The Emperor Has No Clothes A Practical Guide for Environmental and Social Transformation (18 page)

Fig. 6 Hubbert Curves for oil discoveries
& depletion.

66. When I originally investigated this
about 10 years ago coal cost about $30.00 / ton, it now costs
around $41.00 / ton.

If the exploitation of oil fields are
considered, initially the field is discovered by boring a test well
that successfully produces oil. The next stage in the process is
development of the oil field by establishing more oil wells which
increases production and also provides information on its extent
and quality. At some later point in time the field will be fully
developed and producing its maximum output (fig. 7). While this
developmental process is taking place the wells that were bored and
started producing in the initial stages will become exhausted and
go dry. The wells that are established progressively later in the
oil fields development will also eventually go dry until the entire
oil field becomes drained. So what we have are two bell curves, one
that describes the developmental phase where the oil is being
pumped out, followed by another similar bell curve that describes
well exhaustion Fig. 6. The same type of analysis can be expanded
and used to predict the peak, decline and exhaustion of world oil
supplies since a fixed number of oil fields exist in the world Fig.
7.

Fig. 7 Hubbert Peak for world oil production
and exhaustion.

When discussions of dwindling fossil fuel
availability comes up the fossil fuel industry quickly brings out
the magic wand of technological solutions that they claim will
continue to make their products available into the far future. The
nature and status of these wonders are usually presented in the
vaguest terms if at all, and as we have already discussed, even
inventions that are fairly well along in the development process
seldom become viable. Another argument these industries often
present is that new resources will be found to offset the dwindling
supplies. [68] There is no doubt new oil and coal fields will be
found, but new discoveries will become progressively less frequent
as a result of the declining population of untapped fossil fuel
fields. The fact of the matter is fossil fuels are finite resources
that have been mined since the 19th century (oil) and coal
extensively since the 17th century both in vast quantities.
[69]

The coal industry also uses the argument that
its product can be continued to be used because of “anticipated
developments” in carbon dioxide sequestration technology. In the
Harvard paper by Epstein et al., this question was considered and
upon investigation it was found that to operate this type of
technology large quantities of energy are required, thereby
increasing the amount of coal needed to produce a kWh of energy by
25% - 40%. This of course would greatly increase coal usage with
its associated environmental problems caused by mining, retention
basins for tailings, fly ash, as well as the other remaining air
pollution components. In this process the carbon dioxide is
collected and injected into underground storage areas such as
depleted oil wells. To deliver the carbon dioxide to these storage
areas it would require the establishment of an extensive array of
pipelines and other types of infrastructure to implement. The
Norwegians had a small scale pilot project of this type it cost
this plant about $200 / tonne to sequester the carbon dioxide [70],
they happened to have a nearby depleted off-shore oil well so the
pipe line to it from the power plant was not very long. In 2006
they decided to try to scale their system up to process carbon
dioxide on an industrial scale with a target date of 2020 for start
up. The project was abandoned after spending $1.2 billion with an
additional $290 million in cost over runs. The implementation of
this type of technology also has other problems besides being
prohibitively expensive and inflicting greater damage to the
environment. Carbon dioxide which is odorless and tasteless becomes
a deadly gas in high concentrations. If the system developed a leak
either through fissures in the underground storage area or the
pipelines, it has the potential of causing deadly widespread
catastrophes. Of course what will be argued is that the carbon
dioxide can not escape from far underground but as you will recall
carbon dioxide in the presence of water forms carbonic acid which
can eat through many types of rock, corrode metals, and degrade
other types of materials. The presence of underground water is
quite common in oil wells. In fact water is frequently injected
into oil wells in order to maintain oil well pressure and/or
scavenge residual oil. This is where they are planning on injecting
the carbon dioxide, is this wise?

Natural gas started to be exploited for
energy later than petroleum (it was usually just burnt off in the
early days of oil extraction) and gas wells are also found at a
greater depth which put them out of reach of the early technology.
If a Hubbert type of analysis of natural gas is performed it should
peak and go on the decline about 10 or 15 years after oil or
between 2020 – 2025 since world oil peaked in 2010.

68. If oil is considered, there is a very
good reason that oil exploration and development is mostly taking
place far out in the oceans where it is expensive and difficult.
Almost all of the land based oil has been found and there are few
places where large quantities exist that hasn't achieved a mature
developmental stage.

69. Coal was mined for
hundreds of years prior to the 17
^th
century but the industrial
revolution moved it in to high gear in the
18
^th
century!

70. It should be noted that while coal has
variable composition it averages around 80% carbon. When it is
trans formed into carbon dioxide 12 unit weights of carbon require
32 unit weights of oxygen, thus, 1 tonne of coal will produce
approximately 2.9 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

The question is, why are these industries the
authors of expensive PR campaigns to deflect attention away from
these unpleasant facts? The most pressing motivation is to maintain
and increase their short term profit margins. If we look at it from
a longer range perspective, if they can eliminate or attenuate the
implementation of competing non fossil fuel energy sources the
greatest profits will be made during the period when critical
shortages develop. The most basic economic principal is of supply
and demand, if demand for some thing is high and it's availability
is low, the prices the commodity will command will be high. So if
you own the hole in the ground that the needed fossil fuel comes
out of you are going to make huge profits! Conversely if
alternative sources of energy are implemented not only will it
reduce fossil fuel sales, it will also hold the unit price down. So
basically what you will see are all kinds of fossil fuel industry
PR designed to string us along. The themes of these PR efforts will
be to utilize smear and disinformation campaigns directed against
alternatives that have the capacity to significantly reduce or
eliminate the use of these products. The other purpose of these PR
efforts will be to create an impression that solutions to fossil
fuel problems are just around the corner, and there is no need to
change. Oreskes and Conway gives a detailed history of some of the
PR methods employed in their excellent book Merchants of
Doubt.xlii

Geothermal is another technology that is
often held up as a potential means of replacing fossil fuels. At
the present time it provides .41% of the energy in the United
States. It taps the high temperatures found deep underground by
boring two holes and fracturing the rock between the holes to make
the rock permeable. The system operates by injecting water down one
hole then passing the water through the hot fractured rock where it
is converted to steam which goes up the other hole. When the steam
arrives at the surface it is used to power a conventional steam
turbine electrical generator.

A geothermal plant using this system was
constructed near Bern Switzerland which had some problems. When it
was in the start up phase it produced a number of minor
earthquakes, [71] the largest were around 3.5 magnitude. The Swiss
project was abandoned because of the earthquakes. A similar project
that was underway but not as far along in the United States was
abandoned shortly thereafter because of the earthquake problem.
There are a few of these systems that produce significant amounts
of energy that are in operation, for example, in Iceland. However,
the areas where this form of energy can be effectively tapped is
dependent upon rare geological formations where they can extract
energy from volcanic heat stored in rocks near the earths surface.
Recently the Icelanders have established a system that utilizes
heat directly from the molten lava near the surface, not from very
deep wells. One can't deny that a lot of subterranean energy
exists, however at the present time there are no feasible systems
that could be widely applied as a large scale general source of
energy.

There are many different inventions being
worked on to utilize various forms of energy present in the Oceans.
These efforts fall into several general categories based upon
kinetic energy or physical properties; mechanical (kinetic) methods
that utilize water pressure differences that are captured as a
differential in the height of tides and turbines that use the flow
of water in ocean currents or flows from changing tides to drive
them. The second group uses differences in water properties such as
temperature differentials between surface water which is warm and
the cold abyssal depths or differences in the salinity between
fresh water and ocean water. At the present time the general level
of development for the more perfected of these approaches are in
the small scale pilot plant phase some of which are producing a few
megawatts. [72]

71. This area of Switzerland had experienced
an earthquake about 500 years ago.

72. It should be kept in mind that 1
megawatt is comprised of 1000 kilowatts, a tiny amount of energy
when compared to what is currently being used.

The majority of these inventions are in the
lab or theoretical stage of development. It seems unlikely that
this source of energy will become prominent for at least a number
of decades. It also has the disadvantage of being confined to the
oceans. Many of these schemes have the further shortcomings of
being likely to produce environmental problems since many of them
rely on changing the salinity of the water, significantly altering
its temperature, or altering the flow rate which can cause
sedimentation and other ecological problems.

Hydroelectric at the present time is the
source of 7% of the electrical power that is produced in the United
States. It produces no air pollutants, provides the significant
benefits of flood control and irrigation enabling large tracts of
land to become agriculturally productive. It has the disadvantage
of being disruptive to the ecosystem. In recent years much
discussion has been taking place about removing some of the dams
that are having deleterious effects on the marine environment in
estuaries and coastal regions. One often hears arguments that it
can be increased by installing “micro” hydroelectric plants on
small streams. Installation of small scale hydroelectric dams is
possible, but the problem of ecological disruption is present for
these projects as well. If the potential for the amount of power is
considered, micro-hydroelectricity’s capability to offset fossil
fuel usage is trivial. Therefor, the prospects for any significant
expansion of hydroelectric power generation in the United States is
some where between slim and none since this resource is currently
almost completely being exploited and the ecological problems it
produces are unacceptable.

Hydrogen fusion has had much research done
over the last 40 years. It is in the lab stage of development.
Every time the question is asked when a commercial system will
become available the answer has been (for last 40 years) “maybe in
40 years”. My guess is this technology probably will be mastered
eventually and possibly become a useful energy source in the 22nd
or 23rd century!

Space based solar voltaic – this proposal
envisions the construction of gargantuan solar cell arrays that are
in geosynchronous orbits in outer space. This system would beam the
power down to earth using microwave radiation. This type of solar
cell system has the advantage that it can provide power 24 / 7, but
it is so far beyond our current technological capabilities it's not
even possible to guess when it could be implemented, certainly not
within a time horizon that would provide any solution to our
current problems.

Electrical power from wind mills, at the
present time they produce 4.13% of the electricity in the United
States and their numbers are gradually being expanded. Wind
generation has the problem of being an intermittent and variable
source of power. A further deficiency is that wind speeds below
about 13 km/hr (8 mi/hr) contains very little energy. To overcome
the shortcoming of its intermittent and variable nature proponents
argue that an interconnected large scale system could produce a
constant (base load) level of electrical power. In order to
accomplish this an elaborate power transmission grid like the one
for solar voltaic would be required that would cost $1.2 trillion.
Another problem with these systems is that their actual output of
power is a fraction of what they are rated at. About 10 years ago I
read a windmill engineering monograph which indicated that they
produce around 25% of their rated capacity. More recently Blees
provided actual performance data from several large wind farms
located in California and Florida Both had an output of 21% of
their rated capacity.xliii Even using the more optimistic value of
25% we would need to build four megawatts of capacity to produce 1
megawatt of power. The cost per fully rated installed megawatt in
2013 ranged from $1.3 - $2.2 million. If we take an average of
$1.75 million and divide by their actual output of 25% it actually
costs $7 million for 1 megawatt of averaged output. Another
unfavorable factor is that the industry specifications indicate
that windmills have a 20 - 25 year life expectancy while
conventional fossil and nuclear plants have a life expectancy of 60
years. So when making comparisons to fossil fuel and nuclear
plants, windmills actually cost 2.4 times more using the more
optimistic 25 year value. So adjusting their cost for use over a 60
year period brings their comparative cost up to $16.8 million per
megawatt. Bearing in mind the differential in life expectancy I
will do the arithmetic using the 25 year life expectancy cost since
reducing pollution is an overriding concern at the present time.
You will also notice that a larger amount of electricity 2,622
Billion kWh of electricity /yr or 300 million kW / hr. is being
used for these calculations, from 2011 EIA figures . The larger
value is a result of the inclusion of electricity produced by
peaker plants. [73]