Energy Constrained Learning: Part 3

Note: This post is part 3 of 6 in a serialization of Energy Constrained Learning.
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Peak Oil and Climate Change
 

---

 

What’s the Concern?

Reaction to IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2010 was almost instantaneous among credible voices following peak oil, including the PostCarbon Institute, The Oil Drum, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas – USA (ASPO-USA), and the Energy Bulletin. In one sentence I’d characterize this reaction as some gratitude toward IEA for finally acknowledging that peak oil is inevitable and for expressing in no uncertain terms that moderating climate change requires dramatic movement in national energy policies, but this gratitude was also accompanied by a healthy dose of fisticuffs over IEA assumptions, omissions, and their weak backbone in the face of political pressures.

This is not the place to detail the point-by-point concerns of IEA and WEP2010 critics. If you’re interested, please follow the links in the previous paragraph.

Instead I’ll try to summarize several key points in the volumes written about the collision of peak oil and climate change.^[1] Here’s a condensed version:

Energy provides the means for complex organization in all living and social systems.^[2]

Non-renewable fossil fuels provide much of the energy that powers industrial societies, including their agricultural systems.^[3]

Global increases in CO₂ concentrations are due primarily to use of fossil fuels by humans.^[4] The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports “there is very high confidence that the net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming.”^[5]

At the present rate of change in CO₂ levels, the world is only a few decades away from the 450 ppm target that IEA believes will provide a “reasonable chance” at safety from climate change.^[6]

Fossil-fuels are energy dense, meaning that the units of energy produced comfortably exceed the units of energy needed during production. This is frequently referred to as Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI).^[7] It’s easier to refer to it simply as net energy.

Dense energy sources with high net energy provide a powerful multiplier effect for economic activity. For the last three hundred years we benefited enormously from cheap fossil fuels that were readily available.

Net energy of a resource tends to decrease over time.^[8] For example, as the most readily available high quality oil fields get depleted, it costs more to locate and extract petroleum of the same grade. A simple example is deep-water drilling.

When the EROEI of any resource reaches 1:1, that resource is no longer a viable source of energy using existing technologies, regardless of how large the reserves may be.^[9]

In the past we switched our dominant energy source from wood to coal and then to oil.^[10]There is no obvious short-term substitute for oil.^[11]

All oil substitutes have one or more limitations, including low net energy, high carbon emissions, intermittency, degradation of ecosystems and livelihoods, potential for catastrophic risk, small scale, restricted transportability, and non-renewability.^[12]

Our energy future may be a patchwork involving wind, hydro, solar photovoltaic, concentrating solar thermal, passive solar, geothermal, wave, tidal, and spot use of nuclear, oil, gas, and coal. Local conditions would likely determine the mix.^[13]

Insufficient time exists to scale up non-fossil fuel energy sources to ensure safety from climate change and to also maintain current average standards of living in the world.^[14]

The constellation of peak oil and climate change will likely provoke an improvised scramble involving conservation, efforts to improve energy efficiencies, and innovation in post-carbon energy technologies.^[15]

Anticipated growth in the world’s population will exert additional pressure on energy resources.^[16]

Life in the industrial world will be different.

 

---

 

Notes

1. ^ I don’t want to misrepresent myself, so let me be clear. I am not a peak oil researcher, but rather an individual concerned about tomorrow. I have not read the entire volumes written about peak oil. So this summary may not accurately reflect what an energy expert would provide. Still, I think it hits the major points.
2. ^ This is a colloquial restatement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In a system open to an environment, work can transfer energy into action that increases the organization of the system. In the process, however, heat gets dissipated into the environment subject to the restraint that the disorder produced by the heat exceeds the order created by the work. The result is increased system order, increased environmental disorder, and increased total disorder. See Eric D. Schneider and Dorion Sagan. Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2005.
3. ^ In the United States in 2009, for example, oil alone provided 94% of the energy used in the transportation sector and 41% of the energy used by industry. Fossil fuels in total provided 83% of all primary energy used in the U.S. in 2009. All figures are from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review 2009 (PDF), August 2010, Figure 2.0, p75 and tables listed in the footnotes.
4. ^ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report, Summary for Policymakers (PDF), November 2007, p5.
5. ^ Ibid. p5.
6. ^ The world now sits at 392 ppm CO₂. Even less time remains to make the transition to a post-carbon world if we want to improve the odds beyond reasonable. The current rate of increase in CO₂ concentration is 2 ppm per year. Other science claims that 350 ppm should be the target to ensure safety from climate change. Baseline concentrations were about 275 ppm before use of fossil fuels began in earnest. See 350 Science for details.
7. ^ Richard Heinberg, Searching for a Miracle: “Net Energy” Limits & the Fate of Industrial Society (PDF), Post Carbon Institute & International Forum on Globalization, September 2009, p10.
8. ^ Charles A.S. Hall and John W. Day, Jr, Revisiting the Limits to Growth After Peak Oil, American Scientist, May-June 2009 (PDF; paywall), p237 and Figure 10, p236.
9. ^ Ibid. p237.
10. ^ For a nice graph of the sources of energy consumption in the United States from 1775 to 2009, see the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review 2009 (PDF), August 2010, Figure 5, p22.
11. ^ Heinberg, Searching for a Miracle, p7.
12. ^ Ibid. p7,31-55.
13. ^ Ibid. p57-58.
14. ^ Ibid. p61-62.
15. ^ Ibid. p65-69.
16. ^ United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, Population Estimates and Projections Section. World Population Projects: The 2010 Revision, Press Release (PDF), 03 May 2011, p1. The world population is nearly 7 billion and is expected to increase to 9.3 billion by 2050.