Michael Chenoweth

ENERGY

Table of Contents:

1.       June 10, 2008         

                     Last Chance for Human Society

2.       July 4, 2008              

                Where has all the oil gone?

3.       July 23, 2008               

                A Tale of Two Worlds – Peak Oil for Non-Geologists 

4.       August 25, 2008          

               Energy Fundamentals for American Citizens

5.       September 15, 2008   

               On Offshore drilling

6.       April 15, 2009              

             Opinion Editorial: Four Big Lies About Energy

7. NEW April 4, 2011

            "Peak Oil" lecture at Sun 'n Fun Fly In, and the Obama Administrations new plan for America's Energy Future.

8. December 12, 2011

A very good article on why oil prices are going to continue to rise.

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1. June 10, 2008  LAST CHANCE FOR HUMAN SOCIETY (This article written in 2008 and revised in 2009)

Mankind is facing the greatest challenge it has ever encountered. In the balance is the question of whether civilization will continue to exist, or if it will not continue.

The signs of this approaching crisis have been with us for at least four decades, but generally have not been recognized as being as serious as they are. My purpose in writing this analysis is not to threaten anyone. The threat is already there. Instead, my goal is to help the public and relevant decision-makers recognize the threat, and then for them to take action to prevent it from overcoming our existence.

Too often, documents such as this one are written in a dry, scientific tone, and immediately turn off any but the most dedicated reader. I will try to keep this simple, and rely on the reader’s common sense to confirm the validity of what is presented. As you read, please ask yourself, “Does this make sense?” If what follows makes sense to you, you can choose to act on it, and take a hand in your own future, or to do nothing, and just be carried along with the rest of mankind, to whatever destination comes.

I have found three kinds of response to this information from people with whom I have discussed it. The first group are the denyers. They just say, “That can’t be so,” or “My [diety] will take care of me,” and go on about their life. The second group are the optimists. They say, “Someone will figure out a solution and I don’t need to be concerned about it.”  The third group are the ones who take a long and careful look at what I’m presenting here, check out the numbers for themselves, and then start spreading the word.

First, a little background about myself. I’m a self-professed and unapologetic ‘environmentalist.’ I see mankind’s role in the world as only one part of a bigger picture. I don’t claim to be an ‘expert’ in any subject, and at the same time, I assert that one does not need to be an ‘expert’ in order to see the obvious.

I’m also a lawyer. I have spent the better part of the last 30 years watching the legal system address various problems, from how we relate to one another in our personal lives, to how specific parcels of land are used or not used for human purposes. The great disappointment I have experienced in observing legal processes, is in how ineffective they seem to be at addressing serious problems that under-lie the issues being decided, almost all of which are political.

As a species, we humans depend on the rest of the natural system to support us. That system produces the oxygen in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we need to sustain us. Each of those resources is in danger today, and there are numerous organizations whose goals are to protect various parts of the system that provides those necessary elements.

It is remarkable to me that as a society, we have developed mechanisms for dispute resolution that successfully separate a plethora of issues from one another, as if they were not in fact related. As an environmentalist, I know that all of the issues are related. But I just recently realized myself how intimately related they actually are, and the purpose of this discussion is to share that realization with others.

For the last 26 years, since 1982, I have worked with an American conservation organization, the Izaak Walton League of America. It is an organization whose orientation is somewhat to the right of center in the spectrum of conservation NGOs. It was founded by sportsmen, includes many hunters and fishermen, as well as people who see a sensible approach to natural resource issues as a good thing. Interestingly, the Izaak Walton League, though relatively small, is one of the most respected conservation organizations in the United States, for two reasons: 1) its emphasis on a science-based decision-making process in the organization promotes holistic, forward-thinking, and practical solutions to large-scale conservation issues facing our country and 2) the League has a broad centrist base of sensible people, from all across the nation, who democratically decide what the organization’s policies are on all the issues considered. As a result, when conservation issues arise in the halls of Congress, one question we have heard repeatedly is “What does the League think on this issue.” It is a desirable way to be thought of.

Over the time I’ve been a League member, I have often heard leaders of the Izaak Walton League (who tend to reflect the more conservative membership) speak critically of various other organizations or positions as ‘alarmist,’ as if being alarmist was somehow a negative characteristic. I know that many people, whom I know personally, are ‘turned off’ by talk of environmental dangers that are beyond their control. Now, it occurs to me that being an alarmist is only a negative if the house is not on fire. Our house is on fire.

Fourteen years ago, in 1994, I wrote a novel called “Power!” that proposes a new and different approach to satisfying mankind’s need for energy. Different, that is, from the current mix of fossil fuels: crude oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear. My reasons for writing that book were narrow ones; to get kids interested in something, in that case science and aviation, as a means of stimulating their imaginations and motivating them to learn more effectively in school, and to present an entertaining and thought-provoking story.

By today’s standards, energy was very inexpensive in 1994. Today, gasoline prices, which have become the common denominator of energy cost, are pushing past $4 a gallon, and I suspect readers of this in the future will look back at $4 a gallon as a bargain price.  In light of the current cost of gasoline, my 1994 book has a new relevance, not only to teenagers, but also to adults who are conscious of how our energy situation impacts our economy and society, but also how dependent we are on what happens in the rest of the world for the prices we pay for energy.

For the past couple of years, former Vice President Al Gore has been promoting the idea that we need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions, through the vehicle of a film titled, “An Inconvenient Truth.”  It is a well-documented argument about the impacts of human-caused global warming on the world. There are a number of skeptics, who raise a variety of arguments against the proposition of Gore’s film. Some say global warming is a natural cycle, and not human-caused. Some say the indicators used in the film are misinterpreted. Some say that implementing clean-air measures would cost too much.

The question of global warming is a secondary issue here. Don’t let how you view the global-warming debate keep you from seriously considering this discussion of energy.

My friends at the Izaak Walton League, whom I admire for their dedication to protecting pieces of the natural system, have worked diligently, either at the local level on their own properties, or on national issues like energy conservation, clean air, clean water. 

The most important issue that the Izaak Walton League addresses though, is also the most controversial. It is usually called either ‘carrying capacity’ or ‘sustainability’ and has generated huge amounts of controversy among the Izaak Walton League’s membership, because part of sustainability involves the numbers of people who are using any particular ecosystem or resource, which means questioning population and population growth. This subject alone has produced more heated argument among League members than any other, because many members consider the number of children a couple has not to be an appropriate issue for anyone else to discuss, for a variety of religious reasons.

Still, it is easy to find ecosystems on the verge of collapse because the human populations have grown until their needs exceed the ability of their ecosystem to provide for them. For the purpose of this discussion, population is not the critical issue. We have the population we have, at present somewhere between six billion and seven billion. The energy crisis is partly a result of that large and growing population, but even if we were still at 2 billion, it would still be a crisis.

Another issue that I’ve been very close to is wetland protection, because the Florida Everglades is effectively in my back yard and as an ecosystem, is failing. I have spent many years arguing for protection of the Everglades, and now see global warming and sea-level rise threatening to put it all under the Gulf of Mexico. Whether our coast-lines disappear under the sea is an important issue, particularly to those who live at the edge of the sea, but it isn’t the central issue in the current crisis.

Today I’ve reached the conclusion that none of these is the issue that most needs to be addressed. I am back to where I was fourteen years ago, when I wrote “Power!”  But today my take on the relevance of the issues and my motivation for writing are both very changed. Today, I have concluded that the world rapidly is running out of energy and that we must act immediately to shift to an entirely different primary source of energy than those fossil fuels I mentioned above.  We need to shift, because the fossil fuel is running out and we don’t have a replacement.

We don’t need to do it because of global warming, although the need to address global warming and greenhouse gas production is a completely valid need. We don’t need it to promote clean air or water, although those are valid needs, too.  We don’t need to do it to stop rising sea levels, although the concern about rising sea level is a perfectly valid concern.

We need to do it because if we don’t, it is unlikely that our civilization can survive.

Chapter 1.  Supply and Demand.

Here is one of the parts of this discussion where I expect you, the reader, to apply your common sense. The test is, “Does this make sense to me?”

As a child of the 20th Century, I was raised with constant reminders of several fundamental economic theories.

One of those theories involves the so-called ‘law’ of supply and demand. It goes, generally, that if the supply exceeds the demand for a particular commodity, the price will fall, as sellers compete for customers. The reverse is that if the demand exceeds the supply for a particular commodity, the price will generally increase, as purchasers compete with one another to buy the limited supply. This economic theory is fundamental to a capitalist economy.

The corollary to that theory is that when there is an increased demand for a particular commodity, the increased price will motivate producers to produce more of the commodity, and if the price goes down, producers will cut back on production and move to producing something that produces more revenue for them. An example of this that comes immediately to my mind is the dairy/beef cattle industries. I have seen occasions when there have been news reports that some dairy farmers, faced with falling milk prices, have reportedly shifted their emphasis to growing beef cattle, and when beef prices fell, shifted back to dairy production. These are, of course, oversimplifications because a modern dairy farm involves many thousands of dollars of milking equipment, but the concept, I think, is pretty clear.

Now we get to the crux of the matter. The commodity that we are talking about is energy, and most importantly, fossil fuel.

Modern civilization runs on energy. Since the 19th century, when horses were replaced by steam engines as the primary method of moving things, the world has increasingly run on burning fossil fuels. Those fuels, in my mind, fall into three broad categories; petroleum, including both crude oil and natural gas, coal (which is actually another form of petroleum), and uranium.  All of these are dug out of the ground in various ways, and usually end up heating water to produce electricity or being burned in engines to run machinery, such as our cars, trucks and airplanes.

In addition to the fossil fuels listed in the preceding paragraph, the world uses limited amounts of energy produced by hydroelectric plants, solar collectors – both thermal and photovoltaic, wind-powered generators, and geothermal plants. Although technically interesting, neither hydro nor wind has sufficient capacity to replace the fossil fuels we depend on, and both of those, wind and hydro, have significant negative impacts on the environment that effectively limit the extent to which they can be implemented. (This statement is incorrect and corrected further on.)  The remaining two, solar and geothermal, are both effectively unlimited in their ability to produce power.

The technology however, to produce large amounts of power (and by ‘large amounts’ I mean enough to replace our fossil fuel supply) with either one has yet to be developed. In November of 2009, Scientific American had an article which suggested that there IS a capability to produce enough wind turbines and solar photovoltaic cells to replace our fossil energy, so I may have been mistaken in my earlier statement.

To understand the nature of the crisis about which I am concerned, it is useful to have a model for the world’s supply of fossil fuel. I think of that supply as a large tank, full of oil.  Or it used to be full of oil, before we started using it back in the 19th century.  The fuel in the bottom part of the tank, maybe as much as 1/3 or 1/4 of the volume of the tank, isn’t available to us, because the energy it takes to extract that remaining fuel from the ground, at least with existing technology, is greater than the energy contained in the fuel that would be recovered. Some authorities refer to it as ‘unrecoverable’ oil. It may well be that in time, there will be low-energy methods developed to extract that oil from the ground, but remember, the total amount that might be recovered that way is not all that much, maybe less than a third of the total that ever existed. Amory Lovins refers to this as the ‘spaghetti bowl’ phenomenon. That is, it is easy to get the spaghetti out of the bowl when the bowl is full, but trying to get the last few strands of spaghetti takes a lot of work, and maybe more work than it is worth.

So let’s say the tank we have been running on for the last 150 years has X amount of petroleum (and other fossil fuels) in it. Three-fourths of that amount has been relatively easily available to us. The other fourth is not reachable, at least not today. For over a century, we have been draining the tank, and the rate of our consumption of that resource has been increasing. We keep putting more and larger straws into the tank to suck up the oil. When, as now, the price of oil goes up dramatically, and it is presently over $130 per 42-gallon barrel, world leaders often urge oil producers, usually led by the Saudi government, to increase the rate at which oil is withdrawn from the tank.

There is a useful graph of this consumption in a report from the US Department of Energy’s Energy Information Agency. You can read it at: http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/feature_articles/2004/worldoilsupply/oilsupply04.html.

An interesting fact to keep in mind is that the production rate reflected in the charts in that report are the same as the consumption rate during any given time period. That is because oil has been consumed almost as fast as it is produced. There are no statistically significant reservoirs of oil set aside that can replace the oil that is pumped from the ground. The largest storage supply that I’ve heard of is the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve.  My recollection is that it, when full, contains approximately 710 million barrels of oil. At the current rate of consumption, with the US using 21 million barrels a day, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would keep the US going for only about a month, if all other supplies were cut off (or ran out).

That brings to a couple of other important points. The United States, with 300 million residents, uses about 21 million barrels a day of oil. A barrel of crude oil contains 42 gallons. That is 882 million gallons or almost three gallons per person per day. That doesn’t consider the amount of energy consumed that comes from coal (about half of our electricity comes from coal) or nuclear (about 15 percent of our electricity is from nuclear plants). Nor does it consider the minor contributions from wind and hydroelectric power. The US uses somewhere between 1/3 and 1/4 of the world’s oil production.   So we can estimate the world’s oil production at somewhere in a range between 63 and 84 million barrels a day. Because the US is the only country still using gallons, consider how many liters of oil we are using – 3.32 billion liters a day. That is still hard to imagine, so try this: The amount of oil used in the United States in one day would cover a football field with column of oil about 3,000 feet tall. The rest of the world’s oil consumption is something like 10 billion liters per day.

Chapter 2.            “It’s the Economy, Stupid,” or “It’s the Stupid Economy.”

This is an election year. The selection of the politicians who will lead our country for the next several years is critical to our ability as a nation, state or town to live within our means, and if my analysis is correct, it will be critical to our survival as a society. 

As the elections approach, each candidate will be selecting economic advisors, and I will be so bold as to make a prophesy here.  Each economic advisor will tell his client how to improve conditions for the business community, without any concern for the world’s rapidly diminishing supply of oil.

Let me know if I’m wrong. I would love to be wrong on this point. Ask yourself what outcome is most likely.

We will see emphasis on how to improve business, by increasing various kinds of production, exports, and making the dollar more competitive with foreign currencies. All of that increased production will require more energy to accomplish.

Chapter 3.            What About Bio-fuels.

Recent emphasis by the federal government on development of ‘biofuels,’ which I think of as methane, ethanol, and bio-diesel, has gotten a lot of press. Less clearly publicized are the costs of that production.  We are converting food production into fuel production, but there is serious question about whether there is any way for that production to make any reasonable difference in the overall situation. There are questions about whether the cycle of energy inputs required to grow crops and then process them into fuel will result in a net energy gain or loss?  Remember, when we run out of fossil fuel, in order to sustain only the level of energy use we have today, we need that football field, 3,000 feet deep, every day, IN EXCESS OF the energy input required to produce it.  We are talking of 882 million gallons per day. The reports I’ve read suggest that optimistic ethanol producers claim they will be able to produce 90 million gallons PER YEAR, after they get going. That means that in a year’s production, they will produce enough for about two hours of our economy’s consumption. And the cost of that production is diversion of land from food production to fuel production. Millions of people around the world are dependent on grain grown in the United States. Our diversion of that grain supply to fuel production, or conversion of the land to other crops more favorable to fuel production, will result in famines in many lands around the world. Already, before the ethanol/biodiesel production is even fully underway, food costs have risen by 50% in lands where people live on the equivalent of less than one dollar a day. 

Chapter 4.            Will People Ever Choose the Inconvenient but Necessary Route?

Solving the energy crisis I am discussing here will be neither cheap nor easy. It will require sacrifices comparable to those endured by our parents in World War II, when almost everything was rationed and there were only 2 billion people in the world. It is likely that no politician will have the courage and integrity to tell the public that their future is at stake nor that they must make sacrifices in order for our civilization to survive. Instead, we are likely to see a series of short-term programs to address only the superficial problem. We are seeing that today in proposals that we can avoid the expensive cost of fuel if only we a) eliminate the taxes on gasoline, or b) drill in areas that have been protected for environmental reasons. In reality, neither of these will make any measurable long-term improvement in the energy situation.

We are a curious race. Experience with numerous elections has convinced me that if voters are given a choice between a) something they urgently need, or b) something that they can do without but is a convenience or new toy, they will take the frills and reject the necessity.  It is the classic choice between ‘bread’ or ‘circuses.’  People invariably choose the easy way, or the luxury, the ‘circuses,’ even if they know it will be against their long-term welfare. It is a demonstration of the power of ‘instant gratification.’ 

Here is the best example I can think of:  we know that our excessive government spending will put our grandchildren deeply in debt, so deep that they are unlikely to ever climb out of the debt, but we continue to vote for tax reductions instead of policies that will bring us to a balanced budget and eventually get our nation out of debt. Why is that? Are we so undisciplined that we ‘just cain’t say no?’  I think perhaps we are. You decide.

Chapter 5.            Energy is unlikely to become significantly less expensive, and we may run out of oil during our lifetimes.

This one is obvious, or should be, to everyone who is paying attention.

Chapter 6.            What about other fuels, like charcoal?

Forty years ago, when I was in the military during the Vietnam war, I lived in Thailand for almost two years. One pervasive and unavoidable presence was the smell of charcoal cooking.  Virtually everyone cooked with charcoal. Every morning, I would see oxcarts coming into town, heading for the market, loaded with charcoal, which was manufactured somewhere outside of town. Charcoal was such a dominant factor in the energy situation at that time that my house-maid actually ironed my uniforms using an iron heated by charcoal.  At the time, I wondered how many trees were required to keep this process going?  Since that time, the population of Thailand has increased from 36,000,000 then to 66,000,000 now. I also heard recently on the radio that many third-world societies who previously cooked on charcoal have now turned to kerosene to fuel their stoves.  As the price of petroleum continues to rise, will there be an alternative for those people to cook with, as kerosene becomes too expensive?

Chapter 7.            What about Canadian oil sands?

There is a lot of loose talk about “inexhaustible” supplies of oil in Canada’s “tar sands.”  For starters, if anyone tells you a source of fossil fuel is “inexhaustible,” right away you should be on alert, because they don’t know what they are talking about, or are playing word games with you related to the total amount versus the recoverable amount.  The largest supplier of oil for US consumption is the United States. We produce about 40 percent of the oil we use. That amounts to about 8 million barrels a day. Of all the other sources, Canada is the supplier of the largest amount of our oil imports. In 2008, that was running about 2 million barrels a day. But there are environmental considerations too. See the article at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/canadian-oil-sands/kunzig-text

Chapter 8.            What about oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?

In 1998, I traveled to Alaska as a guest of a non-profit organization, Arctic Power, which is funded by the oil companies. I was part of a group of Izaak Walton League leaders who were escorted around Alaska by the oil industry in the hopes that we would recommend changing our organization’s national policy, which until that time had opposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We met with our local chapter in Anchorage and visited Port Valdez and were shown the safety improvements in place for handling tankers and any spills that might occur. We were flown to Prudhoe Bay, taken on a tour of the oil production fields there, and then flown on to Kaktovik, a small native village where the Kaktovik Inupiat people live.

The Kaktovik Inupiat people own the subsurface rights to the oil believed to exist under the 10-02 Area. The village is on the edge of the Arctic Sea, in the middle of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. At each stop, we were told how safe modern oil production and handling techniques were, how the tundra and permafrost would be protected in the “10-02 Area” (the area where drilling was proposed to occur).  After returning to Anchorage, we learned that the State of Alaska had just levied the largest fine in history on the oil companies, for a major leak on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which the oil companies had tried to conceal from regulators. The oil industry representatives who had briefed us on oil industry safety had conveniently failed to inform us about the spill and fine, which damaged their credibility with us after we learned about it through other sources.

In any case, and even if there were no adverse environmental considerations in drilling in the 10-02 Area, and assuming the most optimistic projection on the amount of recoverable oil there – we were told 16 Billion barrels might be there – it would take at least 10 years to begin production, and the rate of production would be relatively small compared with the US gluttonous appetite for oil. As a footnote, some reports indicate that the oil under the North Slope, including the 10-02 Area is so high in chemicals like sulfur that it isn’t desirable for US consumption anyway, and would end up being sold abroad. 16 Billion barrels might be there. If we use 21 million barrels a day, and import 16 million of those barrels, and if all 16 Billion barrels in the 10-02 Area were recoverable, there would be enough oil there for 1000 days. Then what? The point is that we can address our energy needs more rapidly, and with less cost and environmental damage, through implementation of renewables.

Chapter 9.            What about energy conservation?

Energy conservation is the best and least expensive short term way to deal with our energy situation. The savings that can be made by reducing wasteful uses of energy could dramatically reduce our energy consumption. However, even deep cuts in consumption do not change the fact that the world is running out of energy, and we have to find a new source.

Chapter 10.            What about wind energy and solar energy?

Wind and solar energy are the best hope for satisfying our future energy needs. The technology is well-understood and being improved every day. For more on this you can read the article, “A Plan for a Sustainable Future: How to get all energy from wind, water and solar power” in the November 2009 issue of Scientific American.

Chapter 11.            What about nuclear energy?

I don’t expect all who read this to agree with me on this subject. The American people, whom I expect to be the main audience, have been brainwashed for several decades with talk of nuclear power as ‘safe,’ ‘cheap,’ or generally the solution to the energy problems of the modern world. I hold another opinion. Nuclear power is dangerous beyond human imagination. The dangers include not only the possibility of major accidents but also the routine release of radioactive byproducts of the process.  Some day I’ll do another article on this subject, but for now I have no doubt that my opinion is accurate.  (UPDATE: March 13, 2011, One Japanese nuclear reactor has experienced a loss of cooling and an explosion and five others are reportedly in trouble this morning. All this due to events that were not anticipated in the reactor design.  'Nuff said?) 

Chapter 12.            Domestic versus Foreign Oil

We hear a lot about ‘energy independence,’ as if drilling more holes in the United States will result in a) less oil imported, or b) lower fuel prices. I regard this argument as specious. The reason is that oil is ‘fungible.’ That is, once it is in a ship or pipeline, it is almost impossible to tell where it came from. So even if we pump a lot more oil out of wells inside our country, it will make an insignificant change in the global supply, which is what dictates prices. Instead, what pumping more ‘American’ oil will cause, is more rapidly reaching the point where we have no reachable ‘American’ oil to buffer the amount of foreign oil we have to buy.  And, all of the emphasis on using oil as a fuel overlooks the very important role oil serves as a source of raw material for the chemical industry. Even after we switch over to renewable sources of energy, we will continue to need materials for plastics, fertilizers and lubricants, and oil is particularly well-suited for those applications.

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2.         July 4, 2008    Where has all the oil gone?

By now, almost everyone has noticed that gasoline is getting more expensive. Government is beginning to notice as well. In late June, 2008, Florida’s Governor Charlie Crist, recognizing that much of Florida is just above a rising sea-level and depends heavily on a tourist industry in turn dependent on fuel for travel, convened a summit on climate change, in the process addressing many issues about energy costs.

 The Big News:

During the ‘International’ panel at the climate change summit, with representatives from Florida, Germany, Spain, France, England and Japan making presentations, one speaker began, “I have bad news, and I have good news.” 

The bad news is –

 the world is running out of oil. 

This reality, whether the supply peak occurs in ten years, twenty years, fifty years or 100 years, is undeniable. There is considerable debate on how much oil is left, but we can’t afford to be wrong. Combined with exploding demand for energy in Asia and Africa, the end of oil already profoundly impacts our life, and is increasing prices for energy and for everything energy produces, and causing legitimate anxiety about our energy future. Knee-jerk reactions from politicians are resulting in desperate proposals to drill off of our sensitive coasts and in the Arctic Refuge, as if we can drill our way to lower prices or a solution to the energy shortage. Most attendees at the climate change summit agreed that neither lower prices nor energy independence can possibly result from more drilling, no matter where or how much is done.

On the other hand, the good news is –

the world is running out of oil.

In a global economy that is overwhelmingly dependent on petroleum, the understanding that the oil is running out is focusing scientists, engineers and politicians around the world on new, clean, sustainable ways to meet the world’s energy needs. They are making great progress. Time required to implement clean renewable energy strategies is shorter than the time required to develop new oil fields or build nuclear plants, and a shift to renewable energy will help reduce CO2 emissions.

Participants in the Florida Climate Change Summit, including the Prince of Wales (Prince Charles), California Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger, Florida Governor Crist, and at least one member of the German Parliament, spoke enthusiastically about dramatic advances in alternate energy being made in their various jurisdictions. Germany, for example, currently (no pun intended) has one-half of the world’s installed photovoltaic capacity and also generates a very significant portion of its electrical energy needs from wind power, having one-half of the world’s installed wind generation capacity. It is worth noting that Germans live well but use only a small fraction of the per-capita energy we use because of decades of energy conservation effort.

Spain is producing 12 percent of its energy from wind. The United Kingdom is working to install equipment to harness tidal power, both in the waters off Scotland as well as in some English estuaries. The UK Consul General was quick to acknowledge the environmental challenges these projects involve, but assured attendees that the British government is committed to provide necessary protections for the UK’s valuable coastal natural resources. France, already heavily dependent on nuclear power, is nevertheless giving new attention to renewable sources of energy. In the US, California, already a leader in clean-air rules, is the prime example of alternative energy programs. Governor Schwartzenegger spoke at length about actions being taken in California to develop renewable energy.

Significant movement is already occurring in the direction of solar power. Florida Ikes with serious environmental concerns about the use of nuclear power and about Florida Power and Light Company’s (“FPL”) plans to build two new very large nuclear plants near Miami, were nevertheless encouraged to learn that FPL, already the largest wind-power utility in the country (its largest wind farm is in Texas) is also preparing to install a 75 mw solar-thermal plant adjacent to a natural-gas-fired generating plant in Martin County, Florida, a 10 mw photovoltaic plant at the Kennedy Space Center in Brevard MCounty, and a 25 mw plant in DeSoto County. 

FPL had a very large section from the Martin County solar-thermal system on display outside of the hotel where the Climate Change Summit was held. The system uses large mirrors to focus the Sun’s rays on a pipe containing oil, which is heated to very high temperatures, then passed through heat exchangers where water is boiled into steam. The oil is then returned to the solar collector while the steam continues on to drive steam-turbines. The solar system can provide steam during the day to enable the plant to reduce its overall consumption of natural gas.

Concurrent with the discussions of new sources of energy were equally enthusiastic discussions of ways to use less energy, both to conserve the remaining conventional energy, capture solar energy, make new energy sources more effective, and to use energy in more efficient or cleaner ways. There was a plug-in Toyota Prius and a hydrogen-powered Ford Focus. There were next generation LED light bulbs that use only a small fraction of the energy required by a compact fluorescent. Many exhibitors presented examples of how their products or processes would save significant amounts of energy. One such exhibit demonstrated how their process recovers the styrene in polystyrene packing and insulated containers. The process produces reusable feedstock for polystyrene manufacturing, without the need for more petroleum.  Another company had examples and photographs of their operation that recycles grease solids from grease traps into a useful and valuable dry powder.

Still other exhibitors emphasized solar collectors for heating water, either for domestic hot water uses, or for swimming pool heating, and various kinds of photovoltaic systems, controllers, and other devices for reducing the amount of energy used. Among the most interesting displays were exhibits from several Florida universities, showing the emphasis they are placing on clean energy and energy conservation, not only in operations, but in education and research. The Florida Solar Energy Center (“FSEC”), part of the University of Central Florida, is the largest and most active state-supported renewable energy and energy efficiency research organization in the US.

The really good news however, is that there are things we all can easily do right now to reduce the amount we are spending for energy and our impact on climate change. For Ikes, the list of possible activities is quite familiar, and we have discussed many of them previously.

One of the areas where energy efficiency can be improved most is in our buildings. Buildings consume 40 percent of the energy used in the United States. FSEC showed benefits of programmable thermostats, compact fluorescent light bulbs, inspection of heating and cooling ducts to eliminate leaks and blockages, more efficient or fewer appliances, improved insulation, and turning off unused power users. There were long discussions of the benefits of “LEED” certified buildings, and the State of Florida has announced that only certified ‘green’ hotels will be used for state-sponsored events. Many Florida hotels are now scrambling to qualify under the Florida ‘green’ hotel program.

The City of Miami passed out a list entitled, “ONE PERSON–TEN STEPS–TEN TONS”, suggesting that a few steps could reduce a person’s annual CO2 production by 10 tons. In addition to the FSEC suggestion to replace incandescent bulbs with CFLs, Miami suggests:

Clean or replace your Air Conditioner (or furnace for those in the North) filter;

Insulate your water heater;

Get a home energy audit and follow it up with proper home insulation;

Adjust your thermostat 2 degrees UP in the Summer and 2 degrees DOWN in the winter;

Use less hot water with a low-flow showerhead and by washing your clothes in cold water;

Re-cycle half of your waste at home;

Plant a native tree;

Walk more and avoid driving 10 miles every week.

Other participants suggested:

Increase the MPG of your car by keeping your tires properly inflated.

Slow your driving speed and save precious gallons of gas while increasing trip times by only a small percentage.

We would also be smart to look at other energy-saving strategies being used in European countries with lower per-capita energy consumption than ours, and see if we can adopt some of those strategies here.

Interestingly, while a few years ago the summit participants urging such strategies would have been environmental organizations, this time they were industries who have now realized that going green will be good for the environment, good for their businesses and good for the economy. 

What we have before us is a new world with limited energy supplies, but we can still have a good life and leave a healthy world for future generations, IF we act wisely today. To understand the importance of that wise action, it is essential that we understand the seriousness of the oil supply situation.

We can think of the total oil supply as a pie, from which everyone in the world is taking pieces. The US piece is about 21 million barrels, or 882 million gallons PER DAY. It is hard to imagine how much oil that might be. Think of it as a football field covered with oil, three-fourths of a mile deep. Each day.

We have already consumed at least half of the pie, and part of the pie cannot be used at all, because we don’t have a way to get at it. The available remainder of the pie is not very big. In fact it is so small that we can see that it is only going to last a few years more. (Department of Energy reports predict the production peak will arrive in between 20 and 40 years and that production will decline very rapidly after that.)

Not only are we using the available petroleum faster than ever (we in the USA consume 25 percent of the amount consumed globally each year) but some people who use the other 75 percent want to grow their consumption rate much faster than our consumption is growing. People in developing countries, like China and India, for many reasons, are trying to bring their standard of living (and the rate they are consuming the pie) up to a rate equal to ours.

There is only one small problem, which is that there are about 10 times as many of them in that region as there are of us. If their rate of consumption grew to equal our present rate, the world consumption rate would jump to about 250 million barrels a day, rather than the present 87 million barrels (2005 data). And if the remaining three billion people in the world brought their consumption rate up to ours, the rate would be about 500 million barrels a day. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the world’s production capacity can’t grow fast enough to meet such a demand, so instead, the price increases.

We have several available options now that we realize a future oil shortage is coming:

One approach would have us cut pieces from the pie at a faster rate. Remember, the pie started at a finite size and only gets smaller as we use it. Advocates of this strategy say the pie will be cheaper if we consume it faster. (These are the people who say we should be drilling in the Arctic Refuge and off our most fragile coastlines.) Some of us think such a strategy would leave us less secure, rather than more secure, as the size of the remaining pie shrinks, as competition for the remaining pie becomes more intense, and as we become totally dependent on foreign sources because of the exhaustion of our own (presently) untapped oil reserves.

Another approach is to argue over who gets the biggest and final pieces. Advocates of this strategy are in the business of financing the argument. No matter who wins, they make money selling military equipment to the people arguing over the pie (until the pie is gone or the arguing parties destroy each other).

A third approach is to take some of the pie and try to stretch it. Supporters of this strategy are the proponents of biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. The difficulty with this approach is that, in order to create the biofuels, more energy is required and land is diverted from food production to biofuel production, already causing a 75% increase in some world food prices, inducing farming on marginal land that should not be farmed because of environmental considerations, consuming already-scarce water supplies, and using already-scarce fuel supplies in processes with energy costs that are either equal to the energy produced or very little less than the energy produced. In order to replace the crude oil supply with biofuels, the biofuel companies would have to produce a net gain equal to the amount of energy we already use – remember the football field? 882 million gallons each and every day. Ethanol proponents say they may be able to produce 90 million gallons per year. (Requiring 400 million gallons of water in the process.) That is 1/3600 of the amount of new fuel needed.

So is there any hope?  Yes, of course there is.

There is another strategy that requires us to think ‘outside the box’ or in this analogy, ‘outside the pie’ and offers a realistic, sustainable and practical solution.

Suppose we bake another pie in a different flavor? 

In this case, instead of crude oil, the new pie would be composed of wind power, solar thermal, photovoltaic,  and geo-thermal.

If we do it right, we can make the new pie as big as we want, and it can continue to get bigger as we need more. As a renewable resource, it is sustainable and won’t ever be used up. Not only does the production of this kind of new pie reduce the demand on the old pie, and perhaps thereby reduce the per-unit cost of the old pie, but the process of baking the new pie will employ millions of workers and stimulate our economy. The end result will be a process that helps stabilize the price of energy and brings additional benefits.  But we need to get started.

When asked what his vision was for the global energy supply 100 years in the future, Tom Dyer, a representative of Kyocera Solar, a manufacturer of photocells, said, “One hundred years from now, everyone will be operating on solar power.” There was no disagreement from anyone present.

The big remaining questions are, “How much time do we have?” “Are we smart enough to get started on the transition to solar power while there is still energy to fuel the transition?  “How long will it take us to complete?” The answers to those questions remain to be determined.

References: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/presentations/long_term_supply/index.htm

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/feature_articles/2004/worldoilsupply/oilsupply04.html;

http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/index.html

3. July 23, 2008 A Tale of Two Worlds – Peak Oil for Non-Geologists 

 This article is about the world’s oil supply. Do not believe it simply because it is here on paper. Check out the information for yourself. You need to know what the facts are, if for no other reason than you live here, your children live here, other people whom you may care about live here. These facts, and the decisions we make as a society as a result of those facts, will profoundly impact you and the people that you care about.

The fundamental fact is that in 1859 when Drake drilled the first oil well in Pennsylvania, there was a finite amount of petroleum in the world. It takes millions of years for old carbon-based  deposits, probably mostly from plants that grew here a very long time ago, to be converted into oil. No one knows exactly how much of that oil there was in 1859, and there is some disagreement among scientists as to how large the total volume was, but the figure that the United States Geological Survey (“USGS”), who are the United States federal agency responsible for geological information, is using is approximately six trillion barrels of crude oil. That is 6,000,000,000,000 barrels – 6 X 1012 barrels. For the purpose of this discussion, we are using barrels equal to 42 US gallons. So the total is a lot of oil. This includes all of the world’s known oil reserves, plus the USGS’s best estimate of the total of “undiscovered” oil reserves.

Since 1859, the amount of that six trillion barrels of oil has been decreasing. Initially, the decrease in the remaining supply was slow, because the world had not developed a lot of uses for that resource. In the middle of the 19th century, the most common fuels for heating and industry were wood and coal. But as time progressed, particularly in the last half of the 20th century, the number of ways to use crude oil, both as a fuel and as a base stock for the chemical and agricultural industries, has grown geometrically. The United States has been a leader in this growth. At the beginning of the 21st century, the United States, with about four percent (4%) of the world’s population, used about one-fourth of all the petroleum consumed in the world. That volume, according to the USGS, was approximately 21 million barrels a day. In gallons, that is about 3 gallons per day for each person living in the United States. If the one-fourth figure is correct, then the rest of the world was using about 63 million barrels a day, and the total was about 84 million barrels a day.

Now do some math. Divide the original supply – six trillion barrels – by 84 million barrels. See how many days the original total would last at current consumption rates. Well, six trillion is six million million. Let’s see – if we strike off the last six zeros – the millions, that is 84 into six million. How many days does that mean our supply would have lasted at that rate, if we could use every drop? OK, that comes out to about 70,000 days. How long is that?  Well, that is roughly 200 years. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

But wait. There is a problem. We can’t get at all of the oil. The first oil was easy. The reports from the 1850s suggest that the oil was bubbling out of the ground. As the years have passed, oil has become harder to extract and harder to find. It takes more energy today to get a barrel of oil out of the ground than it did 150 years ago, or 100 years ago, or 50 years ago. And today we have begun to realize that, using existing available technology, there will come a time when the energy required to get a given amount of oil out of the ground will be greater than the energy contained in that oil.  When that happens, it will no longer be economically realistic to extract oil from the ground. It won’t make sense to use more energy getting the oil than it contains.

The limitation to how much of the oil is recoverable is entirely dependent on the level of existing technology at any given time. It may well be that, when we reach the point that all of the recoverable oil has been pumped up, some new technology will be discovered or invented that will enable us to get another fraction of the previously unrecoverable oil, but at any given time, there will still be oil that is out of reach because of technological limitations. So when you hear someone say, “the world will never run out of oil,” you will understand that they are technically correct, because the oil that we won’t run out of will be unrecoverable. But when that time comes, there still won’t be a supply of oil to run the industries that we run on oil today.

USGS scientists tell us that, of the six trillion barrels of the original oil that was there in 1859, somewhere between one-fourth and one-half will be unrecoverable, because of limitations in our oil-extraction technology. Again, I say, “Don’t believe me. Look it up for yourself.” There are citations at the end of this article to several publications on the US Department of Energy’s (“DOE”) web site. These are presented by the United States Energy Information Agency (“EIA”).  You can also find a lot of other information, and varying opinions on the subject, using Google. Look it up. Decide for yourself what you want to believe, and whom you want to believe.

Now then, as the world’s oil producers pump oil from the ground, what actually happens to their production? Oil production is a complex technical process, but for our purposes we can simplify it, because all we really need to know is the result. A well stops producing when a particular technique no longer works for that well. The oil companies pump up the easy oil first. Then there are liquids that can be injected into the well that will release some more of the oil, so they do that. But at some point each well stops producing, so they move on to another well, because the cost of the additional processes is greater than the value of oil that can be recovered from that well. That can also be expressed as the “energy” that would be produced from a particular well being less than the “energy” it takes to pump it up. Because there are many thousands of wells operating around the world, this process progressively reduces the amount of recoverable oil that is left.

I like to think of the world’s oil supply as a circular pie. At the top of the circle, the crust is thin and the filling is easy to get at. We eat that part of the pie first. But as we get farther and farther away from the top of the circle, the crust gets harder and harder to cut through, until we reach a point, about half way down the circle, where the crust is harder than cast iron, and we can’t get the filling from the pie where it is under that part of the crust. The USGS tells us that the cast iron crust covers one-fourth to one-half of the pie. So if we want any more of the filling, we have to work really hard to reach under the cast iron to scrape out a little bit more filling.

Now lets talk about how this situation is reflected in the real world.

It is fundamental to the way we look at economics, at least in this country, to think of ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ as basic and related issues. Our economy is based on the theory that when there is a commodity that people want, like, for example, cars, the price for the commodity is based on the relationship between the supply and the demand. If there are 1,000 cars available each week, and 1,000 people each week who want to buy those cars, the price of the cars will likely be based, roughly, on the manufacturer’s cost of producing the car, plus the amount of profit that the manufacturer thinks it should make on each car.

If on the other hand, there are 1,000 cars available each week, but only 950 people who want to buy a car, the manufacturer has an incentive to cut its price or somehow give the purchasers a better deal on the cars, to try to induce another 50 people to buy the other 50 cars. Or if there are only 1,000 cars available each week, and 1,500 people each week want those cars, the manufacturer can be expected to, at least initially, raise the price of the cars to take advantage of the large demand, and thereby maximize its profits. We are seeing this in the prices of hybrid cars right now. Over the long term, though, the manufacturer is expected to produce more cars, to try to sell cars to all 1,500 purchasers, and not just to the 1,000 for whom there were cars initially.  When there are 1,500 cars available for the 1,500 buyers, we expect the price to go back to somewhere nearer the manufacturer’s cost.

This theory assumes that the producer of the product can increase production sufficiently to meet the demand.

So far, we’ve only talked about the ‘supply’ side of the equation in our discussion about oil. We can understand that there was a time when oil was relatively easy to pump out of the ground, and we have seen production rates increase over the last 150 years, as the demand for oil increased. But we understand that the more rapidly oil is pumped from the ground, the more rapidly we approach the point where wells will begin to stop producing, and the oil will be harder to obtain. As we reach that point, the production will decrease.

In 1956, a geophysicist named M. King Hubbert predicted that production of US oil would reach a peak between 1965 and 1970 (http://www.hubbertpeak.com).  Critics at the time dismissed his prediction as wrong, for various reasons. Looking back, we now know that his predictions, using much less precise information than we have today, was remarkably accurate. The peak in US oil production occurred in about 1970.  Since then, domestic production, which accounts for about 7 million barrels a day of the 21 million barrels a day that we use in the United States, has been declining.  US oil production has dropped 36 percent since its peak in 1970.  The oil field at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, which produces more oil than any other oil field in the US, produces only 450,000 barrels a day, down 72 percent from its peak in 1987.  (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/06/AR2005060601742.html)

Today’s geologist still use the models, improved over time, that M. King Hubbert used 50 years ago, but today they use them on global oil supplies, and their predictions give us reason to be concerned. Their conclusions are that the global supply of oil will reach its peak sometime between 2026 and 2040. (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07283.pdf)  Some others believe that peak was reached in 2005. It is reported that 33 of the world’s 48 oil producing nations, including perhaps Saudi Arabia, have passed their oil production peaks.

What this means is that our supply and demand theory, and the way it applies to oil prices, has to be considered in light of the fact that the producer of the product – crude oil – does not have the ability to increase, in any meaningful way, the supply of oil, to meet the increasing global demand for petroleum.

This brings us to recent suggestions that we should open up the coastal areas of Florida and California to oil exploration and production, as well as the previously off-limits areas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Due to the long time lag between opening those fields to exploration, and due to a shortage of drilling rigs, and due to other limitations, industry experts say it would likely be 10 years before any oil could be produced from either the Arctic Refuge or offshore fields.

If we look realistically at the growth rates of China and India, and potential growth rates at other countries around the world, it is not difficult to understand that prices can only continue to rise. By the time that the sources discussed above could begin to produce, the production from other fields around the world would have declined more than the new fields would reasonably be expected to add.

So we have one world, the petroleum-based world we live in today, where we can easily foresee a future where we spend more and more money to extract less and less oil from the ground, and end up running out of oil anyway. This is the pie that cannot be consumed any farther. As the supply drops off, the price can be expected to increase exponentially, until no amount of money can buy more petroleum. When that happens, where will the energy come from to run our society, to run tractors to grow food, to run trucks to deliver it to our tables?

Then there is the alternative world.  It is a world where, instead of spending our capital today on drilling more oil wells, we spend it to produce solar collectors. Where we spend it on wind turbines, fuel cells and renewable energy technology. This is a pie that gets larger as we cut pieces from it.

As responsible citizens, we have a choice to make. Which worldview is in our own long-term interest? Which one will present the best living conditions for future generations? Which one will provide us with a sustainable future? Look up the facts and decide for yourself, then tell your Congressmen how you think America (and other countries) should prepare for future energy needs.

Citations on global oil supply

1.            (2000 DOE report. Most interesting is the predicted rate of decline under various scenarios. See slides 16-19, and the range of recoverable supply on slide 20. Note also that these statistics only address supply, not demand, which has the potential to be 10 times the historical demand.)

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/presentations/long_term_supply/index.htm 

2.            (2004 DOE report. Note on figure 1 that the USGS prediction assumes 10% more recovery than the other example given- 40% vs 30%.)

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/feature_articles/2004/worldoilsupply/oilsupply04.html

3.            (Wall Street Journal, July 1, 2008)

http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/07/01/peak-oil-iea-inches-toward-the-pessimists-camp/

4.            (Hirsch Report from SAIC for DOE, 2005. Most interesting: pp. 61-67) 

http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf

5.            (A business/energy related web site. See the link under “Peak Oil” for a discussion of why the energy-optimists are misreading the situation.) 

http://www.energyandcapital.com/

6.            (Dr. M. King Hubbert in 1956 accurately predicted that US oil production would peak in 1970. His methodology is still followed to predict the global oil peak.) 

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/

7.            (A website discussing a variety of energy-related issues.) 

http://www.theoildrum.com/

8.            (This is a good and broad discussion of the issue of peak oil, as well as the views of those who disagree about the seriousness of the situation. A good background piece.) 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

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4.       August 25, 2008        

Energy Fundamentals for American Citizens

The United States of America uses a lot of energy. So much energy that it defies the imagination. Let’s talk about how much we use and where it comes from. There are different kinds that we use.

The simplest kind of energy is electrical energy. We use a lot of it. We will get to just  how much we use later, but first let’s talk about where we get it, and how.

Today, virtually all electricity is produced by spinning machines. These machines look like electric motors, but instead of using electricity to turn their moving parts, which is what a motor does, their moving parts are spun by some other kind of energy. We call them generators.

So how do we spin these generators? The easiest to see are the among the oldest, and at the same time, the newest – Windmills. The large rotating propeller is turned by the wind, and the shaft turns a gearbox connected to the generator, which spins at a faster speed than the windmill blades are turning.

The next kind is hydro-electric generators. In these systems, water held back by a dam is carried under pressure through a spinning water turbine.  These powerplants, although seldom recognized as such, are producing, indirectly, solar power. They are drawing from the water the energy produced by the Sun that evaporated that water from the sea, from rivers and lakes, and from plants on the land, and lifted it into the sky. This is one kind of solar power that we have had the longest experience with, along with wind power for our sailboats for transportation and windmills for pumping water and grinding our grain.

The next easiest kind of generator to understand is one that is driven by a motor. The simplest of these uses a motor of only a few horsepower to produce a few hundred watts of electricity, or an alternator in our car driven by a belt connected to the car’s engine. The first of this kind that I had a chance to learn about were in powerboats, were driven by a small diesel engine, and produced about 5 kilowatts.  The largest of these can produce megawatts, that is, millions of watts of power, and may be driven by a large gas turbine engine.

Finally, we get to the kinds of generators that produce most of our electrical power. These generators use high-pressure steam that is produced by boiling water, to drive steam turbines which are in turn connected to large generators. One of these generators can produce hundreds of megawatts. The steam in one of these plants is produced by burning one of several kinds of fuel. Most of our electricity is produced by burning coal, which accounts for about half of all of our electrical production. The remainder is produced by burning oil, natural gas, or uranium.

From the point of sustainability, these fuel-burning generators have a number of negative considerations. One very important one is that the supply of fuel is finite, and particularly for oil, is running out pretty soon.  The gas and uranium supplies may last somewhat longer, but neither of them is either infinite, nor large enough to fuel our needs for any realistic time into the future.  There is a lot of coal in the United States, and if we did not use it any faster than we are using it today, it would last for many decades. But that isn’t a realistic prediction. It isn’t realistic because there are a lot more people in the world than there were before, and they all want to live with a standard of living equal to the standard that Americans enjoy today, so they are competing with us to buy that coal for their use.

Coal, as a long term fuel source for our nation, has many shortcomings. It is a dirty fuel. We have known for decades that coal produces air quality problems. We have learned that the mercury and other metals released when coal is burned create water quality problems, and we know that there are places where people are advised not to eat the fish because of mercury contamination. Most recently, we have begun to realize that global climate change is an issue we cannot afford to ignore, and coal burned to generate electricity is a large contributor to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Although the US has a lot of coal, there is one other negative to using it. The process of mining it effectively destroys the environment of the places from which it is mined. Most mining these days is accomplished by going into mountainous areas like West Virginia, pushing the tops of the mountain into the valleys, digging out the coal that is exposed thereby, then moving to the next mountain.  Maybe it is necessary to destroy the whole ecosystems that are wiped out by this process, in order to accomplish our national goals, but these are serious policy issues that should not be casually decided.

There is one other important negative environmental impact from steam-generated electricity. It is very inefficient, because of the way steam generation works. In order to produce a ‘jet’ of high-pressure steam to drive a steam turbine, there needs to be a relative low pressure on the steam discharge side of the turbine.  When steam goes through a turbine, only about 30 percent of the energy in the steam is extracted from the steam. But in order to insure that there is a sufficiently low pressure on the discharge side of the turbine, there has to be a large reduction in the volume of the steam. This is done by ‘phase change’, changing the steam from a gas back into a liquid, which reduces its volume.

Phase change is accomplished by passing the used steam through a heat exchanger, where the remaining heat from the used steam is rejected into a lake, stream, ocean, or cooling tower. Most of the energy in steam is lost with the phase change, not during power generation. Then the water has to be reheated into steam, before it can be used again. So we take our valuable fuels, and throw away at least 2/3 of the energy they contain. That is inherently wasteful and damaging to the water-bodies into which the heat is discharged. If the fuel had value when we started, we are burning up two-thirds of those dollars and throwing them away into a river or lake or ocean.

If we are looking for a way to produce the electricity of the future, we should try to find systems that do not waste 2/3 of the energy they begin with.

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5.       September 15, 2008        ON OFFSHORE DRILLING

Recent debates between political candidates have focused on the possibility of drilling for oil offshore, in areas (including Florida’s coasts) up to now off limits to drilling, and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  Many Americans mistakenly believe that gas prices would be lower if these areas were opened to oil exploration and production. But drilling in these areas would damage natural resources around the drilling and production activities.  The Izaak Walton League of America has strong policies against drilling in these areas.  So what are the facts?

Fact #1.  The United States uses much more oil than it can produce domestically. The USA’s current appetite for oil is now somewhere around 21 million barrels (42 gallons per barrel) per day. This is 882 million gallons per day, or an amount equal to a football field size tank over 3,000 feet deep, each day. See some details about our consumption of petroleum at  http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_cons_psup_dc_nus_mbbl_m.htm

Fact #2.  US oil production peaked in 1970, and has been in steady decline ever since.  In 1970, the USA domestic production was about 10 million barrels per day, while today’s domestic production is about 4.86 million barrels per day.  See: http://www.gravmag.com/oil.html  There is a very interesting, carefully researched, and equally detailed 1976 editorial, from the editor and publisher of the magazine “Fishing Facts.”  Read it, understand that it was written 32 years ago, and recognize that it reflects the state of the science at the time it was written, but is still correct, as far as it goes. You can read it at http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2005/05/our-petroleum-predicament.html

Fact #3.  Global oil production is peaking soon, or may even have already peaked. The uncertainty relates to questions about how much “undiscovered” petroleum there is still to be found. A more recent study from the US Geological Survey, prepared by the highly-respected consulting/engineering firm, SAIC, in 2005, provides an official view of the global oil supply, from the Bush administration. This report can be viewed at http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf

Fact #4.  We are importing about 16 million barrels of foreign oil per day. That is, according to T. Boone Pickens, as much as 74 percent of the oil we use. The availability of foreign oil is much more important to our gas prices than increases in domestic production. (The Trans Alaska Pipeline has a total capacity of 2 million barrels per day, and is currently carrying about 700,000 barrels per day. That means if the pipeline were running full every day, it would only contribute an additional amount equal to 10 percent of the oil we import.  It isn’t possible to produce an additional 16 million barrels a day from domestic sources, even if we drill everywhere that oil is even suspected. In the 1970s, a 5 percent reduction in the supply caused a quadrupling of gas prices. Even a 15 percent shortfall in our energy supply is believed to be able to cause a 550 percent increase in the price.  See: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Fact #5.  There are not enough drill rigs in existence to do the exploration necessary to make any significant increase in the domestic supply.  693 offshore rigs exist in the world. 628 of them are already working. That leaves 65 possible drill rigs, many of which will go to work in other countries. It takes 3 to 10 years to build a new drill rig. See: http://wilco278.wordpress.com/2008/08/12/offshore-drilling-how-many-drill-rigs/

Fact #6.  Spending money to locate and pump up the last remaining domestic petroleum, wherever it may be located (whether in the offshore areas and ANWR, or in the millions of acres already under lease by oil companies) will divert funds that can be more effectively used to produce and install solar, wind, and geothermal electrical generating facilities. Those facilities, once on line, will produce energy from a virtually inexhaustible, and free, source, the Sun, rather than from geologic formations that will begin running out as soon as there is any petroleum pumped from them. See item 9.

Fact #7.  There is already technology available to dramatically reduce our energy demand, through simple conservation measures. And the biggest user of petroleum, transportation, which accounts for 65 percent of our petroleum appetite, is seeing new developments, like Honda’s hydrogen-powered car, the FCX Clarity.  See it at: http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/

Fact #8.  The solar, wind and geothermal systems that can unlock us from dependence on foreign petroleum already exist, on the shelf, and need only be manufactured to be available for our use.  See #9.  Converting some of our systems to natural gas production (as promoted by natural gas tycoon T. Boone Pickens) can provide a ‘bridge’ to a fully renewable system.  See: http://www.pickensplan.com/theplan/

Fact #9.  Producing and installing these solar, wind, and geothermal systems can create thousands or millions of high-paying American jobs, which would not exist if we continue with traditional petroleum supplies. We can develop these systems and market them globally if we take a decision right away to be the leader in this technology. If we fail to take that decision, other nations will capitalize on the opportunity (like Honda) to become the leaders in that technology. One very interesting presentation to the Corporate Eco Forum was made on September 8, 2008 by Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, identifying the advantages to business of a move to renewable, sustainable energy systems. See it at: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4MlC959hjRM&feature=user

Fact #10.  If we supplant our petroleum resources with the available abundant renewable  and sustainable power from solar, wind and geothermal, it will reduce the pressure on the remaining supplies of petroleum, and IF the conventional wisdom about the effects of supply and demand are valid, we can reasonably expect the price of petroleum to stabilize and perhaps even come down some, particularly if we can persuade other nations to make the switch along with us.  And if we have shifted our energy consumption to renewable sources, whether it comes down or not will be less important to us. Making that change will have one other beneficial result, a significant reduction in the amount of CO2 we produce. Even if all the global warming talk is wrong, it still means cleaner air for us.

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6.       April 15, 2009      

Opinion Editorial: FOUR BIG LIES ABOUT ENERGY.  

There are four “big lies” about energy being told to the American people today.

The first big lie is that we can drill our way to energy independence. The gas and oil producers are running slick TV ads urging viewers to contact their representatives in Congress and support more drilling. The truth is that US oil production peaked at 17 million barrels per day in 1970 and has been declining ever since. We now domestically produce less than 5 million barrels per day, including Alaskan production, despite new exploration, but we use 21 million barrels per day. We import the difference. Experts (US Geological Survey) suggest that the global ability to produce petroleum from geological deposits may have already peaked, and global demand is increasing, so no matter whether we drill or not, and no matter if new oil fields are discovered, the cost of petroleum is on an upward trend. We need strong incentives, like the ‘cap and trade’ legislation that has been proposed in Congress, to induce utilities and industries to switch to cleaner and sustainable energy. It may initially cost more than what we have now, but the cost will be much less than the future cost of petroleum.

The second big lie is that there is such a thing as “clean coal.”  The mining industry is promoting this non-existent technology on television. Coal mining destroys entire mountains and valleys, and the ecosystems existing there, particularly in West Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, and burning coal produces prodigious amounts of greenhouse gases. There is no existing technology to remove effectively those greenhouse gases from the air. About half of our electricity is produced by coal, so to clean up our air it will be necessary to stop burning coal until there is better technology available. Renewable clean energy sources are available now to replace the coal.

There is no way we can find energy independence in either coal or oil, and continuing to use fossil fuels will worsen the already dire climate-change conditions we are experiencing. And both coal and petroleum are finite sources that will soon run out, regardless of what else we do. It is time for a clear change in energy policy.

The third big lie is that nuclear power is safe and clean. Neither of those claims is borne out by the facts. Operating nuclear power plants constantly emit radioactive gases (Dade County is downwind and receives those gases from the present Turkey Point nuclear plants), create damaging thermal pollution problems, and the nuclear fuel mining (more imported fuel) and processing cycle creates huge amounts of pollution. Potential consequences of a nuclear accident (masked behind questionable ‘risk analysis’) are so serious that the industry could not operate without a federal law (the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industry Indemnity Act) that insulates plant operators from liability in case of an accident. No one has seriously examined whether FPL or the federal government could make whole South Florida landowners in the event of a serious accident. Nuclear is simultaneously the most dangerous and most expensive source of electricity in existence, and none of the cost estimates realistically consider the cost and likelihood of successfully securing the waste products of nuclear power for the time (thousands of years) during which those products will be dangerous. Human history has no record of any civilization lasting that long.

At the same time, FPL and other Florida utilities deserve credit for their tentative first baby steps toward clean renewable power with their beginning construction of several large solar energy installations in different parts of the state. Those first steps need to be praised, expanded and developed into major facilities with 24-hour-a-day energy-production capabilities, now possible using thermal storage or hydrogen generation. That is the direction the utilities should be focusing their efforts. FPL could install an enormous amount of renewable energy capacity with the many Billions of dollars that would be needed for a pair of new nuclear plants. One simple place for such investment would be to return to solar water heaters on each customer’s house, which FPL could finance through its monthly bills, reducing the electricity demand at the customer’s location, and still making a profit for FPL.

The fourth big lie is that ethanol or other bio-fuels offer a viable solution to the energy problem. The jury is still out on whether those fuels produce a net gain of energy, after all of the production and distribution requirements are factored in. In any case, in order to replace our present petroleum supply these fuels would have to produce a net gain equal to 882 million gallons of oil per day. That is simply impossible, not only because of the very large land areas that would be involved and the need for conversion of lands now used for food production to bio-mass production, but also because fuel production processes would require enormous amounts of water that are simply not available at a time when communities all over the world are experiencing water shortages.

Existing energy sources can provide a short-term bridge to the renewable energy that we need for the long term, but America needs to move as rapidly as possible to produce 100% of its power from clean, renewable sources of energy, including wind, photovoltaic, solar thermal and geo-thermal, while implementing strong conservation measures.  Renewable energy is now readily available using existing technology. Today we are effectively wasting our money, burning dollars to run our cities and cars. Spending that money instead to build renewable energy facilities that will generate electricity using free solar energy is more sensible and vastly preferable to exporting our dollars to other nations. A viable renewable energy industry here in the United States will create millions of domestic jobs that cannot be exported and will make us the leader in this new industry. Conversely, if America fails to step up to develop this industry, other countries will continue in the energy leadership position, as they have done up to now.  Americans should urge their representatives in Congress to move full speed ahead with clean renewable energy.

By the way, complete, accurate media reporting is the key source of information citizens need to participate effectively in our democracy. The Miami Herald and other media sources need to focus more investigative and reportorial energy on identifying and comprehensively reporting all the facts on our energy situation. Citizens need to take seriously the reality of dwindling supplies of conventional fuels and that won’t happen unless the media does its job. 

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7.  April 4, 2011

Last Friday, I presented a talk at the Sun 'n Fun Fly-In in Lakeland, Florida, ostensibly about my novel (see "Power!" elsewhere on this website) but primarily about the reality of "peak oil" and the urgency of taking action to develop alternate sources of energy for America, as well as for the rest of the world. I will figure out how to put that Powerpoint of my talk on this website eventually.  Most of the charts, tables and graphs in my talk are provided earlier in this page.  

For now, I want to direct all readers to a speech the President made on March 30 about the need for America to develop clean renewable energy right now. Watch the speech. It runs 47 minutes. If you want to discuss any aspect of it, send me an e-mail at michael@michaelchenoweth.com.  The speech is online on the White House blog at 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/03/30/obama-administration-s-blueprint-secure-energy-future?utm_source=email104&utm_medium=image&utm_campaign=energy

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8. A GOOD ARTICLE ON THE FUTURE OF ENERGY FROM OIL.

I just ran across the following article and recommend it.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/45594