Author of Finding Lights in a Dark Age, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future and A Small Farm Future
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Posted on December 7, 2014 | 9 Comments
So, continuing with my odyssey behind enemy lines in the land of the eco-panglossians, we now come to the matter of energy. And if you’re still reading, Tom, with this post we begin our countdown towards the question of sustainably synthesized fertiliser (having made you wait so long, I fear my comments on this are going to be a terrible anti-climax when I finally get to them…)
Let me begin with a comment made by the inestimable Mr Strouts on his blog a while back, to wit that ‘Fifty years is a looooong time in the world of energy’. Now, it strikes me that this view is historically incorrect. From the dawn of human history to the nineteenth century there was basically little more than wind, water and biotic energy available. The technologies that made use of them at the dawn of the nineteenth century were a good deal more sophisticated than those that made use of them at the dawn of, say, the ninth century or previously, but there wasn’t an awful lot of difference in the nature of the supply. So perhaps we could posit the alternative hypothesis that for about 200,000 years very little happened at all in the world of energy. Or to express it in a more Stroutsian manner, that fifty years is a shooooort time in the world of energy. Arguably this began to change in the nineteenth century, when humanity started to rely more on fossil fuels. Doubtless the energy sector of today looks very different to that of the early nineteenth century, but our basic reliance on fossil fuels is much the same, so whether fifty years is a long time or not in the modern world of energy seems to me moot.
We can’t of course predict what the world of energy will look like fifty years hence, but perhaps we can learn a few lessons by looking back over the last fifty years. Actually, the data I’m going to present only look back over the last 31 years (from 1980-2011 to be precise) because this time series is all that’s available on the excellent US Energy Information Administration website. I’ll leave it to others to judge what 62% of a looooong time is – a long time, if not a looooong time perhaps? Hopefully long enough to be worth a look, anyway.
So, my first graph (Figure 1) presents total world primary energy production, which in 1980 amounted to 287 quadrillion BTUs. Of that, 89% came from fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas). Fast forward to 2011 and total world primary energy production has leapt to 518 quadrillion BTUs, of which 87% came from fossil fuels. So perhaps I ought to concede that Graham is right and things have changed. We’re now producing nearly twice as much energy as we were 31 years ago. But on the other hand we’ve scarcely budged our proportionate reliance on fossil fuels. Plus ça change…
It’s often argued that we’re getting better at getting more out of our energy, so I suppose another interesting statistic would be per capita energy use over the same time period. I’m not really sure how relevant this figure is, because eco-panglossians are not the types to bother over such trifling possibilities as the limits to human growth, and limits-to-growthers are not going to be placated by any per capita sleight of handery. Still, let’s look at the figure anyway – here it is, in Figure 2. Goodness me! In 1980 we produced 64.7 quadrillion BTUs per billion population (or 64.7 million BTUs per capita, if you prefer), whereas in 2011 we were producing 74.1 million BTUs per capita – a 15% increase in energy intensity.
Perhaps you could argue that this is a good thing, reflecting increasing energy availability to people who previously went without. Well, there is some evidence for that: as Figure 3 shows, per capita energy consumption has declined 9% in the heaviest per capita energy consuming region (North America) and increased 65% in Asia and Oceania (mostly reflecting China’s rise – I wonder if there’s any connection there). The Asia and Oceania figure also includes Australia, which has recorded a 13% rise to a whopping 289 million BTU per capita, while things look pretty static in Europe. Here’s another figure: in 1980 per capita energy consumption in the highest consuming region (North America) was nearly 20 times more than the lowest consuming region (Africa). In 2011 that discrepancy was still sixteen fold, with most of the relative decrease associated with decreasing American consumption rather than increasing African. Even China’s current per capita consumption is still less than a quarter that of the US. So arguably there’s been limited progress on distributional equity, even leaving aside any larger sustainability issues about energy dependency.
Let us turn from total energy production and consumption to the production of electricity. Figure 4 shows total world electricity generation from 1980-2011. Its growth exceeds the growth of total energy production – we’re now generating 2.6 times more electricity than we were in 1980. But it’s worth pointing out what a small proportion of global energy production the electricity sector occupies. In 1980, electricity generation amounted to about 10% of total global energy production. In 2011 the figure was 14%. And if we look at the mix of electricity generation methods, we see once again that it’s dominated throughout by fossil fuels (70% in 1980, 67% in 2011). The corresponding figures for nuclear power were 9% (1980) and 12% (2011), and for renewables 22% (1980) and 21% (2011).
Let’s just point out the implications of those figures in relation to nuclear power, which is one of the eco-panglossians’ major hobby horses. The likes of Stewart Brand and Mark Lynas seem to see it as our energetic saviour, but leaving aside any specific rights and wrongs of the technology, let’s not forget that it’s a method of generating electricity, which currently furnishes only around 14% of our total energy needs, and of that 14% only 12% currently is nuclear. Supposing we increased nuclear generation tenfold (which I imagine would be difficult to do any time soon even with a complete consensus over it, and even then only in the richer countries) – it would still be providing us with less than 20% of our total energy.
Why, then, this big eco-panglossian fanfare for nuclear? Writing of the new nuclear plant being built just down the road from me at Hinkley Point using expensive and old fashioned pressurised water technology, the self-styled scientific rationalist Mr Strouts opined “technology does not follow some kind of god-given path to heaven”. He follows this plausible contention with the sentence “So we can embrace Hinkley C as a victory against extreme Luddism of the Greens, while lamenting that it is not Thorium”. Non-sequitur alert! In this avowedly non-teleological teleology, thorium is more heavenly than PWR, but PWR is more heavenly than whatever the Greens support and, being closer to heaven, therefore ought to be supported. Here, scientific rationalism crumbles under only moderate stress, to be replaced by an irrational technophilia for its own sake, regardless of whether it makes sense in the circumstances. This is the beating heart of eco-panglossianism, all too evident in Whole Earth Discipline, its sacred text: never let cold rationality or economic nuance get in the way of techno-boosterism.
Another entertaining aspect of the Hinkley Point fiasco is the fact that, after the British government of the 1980s deregulated the electricity industry because they disliked the socialistic implications of a centrally planned public supply, they’re now giving British public money to a publicly owned utility company from the planned economy of China to build the darned thing. But let us leave that thought hanging until another time.
The conclusions I’d draw from the EIA data and the wider energy scene are as follows. For a looooong time, people were reliant on renewable biotic, wind and water energy. After that, for a long time we’ve been reliant on fossil fuels, we’re now more reliant on them than ever before and we have few other tools in the box, or new ones in the offing. (This, incidentally, is also pretty much the conclusion of Vaclav Smil in his book Energy: Myths and Realities (AEI Press, 2010), Smil being very far from a fellow traveller in the camp of those of us Graham likes to call ‘greentards’). We may not be in any imminent danger of running out of fossil fuels, but the growth of the unconventional sector is surely suggestive that, if not yet over, the party has at least got to that stage when you start rummaging in cupboards or secretly filching half drunk glasses in order to keep your spirits up.
This is the point at which I think the eco-panglossians are at their weakest and least rational, and therefore at their most stridently outspoken. Doubtless drawing inspiration from the fairytale world of neoclassical economics where rising prices incentivise a smooth transition to substitute goods, they are generally of the opinion that somebody is bound to think of something. And of course they might turn out to be right. ‘Never bet against human ingenuity’ in the words of Daniel Lacalle. From the looooong perspective of five decades, no doubt fracking or the tar sands create the impression of limits being transcended – or at least of a breathing space being created so that if somebody sorts out nuclear fusion, if somebody sorts out batteries, if somebody… But from the looooong perspective of 200,000 years, I’m inclined to take a Philip of Macedon approach to these ‘ifs’. As one of the respondents on Lacalle’s blog excellently put it: “Colossal quantities of surplus energy allows human ingenuity (specifically, technology). It does not follow that technology allows surplus energy. Your betting advice seems to assume reversal of causality.” Yes indeed – I’m happy to applaud human ingenuity, but I can’t find much evidence in human history to suggest that we will easily overcome the dwindling availability of cheap, versatile and highly concentrated fossil energy. So why not give ourselves a head start– slap a massive carbon tax on fossil fuel for us westerners, divert the lion’s share of what’s remaining to low income countries where grid energy is in short supply so they can prepare well too, incentivise a shift to a more renewable electricity-based energy mix, and contemplate a future of energy descent.
In my earlier post on energy, I wrote “If people sort out clean energy, there’s still a raft of issues such as water scarcity, phosphate scarcity, soil loss, past carbon emissions, anthropogenic nitrification, oh and social justice, to keep us eco-realists worried” to which Strouts responded by posting some pictures of Tigger (himself) and Eeyore (me) along with the thought “You can almost hear [Smaje’s] hands wringing together and his mournful cries of “woe is me!”
Very droll…though I suspect irony detection isn’t Graham’s strong suit. Still, he’s reading me wrong. I’m Tiggerishly optimistic that humans won’t succeed in transcending energy limitations long term, which cheers me up no end because energy availability is a strong ecological limit to which all species, including humans, are pretty well adapted and know how to not only cope with, but thrive in, given half a chance. Don’t get me wrong – a bit of cheap and concentrated energy is a marvellous thing, and can help improve human wellbeing if judiciously used. The problem is that ‘judicious use’ seems rare among the human virtues. In the unlikely event that humans do overcome energy limitations long term, well then yes I do have to confess an Eeyoreish streak – it’ll be a disaster for the poor, a disaster for other species, and we’ll soon get tripped up by that raft of other limitations I alluded to that at present we’ve scarcely even begun to think about. But more on that in upcoming posts.
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Right then, you’re the man with the statistics, can you answer me this?
If we cover every bit of non agricultural space with solar panels and propellers will we be able to continue with our standard of living, including funding the technological developments that you say are supported by cheap fossil fuels?
If not, can we do it with nuclear power added to the mix, regardless of whether or not this is desirable?
Ah well, my handy little EIA database is regrettably silent on those questions. But you’ve appealed to my inner nerd – so a bit of Google searching has enabled me to hazard some answers. Assuming 37% of global land area is devoted to agriculture (and bearing in mind that 71% of the earth’s surface is sea), and assuming an incident solar energy budget of 240 Wm-2 then I think current global energy production is about 0.02% of incident solar energy on non-agricultural land (including the oceans), assuming we could capture it at 75% efficiency. Which of course we couldn’t, because the limitation isn’t really available space but the resource and financial cost of installing the capacity (plus the opportunity cost of covering everything with generating capacity – it’d be a case of NIMBPs or ‘not in my back planet’…)
Nuclear power: well, as my figures above show nuclear power currently furnishes 1.7% of our global primary energy production, so if we increased current nuclear capacity approximately sixtyfold then yep we could do it all with nuclear. But bear in mind, as I said above, that electricity currently constitutes only 14% of our energy production: there are a lot of applications where it currently wouldn’t be of much help, and a lot of countries that probably couldn’t afford it.
The answer to your question perhaps also depends on who the ‘our’ is in ‘our standard of living’ – the denizens of the United Arab Emirates use 715 million BTUs per capita per annum, whereas those of Chad use 0.34 mBTU. In the UK we use 135 mBTU, in the US it’s 313mBTU, and the global median country is Uruguay at 57mBTU. So it’d be easier for some of us to maintain our standard of living than others. Though personally I wouldn’t equate standard of living directly with energy consumption (…though nor would I entirely disconnect it). Hope that helps.
Behind enemy lines… keep your helmet firmly in place, your profile close to the ground, and your senses keen. Also good advice for growing greens and carrots 🙂
So here I am again to kibitz, I do hope I’m not wearing out a welcome for always sharing some contrarian opinions.
Longish vs short term results matter on some landscapes, so I suppose I’ll stand with those looking about at all manner of data to discern meaning, cause and effect, and follow on with predictions and policy direction. And its along this line of thought that I get confused by the respondent on Lacalle’s blog (again… thanks for the link) who put it: “Colossal quantities of surplus energy allows human ingenuity (specifically, technology). It does not follow that technology allows surplus energy”. I suppose if one limits the field of view to only those moments when indeed there has been a colossal quantity of surplus energy then the premise is fair. But I’d suggest human ingenuity (and specifically technological innovation) occurs – or at least is not prevented – at other times as well. More to the commenter’s point – the premise doesn’t point directly to the conclusion that technology allows surplus energy… this wording troubles me. Technology can be employed to produce energy. Whether there is a surplus is another matter – but surely a technology like atom splitting can produce such an enormous amount of energy that concerns about surplus don’t seem relevant. Ultimately though the commenter used the expression to suggest Lacalle’s advice to never bet against human ingenuity is somehow illogical. I guess I’m stuck, and any clarification or explanation would be appreciated. Betting against human ingenuity seems to have had a tough record thus far, and the size of the energy supply at any point in history doesn’t appear to me to have challenged or supported this outcome. So what of the future? Well, that’s fair a question. Lets get to that next.
“… few other tools in the tool box, or new ones in the offing”
Fission does have its issues, solar and wind are not the Holy Grail either. Hydro is cool, but again, not a panacea. Not sure I want to put fusion forward as ‘in the offing’, but then I don’t want to bet against human ingenuities potential to figure it out at some point (the ‘when’ then becomes significant). Hydrogen – there’s a technology in the offing. Biofuels… (gosh, why didn’t I start with this one?? 🙂 ).
So biofuels have some baggage as well, but one thing they can trumpet is that the plants (and animals) used to produce feedstocks for fuel synthesis can be manipulated by plant and/or animal breeding. Hmmm, I’m SO predictable… sorry.
There is even some research on creating a commensal system with a green alga and a yeast which may produce surplus feedstocks that could be directed to energy production. There is a biological N fixer in the mix, but I believe the P, K and other mineral necessities have to be supplied.
Ingenuity is what we do. And small farmers are as good at it as any.
My take would be that there’s essentially only been one energy transition in human history so far – the transition to fossil fuels – and the EIA data show that we’re currently still almost entirely within its grip. So yes there are various other new energy technologies around of the kind you mention, and one or more of them may rise to fill the future void that the exit of fossil fuels will leave – but we don’t currently have much historic evidence to suggest that transitions of this sort will be easy, and it seems to me that retaining present levels of cheapness, concentration and versatility in our energy sources will be a profound challenge. Though as I mentioned in the post, I’m not convinced that retaining these present levels is necessarily all that desirable.
Clearly humans have innovated throughout history, energy transitions or no – and as I suggested in my Dark Mountain piece, I certainly don’t consider that an intrinsically bad thing. I think what the commenter on Lacalle’s blog is driving at is that there has been a massive burst of technical innovation over the last couple of hundred years which has been potentiated by the easy availability of cheap, concentrated and mobile fossil energy. This can trick us into thinking that humans are so innovative that it will be easy for us to innovate our way out of a squeeze on the fossil fuel supply, but here is where the direction of causality is wrong. I think he’s probably correct, and that this insouciant faith in the inevitability of a future energy transition will likely turn out to be mistaken. That doesn’t mean that people won’t find good solutions to their problems – but I suppose my general line of argument against those of the eco-panglossian faith is that ‘good solutions’ are not always high energy or high tech solutions, and not all (or even not many) problems can be solved in the long run by throwing more energy at them.
First – quite sorry for the tardy response. Out of town last week… comparing notes with other breeders, coordinating our eventual release of unimaginable amounts of energy (or something we hope will be important).
So if the debate is over causation behind the perceived blooming in technology then I would like to nominate another possible causal factor. Us.
While I won’t argue against the seeming correlation between the advent of fossil fuel use and a blooming rate of technological development, I will argue that using fossil fuels as we do is itself a technological development that we instituted. And we didn’t forget how to do it. Indeed we continue to expand that tech and innovate still more. If you burn a liter of petrol to accomplish some task – its gone. I can’t come behind you and burn it again. On the other hand, if I invent something or discover some important relationship in nature, you and everyone else can then employ that invention and/or build upon it to make something else new [patents and IP protection do come into play, but for simplification I’ll leave them aside for now – if one wants we can go down that path another time]. Technological innovation doesn’t get used up. I can’t imagine a ‘peak’ innovation to compare with a ‘peak’ resource issue.
While correlating changes in the last few hundred years (fossil fuel history) I can point to the vast swelling of the human population. I can also point to the even faster swelling in scientific publication. Both humans and our created knowledge are more durable than a liter of petrol. So an individual human does have an expiration date, but all the while this person lives s/he learns and eventually teaches – thus becoming a living archive of some subset of knowledge. More humans, more archives, more collaboration, more invention, more innovation. A liter of petrol just burns once.
So surplus energy may have played a role to ‘grease’ the wheels. But the wheels were already there – an innovation of human origin many, many millennia ago. You use the word ‘potentiated’ to describe the impact of fossil fuels in this blooming of technology. And I’m not entirely opposed to this notion – I might argue that some subset of all the technological innovation occurring in the time frame with fossil fuel use has been potentiated by the availability of surplus energy. But not all.
Further, I’d suggest that human infatuation with our ability to innovate has a much longer history than our conquering of fossil fuels. One might imagine the first hominid to control fire felt not just the warmth of the flame, but was also warmed inside by a realization that this discovery was a game changer.
Perhaps what I like the most about the direction you’ve taken above is the concern about appropriateness of innovations. The Pangloss in me may expect our capacity to innovate to continue – but how will we collectively decide which are indeed the ‘good solutions’. Markets? Politics? It may be worth considering whether and when each of these two human inventions might be further improved through innovation.
Well, I’m happy to call the turn to fossil fuels an ‘invention’ provided the importance of the distinction you make is underlined – unlike many other inventions, this is one that can be used up. If the motion for debate is that humans can be adaptable and inventive in solving their problems, then I’m happy to sign up to it. If it’s that humans are so adaptable and inventive in solving their problems that a future transition to a post-fossil energy economy of equivalent extent and versatility is a done deal, then I’d beg to differ – to me that’s an article of faith, with little evidence to support it. I agree with you that human infatuation with our technical power has a long pedigree – the Prometheus story and the Book of Genesis spring to mind. But there have been plenty of times in human history where our adaptability and inventiveness has had to involve retrenchments in situations of constraint, threat and scarcity. Even when that isn’t the case, transitions can still be painful – Emma Griffin’s ‘Liberty’s Dawn’ book that I reviewed a while back discusses the many trades and occupations that were rapidly eliminated in the industrial revolution. We’re currently building a world, for which the eco-panglossians are great cheerleaders, involving high energy urbanising infrastructures with major ecological and economic externalities and the proliferation of what David Graeber calls ‘bullshit jobs’ in which increasing numbers of people are increasingly ill-equipped to address their basic needs. I wouldn’t necessarily bet against humanity overcoming the problems that we’re storing up here relatively painlessly, but the more we pursue our present course the more the odds lengthen. The main lesson of something like the Genesis story is that our human hubris tends to trip us up: the eco-panglossians would do well to learn a bit of human history, both long-term and short, ponder such lessons, and rein in their aggressive bombast. As I previously mentioned, I think it would be good to cast the net much wider than the eco-panglossians do in the search for solutions – many of which, as you imply, might well be economic or political ones that involve thinking a bit more out of the box than the standard eco-panglossian prescription for technical fixes to maintain the status quo. I do agree that there’s a precious legacy of prior invention and scientific understanding at our disposal – sadly, it’s easy to misuse or squander it.
Indeed – you are absolutely right for making the point of difference between populations and individuals. And if I were wearing a broader thinking cap I might have reined in a bit of my own enthusiasm.
Individuals succeed or suffer, populations adapt or fail. So we as a human race have adapted over time (we haven’t failed yet). Some individuals have benefited, and some have not. And I’m not trying to paint a potential future where no one will suffer. Perhaps my vision is one where we needn’t all suffer, some will survive. My optimism is for the broader population. The human suffering dually noted by Emma Griffin is at the level of individuals. History is written by the winners.
Thanks for the pointing to David Graeber – more to chew on.
And perhaps I might repay a bit of indebtedness for all the sources you provide by tossing this one your way: have you run across http://www.feasta.org/ ?
The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability. Irish et al.
Thanks Clem, I’ll take a look at it.
Just one afterthought – yes individuals win or lose and populations survive or don’t, but there are political/economic systems which systematically advantage some individuals and disadvantage others, albeit with enough play so that you can never be completely sure who the future winners and losers will be (though you can usually make a pretty good guess). This persistent non-randomness of the dice makes it difficult for me to accept the rules of the game we’re currently in (and of past games too): I’m happy to celebrate human survival, and I accept that there are always going to be winners and losers, but neither of these concessions are enough to convince me that we don’t need to change the rules of the present game.