--- In ruralgreen@yahoogroups.com, "Joanne Cvar" <cvar@o...> wrote:
> So maybe technology can save us from ourselves?
> Joanne

There's a tough question, and it is essential that we get the answer right. I've been working at it for a while now. Here's my latest draft:

If you mean, "Is there a known technical solution to the emerging energy shortage, one that allows for continued growth of the economy," then the answer is, "No." That is, there are no known sources of energy that will be as abundant, as ubiquitous, and as cheap as the fossil fuels that are the source for 86% of the energy now used by our society. There are no solutions in sight that will allow us to keep going indefinitely as we are now.

If you mean, "Are there technical solutions, both certain and very likely to be developed, that will be very useful, over the next century, in making our adjustment to a society that uses less and less energy," then the answer is, "Yes." There isn't any technology without limitations, and many of those are limitations of cost, but there are lots of ways to do things more efficiently (i.e., using less energy) that will be helpful. We will in the course of the coming century still need to do less (shorter commutes, less flying, etc.) and we had better be doing less with a smaller population because we are not going to be able to produce enough food for a larger one, but there are technologies that can be helpful.

The question, in this instance, started with a report of a new powerful lithium battery. No battery, no matter how efficient, is a source of energy. A battery has to be charged - chemically, in the case of a disposable battery, or with electricity, in the case of a rechargeable battery. Either way, a battery is just a carrier of energy, as electricity itself is just a carrier of energy. The same is true for hydrogen, which is a fuel and a carrier of energy, but not a source of energy.

Batteries, electricity, and hydrogen are all things that have to be made. Making them takes energy. When you use batteries or electricity or hydrogen, you get back some energy, but you never get back as much energy as went into making them or,for a rechargeable battery, charging it. In all cases, you need some source of energy to put in before you can get energy out.

There are only three sources for all the energy used in our society:  nuclear reactions, fossil fuels, and sunlight. Only two, if you look at fossil fuels as compounds derived from sunlight and concentrated by biological action many millions of years ago, and only one if you look at the sun as a big nuclear fission reactor, but that's getting so abstractly philosophical that it may be impractical. In our daily life, we see nuclear fission plants and sunlight (driving wind and rain and the growth of crops) and fossil fuels mined from the earth as three different things; three sources of energy.

If we want to consider it, there is a fourth source; gravity, used in the forms of tidal energy and geothermal energy. This is so small a part of the energy actually used, that it hardly seems worthwhile to mention it. It's a small fraction of a tenth of a percent, for good reasons of availability and cost.

Fossil fuels provide 86% of the energy we use. Without fossil fuels, not a plane would fly; not a train or truck or car would run; and most homes would be cold in the winter. Forget about increased demand due to economic growth and population growth. If we (the world) simply continued using energy from fossil fuels at the rate we do now, substituting coal for oil and gas as the oil and gas run out, then all fossil fuel reserves will be exhausted by the end of the century.

Of course, that is in many ways a ridiculous assumption. As oil and gas and coal become scarce relative to demand, their price goes up, and we use less. This is elementary economics, and we see it happening now. More accurately, we feel it happening now, if we can be said to feel through our wallets.

In the 1970s we had an artificial energy shortage that, being artificial, was also temporary. We saw how that affected the economy. Now, we have a permanent energy shortage, as the demands of the economy bump against the limits of oil and gas production.

Since the first steam engine was developed to pump water out of a coal mine (patented by the English inventor, Thomas Savery, in 1698), we have been using fossil fuels to power the machines that work for us. More fuel, and thus more power, has been available for those several centuries. It is not yet an abrupt shock, but it grinds away at every sign of growth, and it will grind faster and faster as wells and mines are depleted.

The continually expanding economy has been built on the assumption of more fuel always being available, and cheaply, too. Well, it has been true for centuries, but we are now at the beginning of a new era in which it is no longer true. The era of cheap energy from fossil fuels is over.

That does not mean there will never be a day when the price of oil is lower than it was the day before. It does mean that, from one decade to the next to the next, the price of oil will go up. So will the price of gas and coal. The price goes up, and we use less. Unless other sources of energy can be developed, and those as cheap as oil and gas used to be, we use less energy, period.

The big problem with developing other sources of energy to replace fossil fuels is the scale of the thing.

Suppose we tried to produce, in the United States, enough hydrogen to replace the fossil fuels we use now. If we produced it using nuclear power, it would take 11 new nuclear plants for every one we now have. If we produced it with wind turbines, it would take a turbine 140 feet in diameter for every twenty persons, assuming we could find places with good wind to put all the turbine towers. If we produced it with solar panels, we would obliterate an area the size of Missouri with solar panels.

Aren't all of those scenarios, or any combination of them, pretty absurd? It's why James Kunstler correctly called the idea of the hydrogen economy a cruel hoax. The distinction between a source of energy and a carrier of energy is a fundamental one, so the main question about a hydrogen economy is, "Where does the energy come from to make the hydrogen?"

It is possible to make different assumptions about efficiencies and so on which would make the estimate of what it would take to replace fossil fuels smaller, but it is almost impossible to make assumptions in range of reason which would cut the numbers in half. We aren't going to replace fossil fuels with hydrogen, and still have the same amount of energy available. It will be less.

The same kind of thing is true, for instance, with biodiesel. When you look at just the number of gallons of oil we consume in a year, and the per-acre annual yield of biodiesel crops, it becomes clear there isn't enough arable land in America to replace it with biodiesel, even if we give up on growing food entirely.

It doesn't mean there is no place for biodiesel. It just means biodiesel, and biomass generally, has its limitations. There's a place for solar photovoltaics, and a place for wind power. They also have their limitations. As a society, we rip through, it has been said, 4000 years of fossil fuels in a day; 1-1/2 million year's worth in a single year. It's impractical to match the rate of fossil fuel energy use with alternate forms of energy, and soon it will be impossible to keep it up with fossil fuels.

There is a sort of oil in the Canadian "oil sands." That's now being produced. It is very expensive to produce this oil compared to the cost of pumping it out of the ground in Saudi Arabia or in Texas. It is being produced now only because the price of oil is high enough to make oil sand processing profitable, and the Canadian producers expect it will stay high permanently.

There is a sort of oil in Colorado "oil shale." That is not now being produced. It costs more (both financially and environmentally) to produce oil from oil shale than oil from oil sands. It might yet be produced if the price of regular oil goes high enough to make oil shale processing profitable.

The key here is, the oil of the future will be more expensive, no matter where it comes from. Energy generally will be more expensive, and we'll be using less. This will not just cause inflation. It will interfere with economic growth, ruin banks, and turn corporate prosperity into recession, depression and corporate failures.

We are literally at a turning point in history. For the last three centuries, using more energy has meant progress and economic growth. More was always available. Now, more is not going to be available. We will need a different kind of economy (maybe one that economizes) and a different kind of society (not globalized, but localized).

All the corporate politicians are desperate to somehow keep the economy accelerating, when we should be slowing down to make the turn. Ask them, and they'll tell you, "It's the economy, stupid." They're wrong. If they think the economy is the most important thing for the society, it just means they can't see the turn coming. They're right only if they mean the economy is the enemy of the society. In any case, it's up to us to take their hands off the wheel and their feet off the accelerator, or our whole society is going to skid into the ditch.

Technology - short of a miraculous discovery of a new and cheap source of energy - is not going to save us while we passively go along for the ride as passengers. If we are in control, as the people are supposed to be in a democracy and are not in this society, then we can use technology to good purpose when we are trying to conserve energy, not to use more and ever more of it.

Areas with clear skies and sunshine can get a lot out of solar panels. Areas with reliable winds can use wind turbines. Areas with arable land can use biomass. Industrial agribusinesses will collapse, and the lands can be returned to family farming.

In the cities, we can recreate neighborhoods where people work, shop, go to school and get ordinary medical care within walking distance of their homes. Products from China will be more expensive than products from within the state; more expensive, because they have to travel from China, and that takes lots of expensive energy.

Exurban gated communities and bigfoot subdivisions can be returned to farmland or forest.

We'll need a lot of local adapting to conditions to adjust to a world with progressively less energy. Giant global corporations will just get in the way of that process, and will become much less powerful than they are now. It will be an opportunity to restore democracy to our daily lives wherever local communities value democracy. It will also be an occasion for the few who believe they should be priveleged to fight mightily to keep their priveleges, no matter how many of us must be impoverished in the process. Social justice and democracy are not guaranteed.

As to how this is all going to turn out - my Magic 8 Ball said, "Cannot Predict Now." It's not up to me to determine that any more than it is up to any of the rest of us. If enough people are inspired to demand a more egalitarian society that uses resources sensibly, technology allows us to create that society. If not, our society can collapse and disappear, like that of the Maya, the Mound Builders, or the Soviet Union. Either way, it's not going to be done to us, but by us.

Art Myatt

Click here to visit Art's website.