The Slow Search for Solutions: Lessons from Historical Energy Transitions by Sector and Service

The Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) has released a new research report that examines past energy transitions by sector and service to identify features that may be useful for anticipating future transitions. The United Kingdom was the first to make the transition from traditional energy sources to fossil fuel.  The UK experience may help us understand how to transition to a low carbon economy.

Each country will have transition patterns driven by natural resources – coal, oil, wind, tidal, geothermal, etc.  The chart below shows the energy transitions for the UK from 1500 to 2000. Note the early use of wind.  Since the data only goes through 2000, UK’s significant recent investment in wind initiatives is not reflected.

Share of Primary Energy Consumption in the United Kingdom (1500-2000)
Share of Primary Energy Consumption in the United Kingdom (1500-2000)

Highlights of the BC3 Report

  • The main drivers for the energy transitions were the opportunity to produce cheaper or better energy services.
  • In a majority of cases, the successful new energy source or technology provided the same service (i.e. heating, power, transport or light) with superior or additional characteristics (e.g. easier, cleaner or more flexible to use).
  • The existence of a niche market willing to pay more for these characteristics enabled the new energy source and technology to be refined gradually until they could compete with the incumbent energy source.
  • Nevertheless, this implied that, on average, the whole innovation chain took more than one hundred years and the diffusion phase nearly fifty years.
  • In the same way, since low-carbon energy sources and technologies are valued for their low climate impact, they will be able to develop gradually until they can compete with fossil fuels.
  • However, for a transition to take place, low carbon energy sources and technologies will have to provide cheaper energy services – possibly helped by carbon taxes or tradable permit approaches.
  • Based on past experiences, a complete transition to a low carbon economy is likely to be very slow.

How fast will our transition to renewables be?  Can business and government get behind a clear statement of the problem and develop a cogent unified transition plan?  Will the transition be proactive or reactive?

Shale Gas Exploration: The Coming Storm

When you see three mainstream media (Vanity Fair, HBO, and Bloomberg) covering the esoteric practice of hydraulic-fracturing (also know as “fracking”), pay attention. Vanity Fair’s report, A Colossal Fracking Mess; HBO’s report, Gasland; and Bloomberg’s report, Shale Game, all detail the nasty practice of fracking – a process used to release natural gas and oil from the earth.

How nasty is fracking? Watch this amazing video of a homeowner demonstrating one of the toxic side effects of Fracking taking place on land near this man’s home.

This video was posted a year ago, and has had about 130,000 views. Though it took a year for the story to hit the mainstream media – the cats out of the bag.

Burning water is just one of the side effects of fracking. Tests of fracking runoff show presence of benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, boric acid, monoethanolamine, xylene, diesel-range organics, methanol, formaldehyde, hydrochloric acid, ammonium bisulfite, 2-butoxyethanol, and 5-chloro-2-methyl-4-isothiazotin-3-one. (Recently, in congressional testimony, drilling companies have confirmed the presence of many of these chemicals.) In the Vanity Fair article, Theo Colborn, a noted expert on water issues and endocrine disruptors, said that at least half of the chemicals known to be present in Fracking fluid are toxic; many of them are carcinogens, neurotoxins, endocrine disruptors, and mutagens.

HBO’s Gasland is a detailed journey around America, visiting the various communities where shale gas exploration is having an impact on health and wellbeing of the community. Special attention is given to the Marcellus Shale, which poses high risk to ground water for residents of Pennsylvania and New York.  All three reports detail this.

Each well needs 82 tons of assorted chemicals to get it producing. New York has banned shale gas drilling statewide until it adopts new rules. “We firmly believe, based on the best available science and current industry and technological practices, that drilling cannot be permitted in the city’s watershed,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in an April.

While the Vanity Fair and Bloomberg reports provide for gripping reading, Gasland’s use of video and narrative delivers a powerful compelling punch. After watching, I was thinking how grateful I was to not live in any of the numerous communities exposed to the toxic side effects of shale gas exploration.

Dimock Township in Pennsylvania is one of the towns that features in all three reports. The Bloomberg report says:

Victoria Switzer, who moved to Dimock Township, Pennsylvania, to build a $350,000 dream home with her husband, Jimmy, in 2004, had no idea how shale gas would consume her village of 1,400.

She says she found so much methane in her well that her water bubbled like Alka-Seltzer. Neighbor Norma Fiorentino says methane in her well blew an 8-inch-thick (20-centimeter-thick) concrete slab off the top. The $180 bonus Cabot paid to drill on Switzer’s 7.2 acres (2.9 hectares) and the $900 in royalties she gets each month don’t compensate, she says.

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, “The 10 most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the oil company an I’m here to help.’

Transitioning from Fossil Fuels to Renewable Clean Energy

Gas/Oil production is peaking. The easy oil and gas has been consumed. What remains will increasingly be harder to get to and more complicated to extract. Witness the BP Deepwater Horizon debacle in the Gulf. The business of oil/gas extraction will get increasingly messy and rife with political and legal risk.

Oil ERoEI Trend

In 1950 we could produce 100 barrels of oil using the energy of 1 barrel of oil.  So the Energy Returned on Energy Invested (ERoEI) was about 100:1.  Today that ratio has fallen below 10:1. Similar low ERoEI can be found for other fossil fuels.  The chart below shows the ERoEI for various forms of energy.  The highest ROI is in wind and solar.  This is where we are seeing double-digit growth.

ERoEI

The oil/gas industry has 100 years of inertia propelling it forward. The golden days of fossil fuels are behind us. The industry is a dinosaur now – kept alive by our addiction to fossil fuels. Renewable energy is our future. The faster we can make the transition, the less damage will be done as the beast staggers to its rotten end.

Bryan Walsh, one of my favorite environmental reporters, just published this evenhanded video that looks at some specific examples of toxic fracking related events in Pennsylvania, the heart of east coast gas extraction. The devastating impact on homeowners and communities is tragic.

Fossil fuels – RIP.

Peak Oil

 

Recommended Reading

Congress Releases Report on Toxic Chemicals Used In Fracking by Jay Kimball

 

Climate Change May Reduce Protein in Crops

The concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere may double by the end of the 21st century.

In a recent Science Magazine article, scientists at University of California, Davis discovered that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can reduce the protein content of crop plants by as much as 20 percent.  Their research shows that high CO2 levels interfere with the ability of plants to convert nitrates into proteins, thus reducing plant productivity and food quality. Increasing nitrogen fertilization might compensate for slower nitrate assimilation, but such fertilization rates might not be economically or environmentally feasible.

Food = Energy

Most crop fertilizers are produced from oil. As oil supply tightens, the price of oil will rise.  The price of fertilizer will track that increase.
About 17 percent of fossil fuels are used to produce our food.  The most energy intensive activities are:

  • Fertilizer & pesticide production
  • Irrigation
  • Transportation
  • Processing

Fertilizer and pesticide production accounts for 31 percent of fossil fuel usage in food production.

Business Impact

Big Ag should be concerned about this.  They are the heaviest users of fertilizers and pesticides.  It’s time for them to think about how to adapt to this.  Organic farmers should be in much better shape. They avoid the use of fossil fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides.  Organic sources of nitrogen, such as compost and manure, are their soil amendments of choice.

Community Impact

Food cost represents from 16% (developed nations) to over 60% (developing nations) of a family’s budget. As climate change reduces food quality and oil inflation drives up the cost of food production, family’s will struggle – receiving less nutritional value, at greater cost.

Government Impact

Looking at this news through the lens of government, three issues rise to the top:

  1. If you need to feed a lot of people (think India and China), it’s all about efficiency.  A 20% drop in protein production is a big problem.
  2. Make sure your Department of Agriculture and extension agents are at the top of their game, developing and disseminating best practices for our climate changing world.
  3. If your state/country produces a lot of food (think California, the grain belt, Canada, Europe and the UK), think about ramping up non-fossil fuel-based sources of nitrogen.

One clever approach to producing organic nitrogen – use farm animal waste to generate biogas for energy production, and use the resultant nitrogen-rich composted manure to amend farmland soil.  The benefits?

  • Less dependency on oil.
  • Strengthen the local economy through local nitrogen and energy production.
  • Capture the methane in animal waste before it enters the atmosphere.
  • Healthier food

The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United StatesTo learn more about Climate Change impact on food production, read the US Department of Agriculture’s report The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity.  It is an outstanding example of government in action:

  • Recognizing the fundamental importance of food to a functioning society.
  • Laying out the impact climate change will have on food production.
  • Detailed guidelines for farmers – how to mitigate impact and plan for changes to crop strategy as global warming and rainfall patterns shift.

The Real Population Problem

Google Trends tells me that starting in 2008 the monthly number of news stories on population doubled. Most of the stories like to talk about how global population will expand by 30%, peaking at about 9.1 billion people by around 2050.  Though 2050 is a nice round number, and a convenient mid-century marker, one can be lulled in to feeling like it’s a problem that is 40 years off. Not so. The population problem is here and now. And it’s not just about the number of people on the planet, but how those people consume resources.  Let’s take a look at the pertinent trends.

Energy and Population

The rate of population growth has a strong correlation with the effectiveness of the dominant fuel source at any given point in history.  As the chart below shows, wood was the dominant fuel until coal came on the scene in the 1600s. The population growth rate increased modestly with the proliferation of coal.  But the real exponential growth began with the discovery and exploitation of crude oil.  Crude oil production is peaking and the world is in the early stages of a transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy.

Fueling Population Growth

 

 

China, Brazil and India – Chasing the American Dream

As the population has grown, per capita income and consumption have grown. The most dramatic growth has been in the developing countries of China, Brazil and India. Let’s take a look at the trends in energy use and per capita income relative to some of the leading developed nations. Using GapMinder’s Trendalyzer with energy consumption data from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2010 and income data from the IMF, we can see some powerful trends unfolding (N.B. data presented for 1965 through 2008, 1 year steps, circle area proportional to population size, energy use in tonnes of oil equivalent):

  • China, Brazil, and India all show steadily increasing per capita income, with China having the biggest change – outperforming India and Brazil more than 2 to 1.
  • Though US per capita energy consumption is substantially larger than China, Brazil or India, growth has been flat. This comes from conservation initiatives (efficient lighting, insulation, etc.). We must do better.
  • China, Brazil, and India’s energy consumption is growing quickly as they move toward American patterns of consumption. The trend is strong and steady, with no signs of slowing.
Regional Energy Consumption and Income Trends
(click for larger image)

 

Less Is The New More

Though Americans represent only 5% of the world’s population, we are consuming about 24% of worlds energy. We are similarly voracious consumers of water, food, land, etc. Citizens in developing nations aspire to live the American lifestyle. Fareed Zakaria refers to this as the “rise of the rest” in his book A Post American World. But the world has only so much to give. Much of what we consume is not renewable. We are bumping up against the limits of earth’s ability to provide for us. As the population expands, for developing nations, their historically meager slice of the pie will expand. For developed nations, their slice of the pie must contract.

 

Our Ecological Footprint

Using ecological footprint data from Global Footprint Network we can see the current state of consumption for North America and the rest of the world (N.B. width of bar proportional to population in associated region).

Global Ecological Footprint

N.B. Ecological Footprint accounts estimate how many Earths were needed to meet the resource requirements of humanity for each year since 1961, when complete UN statistics became available. Resource demand (Ecological Footprint) for the world as a whole is the product of population times per capita consumption, and reflects both the level of consumption and the efficiency with which resources are turned into consumption products. Resource supply (biocapacity) varies each year with ecosystem management, agricultural practices (such as fertilizer use and irrigation), ecosystem degradation, and weather.
 
This global assessment shows how the size of the human enterprise compared to the biosphere, and to what extent humanity is in ecological overshoot. Overshoot is possible in the short-term because humanity can liquidate its ecological capital rather than living off annual yields.

Carrying Capacity

The last sentence of the note above is important. The developed nations are already consuming beyond the earths capacity to provide. Carrying Capacity has been exceeded and as it is exceeded, Carrying Capacity declines. While developed nations are making headway improving conservation, there has been little reduction of consumption – we have simply slowed the rate of per capita consumption. Meanwhile developing nations are moving up the consumption curve, aiming for an American-class lifestyle. Depletion of earth’s precious resources accelerates – oil, potable water, wild fish, species, clean air, etc. are all in decline. Earth’s Carrying Capacity is thought to be somewhere between 1 and 3 billion people. We have been operating the planet well beyond that for almost 50 years now.

Earth's Carrying Capacity

Even if the population stopped growing today, we are consuming beyond the earth’s capacity to provide. With 6.8 billion people already on the planet, the growth of consumption is the population problem, right now.

Zacharia suggests “As each country rises up, they become more self confident and nationalistic, and less inclined to cooperate in global unity toward a common goal of tackling the pressing problems of this century.”

And quoting Hamlet: “There’s the rub.”

  • Population has grown beyond the Carrying Capacity of the earth.
  • Increasing demand for critical resources (energy, water, food, land, …) reduces Carrying Capacity further, and accelerates decline exponentially.
  • Climate is changing, pollution growing, species extinction accelerating.
  • And our ability to work cooperatively to meet these challenges is failing.

This is not sustainable.

How do we break the vicious spiral? How can our global economy – grown soft and pudgy during the 20th century’s age of abundance – adapt and function in the lean and mean dog days of the 21st century?