The Energy Grid Blog is managed and written entirely by Seed editors and expert guest bloggers. Read more about them Energy security and environmental sustainability aren't just two sides of the same coin, they're two aspects of the same principle. We all want to be able to forget about the threat of losing what we have. The challenge that comes with our reliance on fossil fuels is, at its core, all about finding alternatives that we don't have to worry about. Renewable sources. Clean sources. Domestic sources.
Civilization should be concerned with more than just a reliable and affordable source of energy. Government should be devoted to ensuring a fair crack at peace, order, justice, health, liberty, equality, fraternity, and, if you prefer, the pursuit of happiness. That's quite enough to fill the legislative agenda of our elected representatives, without piling on the need to locate, guard and exploit energy.
And yet, governments everywhere are obsessed by necessity with energy. How did we get here?
By not acknowledging two facts that have been widely known for more a long time. First, sooner or later we're going to run out of organic fossil fuels. Second, returning all that carbon to the atmosphere several orders of magnitude faster than it was removed will produce profound changes to the biosphere.
Some have argued that it's just bad luck that we're only figuring out just how much we've altered the carbon budget and heat balance of the planet now, when it might be too late to jump off this particular train without suffering fatal injuries. But that's simply not true.
In 1896 Svante Arrhenius painstakingly calculated, by hand, that doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would increase the global average temperature 5-6°C. Last year, NASA's chief climatologist, James Hansen, and his colleagues reached the same conclusion , although their methods and assumptions were both far more complex. Back in Arrhenius' time CO2 levels were beneath 300 parts per million, today's they're around 387 ppm.
Bad luck is also blamed for the reality that oil and gas reserves are just a tad bit too small to see us through to the point where clean and renewable sources of energy become affordable. This also ignores essential history.
In 1948, M. King Hubbert used statistics and plain old common sense to point out that we can only keeping increasing the rate at which we extract oil from the ground for so long. At some point -- a point that can be anticipated with a fair degree of accuracy -- that rate will peak, and then decline. The growing consensus is that we're very close to that peak right now, if we haven't already passed it by.
It's not like the precarious spot we find ourselves in now should come as a surprise to anyone. If we had started getting serious about breaking our addiction to fossil fuels half a century ago, photovoltaics would be cheap as dirt by now. Neither is the real problem a lack of scientific understanding of ecological limits or the scale of fossil fuel reserves. The real problem is society's collective refusal to pay attention to the facts.
Nowhere is this peculiar species of distraction more abundant than in the U.S., where last year nearly half the electorate supported a campaign that embraced as its most popular slogan, "Drill, baby, drill." The country dodged a bullet there, but the rhetoric of denial persists.
Denialism and childish, wishful thinking at this late stage are perhaps the greatest threats to genuine energy security and climate stability. Ignorance is excusable for those facing more immediate concerns, such as putting food on the table or guarding against suicide bombers. It is unforgivable for a civilization that can afford to buy 17 million iPhones in little more than two years.
We all want the same thing: to not worry about energy. The challenge is to convince the pseudoskeptics, including those sitting in Congress and the boardrooms of industry, that we haven't reached that point yet.
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We all want the same thing: to not worry about energy.
Except for those of us who want the rest of us to pay them for "their" energy - at worrisome rates which they alone control.
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | May 12, 2009 2:30 PM
" The energy " she(it) is there. Her name is nuclear power. In when the electric motor car of the carnivals? Cars which circulate under a wire netting electrified with a pantograph. Quite silently. Batteries(drum kits) are reloaded to go outside cities.
IT IS the future.
Posted by: humorix | May 12, 2009 2:53 PM
"The growing consensus is that we're very close to that peak right now, if we haven't already passed it by."
This is hardly a consensus. Most professionals in the oil patch (specifically those that are involved in estimating remaining resources for governments or oil-and-gas companies so they can build policy) think we're not there yet. Furthermore, I'm referring to professionals that use geology-based models.
Hubbert's methodology is seriously flawed in that it's pretty static -- by that I mean that it doesn't take into account advances in engineering. His widely touted prediction of peak US production in 1972 serves as a good example. This was Hubbert's high-case prediction. High cases are normally reserved for what's on the upper fringe of likelihood. Thus, Hubbert's estimate for most likely peak production, which was 1965, fell well short of reality. Furthermore, when Alaska is included, the peak stretches towards 1980, which is 15 years after Hubbert predicted it was most likely. Engineering increases long-term production through increased recovery and access to other regions that couldn't be drilled before, like the Arctic, and now deepwater. In reality, oil-patch technology is dynamic and not static. And, costs come down with time, eventually making expensive oil plays into affordable oil plays.
Hubbert's "peak" will likely not be a peak at all but a plateau (ie. we won't experience a rapid fall in production, but a period of sustained flat production) which will probably start sometime shortly before or after 2020. Other than reserve additions in existing fields (which are where the bulk of additions actually come from, not discoveries), the big new oil reserves being added are in the form of deepwater deposits which take a long time to bring online, as will new discoveries in the Arctic. They're vast in size but take a long time to get the oil out of them, much like the oil sands in Canada and Bakken oil in the mid-west US.
Finally, as the world discovers vast new reserves of natural gas, we discover vast new reserves of natural-gas liquids, which can take some of the load off of oil.
So, the real problem is going to be demand outstripping supply, not falling supply. It's a problem, of course, but it's not the doomsday scenario many people are painting.
And believe me, I'm not advocating extraction of oil from the oil sands, I'm just saying that there are plenty of resources we can damage the world with.
Lastly, the Raymond James opinion that's cited in the article refers to production peaking in the first-quarter of last year. That's like saying you can determine world-temperature trends based on short-term data, much like how climate skeptics refer to "cooling" since 1998 or 2001. I wouldn't take that evidence seriously.
Posted by: Miguelito | May 12, 2009 6:51 PM
Excuse me if I'm wrong, Miguelito, but I think you are mistaking : Alaskan production never managed to raise the overall US oil production, only to slow the decline. IIRC, the US peak is still 1971, only 6 years after what Hubbert thought, and a lot less than your estimated 15 years.
As for the new regions, let's be honest, we all know that discoveries of new oil have been for some time very low and lower than current consumption for a long time. (peak discoveries in the 60s, which doesn't fit with the "we keep finding new oil every year" rethorics.
We won't know if petroleum production peaked back in 2008 or will in 2015 or 2020 until we are past that. But do not dismiss the early predictions. Better prepare earlier and have more time than previously thought. A pessimist is never dissapointed!
As for the real problem, I think in our current times of economic crisis, we have a glimpse of what peak oil can look like. It won't be a matter of demand outstripping supply (because in the real world, consumption of a commodity can never outstrip production), but most of the world unable to afford these prices, very high inflation, decreased industrial output, increased unemployment and poverty worldwide except maybe in oil exorting nations.
Maybe the world's economy, in its current shape, simply cannot afford petroleum over $100/bl ? In which case the talk about ultra-deep and extremely expensive alternatives is a pointless talk. Retrofitting the economy, not the technologies, should be our goal.
Posted by: Topolino | May 13, 2009 1:38 AM
I think the comment by Miguelito illustrates the point of the article perfectly. The peak for the US lower 48 states was within the range predicted by Hubbert (he didn't include Alaska). But the message is not that the peak may be year X or year Y. Rather, it is that fossil fuels, like all resources, are finite. Miguelito appears to believe that if we scrabble around for bits and pieces of oil, we can continue to grow production for another 11 years (despite almost no growth in the last 5 years) and that there will be no problem with a plateau. This is wishful thinking, whether it turns out to be true or not. However, even if it turns out to be true, for how long will it be true?
For a world obsessed with economic growth, the fact that we live on a finite planet will come as an horrendous shock. There are limits here but people like Miguelito would prefer to bury their heads in the sand until there is no time, and no resources, for adaptation to a more resource constrained civilization. It's tragic, in the extreme, that there appear to be so few people who accept reality.
Posted by: Tony | May 13, 2009 5:51 AM
I think that there's an easy way for the U.S. to refute Hubbert's theory: Make Saudi Arabia the 51st state. Voila, problem solved.
Posted by: Wisco | May 13, 2009 9:03 AM
No, Tony, there's not only one earth to draw resources from, nor is there any reason to believe that we won't continue to substitute new materials for old processes. I call your "sustainability" sham for what it is -intellectual, cultural, and physical death. At high technology with vast resources of energy available, the Earth would be able to sustainably carry far more people than with low tech. You know this and want those other people -some of whom haven't even been born yet and have done nothing to you - to die - and you probably don't particularily care if its by starvation or one of the other four horsemen.
Forgive me if I look for technological solutions out of the PO mess. It's much more humane to do and much more of an inspiring hope for a future that doesn't involve living in small tribes.
Posted by: Clarence | May 13, 2009 10:00 AM
As much as we should charge ahead figuring out how to replace fossils with renewables, lost in the debate is the fact that our energy efficiency over all is a pathetic 13%. In fossil-based power plants, it is usually not more than 30%, even though with tweaking of regulations and incentives, it could be 90%.
What's mind-boggling is the incredible waste in our fossil energy use, even as we know the fuel is rapidly running out.
Posted by: Biotunes | May 13, 2009 11:36 AM
Having been a true optimist (cornucopian, for those who love that term) and a true pessimist (doomer, as they call themselves) after discovering peak oil, I now find myself somewhere in the middle.
Clarence and Tony are partly right and wrong, both of them. But there's a fairly large quantity of options between going back to living in tribes and harvesting uranium from the surface of Pluto.
Let's face it : neither of these are gonna happen. But the pessimists have something to teach us : caution. The overly optimists, with their deep-space fantasies, have nothing to offer except wild dream, that THEY won't sure make happen.
Posted by: Topolino | May 13, 2009 11:44 AM
"Excuse me if I'm wrong, Miguelito, but I think you are mistaking : Alaskan production never managed to raise the overall US oil production, only to slow the decline. IIRC, the US peak is still 1971, only 6 years after what Hubbert thought, and a lot less than your estimated 15 years."
You're right, but it's more complicated than looking at a single point. When you look at the production curve with Alaskan production included (http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/gene/peakoil/usoil.gif) look for where the smoothed peak should sit. Definitely not in 1971, but closer to 1980. And notice the shape of the curve: production plateaued for a good 14 years before beginning to go through significant declines starting around 1985. It kind of illustrates my point: world production is probably going to plateau as we go into areas we couldn't before. And, again, on an annual basis, we currently add far more oil to the world's reserves through reserve additions in existing fields than through new discoveries. That's a function of technology (water injection and enhanced oil recovery as two examples -- we get lower rates, but can prolong production).
Yes, I don't think the world can really work that well on $100/barrel per oil either, but, when it's profitable to extract oil from the oil sands in some of the projects for less than $50/barrel, same with Bakken oil, there's plenty of production we can add on if oil is $75/barrel. And deepwater drilling and production costs will keep coming down as well.
I'm not saying we shouldn't conserve. Again, at some point, demand is going to outstrip supply and we should prepare for that. What I am saying is that a lot of the doomsday talk doesn't consider the advances in science that occur in the oil patch. In a way, it's like looking at agriculture and not including advances in agricultural practices. There's only so much arable land to go around, but we all know we can increase outputs through other means. There's a limit somewhere, but you don't just say "we've got no place new to grow crops, therefore we'll never increase agricultural output again".
Posted by: Miguelito | May 13, 2009 6:34 PM
"For a world obsessed with economic growth, the fact that we live on a finite planet will come as an horrendous shock. There are limits here but people like Miguelito would prefer to bury their heads in the sand until there is no time, and no resources, for adaptation to a more resource constrained civilization. It's tragic, in the extreme, that there appear to be so few people who accept reality."
Nice to know I've got my head in the sand and can't accept reality.
Part of my job is to do resource assessments. As such, I must be familiar with advantages and disadvantages of several methods. The flaws in Hubbert's method are well known. One of the problems is that there isn't much science behind it (and by that I don't mean that it's not scientific, I just mean that it's a neat statistical trick on a very limited dataset and doesn't take into consideration the nuances of oil and gas resources). Using Hubbert's method to estimate ultimate resources available, you make a projection from production data and only production data. There's no consideration at all to geology or engineering. None. As such, Hubbert linearization leads to pessimistic ultimate totals because it can't envision beyond the status quo. What couldn't be exploited ten or twenty years ago can be exploited now and we can get better recoveries out of it as time goes on.
As for Alaska, again, he missed it. Could have it been predicted? Not with Hubbert's methodology it couldn't, because the production data he would have used didn't exist since Prudoe Bay wasn't discovered until 1968, well after Hubbert did his study. Again, technology made it possible because they couldn't explore there in the 1950s.
Another point: his most likely scenario for ultimate US oil to be produced was 150 billion barrels, his high case was 200 billion barrels. How much has the US produced as of today? Since 1920, the US has produced almost 196 billion barrels and I can't find data for before that. Furthermore, there's still lots left to be produced, albeit the US is obviously on the downswing.
So you can say that I've got my head in the sand and can't accept reality all you want.
Posted by: Miguelito | May 13, 2009 8:38 PM
"Miguelito appears to believe that if we scrabble around for bits and pieces of oil, we can continue to grow production for another 11 years (despite almost no growth in the last 5 years) and that there will be no problem with a plateau."
I did not say there would be no problem with a plateau. Exact words: "So, the real problem is going to be demand outstripping supply, not falling supply. It's a problem, of course, but it's not the doomsday scenario many people are painting."
As for production being flat for the past five years, if an AGW-skeptic came buy and used the "there was no warming in global temperatures in the past five years, maybe even a slight cooling, therefore AGW is a hoax and we're entering a cooling period", would you buy their argument? You shouldn't, because it's been argued over and over, quite correctly, that the long term trend is more important than any potential noise in the dataset.
Posted by: Miguelito | May 13, 2009 8:45 PM
Try taking first year thermodynamics again Biotunes. Energy efficiency is limited fundamentally by the Carnot cycle. This is a best-case scenario for energy generation, in which efficiency e is limited by your hot (Th) and cold (Tc) temperatures:
e = 1 - Tc / Th
Assuming ambient temperature as Tc (the only option, can't be changed), to obtain a 90% efficiency you'd need a hot source at almost 3000K. And that's BEST case scenario.
There's a reason power generation is only 30% efficient.
Of course, if you're talking about the ratio of 'real' efficiency to 'potential' efficiency, then that's different. But in that case the numbers for commercial coal stations are actually pretty good; economically speaking, there's no point burning coal that costs you money if you don't make as much money from it as possible.
As for Clarence, technology can't offer a solution to the second law of thermodynamics, or to the conservation of matter and energy. The only renewable energy source on a solar time scale is the sun (hydro sources are essentially just low efficiency large area gathering solar sources). Look at a shorter time scale and you can add geothermal. Every other energy source is constrained by particle conservation laws. Once you dig up all the coal and oil and uranium, that's it.
Of course, you could make an argument that the timescale for 'peak non renewables' is sufficiently long, and further make an argument that the various side-effects (such as anthropogenic global warming) can be sufficiently mitigated. But you can't avoid quoting your timescale. For nuclear, you're looking at hundreds of years. For oil, the next hundred. For coal and gas, quite a lot longer, but side effects of coal in particular will get you in that time period.
If, Clarence, you're referring to solar technology solutions, then fine. That's a pretty significant barrier though; I hope we'll see it in our lifetimes but I won't put money on it.
Posted by: Nils Ross | May 14, 2009 12:35 AM
Miguelito, it is obvious that the Hubbert technique for predicting the peak is not working that well anymore.
However :
-other "peakists" are using different methods IIRC, Campbell, Laherrère and others have been using different methods, resource-based methods, etc. I'm not a geologist or an expert on the subject, and you probably know a lot more than me about it.
-a worldwide peak will occur, indeniably. some say it has already happened, others put it in the 10s, the 20s, the 30s. Who knows ? but there will be a plateau.
- you acknowledged that we should start conserving at "some point". This is gonna be news to many : "some point" is now, not later. We all know what will happen if we wait.
Now, since you are an expert, try to put yourself in the shoes of someone who hears both the optimists and the pessimists.
If you believe the pessimists, you are going to think that you, personally, need to change your habits now, not later, and you are going to make a difference, be it in heating less, using your feet/a bike/public transportations wherever available and carpooling.
If you listen to someone like yourself, Miguelito, what will you think ? "Oh, it's a future problem. We'll start changing habits... later!" (side note : "later" = never!).
We need more doomsayers. If most people in the industry were doomsayers, we'd avert doom. But overoptimistic talk will certainly make the doomsayers right, eventually.
People need to understand that our current energy is virtually free. It still was at 150$/bl. It will still be at 300$/bl, if you compare it with historical "costs" (hard to define, considering "energy" and "money" meant something different back then). To have a long-term approach that is realistically positive, energy should cost 10, perhaps 20 times as much as it does now.
Don't sugar-coat the truth of the world's energy predicament. In this area as in all the others, the observer changes the experiment.
Posted by: topolino | May 16, 2009 10:14 AM
Well, if we consider the increase of the temperature it’s worth to say that global warming is natural phenomena. Still very dangerous to humankind and other creatures. For few last centuries we didn't care much about it as we weren't aware of what was happening. Now we try to revert negative results of our actions what is not only difficult but - as far as I know - almost impossible. What we can do is to slow dawn ill effects.
This issue is now considered not only as the matter of environment but also global economy (what a surprise...) and even politics (justified as it seems it's still a trump card...). Yet just a few positive changes were done. As for me some (mighty) people are short-sighted, focused on the profits they have now. There are ways to acquire 'green' and renowable energy resource but, as long as we won't think of the matter as a long lasting - not much can be done.
Posted by: wybory sondaze demokracja | May 17, 2009 5:09 AM
"Government should be devoted to ensuring a fair crack at peace, order, justice, health, liberty, equality, fraternity, and, if you prefer, the pursuit of happiness."
The industrial age ushered in a huge increase in the ability of governments to provide peace, order, justice, health, liberty, equality, fraternity, and the pursuit of happiness. Energy is the engine that drives the world economy. Modern methods of farming, mining, manufacturing, and distribution are all energy intensive activities. The growing need to desalinate water and to irrigate arid lands to meet the demands of a growing population are also energy intensive activities. Either we find an affordable, safe, replacement for fossil fuels or we face of future of decreasing options and increasing violence as nation-states fight over the control of decreasing fossil fuel reserves.
Posted by: Kevin | May 17, 2009 12:43 PM