway stations. 

The overall prognosis is good.  People will walk and cycle more and children will be less often driven to school.  Roads will be less congested.  Pollution will be lower and the Blue Mountains will be blue again.  Lifestyles will be healthier and the production of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will decline.

The higher petrol prices may come to the aid of town planners in other ways too.  Much of the sprawl of Sydney suburbia can only be serviced by car and many of these properties have almost as much real estate dedicated to cars as to human habitation.  The prices of these properties will fall relative to areas of attractive higher density housing that do not require and the constant use of motor vehicles. 

In the meantime the technology that gave us the first transistor in 1948 provided the integrated circuit in 1964 followed by the microchip microcomputer in the late 1970’s, has led to the www in the nineties, mobile phones and electronic commuting today. 

Today I can talk to somebody in the United States at the click of a button and at less cost than talking to somebody down the street.  It is not absolutely essential for me to leave home or travel to America to do much of my work.  I’m writing this by a speaking into a microphone and just correcting my text as I go with the keyboard and mouse.  In future most written text will be dictated like this. I can retrieve vast amounts of information from my desktop.

I can already use a web-camera (if I choose to) and microphone to talk face-to-face with people in other places in the world all from my chair at home.  I could, if I wished, publish this document as a blog available to everybody with a computer and an Internet connection.

In addition to electronic commuting technology has given us a biological revolution. Watson & Crick, using the results of Franklin, first decoded the structure of DNA in 1953 (when I was talking to steamroller men).  Progress in biology has been even more spectacular than that in electronics in the intervening period.  Not only is it possible to move genes from one species to another but we are close to creating life from its raw chemical constituents.  Biotechnology will define the 21st century and it is very possible that it will play a part in finding a replacement to oil.

 

 

Alternative sources of energy

 

 

 

A central point, made eloquently in A Crude Awakening, is that we need an alternative source of energy to replace oil. 

Although it fails to report it, coal resources are also finite.  Two recent industry studies have suggested that ‘peak coal’ will be reached in around 15 years, although again, as the price rises there is a lot more coal that may become economic.  For example the whole of the Sydney Basin is underlain by coal. There are sub-economic coal seams visible at Katoomba and coal was even mined at Balmain, in the middle of Sydney, from 1897 to 1931. The mine was the deepest ever worked in Australia and until the early 1950’s still provided methane for the Sydney gas supply.  In the 1890’s good coal, in ten foot seams, was also found under possible mine sites at Cremorne and Neutral Bay.

Unless we find an abundant alternative energy source by the time we reach peak coal we really will be in trouble.  But will civilisation, as we know it, collapse?  Some people will think it has already if we have to start mining coal at Balmain or Neutral Bay.

We will certainly be unable to supply the projected human population with food and this will be ‘rectified’ by increasing famine in third world countries. 

It is not stated, but we might read between the lines, that the powerful may even want to return to some form of low-paid slave or indentured labour to maintain their lifestyles.  Others might claim that this is already happening in the sweat shops of the third world. 

But in many ways a lot of this is old news.

We have known that oil is bound to run out since the early 1970s and the usual answer to this problem has been to suggest that replacement energy will come from coal, nuclear or (latterly) solar sources.  When I worked for British Steel in the mid 1970’s our ‘Energy Futures’ strategy anticipated both oil and coal prices rising very steeply as resources were depleted.  It proposed hydrogen as the transport fuel of the future and as a reduction agent (replacing coke) for iron manufacture. The hydrogen would be generated from water using nuclear power.  This was called ‘nuclear steelmaking’.

The NSW Department I worked for in the early 1980s commissioned a report into coal chemicals that included its possible conversion to petrol.  This reported that the coal to petrol conversion process is well proven, having operated sub-commercially in South Africa for many years, supported by the Apartheid trade embargoes and the use of cheap coal and labour.  It also revealed that the energy efficiency of this process is low, the costs high and a great deal of fresh water is consumed.  Gasification of coal may be a better option.  Nevertheless, a web search suggests that a number of these plants are on the drawing board again.

Low energy efficiency in this case translates to increased carbon dioxide production, increased water use and increased and water pollution, in addition to larger coal mines and general resource waste.

The most efficient way of using coal as a source of general energy supply remains to burn it in large relatively efficient stationery power stations to generate electricity. 

The report also concluded that coal has a wide range of industrial uses and could be used as feedstock for plastic and other petroleum based products if the cost of petroleum becomes uncompetitive. 

Apart from generating electricity the main use of coal today is in iron making (the feedstock for steel manufacture) where it forms both an energy source and the reducing agent.  Smaller but still important uses include other metallurgical reduction and the manufacture of cement.  In some of these industries natural gas can be substituted for coal or vice versa.

 

 

Transport fuels

 

 

 

Although oil is an energy and chemical source in itself, when it comes to transport fuel it is energy storage per unit of volume and weight that is its main advantage over, say, electricity. 

Electricity is already a viable transport energy alternative to oil in the urban areas where vehicles can be connected to the grid.  But it is debateable if this is friendlier to the environment than petroleum.  While electric motors are very efficient there are significant losses in the transmission of electricity over the grid, particularly to light rail (trams) where voltages must be kept low, and the electricity has to be generated by some means.  In Australia this means burning coal or natural gas to make steam to drive turbo-alternators.  Thus busses that use natural gas directly are likely to be more environmentally friendly than say, light rail, although this is very dependent on operational circumstances.  Until we use nuclear or solar power to generate electricity, electric vehicles will remain just as polluting and resource consumptive as efficient petroleum or gas fuelled vehicles.

 Electricity is not suitable for long distance road or air transport.  In these areas the energy density (both by volume and weight) of the fuel used is a critical factor, influencing both the efficiency of transportation and its economic and technical realisation. 

 

 

Hydrogen

 

 

The energy density of petroleum, in the form of petrol and aviation fuel is 46.9 and 42.8 MJ/kg, respectively.  By volume to they yield 34.6 and 33 MJ/L.  This compares with liquid hydrogen that yields only a third as much energy per litre but three and a third times more energy per kg. 

Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. On Earth almost all hydrogen occurs in its oxidised state, water.   Because its reduction is expensive the main sources at present are biological in origin (fossil) about half comes from natural gas deposits and most of the remainder from oil and oil refining and from coal (see above).  Although it comes from similar sources, hydrogen is presently more expensive, as a source of energy, than petroleum due to difficulties in handling and storage.

Fossil hydrogen obviously suffers the same resource limitations as petroleum.  But effectively unlimited amounts of hydrogen can be made by the electrolysis of water.  This is relatively expensive as it consumes electricity that, in turn, needs to be generated somehow (with consequent energy losses and capital investment).  Thus hydrogen is a possible means of storing and transporting cheaply generated electricity.  Only the lighter hydrogen component need be transported as the oxygen component is released to and recovered from the atmosphere at source, regenerating the water.  This is the basis of the proposed ‘Hydrogen Economy’, cheap electricity would be generated using solar, geothermal or tidal power in remote locations and used to produce hydrogen which would then be compressed or liquefied and transported (or piped) to where the energy was required, where it would be converted back to electricity in a fuel cell or burnt (re-oxidised) to generate heat. 

Some new technologies are under development in support of a Hydrogen Economy.  High temperature electrolysis of water (HTE) requires considerably less electrical energy than conventional electrolysis.  At even higher temperatures, hydrogen can be directly separated from water using the sulphur-iodine cycle.  This promises very high efficiencies.  This cycle has been demonstrated experimentally in several nuclear reactors worldwide but there are significant materials and design issues to be resolved.  Nuclear plants are currently in the design phase that will produce both electricity and hydrogen by one method or the other.  The overall efficiency of such a plant could be very much higher than existing nuclear plants, particularly as this would (if used in conjunction with fuel cells and local hydrogen storage) provide a means of optimising (peak v base) energy loads.   It is possible that a future high temperature solar plant might employ the same technologies if the technical difficulties can be resolved.

In any electrolysis solution very significant quantities of water are implicitly transported concurrently from the generator to the consumer.  This precludes low cost energy sources in deserts from participating in an electrolysis/hydrogen based solution.

Liquid hydrogen is the principal fuel of the space shuttle.  It is very much more expensive to produce than gaseous hydrogen as it must be liquefied in very capital intensive equipment, using a great deal of energy (compression and latent heat, released as heat in the process), and then stored at minus 253° C.  It is stored uncompressed, in cryogenic containers, and in order to retain its low temperature is constantly gently boiling and thus giving off hydrogen gas. This is both flammable and highly explosive if allowed to accumulate, for example in a vehicle cabin or a garage. In an accident if it splashes it may cause serious freezing injuries and, if ignited it burns rapidly, consuming all the available oxygen.  In a large (eg tanker) fire it may asphyxiate victims in the accident area. But it is also quick to disperse and leaves no on-going risk to rescuers.  A number of references suggest that on balance it is safer than petrol.  Due to its high energy density per kilogram liquid hydrogen is a technically viable alternative fuel for air travel, where it would have significant environmental and efficiency advantages and accidents are usually remote from other infrastructure and rare. It will be very much more expensive than the kerosene presently used to fuel Aircraft.  It is unlikely that liquid hydrogen could ever be made safe or cheap enough to use in cars, busses or trucks travelling in urban areas. 

Compressed gaseous hydrogen is equally problematic. The energy density per litre is much lower and even when the tank is fully compressed it is less than one 7th that of petrol.  A 700Bar tank, needed to get anywhere near this energy density, is very heavy and may explode in an accident. But the fire danger is said to be lower than that of petrol.  Nevertheless as the survivors of the Hindenburg and those of us who have filled large plastic bags with hydrogen gas, and set them floating skyward with a burning paper tail know, hydrogen makes a very nice woomp, and spectacular flame when ignited. 

Unlike liquid gases, the energy density of compressed gas declines as the tank empties and the pressure falls.  From an energy density point of view even coal is a denser transport fuel than compressed hydrogen gas (recall the steamroller, steam trains and wagons of the past).  But using fuel cell technology, far more of the stored energy in hydrogen can be converted to electricity and then to mechanical energy and transmitted to the wheels.  A number of demonstration vehicles have been built using hydrogen as fuel.  Most of these store the hydrogen in the form of metal hydrides rather than as a compressed gas.  This technology is much safer, and is effectively emissions free, but adds significantly to the weight (about four times that of an equivalent full petrol tank), volume (about three times), initial cost (hundreds times more expensive) and complexity overall.  It also has potential environmental costs and consumes scarce resources.

In the laboratory (and by children inflating balloons) hydrogen is commonly generated via a replacement reaction employing aluminium and caustic soda and this has sometimes been proposed as a method of fuelling a vehicle.  But this is highly energy inefficient as the energy cost of creating both aluminium and caustic soda is very high and the energy efficiency at each step is low.

Hydrogen gas may already have been overtaken in energy density (by weight), safety and convenience by electricity storage in new high efficiency (eg lithium ion) batteries and possibly by other chemical energy storage options.

 

 

Electricity

 

 

Electricity is the ideal pollution free energy source.  Electric motors are smaller and much more efficient than internal combustion engines; they are quieter, cooler and create zero emissions.   In cars each wheel can have its own motor, obviating the need for gearboxes and differentials.

If electricity is stored in batteries, vehicles can use regenerative braking to recharge the batteries going down hills or when stopping.  This is not available to hydrogen or petroleum fuelled vehicles. 

Hybrid cars are already available that use a combination of battery and petrol power and it is possible that new battery technology might allow vehicles to ‘park and plug’ to eliminate the petrol motor component completely.

Because it is possible to control the times when batteries are recharged (eg through smart metering) irregularities in grid utilisation can be smoothed and as electric vehicle utilisation increases. And this might be done on a vey local basis.  This could be used to offset the fluctuating electrical inputs from wind turbines and solar power generation.

 Electric vehicles are familiar and very mature technology.  The technology is used for trams, trolley buses, for milk delivery (particularly in Europe) and wheelchairs for the disabled and elderly.  Electric motors produce no exhaust and are relatively quiet and maintenance free.  These vehicles have previously needed to be connected to wires to the electricity supply or were very constrained in range, acceleration, carrying capacity and ability to repeatedly handle steep gradients.

Battery technology is now approaching a point at which it becomes possible to build a practical private motorcar that provides similar utility to one with a standard internal combustion engine. 

 

 

Electric Cars

 

 

By using electricity generated outside of cities they effectively transfer the exhaust gas (and any pollution) to the electricity generation plant.  If this electricity is produced from a non-combustion source such as wind, nuclear or solar there is no carbon pollution except that generated in the initial manufacture transportation and maintenance of the equipment involved in the various processes involved. According to a British parliamentary report, nuclear power has the lowest whole of life carbon footprint, followed by wind then solar.

But as over 80% of electricity in NSW now and for the foreseeable future is generated by burning coal and gas this benefit is limited to the transfer of the pollution and primarily focused on Sydney; which has the most serious ventilation and vehicle exhaust pollution issues.

Hybrid vehicles such as the Toyota Prius are already successfully competing with conventional internal combustion powered vehicles.  These use the facility of electrically powered vehicles to regenerate electricity when running downhill or when braking.  This energy is returned to the vehicle battery. The electricity to charge the battery for normal running is generated by a smaller conventional internal combustion engine that would normally power a car of that size and this combined with a more even power demand on the engine delivers greatly improved fuel efficiency.

Fully electric vehicles achieve similar energy efficiency but all the power required is provided by the remote engine (the electricity generating power station) and is stored in the vehicle battery.  

Large stationary engines (steam turbines) are more efficient than small internal combustion engines but the electricity transmission grid consumes a proportion of the electricity generated offsetting this advantage.  Further, existing petrochemical fuels have a lower carbon footprint than coal as they contain more hydrogen (that burns to water). 

These factors mean that in NSW and Australia a fully electric car  will have a larger carbon footprint than an equivalent hybrid for the foreseeable future.

An important disadvantage to electric vehicles is the present very high capital cost per vehicle.  This is due first to the cost of lightweight batteries and second to the relatively low production runs of the vehicles and their components. 

The original electric cars used the common lead acid battery technology still commonly used in cars and trucks.  This has a very low energy density compared with liquid petroleum or even liquid petroleum gas and hence a very short range and or much higher weight and volume.

Modern battery technology (for example that used in mobile phones) has a very much higher energy density; approaching that of various hydrogen fuel alternatives; but still some way below that of petroleum. The leading current technology for electric vehicles is lithium-ion (Li-Ion) and its variations.  This is used by all 'new generation' electric vehicles except one (that uses sodium metal chloride).

At the present time these batteries are still extremely expensive.

Notwithstanding much higher energy densities advanced batteries are still well short of the energy density provided by petroleum.  Adding extra batteries adds volume weight that compromise performance and cost.  Achieving a practical balance between these factors gives most present and proposed electric vehicles a range of around 100Km at which point they must be recharged.  Thus there needs to be a recharging facility at the destination.

A shorter range would make the vehicle less expensive, improve its performance and reduce recharging time.  So once these vehicles are commonplace and recharging stations can be found anywhere the technology will become more practical.

Until an electric vehicle user can be confident that the vehicle can be recharged anywhere they go it will be difficult to go far afield or to take unplanned side trips or excursions.

Further, there is not yet a single standard for recharging these vehicles with a common plug, voltage, frequency (if AC) or charging rate.  There is not yet a suitable cost regime for such services.   And there are several competing recharging and/or battery ownership models; including one in which batteries are exchanged rather than recharged by the vehicle owner. There will need to be a considerable 'shake-out' of these alternative models as the technology matures.

The battery technologies on which these vehicles depend are still very new, less than five years old. There are several competing battery technologies and although none presently matches the energy density of the Li-Ion family of batteries, some of these may be more appropriate to electric vehicle use and may be safer. The Toyota Prius uses more mature and less energy dense NiMH technology for this reason.

Lithium-ion battery technology has undergone rapid development but has had a number of hurdles to overcome. Early versions had relatively poor recharge cycle performance and the recharge and discharge rates both need close management to avoid shortening the overall life. The technology did not work well at temperatures below freezing or over 40 degrees Celsius. Batteries need to be cooled when in operation and there are still issues at the very low, or very high, temperatures experienced in extreme conditions (eg in a desert or the mountains).  

Similar technology used in Laptop computers has resulted in explosions and fires.  Batteries used in cars are very much larger than those used in a laptop and are, when charged, concentrated packages of many hundreds even or thousands of kilowatt hours of energy.  

Unlike petrol, that is relatively safe as it consumes limited available oxygen to release its energy, battery energy may be immediately released in the event of an accident or electrical breakdown.  Carrying a battery storing about the same energy as just 13 litres of petrol is roughly equivalent to carrying the explosive in a US 500 Pound Bomb [13 litres of Petrol = 116kWh  = 418.4 MJ = 100kg TNT];  capable of destroying a substantial building.  Because of this danger the batteries need elaborate built in electronics and must be compartmentalised with intermediate current limiting devices to ensure that any failure is contained to one section.

 

While every effort is made to avoid safety issues the technology is as yet unproven and could have a serious set-back should there be 'an incident'.  Anyone who has seen what happens when a standard car battery explodes will take pause.

 

 

Electric Trains

 

 

Largely because of electricity’s convenience and low emissions, electric trains, trams and trolley buses are already widely used in urban areas. And because electricity is difficult , and potentially dangerous, to store the great majority of urban and long distance electric vehicles are connected to the electricity grid using electrified rails or overhead conductors. 

In order to reduce resistive heating losses in these conductors, electric vehicles need to run at the highest voltage that is consistent with community safety.  When wires run in public streets the light rail supply is limited (to 600V DC on Melbourne trams and to 700V DC on the more modern Sydney light rail).  Heavy rail uses a more efficient higher voltage overhead supply (1500 volts DC in both New South Wales and Victoria – systems dating back to 1925).  DC was used because practical AC traction motors awaited the development of high voltage high current silicon thyristors in the 1960s’. 

If electric transport is to be expanded it would be very desirable that present system losses were minimised by the use of up-to-date technology. 

To achieve this and to increase energy efficiency it would be desirable that the supply voltage was raised and that AC was used.  But this would require a complete upgrade and replacement of all locomotives and commuter rolling stock in NSW (and Victoria).  Several other Australian States already use more recent technology.  Modern high-speed electric trains and heavy goods locomotives typically use 25,000V, 50Hz AC, for their overhead conductors.  This is an argument for a separate ‘very fast train’ passenger, and separate high voltage freight network (Brisbane to Melbourne via Sydney).  And rather than invest in more outmoded heavy rail suburban transport it would be a good idea to install modern metros in Sydney, Newcastle and possibly Wollongong.

A suburban Metro in Newcastle could preserve the controversial existing rail easement to Newcastle Station while allowing its paving as a pedestrian mall, across which people and cars could amble, as they do across tramways in Melbourne.  The Newcastle Metro might eventually be connected to Sydney via a very fast passenger line, taking a coastal route with appropriate tunnels and viaducts.  It might run east of Gosford and cross the Hawkesbury from Pearl Beach to West Head and then East to join a new northern beaches Metro line before passing through Ryde (the main Sydney Hub) and on to Melbourne.  It could connect to this Metro line at say Ingleside or Terry Hills.

For Example:

 

 

 

 

 

The northern beaches Metro is needed now and would run through: Narrabeen; Brookvale; North Manly; Seaforth; and Cremorne; to North Sydney. This is similar the the route that Sydney's trams once ran. 

 

 

Liquid Petroleum Gas

 

 

As an alternative to diesel and petrol, liquid petroleum gas (LPG) is already widely used for transportation.  Australia’s reserves of LPG are far greater than those of petroleum oil but these are largely exported and could be depleted at about the same time as oil runs out.  LPG is a mixture of propane and butane.  It is possible to produce these gases by coal gasification but because not all the gases produced from coal, including hydrogen, are easily compressed the best method of achieving this would be a co-generation plant to produce electricity and transport gasses.

Many of these technologies will become economic as the price of petroleum rises after ‘peak oil’.  Coal substitution technologies will soften the impact of peak oil.  But because of relatively easy substitution, the coal price is linked to the price of petroleum.  It is certain that as the cost of petroleum increases, so will the price of coal.  As a result the cost of coal fired electricity is likely to rise substantially in the next two decades. 

Coming on top of this are present concerns about carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect.  These will certainly lead to a carbon tax in the near future resulting in additional cost pressures on fossil energy sources.  But although carbon taxes will bring on alternative energy sources more quickly and slow the rate of carbon dioxide release, the use of taxes to prevent exploitation (rather than simply making it more expensive) is probably politically untenable and impossible to enforce worldwide.  Thus unless a lower cost alternative is developed, making the remaining reserves uneconomic to extract, coal and oil reserves will still be fully exploited, releasing the same amount of carbon dioxide as before (albeit at a higher price and over a slightly longer time frame).

 

 

Sustainable energy

 

 

 

It is hoped a carbon tax will make a variety of alternative energy sources and transport technologies economically viable.  Chief amongst these is the fission of uranium and its daughters (nuclear power).  It is already the principal source of electricity in over half a dozen countries including France, Belgium, Sweden and Finland and a very significant contributor in Japan, Korea, Canada and several States of the USA. There are presently over 400 commercial plants running and another 60 under construction worldwide.   After coal, nuclear power is the largest source of electricity in the world.  It is the only realistic contender, at current prices, as a replacement for fossil fuel. 

But fission power is not renewable energy.  Easily available uranium reserves are limited.  Although fissile material is very wide spread there are limited sources in sufficient concentrations to make extraction economic.   The lifespan of reserves can be extended considerably using fast-breeder technology but this is more dangerous and lends itself more easily to weapons making.

The principal sources of sustainable energy in Australia today are biomass /biogas and hydroelectric power.  For example, wood burning still provides over 25 times the energy supplied by wind, the next largest source.  The contribution wind and solar make is still insignificant (less than 0.2%).

But solar power shows great promise, particularly in warm temperate areas with low cloud cover such as can be found in Australia, the United States and Southern Europe.  Where these are distant from areas of high population density, solar power stations could be used to generate hydrogen, manufacture aluminium, titanium or other energy intensive materials.

Solar power is close to being economic in many situations, particularly for domestic electricity supply where it has the advantage of no grid losses and a relatively easy match of collector area (supply) to demand.  But in high latitudes and where cloud cover is typically high, sunlight hours can be very short.  In some northern cities a collector that covered the entire map would not receive as much energy as they use (as one wit observed, it would be very dark under the collector) and in many tropical areas almost continuous cloud reduces the practicality of solar even for domestic use. 

The ideal solar power station would be located where there is no cloud cover and there is 24 hours of daylight.  So solar power may be most effectively implemented, on the scale required, if collected in space and the energy sent to earth by microwave.  If this could be implemented it might satisfy our energy needs indefinitely.  But dangers include its potential use as a weapon (death ray), accidents and environmental damage that might result.  It would obviously be a very technology intensive solution.

Some states (California) and countries (Denmark) have embraced wind, geothermal (Iceland) or wave power as a solution.  But the available resources are at least two orders of magnitude too small to provide for world energy needs, particularly if we need to substitute electricity for oil as transport fuel.  They are interesting sideshow used to establish ‘green credentials’ but can go nowhere near satisfying the energy demands of the developing world. 

Of course corporations manufacturing and promoting the proliferation of wind turbines (eg in California and Denmark) like to talk about how many houses a wind farm will supply; failing to mention that domestic energy demand is little more than twelve percent of the total demand and at the present time wind can go nowhere near meeting even that demand without a substantial input from gas and or other forms of combustion.  If land transport is to be predominantly run on electricity in future, present electricity generation capacity will need to expand by three or four times.  This is completely beyond the availability, let alone capability, of wind energy.

Alternative energy (particularly wind power) is often accompanied by understated environmental and other costs that would become all too apparent if scaled up to anything like present oil or nuclear energy sources.  Although some may be economic as energy prices rise, particularly in isolated areas, they can contribute very little to our overall energy needs.  They can effectively be ignored as significant elements in a broader world energy strategy to sustain human civilisation and power its future economic growth and survival.

Most informed commentators since the 1970s have taken it as obvious that the use of fossil fuels is but an interim solution to humanity’s future energy needs.  They have pointed out that there is more than enough energy available for all our needs from the sun and from deuterium in the oceans. 

Deuterium (heavy hydrogen) provides the energy released by the hydrogen bomb (and the sun).  This was first demonstrated at Bikini atoll, rather spectacularly, in 1952.

 

 

 

Deuterium is obtained from heavy water extracted from the sea.  The economic reserves are effectively limitless. 

But to harness this energy safely is very difficult and we still have not mastered it.  It will require a nuclear power stations that are much more sophisticated than those we possess today.  In order to accomplish this we will need a great need number of trained engineers and physicists.  We were on the way to achieving this with the advent of nuclear power using fission technology, but a series of early accidents, combined with its use by irresponsible politicians and generals to kill people and damage the environment, gave nuclear opponents the opportunity to block this direction of progress in several advanced economies. 

 

 

Bio-fuels

 

 

Of course solar is the source from which bio-fuels gain their energy.  But the contribution of bio-fuels is presently strictly limited by resource availability (suitable land and water).  Under present technologies they compete for resources with food production and are even leading to the further destruction of natural forest. As they are never likely to contribute more than a few percent of our transport energy requirements some critics are already questioning government market interference aimed at their expansion.  But biotechnology may offer solutions that could make bio-fuel a possible serious contender as replacement transport fuel.  Genetically modified algae are one promising area of research.

GM also offers potential solutions for the development of new food crops that would require less energy, convert solar energy more efficiently and potentially absorb carbon dioxide at a greater rate extending the possible use of coal.  But again at the opponents need to be reassured or quieted.

 

 

There is now a more extensive analysis of alternative energy sources on this website [Read here...]

 

 

Population

 

 

 

Finally we have to consider the impact of population.  And here A Crude Awakening is excessively diplomatic about the solutions, and perhaps over pessimistic about likely starvation and social collapse.  

There is no doubt that the world is presently overpopulated. 

Human beings have existed in our modern form for perhaps 70,000 years.  For all but the last 200 years the human population has been less than a billion and for most of recorded history has been less than half a billion.  We presently number over six and a half billion and it can be fairly said that human beings are in plague proportions.

Natural resources, of which coal and oil are just the tip of the iceberg, are presently being consumed at an unsustainable rate, without any concern for the future. 

Demographers now believe that the world population will reach nine and a half billion by 2050 but should then begin to decline.  Most western countries have already reached underlying zero population growth and continued population growth is due to ageing and immigration in these areas.  The single biggest factor in this has been the empowerment of women through equal education of boys and girls and giving girls control of their own reproduction.

There is every probability that the most populous country on the planet, China, will achieve a comparable standard of living and a ‘developed world’ demographic profile before 2050.  But there is less hope for the Indian subcontinent, Indonesia, the Philippines, Africa or South America where a large proportion of the population live in poverty.  Even developed countries often have a poor and ignorant underclass where population growth is often still out of control.

 

 

Poverty

 

 

As China’s experience demonstrates the practical solutions to poverty include some compulsion and some that reward desired behaviour.  These need to include modified ‘one child’ policies but have to be supported by policies to empower women to take control of their reproduction, including birth control knowledge and means, and abortion on demand.  Compulsory secular education, including basic science, needs to be enforced for all children between the ages of 5 and 15 preferably with opportunities provided for higher education, particularly for women. 

Undernourished and/or abused younger children need to be placed in crèches during the day where they can be fed and cared for properly while their parents work.  Unemployed parents need to be occupied while their children are at school, perhaps being given education in parenting or a trade, combined with work experience designed to increase their self esteem.

By these means we might hope to both, reduce or eliminate poverty and return the human population to a sustainable level of perhaps a few billion people by the end of the 23rd century.

But many of the high population growth countries and communities are in the sway of various cultural traditions and beliefs that are anathema to practical solutions, including female education and birth control.  Many of these traditions originally evolved to underwrite ancient hierarchical power structures. They are typically designed to create and support a supreme ruler and wealthy class and their priests and adherents inadvertently or deliberately perpetuate ideas that have evolved to maintain class distinctions and instil a culture of subservience.

 

 

Time to fix things

 

 

 

Some of the more dire outcomes of A Crude Awakening are further into the future than suggested and this provides time for technology and knowledge to provide solutions, something it often does very quickly.

If population is controlled and new technologies (like fusion and solar are developed) we may need to have no concerns for our children and grandchildren.  They will certainly see a lot of changes but then so have we.

Change is the spice of life, and in economic terms, change equals consumption and consumption equals production and that is the measure of the economy.   It is just that the means of providing the energy required will need to change.

Rather than destroying the economy, rebuilding a submerged or cyclone ravaged city or moving farming elsewhere stimulates economic activity.  On one hand some people may be financially injured but on the other hand people will be financially advantaged elsewhere and a bit of wealth, and hence power, redistribution is stimulating in itself.

Possibly some cities may be inundated, and people will continue to be upset by cyclones or drought or flood, some people may have to move off the land or onto the land or from the suburbs into high density accommodation, some people may even have to change their holiday or trip to work habits but all of these are just elements in a world of change. 

On a planet that is still geologically unstable, with a sun that varies in temperature and with planetary and galactic orbits that are not circular, and that as a consequence, is periodically visited by ice ages and temperatures much higher than at present, there can be no status quo, no lasting stability.  When the same planet is suddenly inflicted with one species that for most of its existence has not exceeded half a billion but is suddenly heading for nine billion and rapidly destroying the natural balance in the process, change will happen no matter what we do about energy. 

In conclusion, A Crude Awakening makes some very pertinent points.  In particular the world is about to change and this change is unavoidable.  But overall, the message of A Crude Awakening is just too bleak.   The main weakness though is that it fails to make the most important point strongly enough – we must first contain, and then reduce, world population.

 

 

 

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