English for BusinessIIb. Resources overview

(completion, 3.10.2011)

Karl Seeley, PhD

Hartwick College

From March 3

• Overview of history of growth of energy use

• Relative roles of different types of energy• Overview of attributes of energy types

For today

• EROEI• Resource problems

– Limitations on exhaustibles– Climate change– Ecosystem condition

EROEI

• Energy Return On Energy Invested– Energy contained in a source ready to be

used, divided by energy expended to get it there

• One measure of the physical cost of an energy source

• Interaction between physical properties and technology

Resource problems

• Limitations of exhaustibles• Climate change• Stressed ecosystems

“Peak Oil”

• At some point, annual oil production must reach a peak– That’s implicit in exhaustible resource

• Are we there yet?– Depends on your definition

Liquid fuels

• Oil itself is diverse in quality and accessibility• There are similar hydrocarbons

– Condensate, Natural Gas Liquids (NGL)

• There are non-petroleum-derived liquids– Ethanol, biodiesel

• “Liquids” have maybe plateaued, clearly not peaked

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7522

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7241

Fig 2. World production of “all liquids.” Image from "Oilwatch Monthly"

Oil, not liquids

• If you focus on oil, then we haven’t yet made it back to level of July 2008

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7241

Fig 1. World production of conventional oil. Image from "Oilwatch Monthly"

Oil, not liquids

• If you focus on oil, then we haven’t yet made it back to level of July 2008– Ethanol has lower energy per volume than oil

• So expanding “liquids” by replacing oil with ethanol may not mean increasing available energy

– Ethanol and biodiesel have lower EROEI than oil• So more of what we have is going to keep extracting

energy

Conventional oil, not just oil

• Conventional oil:– On-shore or shallow water (not deep)– Liquid (not tar or shale)– Relatively sweet (not too much sulfur)

• As you violate these conditions, costs go up– Monetary, but also environmental damage and

CO2 per unit energy

http://planetforlife.com/oilcrisis/oilsituation.html

Fossil alternatives to oil

• Coal: outlier predictions that a peak is near, but consensus is for a large supply

• Gas: looked scarce until improvement of shale technology– Maybe abundant, but EROEI is weaker, and

bigger concerns about water pollution• Deepwater oil, tar sands, oil shales

– Total quantities 2x, 3x “conventional” oil

Peak cheap oil

• We probably have enough fossil fuel to keep current rate of expansion for a few more decades

• But 20th century growth happened with oil that was physically cheap

• How much do our economies depend on that?– Rather than on imperfect substitutes

The climate wrench

• Climate change is a different problem:• Even if we have lots of fossil fuel, we don’t

want to use much of it• What are the alternatives?

Wind again• In theory, can replace coal-fired electricity

– Currently more expensive than coal• Though coal doesn’t have to pay for the costs it

imposes through climate impact

– Intermittency/storage problem is big• Norway preparing to offer “balancing services”

– Turn hydroelectric on/off as needed to complement wind elsewhere in Europe

– Need high capacity cables – and water!» http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7404

Desert solar

• “Within six hours, deserts receive more energy from the sun than humankind consumes in a year.”– Dr. Gerhard Knies, http://www.desertec.org/en

• That’s true, but it’s dispersed– Concentrating it, upgrading to industrial quality, is

inherently expensive

• Interesting side benefits– Use seawater for cooling, produce fresh water

Nukes to the rescue

• A better fit for “business as usual” (BAU)• Predictable, controllable, base-load power

– But• How quickly can you build out?• How worried are you about operational accidents?• How serious do you think the waste/decommissioning

problem is?• How much uranium is there?

– This is greatly extended if you use breeder reactors

Biofuels

• Implications of large-scale replacement• EROEI• Carbon emissions

Large-scale biofuels• Food vs. fuel

– 41% of U.S. maize crop currently going to ethanol (=15% of global maize)

• http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40317079/ns/us_news-environment/

• But even more goes to animal feed– Europe might make ½ its gasoline if it stopped feeding

animals (FAOStat + author’s calculations)

• Global capacity?– Replacing world diesel capacity with palm oil

would take 12x global palm-oil acreage(Data from FAOStat + author’s calculations)

Low EROEI

• Biofuels have low EROEI– Corn ethanol ~1.2 (claims of ~0.8)

• Some of that is electricity an expensive way of turning coal into liquid fuel

– Biodiesel as high as ~4– Sugar-cane ethanol ~6

• Oil is currently ~20

Biofuels won’t drive as vibrant an economy

Downloaded 1/20/2010 from http://www.esf.edu/EFB/hall/

Basic limitations

• Low EROEI, low quantity is a problem for many alternatives to fossil fuels– Not just a biofuel problem

CO2 emissions

• Biofuels theoretically carbon-neutral

CO2 reduction

Carbon

Atmosphere

CO2 emissions

• Biofuels theoretically carbon-neutral– Burning the fuel releases CO2

CO2 reductionAtmosphere

CO2 emissions

• Biofuels theoretically carbon-neutral– Burning the fuel releases CO2

– But growing the plant pulled it from the air

• But fossil fuel is burned in growing, processing

• Converting forest land to oil palm releases huge amounts of CO2 – May outweigh CO2 reduction from replacing

petroleum• http://www.geog.le.ac.uk/carbopeat/press/pr2.html

Biomass in general

• At small scale, probably not problematic• But we’re not talking small scale

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NPP data from Marc L. Imhoff, Lahouai Bounoua, Taylor Ricketss, Colby Loucks, Robert Harriss, and William T. Lawrence, "Global patterns in human consumption of net primary production," Nature, vol 429, June 24 2004, pp. 870-873

Energy use data from U.S. Department of Energy, International Energy Out-look, May 2009, Table A.2

Biomass in general

• At small scale, probably not problematic• But we’re not talking small scale

– Global fossil fuel use is >1.5x total human appropriation of net primary production (NPP)

Food su

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Fibre

Wood (f

uel)

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onst)

Wood/fi

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non-fuel u

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total human appro

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Global use

"other"

Global fossi

l use

Global energ

y use

Annual NPP

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200NPP, human appropriation of NPP, and global energy use, 3

estimates

Lo

Mid

Hi

E J

NPP data from Marc L. Imhoff, Lahouai Bounoua, Taylor Ricketss, Colby Loucks, Robert Harriss, and William T. Lawrence, "Global patterns in hu-man consumption of net primary production," Nature, vol 429, June 24 2004, pp. 870-873

Energy use data from U.S. Department of Energy, International Energy Outlook, May 2009, Table A.2

Biomass in general

• At small scale, probably not problematic• But we’re not talking small scale

– Global fossil fuel use is >1.5x total human appropriation of net primary production (NPP)

– We’re taking 14-26% of NPP already• Most of that is not for energy• And it’s already causing 6th Extinction

– Don’t know how much we can take without accelerating collapse

Responses I: Efficiency

• Better insulation, better engines, etc.– Increased functionality with no increase in

energy use– But we need to reduce from current levels– And watch out for Jeavons’ paradox

• Smaller cars, smaller houses– This shades into …

Responses II: Doing with less

• Living closer to work and services– Rearranging settlement patterns to allow less

driving (less car-dependence)• More an issue in North America

– But getting worse here

• Diet changes– Mainly reduction in meat and animal products

Responses III: Price signals

• Big role for price signals in inducing efficiency and conservation– No judgment about choosing a distant

vacation or a big car– But you’re going to have to be very rich, or

give up a lot of other consumption to get those things

• At what point does this shade into slower GDP growth, or GDP decline?

Responses IV: Tech leap

– Big improvement in algal biofuel?– Cheaper photovoltaic cells?– Cheaper electricity storage?– ???

• Long-term economic growth has been associated with use of larger gradients

• Now talking about finessing smaller gradients– May be qualitatively different from experience

Dematerialization• The digital world promises production of

wealth without using much stuff– A nice idea, but people who get rich there

tend to buy physical things– Rich countries have only slightly “decoupled”

GDP growth from increased resource use• Some of that is in the ability to import from Asia,

where energy use is still rising quickly

– Metabolic vision of economy suggests that high info flow depends on large energy flow

Conclusion?

• No crystal ball– Tech breakthroughs can happen

• But thermodynamics suggest they’ll be hard

– Climatologists could be wrong about climate change• But the data keep coming in showing more effect

than IPCC predicted– Yes, they were wrong, but that doesn’t help

Fasten your seatbelts