This
issue of SOLAR TODAY
focuses on the Global Hubbert Peak, the point in time
when petroleum (and natural gas) will go into unavoidable
decline. Here we explore the options available in light
of dwindling fossil fuel resources, and we speculate
on the scale of solar energy development that will be
needed to overcome the expected oil and natural gas
shortfall.
Peak oil is an emerging reality. With production already
declining in all but a few major oil regions, an energy
shortfall is inevitable. As demand for oil continues
to grow, this shortfall can only mean disappointment
for those around the world who aspire to live more like
Americans, consuming their body weight in oil every
week (150 pounds on average). Never mind price. Even
if price is no object, production will begin to drop
and shortages will become increasingly acute. There
will be great temptation to exploit high-carbon, non-conventional
fossil fuels that could accelerate global warming. To
avoid disaster, solar energy must rise, and rapidly,
to meet the challenge of oil depletion.
A
Coming Crisis
 |
| Peak oil is an emerging
reality. To avoid disaster, solar energy must
rise to meet the oil depletion challenge. Photo
by Ronald B. Swenson |
In 1994 we established contact with leading geologists
who were studying oil depletion and created a website,
www.oilcrisis.com. Much earlier, one prominent petroleum
geophysicist spoke out about the future of oil. In 1956,
the late Dr. M. King Hubbert predicted correctly that
oil production in the United States would peak around
1970, after which production would decline forever.
In the 1960s and 1970s, he predicted that the worldwide
“Hubbert Peak” would be reached around the
year 2000. The world Hubbert Peak has been postponed
a bit because the 1970s energy crisis made us more frugal,
but experts agree that it remains imminent. Dr. Farrington
Daniels, the founder of our International Solar Energy
Society, was associated with Hubbert when he first introduced
his peak oil analysis. (See
sidebar, “A Solar Future Long Anticipated.”)
Dr. Colin J. Campbell, the most prominent successor
of Hubbert, expects the Hubbert Peak in the very near
future (see “The Second
Half of the Age of Oil Dawns,” page 20).
Since the beginning of our short oil era around 1860,
world population has increased dramatically. This population
growth has been fueled substantially by oil. In the
United
States, food travels more than 1,000 miles on average,
requiring over 10 times the petroleum energy to produce
than its solar energy food value (calories). As a practical
matter, we are eating mostly petroleum.
Many societies throughout history have faced resource
depletion. History tells us that Plato deplored the
deforestation in Greece, and that the Greeks started
using passive solar orientation in their settlements
when they ran out of firewood. Archeologists have found
many societies that disintegrated beca16use they depleted
their resources with no concern for the future. Some
simply abandoned their settlements and moved to fertile
land. Others, like the people on Easter Island, could
no longer move. They had cut down all their trees and
couldn’t even make crude boats to fish.
Developed and developing countries alike are addicted
to cheap oil. For the United States, depletion is going
to be especially difficult. Americans use oil as if
it will never run out. The country is designed and built
around cars using cheap gasoline. With fossil fuel resources
becoming scarce, we have to learn to make do with what
we have peacefully or we will have war, depleting humanity’s
collective resources even further.
What might be the possible early reactions to peak oil?
Conservation: Whenever natural
disasters or political disruptions shed light on our
energy vulnerability, earnest appeals for conservation
can be heard. Conservation can be voluntary: I can choose
to buy a Toyota Prius and still go to the beach on the
weekend. I will use less oil, but my lifestyle will
be preserved.
Deprivation: As
oil supplies continue to dwindle, energy conservation
will cease to be voluntary. That may lead to rationing
if we make a reasoned response. But if depletion is
not managed effectively, deprivation
will overwhelm efforts to conserve rationally. As shortages
impact the industrialized world, trips to the beach
will be sparse. Lifestyles will change.
Conflict:
With oil as an essential foundation of productive
modern agriculture and starvation already intense in
certain regions, it can be argued that the poor of the
world are already deprived, involuntary participants
in energy conservation. Energy inequities will continue
to grow between haves and have-nots, struggle over the
remaining oil reserves will intensify. Some say the
conflict in Iraq is a grab for oil. Whether true or
not, how might we avoid conflicts over energy resources?
Substitution: We will inevitably
have to find other energy sources, substituting new
energy for oil and what oil does. Are there solutions
close at hand?
No
Answers in Non-Conventional Oil, Nuclear
One place where the peak oil message is being heard
is at the margins of the oil, gas and coal industries.
As energy prices rise exponentially, researchers are
attempting to exploit carbon-intensive, non-conventional
fossil fuels to replace transportation fuels. Massive
investments have been made to extract tar sands in Alberta;
research is ramping up to find a way to convert oil
shale in Wyoming and Colorado; and improved technologies
are being developed to convert coal to liquids, using
the same process that fueled Hitler’s desperate
army.
But such attempts have produced inadequate amounts of
net energy. For heat to extract oil from tar sands,
natural gas equivalent to one-third of a barrel is used
per barrel. This natural gas is in addition to the liquid
fuels and electricity needed for mining, refining and
environmental remediation. Recognizing rising natural
gas prices, advocates are even suggesting nuclear power
to replace natural gas for heat in the extraction process.
Nuclear power is also being examined for the extraction
of oil shale. This misnamed substance (neither shale
nor oil but marlstone and kerogen, an immature hydrocarbon)
must be heated under pressure to convert it to oil.
One proponent in Colorado envisions a nuclear facility
generating more power to heat oil shale
in situ than all electricity now consumed statewide.
Water requirements and environmental impacts could be
huge.
As the informed public becomes aware of the impact of
greenhouse gases, nuclear power is being promoted again,
this time as a carbon-free energy source. But the popular
notion that nuclear is carbon-neutral is faulty. High-grade
uranium ores have already been exploited, and the mining
and refining of lower-grade uranium ores are increasingly
fossil-fuel intensive.
If all bets are placed on marginal fossil fuels and
nuclear power, the consequences for society will be
dire. Perpetuating the automotive fleet, for example,
may seem laudable. But propping up the fleet with low-grade
fuels could be more dangerous than doing nothing because,
as U.S. Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett suggests in his article
(page 27), these marginal sources too will run out,
and humanity will be left high and dry.
Only Solar Energy Can Fill the Gap
Meanwhile, renewable energy technologies are being brushed
aside by some peak oil “experts” as too
intermittent or diffuse to merit serious attention.
Let’s examine a few of these objections to a full-scale
transformation to renewables.
| A
Solar Future Long Anticipated
When Hubbert predicted global peak
oil, Farrington Daniels focused on the solution.
The afternoon of Sept. 15, 1948, was an important
date for solar energy, the petroleum industry
and the International Solar Energy Society (ISES).
The American Association for the Advancement
of Science (AAAS) was 100 years old, and AAAS
President Edmund Sinnott, Ph.D., invited three
prominent speakers for a Symposium on Sources
of Energy at the Centennial Celebration in Washington,
D.C.:
• Dr. M. King Hubbert,
a geologist working for Shell Oil,
addressed oil
depletion, as the “Golden
Century of Oil” was getting under way.
• Dr. Farrington Daniels,
a physical chemist who had been in charge of
the Chicago branch of the Manhattan Project
and later started the organization that would
become ISES, addressed the future of solar
energy, while solar energy was
still a dream.
• Dr. Eugene P. Wigner
of Princeton, who would receive the 1963 Nobel
Prize in Physics and who had worked on the Manhattan
Project for Daniels, addressed the future of
atomic energy,
about eight years before there were any commercial
power reactors.
At this symposium, Hubbert presented his first
paper on what would become known as the “Hubbert
Curve,” the brief period in human history
during which petroleum was discovered; adopted
by society as its principal energy source; extracted
in ever greater quantities; burned with no serious
concern for the future; fostered affluence,
wars and pollution; became ever harder to find
and “produce”; and was destined
to decline inexorably — leaving us no
choice but to switch to sustainable energy sources.
Even in this first paper, Hubbert warned that
the post-oil transition process would be extremely
difficult. Neither Daniels nor Wigner had much
to offer except hope; solar and atomic energy
technologies were still primitive. Despite Daniels’
experience in the Manhattan Project (or perhaps
because of it), he decided to concentrate on
solar energy, forming the society now known
as ISES and creating a solar energy program
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that
remains famous.
Getting to know Hubbert made Daniels aware of
oil depletion and the energy deficiencies that
solar energy would have to address. In 1964
Daniels wrote that U.S. oil “production”
would peak about five years later, as Hubbert
had predicted accurately in 1956, and that worldwide
oil scarcity would begin shortly after 2010.
As humanity now encounters the Hubbert Peak,
the man who established ISES to meet the challenge
of oil depletion will inspire members of the
solar community in the decades ahead.
|
“Solar energy, plant
biomass and other renewable forms of energy are diffuse
forms of energy.”
Direct sunlight is indeed
diffuse, but thin collectors are a perfect match
to diffuse. Mirrored surfaces on solar concentrators
are thin. Solar cells are thin, and thin-film cells
are even thinner. Furthermore, sunlight is far more
evenly distributed around the globe than is oil.
“Photovoltaic electricity
is expensive.”
The profitability test
is often the result of accumulated political decisions
favoring special interests. In economics it is formally
assumed that oil and other natural resources have no
value until they are “produced” (i.e., extracted),
and then the only value assigned to the resources is
the cost of extracting them. They are free for the taking,
and so we have been paying nothing for the inherent
value of oil. Lobbying efforts have provided large subsidies
for oil. Externalities are not charged at the gas pump.
Preferential tax treatments, highway construction and
defense budgets underpin the oil economy.
Renewable energy subsidies are beginning to level the
playing field. As fossil fuel costs increase, the economics
of renewable energy will transform the market.
(See January/February SOLAR TODAY for
features on the theme, “Solar Energy Cost Breakthrough
Ahead?”)
“The EROI (energy return on investment, or net
yield) for fossil fuels tends to be large, while that
for solar tends to be low.”
A hundred years ago, oil gushers yielded high net-energy
recovery rates, but today solar, hydroelectric and wind
power have net energy yields higher than conventional
fuels such as oil, gas and coal, and an order of magnitude
better than non-conventional fossil fuels. With their
inherently high net-energy yields, renewables can be
ramped up rapidly. (See table,
“Estimated Net Energy Yield of Conventional and
Renewable Sources in the U.S.,” page 16.)
“Neither solar
nor wind power is an immediate, large-scale solution
to the energy problem. … Plants, on average, capture
only about 0.1 percent of the solar energy reaching
the Earth.”
Humanity’s “primary energy production,”
including all fossil fuels, nuclear power, hydroelectric
and renewables, is 13 terawatts (equivalent to 13,000
large power plants), less than 1/100 of 1 percent of
the 170,000 terawatts continuously delivered to the
earth as sunlight. With 600 terawatts of terrestrial
potential, solar energy far exceeds all other possible
forms of substitution. (See
sidebar, “How Will We Fill the Fossil Fuel Gap?”
page 17.)
Transportation in a post-cheap-oil world poses special
challenges. If non-conventional fossil fuels are untenable
and transportation is powered almost exclusively by
liquid fuels, it is tempting to propose biomass as a
substitute for oil. In the United States, 1 billion
tons of biomass are managed each year. To meet all our
energy needs, 7 billion tons more would be required.
Obviously, electric airplanes or cargo ships are impractical,
so biomass will play an important role in our energy
future. But liquid fuels exclusively from plant material
will be possible for transport at only about one-tenth
the present level worldwide. Something has to give.
Considering society’s huge investment in the vehicle
fleet and these limitations of biofuels, it is difficult
to imagine the transformation of transportation to renewable
energy sources. To make the shift, the premise that
solar energy must be converted into fuel has to be challenged.
A direct path from sunlight to electricity can be 10
times as efficient as photosynthesis. Solar energy can’t
be touched or put into a bottle. Solar is
radiant energy, not a solid, liquid or gas.
Electricity from renewables is ideally suited for urban
transportation. It is nonpolluting and well-suited for
fixed guide rail and automated routing of traffic, and
an electric vehicle is at least twice as efficient as
a gasoline vehicle. We are ready for a good reason to
get rid of the internal combustion engine in dense urban
areas, where it is about as practical as a campfire
in the kitchen. Efficiency in the face of oil depletion
is that compelling reason.
Solar technologies continue to improve, and so do electric
vehicles. A battery with three times the energy density
of lead-acid and a charging time under two minutes is
scheduled for introduction in 2007 or 2008. Shanghai
has an electromagnetic propulsion maglev train that
travels at 270 miles per hour.
Getting Up to Speed: Think Terawatts
According to Campbell and other leading peak oil experts,
permanent oil decline will begin during this decade
and will likely proceed initially at 2 to 8 percent
per year. If oil declines at 4 percent and photovoltaic
manufacturing grows at 40 percent per year until 2020,
PV would meet less than 20 percent of the oil shortfall
without meeting any demand growth. If the PV industry
sustains growth averaging 50 percent or more per year,
it will contribute significantly. Though such growth
is an aggressive goal, it is realistic under a scenario
slightly more ambitious than the two-year doubling time
projection that Ron Larson presents in this issue’s
“Chair’s Corner” (page 4). As nonsilicon-based
solar products quickly become commercialized, this goal
is even more feasible. (See
graphic, “As Oil Supplies Decline, Photovoltaic
Capacity Grows,” left.) Developing similar
growth rates for all renewables, it will be possible
for sustainable solutions to realize their potential
for oil, gas and coal substitution. The sidebar, “Making
the Transition,” (page 29), samples some industry
proposals.
France converted from zero to nearly 100 percent nuclear
power in less than 20 years. Renewable energy technologies
have higher net-energy yield than nuclear by far and
are faster to install, so it will be possible to ramp
up in even less time. If others continue to insist that
nuclear power, tar sands or coal-toliquids are options,
the move to renewables will be even more critical as
the only pathway that avoids potential nuclear terrorism
and curbs global warming.
We must recognize the limits of our fossil fuel reserves
and begin to push for rapid growth in solar energy.
For the first time in history, all of humanity will
share the same problem. This common challenge can help
unify us, to recognize the futility of war and to make
governments more responsive to our needs. We will need
large national and international programs, similar in
ambition and spirit to the Apollo “Man on the
Moon” program, to reduce our oil consumption and
to create alternative energy sources. This transition
will provide many good local jobs that cannot possibly
be outsourced, and we will need a significant grassroots
effort.
If we get it right, we will be able to share a future
of clean air and fresh water, viable oceans, thriving
forests and peaceful coexistence. We must get it right,
and be proud that we are members of the generation entrusted
with the task.
Francis
de Winter, principal of Francis de Winter & Associates,
originated the “heat exchanger factor,”
used worldwide in solar water heating. He served during
four years as chair of the American Solar Energy Society.
An ASES fellow, he has received the Charles Greeley
Abbot Award and many other honors. Contact de Winter
at fdw@ecotopia.com.
Ronald B. Swenson is cofounder of ElectroRoof, SolarQuest
and Solarevolution, and publisher of OilCrisis.com.
A former ASES board member representing the Solar Fuels
and Transportation Division, he has published numerous
peer-reviewed articles in this field. Contact Swenson
at rbs@solarquest.com.
To
read this article in print, order the March/April issue:
pubs@ases.org. Or subscribe today, and don’t
miss another issue. To subscribe,
click
here. |
