After The Oil Runs Out

If I'm not mistaken, the energy to crack hydrogen from water actually exceeds the amount you get back when burning it. Mostly due to inefficiencies.

 

Perhaps true but at least other sources can be used to generate electricity to crack water such as solar and wind (not that I am saying that that would be the most efficient use of those resources either)

 

A few notes.

Much of the National Geographic article was taken directly or indirectly from the newly published book by Paul Roberts, The End of Oil.

M. King Hubbert, then a research petrogeologist at Shell, predicted in 1956 that US domestic oil production would peak between 1970 and 1972. At the time, he was widely dismissed. However, US production did in fact peak in 1970 and, in spite of intensive exploration and advancements in drilling and extraction technologies, it has been in decline ever since. For an amazing in depth look at oil: how it was created, where and how we find it and how WORLD petroleum production will peak when Hubbert's methods are applied to the global situation, read Kenneth Deffeyes' book Hubbert's Peak. Deffeyes worked at Shell with Hubbert and now teaches at Princeton.

More good reading on oil:

The Party's Over, Oil War and the Fate of Industrial Society by Heinberg. A dark, depressing analysis of where we are headed which is back to an agrarian local lifestyle with limited travel, scarce food supplies, no power grid... shall I go on?

A dark, but less pessimistic view can be found in The End of Oil, by Paul Roberts (just published). He recently spoke along with S. David Freeman former head of LADWP with 30 years of expertise in the energy field and Bill Reinert, National Manager of the Advanced Technologies Group at Toyota USA on the end of oil. The forum was held at the LA Central Library and about 300 people showed up.

For a thorough exploration of the current and future energy picture the world is facing, read Energy at the Crossroads, by Vaclav Smil, who holds out a reasonable hope of some semblance of industrial society.

No matter who you read in the field, the end of oil is coming. When Hubbert's Peak hits is debatable, but worst case scenarios are now and best case 2030-2040. How BAD things will get is also debatable, but they won't be easy and huge lifestyle changes are likely in the industrial world and even worse desperation in the third world as competition for remaining petroleum resources causes skyrocketing energy prices to trigger steep inflation in all sectors of the economy. In the panel at the LA Library, both Freeman and Roberts hoped the competition would remain merely financial and not turn nuclear as superpowers vie for the last reservoirs of oil to keep their economies humming. And with the increasing number of nuclear players in the world, there is more likelihood of serious conflict. China became a net importer of oil two years ago and its appetite for petroleum in increasing even faster than ours (about 10% per year as opposed to our 3-5% per year).

At the forum Reinert of Toyota was also downbeat on the likelihood of fuel cell cars coming on line any time soon. The entire fuel cell fleet is grounded at the moment due to failures of the stainless steel diaphragm that allows the hydrogen to be drawn from the 5,000-10,000 psi tank it resides in on board the vehicle. As Reinhert put it, you would not want to be anywhere in the vicinity of a diaphragm failure at 10,000 psi.

It is the transportation sector that is really the most problematic since we currently have no reasonable (either financially, technologically or environmentally) replacement for oil in our autos, trucks, trains and planes - and the crunch is coming.

The real nature of the problem, however, is a "non-negotiable" lifestyle that we have all (myself included) become used to. If we start from the premise that somehow we have to continue to live the way we do and buy, use and throw away the things we do, that the economy must continue to "grow" at x% per year, that natural resources are on the "expense" side of the general ledger and not on the "capital" side, then things are going to get really, really bad. As we become more desperate for energy to maintain our lifestyle, environmental laws may be thrown out the window (burn more coal, strip mine for shale oil, create the huge toxic waste lakes that oil extraction from tar sands produces, etc). We as a society may make those decisions, but they won't be easy and they are not without immense consequences. And none of this even touches the issue of global warming and the effects it will have on the world economy. There is now concern that the permafrost is melting and if it does, there are TRILLIONS of tons of methane hydrates which will be mobilized and released into the atmosphere, and methane is 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide is.

Heinberg hopes, in spite of the gloom, that some better society that is more fulfilling to the individual will come out of the chaos and industrial decline he foresees. I hope he's right. I have a teenage daughter who I would like to leave a livable world to. Deffeyes in his book says that one day his granddaughter is going to look at him with incredulity and ask "You BURNED all the petroleum???" and his reponse will be "Yup. We burned it. Sorry about that."

 

One of the best, level headed posts on the subject I've read. Good job, charlieh!

 

Thanks so much for posting this, Charlieh. No one enjoys reading about the doom and gloom that appears inevitable but everyone needs to appreciate the message and do what we as individuals can do to reduce the use of petroleum and its byproducts.

 

Thanks for the kind words. I have been active in energy and environmental issues for years, and I don't think I have ever been more concerned than I am now.

Comments on Maglev are encouraging. We need to be looking at relying more and more on trains, because on a passenger or weight per mile basis, they are the most fuel efficient (with the possible exception of river barge, which while more energy efficient, does not offer the speed we are after, and can't go where there is not canal...). Trains are energy-efficient -- Intercity (Amtrak) trains are far more efficient than airlines (2441 Btu's per passenger-mile vs. 3999 for airlines in 1998, according to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory). In fiscal year 2003, Amtrak served more than 24 million passengers, an all-time record. In fiscal year 2002, despite a national downturn in travel, Amtrak served 23.4 million passengers. Each day, approximately 66,000 passengers travel on Amtrak and that number could be even higher with enough equipment and more cities served.

So... we need to be supporting Amtrak and light rail rather than trying to dismantle it. The Federal, State and Local subsidies both direct and indirect to air transport and highway transport are truly staggering. The federal government provides a tiny (and diminishing) proportion of its transportation funding to rail -- in 2003, $32 billion to highways (doubled in 20 years, accounting for inflation), $14 billion for aviation (more than doubled in 20 years), and barely $1 billion for Amtrak (cut more than a third in 20 years). Yet, when oil pushes beyond $100 or $150 dollars a barrel, as even the optimists figure it will at some point, rail, and specifically electrified rail powered by alternative energy will be one of the FEW transport modes we will have as an option, unless some how the hydrogen hurdles can be surmounted, and no doubt they will, but the question is when. And the issue of generating the hydrogen is still a real problem since we don't have the alternative energy structure in place to do that yet. Right now producing hydrogen, as others have pointed out, is at BEST a break even on the energy (hydrogen is an energy STORAGE medium, NOT an energy SOURCE). If there was enough solar, wind, biomass and hydroelectric producing electricity, then electrified trains, hydrogen production, etc, would all be possible, at least at some level. There is a great deal of doubt in the industry that alternatives to fossil fuels can actually provide enough electricity to "fuel" us at current levels of consumption, let alone covering the estimated growth over the decade or more it will take to bring these technologies on line- and we may not have a decade (we may, but then again, we may not).

The prudent thing to do, given that no one argues that we are GOING TO RUN OUT OF FOSSIL based fuels, the most critical and soonest to decline being petroleum, would be to start NOW (we had an opportunity in the 1970s, but after the Carter administration there has NOT BEEN A SINGLE ADMINISTRATION with an energy program other than letting market forces determine what energies are used and how much is used. Or worse in recent administrations where the stated policy was to ENCOURAGE consumption of energy. That strategy can only work as long as the energy resources are plentiful. To ease the pain our society is going to feel we need a national level effort to encourage conservation (stop subsidizing Hummers, and INCREASE, not eliminate the deduction for hybrids), develop alternative energy sources and encourage mass and rail transit.

If we wait until the situation is truly desperate, it may really be lights out and I don't want to see that.

 

You are correct in your assumption. If, as many energy experts estimate will be the case, our total energy output will be constrained after the Hubbert Peak, the question will be, do you use the alternative energy produced electricity to keep the lights on, keep homes warm and some factories humming (especially since natural gas has already peaked domestically, and probably in Canada, leaving heating oil as the main non-electric source), or do we crack water for hydrogen at a breakeven energy wise in order to power cars... There will be some very difficult choices to be made and most all of them will bring big changes in where we live, work and play, barring some unexpected technical breakthrough.

 

You guys will get tired of hearing from me, I fear.

One thing that I meant to mention - when I was at the LA Libarary panel on the End of Oil with Bill Reinert (Director of Toyota Advanced Systems - ie. Prius), I put a question to him concering the net energy savings of the Prius over its life if you factor in ALL the energy required to BUILD the car and its battery, since batteries are VERY energy intensive to build. There have been several nasty posts on other boards claiming that when you factor the extra energy costs of the battery, the Prius can NEVER make up the energy via the energy saved by better fuel economy. That really disturbed me.

Bill categorically denied that was the case and while he could not quantify the savings, he explained that Toyota had looked very carefully at the entire energy cost of building the car and its power system and over the life of the car, there is a sizeable net energy savings. He even explained that one of the reason that Toyota is NOT using lots of aluminum in the car is because aluminum is extremely energy intensive to produce and they know that it will not be a viable option in the not too distant future (hmm... what does that say about aircraft??). There are also plans to use bioplastics (derived from non-petroleum sources) in future Prii. And he said there WILL be a gas guage fix in the not to distant future! Hallelujah!

This post might be better in another category, but the issue of how best to power our transportation sector made it seem appropriate here.

 

I've never heard of bioplastics, but knowing that something along those lines exists certainly makes me feel better.

You're assuming that we aren't all dead from flood and famine in 50 years. As a guy in his 20s, I'm starting to worry that my retirement will have to be on a boat. That reminds me, Waterworld sure was a stupid movie.

I have a feeling that it'll take a crisis before real technological and legislative advances are made in this area. The atom was split in about 3 years (with decades of groundwork before WWII). I wonder if this generation's scientists and engineers will be able to turn a similar trick?

 

Thank you, Charlieh. I, for one, am not likely to get tired of reading your long but informative posts.

My gut feeling is that we can surmount the technological problems, but the social and economic problems are much harder, and may lead to chaos. As you mentioned, people do not want to give up their present, high-energy lifestyle. And since big money equates to big political power, and those with money always want more, the corporate greed factor is a tremendous obstacle to a rational energy policy.

 

What will trigger the serious social and economic problems is really Hubbert's Peak. Once oil production has maxed (whenever that is), the competition begins and the spiraling prices will cause the problems. For example, an excellent new documentary called "The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream" (web site http://www.endofsuburbia.com/) looks at the impact skyrocketing oil prices would have on American suburbs. With no effective energy or transportation policy our suburbs have spread miles outside of the centers where people work. My postman drives in from Palmdale every day to deliver my mail - some 60 miles each way - in his Ford F350 pickup. Housing prices in Palmdale and Lancaster have soared as folks like him have fled urban LA, but they are still cheaper than LA, hence the exodus. But how will he afford (assuming it is even possible) to GET to work from Palmdale? And what will the value of his equity be in his home if home prices have plummeted since no one can LIVE there because there are no JOBS there?? There is some talk of high speed rail up to that area and on to San Francisco, but at this point it is simply talk, and everyone admits that such a rail line is at least 15-20 years away from reality. And that's an example of the imminent problem - any significant infrastructure change to resolve the inevitable disruptions will require lots of time, and the longer we careen along with no efforts in a direction other than "burn it now", the more wrenching those changes are going to be. Even more disturbing is that infrastructure projects of the scale we are talking about are massive users of petroleum (dozers, graders, cranes, asphalt production, etc) which if we wait too long will be so expensive that the total cost of such projects will be much, much higher. Building solar cells, steel tanks for hydrogen storage, aluminum turbines for wind power - all of these processes are very energy intensive, so the "bootstrap" to get us to alternative energy will be increasing difficult as energy prices rise and supplies are more constrained. Heinberg in The Party's Over points out that in the 18th century, blast furnaces in Europe were only able to operate one year in every two or three and in some areas only one in every ten years due to chronic wood shortages due to deforestation thus necessitating that wood be gathered farther and farther away from established centers of economic activity. Economists of the day wrote about the severe impact this energy shortage had on the cost of living and ecomonic activity.

The only way to get this bootstrap process moving is with leadership at the national level at least. Alas, I see none. This morning's LA Times, for example, has a two section lead article in the business section. The first part drones on about how there really has been no bad economic effect from the rise in oil prices to date (ho hum, business as usual), but does point out that at $70 or more per barrel, the "recovery" would be, and derailed, but right now, everything is A-OK. The article mentions however, that since we are now importing about 40% of our oil from overseas, all the money sent to the foreign nations is "the equivalent of a huge tax that generates no compensating benefits - unless the foreign countries use their oil revenues to buy American goods and services."

The companion side bar in the box is all about how the Big Three auto makers are making so much money selling large SUVs that any change in the product mix is never going to happen. The article points out the fuel cell cars are decades away from mass production, that the only company claiming they can make a profit on hybrids is Toyota and that Americans don't want fuel efficient cars. Here again, we need leadership and incentives to get us moving in the right direction. Tax breaks for fuel efficiency are mandatory - yet barring a change in the law, hybrid deductions phase out over the next few years. The article ends with a quote from Tom Kloza, chief analyst for the Oil Price Information Service (who reports oil and fuel price trends to folks like AAA):

"It amazes me how much Detroit doesn't get it. They keep thinking gas prices always drop. Yes, they do drop, but from higher and higher peaks. Today's low is higher than last year's. Tomorrow's will be higher still. Automakers need to be making more efficient autos. It's a no-brainer."

Well, apparently no one in government or the auto/oil industry seems to think so. To change that we all need to speak out. I write/fax/call/e-mail my senator and congressman every time there is any energy issue coming to a vote. Rail transport, CAFE standards, expiration of hybrid deductions - you name it. They don't care if we don't care, and so far the message they are clearly getting is that we don't care, and with dollars pouring in from the oil and auto lobbies, what do we expect them to do?

 

Maybe it's a mistake to look to the big 3 to change. It's like asking NASA to build SpaceShipOne.

 

I take the train here in Los Angeles, and I've been to japan, with arguably one of the best mass transit systems in the world. But compared to jumping in my car and driving, using mass transit is a PIA. Until some genius dreams up a mass transit system that equals or improves the driving experience, mass transit will be looked at by many as settling for less.

 

Just read over the material on the Maglev2000 website. I sense some overly optimistic math in their cost per mile calculations. My train ticket costs about 9 cents per mile, but that cost is subsidized about 50% by the various rail authorities. So that's really about 18 cents per mile. Add up all the energy savings you want, but the cost of maglev trains and track will absolutely be more than conventional trains in both initial cost and ongoing maintenance. 3 cents a mile sounds too optimistic.

Maglev is definitely cool technology. In fact my company is looking into using it. But with every new piece of technology comes a new host of problems. Some we know, some we find out later.