Final Energy Crisis / Edition 2

by Sheila Newman

Overview

With oil reaching $100 a barrel in January 2008 and the US facing challenges to dollar hegemony, few people would now deny that there is an energy crisis and that it is linked to economic uncertainty. However, the mainstream lacks a theory to explain this apparently sudden challenge to optimistic expectations of long-term economic growth and an end to world poverty. The Final Energy Crisis provides political explanations to fill that gap.

The authors engage with depletion trends in oil, gas, coal, uranium, soil and biodiversity. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, they study energy trends, prospects, assets and liabilities in different political systems and regions, including the US, Venezuela, China, Africa, the ex-Soviet Union, North Korea, Japan, France and Australia. Far from being a doom-laden work on peak oil, this book offers practical suggestions for readers keen to be part of the solution to resource depletion.

This comprehensively updated edition includes 13 new chapters and thorough revisions of existing material.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780745327174
Publisher:	Pluto Press
Publication date:	07/28/2008
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Sheila Newman is an environmental sociologist and editor of articles on energy, population, land-use planning and resources. She co-edited the first edition of The Final Energy Crisis (Pluto Press, 2005). Her blog is at http://candobetter.org/sheila. She is also an environmental film-maker.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Introduction – In the Beginning

Sheila Newman

In the Beginning ...

The earth's atmosphere was unbreathable to humans. But that was okay, since there were no humans. Photosynthesizing cyanobacteria used sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into food, incidentally producing oxygen. The many microbially-mediated rocks (stromatolites) the bacteria left behind from their halcyon days indicate a cyanobacteria population explosion so vast that it seems likely that simple metabolism accidentally transformed the atmosphere to the one we love and overuse today. This "oxygen holocaust" probably also brought about the fossil status of our inadvertent benefactors around 2.5 billion years ago.

Incredibly the evolutionary serendipity from our point of view did not end there because cyanobacteria fats eventually formed the petroleum hydrocarbons which drive the sophisticated combustion engines of trains and boats and planes today.

Yes, if you hadn't already thought about it, the petroleum which fueled twentieth-century cleverness comes out of vast microbial cemeteries in the earth, most of which were formed during two periods of global warming 90 and 150 million years ago. Under pressure from subsequent sedimentation and other geological events, the bacterial corpses cooked, compressed and liquefacted, changing their chemical qualities. Many millions of years later, they became oil. While some of these processes continue today, no new oil reserves could have been created in the short time humans have been using this stuff up.

It is generally estimated that we humans have gone through about half the oil on earth but that our population and our economies have grown so huge that we will use up the most accessible part of the remainder in fewer than 30 years.

Before humans used petroleum for commercial fuel, they used coal. Before they used coal, they used wood. It is believed that the exhaustion of wood supplies led to the use of coal in Britain, where an abundance of iron occurred close to major coal deposits, which provided capital for the industrial revolution. The commercialization of coal accompanied the first big global leap in human population numbers and material consumption, and the formation of corporate structures, from around 1730, until coal was supplemented and overshadowed by petroleum. Petroleum came just in time, since widescale use of coal caused obvious pollution and sickness, visible in pea-soup fogs and in lung and other diseases.

The association of specific technologies with specific fuels, such as horse power with biomass (vegetable fuel), trains with coal, and cars, planes, and rockets with petrol and gas is fairly obvious. But because we think of our species as independent of natural laws, few of us associate human mass with fuel mass. The concept is as surprising at first as the concept that observed sub-atomic particles, like quarks and neutrinos, react to their human observers. We are not surprised to find that sub-atomic particles react to each other, but we forget that we are ourselves composed of sub-atomic particles. Similarly, we easily accept that abundant fossil fuel enriches society, but it does not occur to most of us that our mass and destiny reflect availability of fossil fuel. That is, that the shape and mass of human population is sculpted by coal and oil.

Around 1998 the concept of a final energy crisis (which had faded right into the background, particularly in the countries which adopted Reagan-Thatcherite economic policies after the 1973 oil shock) started to come back on the Anglophone radar. In my own experience of this, it returned initially on internet groups, led by Hawaii-based Jay Hanson, a man with cyber-charisma even in plain text. He formed the Darwin List around this time and then the Dieoff List and then EnergyResources. He should be acknowledged for kicking off an important new energy science-focused intellectual movement on the emerging global internet. In his usual terse but effective style, he summarized the rules and our predicament at www. dieoff.org/synopsis.htm:

Energy is the capacity to do work (no energy = no work). Thus, the global economy is 100 percent dependent on energy – it always has been, and it always will be.

The first law of thermodynamics tells us that neither capital nor labor nor technology can "create" energy. Instead, available energy must be spent to transform existing matter (e.g., oil), or to divert an existing energy flow (e.g., wind) into more available energy. There are no exceptions to the thermodynamic laws!

The second law of thermodynamics tells us that energy is wasted at every step in the economic process. The engines that actually do the work in our economy (so-called "heat engines"; e.g., diesel engines) waste more than 50 percent of the energy contained in their fuel.

Energy "resources" must produce more energy than they consume, otherwise they are called "sinks" (this is known as the "net energy" principle). About 735 joules of energy is required to lift 15 kg of oil 5 meters out of the ground just to overcome gravity – and the higher the lift, the greater the energy requirements. The most concentrated and most accessible oil is produced first; thereafter, more and more energy is required to find and produce oil. At some point, more energy is spent finding and producing oil than the energy recovered – and the "resource" has become a "sink".

There is an enormous difference between the net energy of the "highly-concentrated" fossil fuel that powers modern industrial society, and the "dilute" alternative energy we will be forced to depend upon as fossil fuel resources become sinks.

No so-called "renewable" energy system has the potential to generate more than a tiny fraction of the power now being generated by fossil fuels!

This second edition of The Final Energy Crisis, like the first, explores those limits.

Presented here is a combination of topical, interspersed with technical, political, ecological, and economic articles about energy and society, all examining the idea that the twenty-first century isn't going to be a predictable continuation of the twentieth-century.

The book is divided into four parts: "Measuring Our predicament" (in a variety of ways), "Geopolitics" (is geology destiny?), "The Big Picture" (about "big" solutions), and "After Oil" (about how specific countries may deal with fossil fuel depletion.) Each part has its own introduction to give an idea of its purpose.

CHAPTER 2

101 Views from Hubbert's Peak

Sheila Newman

Anyone with a reputation to lose is cautious about pronouncing that global oil production may truly be peaking and that the world may really be heading for petroleum decline. "Peakniks" who sound the alarm every time the price of gasoline goes up risk the same fate as the little boy who cried wolf, with the citizens of the industrialized global community simply rolling their eyes and turning up their MP3 players.

Whilst experienced oil geologists like Jean Laherrère and Colin Campbell assert that global oil reserves estimations are overestimates, industry oil commentators imply that such "pessimism" about oil supply belongs to old men with outdated techniques and ideas. The rejoinder is that they would say that, wouldn't they, since they are still working for an industry that needs to push upbeat messages in order to sustain share prices.

The problem is that no one can get hold of a definitive data series on oil production from Mother Earth, and the data we have are commercially sensitive. Since the imagined consequences of oil decline range between a modest readjustment of lifestyle and a rapid descent into pan-cannibalism, catastrophe has to be almost upon us before anyone official is willing to risk causing civil panic, let alone corporate rage and investor alienation.

Nailing the global peak in total oil production is a work in progress, with a declining margin for error, which Seppo Korpela discusses in "Prediction of World Peak Oil Production" in this volume, but what about the per capita oil availability peak?

WE ARE DEMONSTRABLY WELL PAST THE PER CAPITA OIL AVAILABILITY PEAK

Although commercially sourced geological statistics are often unreliable and unverifiable in absolute terms, a wide variety of social indicators lends support to statistical records of worldwide and regional declines in per capita oil availability. By per capita oil availability, I mean the amount of oil produced annually divided by the number of people in the world.

Demographic records combined with historical geological records of oil exploration and extraction show that per capita growth in global petroleum energy extracted (defined with or without refined gas-liquids) began to fall shortly after 1978 and that the angle of decline increased from around 1980. Oil extraction rose again in the 1990s but has not kept up with population growth.

Per capita economic growth decline coincided with per capita oil production decline but this is not widely acknowledged. The Anglophone press, particularly, goes on (with one eye shut against the third world) pretending that "everyone" is getting richer.

But, how could this be when available global per capita oil (or oil and gas) appears to have been on a plateau since 1983?

STATISTICS WHICH INDICATE WIDESPREAD DECLINE IN ECONOMIC GROWTH FROM 1974

Not all economic statistics give the false impression that every day everything is getting better and better. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) economist Angus Maddison, for instance, developed a comparative quantitative framework for estimating economic growth across nations and regions going back to 1820. His statistics have an historic basis and use social as well as material indicators. They measure units of "purchasing power" rather than currency exchange rates. Although Maddison expected economic growth to continue through the twenty-first century and did not attribute economic growth to the availability of fossil fuel, his statistics broadly correlate with fossil fuel trends, independently corroborating expectations founded on peak oil/thermodynamic/ resource-based thinking.

Maddison divided world per capita economic growth (which he broke down into a variety of regions) into five phases between 1820 and 1992. According to his data and measures, economic growth was the greatest it had ever been from 1950 to 1973, but has been slowing ever since then. This can be seen in the logarithmic graph of world per capita gross domestic product (GDP) 1950–2003 (Figure 2.1).

Those familiar with peak oil theory will recognize that the great growth period of 1950–73 coincides with the massive expansion of the petroleum-based economy, known in France as "les trente glorieuses" and in English as "the long boom." This period of petroleumenhanced growth built on another period of unprecedented growth from around 1750, based on that other fossil fuel, coal.

Huge population growth accompanied both these periods. The coincidence of fossil fuel growth and population growth is obvious in Figure 2.2.

The decline of the rate of world per capita economic growth coincided with the first and second oil shocks (approximately 1973 and 1980). Since 1973 per capita economic growth has not "recovered" and unevenness of economic growth has increased.

Despite the conspicuous correlation between growth and fossil fuel resources from the time of the industrial revolution, the dependency of economic growth on fossil fuels is not widely recognized. Angus Maddison himself believed in the economic theory that growth has been "dematerialized" since the first oil shock, based on other statistics which show that calories of energy per production unit have decreased. How could two such opposing evidences coexist in the same world? More about this mystery later.

POPULATION GROWTH AND OIL PRODUCTION STATISTICS

World population increased between 1979 and 2003 by about 44 percent. Global per capita oil production peaked in 1979 at 0.73 tonnes (US metric tons, or 1,000 kg) per person then dropped by around 14 percent in 1983 to 0.58 tonnes per person, according to British Petroleum's historical timeline series, which starts in 1965.

But, if we were to limit our definition of oil to "crude" (the liquid stuff that comes out of the underground reservoirs plus "condensates" – any associated gases which liquefy under surface atmospheric pressure) which was essentially the pre-1970s definition of oil, the drop would look a lot more severe.

It seems that, in the 1970s, what was generally understood as "oil" was redefined from "crude" to include liquid products of natural gas, as reflected by the two main Anglophone publishers of statistics collected from the industry.

These publishers are the Energy Information Administration (EIA), which publishes the "official energy statistics from the US Government," and British Petroleum (BP). In the EIA statistics the definition of crude is confined to lease condensates and excludes natural gas plant liquids, such as butane and propane, which are recovered at downstream natural gas processing plants or facilities. BP's widely accessible statistics simply appear to include all natural gas as oil. The EIA has another category, "Oil supply," which comprises, as well as crude oil, most other liquids from gas as well as liquids from coal, oil shale, tar sands and bitumen, and includes ethanol.

Where gases have been redefined as oils, there is the semblance of an oil plateau, albeit saddle-shaped, situated between 1988 and 2006 at around 0.6 for BP, and climbing only slightly from 0.65 for EIA "Oil supply," despite its wide definitional catchment. The lower thick black line, which would have been the only measure of our oil supply in the 1960s, has declined overall since 1989. Remember that growing difficulties in oil extraction lower the energy returned on the energy invested (EROEI) for oil, or its net energy value to the world, but increase prices for consumers.

Figure 2.3 gives three curves, with the lower one (the thick black line) the basic crude (and lease condensates) that the EIA has put out since 1960. The middle (heavy gray) curve represents what BP publishes as "oil," and the highest curve (thin black) shows that the EIA arrives at a somewhat higher figure for gas liquids than BP.

The purpose of this graph is to show how much of the per capita oil plateau has been made up of gas. More every year. (Colin J. Campbell goes more deeply into the production of oil and the production, collection and publication of related statistics in his chapters in this volume.)

For these reasons some oft-quoted oil statistics can make us feel that things aren't as bad as they might seem. It makes sense then to look at other indicators as well – economic, social, and political – which may reflect a reality which the statistics themselves conceal.

NATURAL GAS, ALREADY FILLING IN FOR OIL

Natural gas is a complex of gases, mostly hydrocarbons, which are most often found mixed with, floating on, or near to crude oil reserves. The oil explorers considered it a nuisance. They just wanted to get at the heavy wet stuff that was so convenient to package and sell. So nearly all gases used to be "flared off" (burned off into the atmosphere) because gases are difficult to capture, refine on site, and transport. "Lease condensates" have been counted in with crude for a long time because, although they are gases below the ground, they conveniently condense and liquefy as they emerge into the cooler surface atmosphere.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Final Energy Crisis"
by .
Copyright © 2008 Sheila Newman.
Excerpted by permission of Pluto Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction - In The Beginning

PART I: MEASURING OUR PREDICAMENT
Introduction
1. Views From Hubbert's Peak, by Sheila Newman
2. Prediction Of World Peak Oil Production, by Seppo A Korpela (Ohio State University)
3. Appendix To Prediction Of World Oil Production, by Seppo A Korpela (Ohio State University)
4. The Assessment And Importance Of Oil Depletion, by Colin J Campbell
5. Coal Resources Of The World, by Seppo A Korpel (Ohio State University)

PART II: GEOPOLITICS
Introduction: Geodestinies And Geodeterminism, by Sheila Newman
6. The Caspian Chimera, by Colin J Campbell
7. Update To The Caspian Chimera, by Sheila Newman
8. Battle Of The Titans, by Mark Jones
9. Dark Continent, Black Gold, by Andrew Mckillop
10. The Chinese Car Bomb, by Andrew Mckillop
11. Venezuela, Chavez & Latin-American Oil On The World Stage, by Sheila Newman

PART III: THE BIG PICTURE - FALSE SOLUTIONS, HOPES AND FEARS
Introduction
12. No Choice But International Energy Transition, by Andrew Mckillop
13. Population, Energy And Economic Growth, The Moral Dilemma, by Ross Mccluney (University of Central Florida)
14. Renewable Energy Limits, by Ross Mccluney (University of Central Florida)
15. Peak Soil, by Alice Friedemann
16. Notes On Terra Preta, by Sheila Newman
17. Nuclear Fission Power Options, by Sheila Newman
18. Fusion Illusions, by Michael Dittmar (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich)
19. Geothermal, by Sheila Newman

PART IV After Oil
Introduction
20. France And Australia After Oil, by Sheila Newman
21. North Korea: The Limits Of Fossil Energy-Based Agricultural Systems - What North Korea Tells Us About Our Future, by Antony Boys (Tohoku University, Japan)
22. How Will Japan Feed Itself Without Fossil Energy?, by Antony Boys (Tohoku University, Japan)
23. The Simpler Way, by Ted Trainer (University of New South Wales)
24. In The End: Thermodynamics And The Necessity Of Protecting The Natural World, by Sheila Newman

Short Glossary
Notes On Contributors
Index