Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Lots of folks claim that the worst possible thing we could do is to allow the third world to actually develop to the level of the industrialized nations. The conventional wisdom holds that there’s not enough fossil fuels in the world to do that, that fuel use would be ten times what it is today, that it’s not technically feasible to increase production that much, and that if we did that, the world would run out of oil in the very near future. I woke up this morning and for some reason I started wondering if that is all true. So as is my habit, I ran the numbers. I started with the marvelous graphing site, Gapminder, to take an overall look at the question. Here’s that graph:
Figure 1. Annual income per person (horizontal axis, constant dollars) versus annual energy use per person (tonnes of oil equivalent, denoted “TOE”). I’ve added the horizontal red line to show the global median per capita energy use, in TOE per person per year. (The median is the value such that half the population is above that value, and half is below the value.) Click here for the live version at Gapminder.
So … how much additional energy would it take to bring all countries up to a minimum standard? We could perhaps take the level of Spain or Italy as our target. They each use about 2.75 tonnes of oil equivalent (TOE) per capita per year, and they each have an annual income (GDP per capita) of about $26,000 per year. If that were true of everyone on the planet, well, that would be very nice, with much avoided pain and suffering. So how much energy would it take to bring the billions of people using less energy than the inhabitants of Spain and Italy, up to that 2.75 TOE level of consumption? Now, here’s the wrinkle. I don’t want to drag the top half down. I don’t want anyone to use less energy, energy is the lifeblood of development.
So I’m not proposing that the folks using more energy than Spain/Italy reduce their energy consumption. Quite the contrary, I want them to continue their energy use, that’s what keeps them well-fed and clothed and healthy and able to take care of the environment and the like. As a result, what I wanted to find out was the following:
How much extra energy would it take to bring everyone currently using less energy than Spain/Italy up to their usage level of 2.75 TOE/capita/year, while leaving everyone who was using more energy than Spain/Italy untouched?
So, remembering that the figures in the graph are per capita, what say ye all? If we want to bring the energy use of all those billions of people up to a European standard, and nobody’s energy usage goes down … would that take five times our current energy usage? Ten times? Here’s how I calculated it
First, I downloaded the population data and the per capita energy use data, both from the Gapminder site linked to in the caption to Figure 1. If you notice, at the bottom left of the graph there’s a couple of tiny spreadsheet icons. If you click that you get the data.
Then, I combined the two datasets, multiplying per capita energy use by the population to give me total energy use. There were a dozen or so very poor countries (Niger, Afghanistan, Central African Republic, etc) with no data on energy use. I arbitrarily assigned them a value of 0.3 TOC/capita, in line with other equivalent African countries.
Then, I checked my numbers by adding up the population and the energy use. For total energy use I got 11,677 million tonnes of oil equivalent (MTOE). The corresponding figure for 2009 from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy is 11,391 MTOE, so I was very happy with that kind of agreement. The population totaled ~ 6.8 billion, so that was right.
Then for each country, I looked at how much energy they were using. If it was more than 2.75 TOE/capita/year, I ignored them. They didn’t need extra energy. If usage was less than 2.75 TOE/capita/year, I subtracted what they were using from 2.75, and multiplied the result by the population to get the total amount of extra energy needed for that country. I repeated that for all the countries.
And at the end? Well, when I totaled the extra energy required, I was quite surprised to find out that to achieve the stated goal of bringing the world’s poor countries all up to the energy level of Spain and Italy, all that we need is a bit more than 80% more energy. I’ve triple-checked my figures, and that’s the reality. It wouldn’t take ten times the energy we use now. In fact it wouldn’t even take twice the energy we’re now using to get the poor countries of the world up to a comfortable standard of living. Eighty percent more energy use, and we’re there.
In closing let me note a couple of things. You can’t get up to the standard of living of Spain or Italy without using that much energy. Energy is development, and energy is income.
Second, the world’s poor people are starving and dying for lack of cheap energy today. Driving the price of energy up and denying loans for coal-fired power plants is depriving the poor of cheap energy today, on the basis that it may help their grandchildren in fifty years. That is criminal madness. The result of any policy that increases energy prices is more pain and suffering. Rich people living in industrialized nations should be ashamed of proposing such an inhumane way to fight the dangers of CO2, regardless of whether those dangers are imaginary or real.
Finally, regarding feeding and clothing the world, we’re getting there. It’s not that far to go, only 80% more than current energy usage rates to get the world up to the level of the industrialized nations.
Anyhow, just wanted to share the good news. The spreadsheet I used to do the calculations is here.
w.
PS—Will this make the planet run out of fossil fuels sooner? Ask a person living on $3 per day on the streets of Calcutta if they care … but in any case, here’s the answer. As mentioned above, as of 2009 using about 11,500 MTOE per year. Total reserves of fossil fuel are given here as being about a million MTOE (although various people’s numbers vary). That doesn’t include the latest figures on fracked gas or tight oil. It also doesn’t include methane clathrates, the utilization of which is under development.
That means that at current usage rates we have at least 81 years of fossil fuels left, and under the above scenario (everyone’s energy usage at least equal to Spain and Italy) we have more than 46 years of fossil fuels left … ask me if I care. I’ll let the people in the year 2070 deal with that, because today we have poor people to feed and clothe, and we need cheap energy to do it. So I’d say let’s get started using the fossil energy to feed and clothe the poor, and if we have to double the burn rate to do that, well, that’s much, much better than having people watch their kids starve …
Nice arithmetic, w, and a nice way of looking at the people’s needs. The future is not restricted by today’s fuels and today’s technology, so as you say we should just go for it. There’s methanes and uranium and thorium and goodness knows what else for us to tap into, not to mention a few gazillion watts of sunlight.
what is with the warmist anyway? they will get their wish when we run out of “fossil fuel” …they should be happy.
truth is those bastards will never be happy.
Willis,
I enjoyed your spreadsheet tinkering and more people should do this back of the envelope type exercise rather than accept distorted opinions put out by the media. Just a little bit of extra input to your PS. Many people get hung up on reserves depletion of fossil fuels. It must be remembered that these reserves are a subset of the worlds fossil fuel resources, which are generally at least an order of magnitude greater than reserves. Resources become classified as reserves dependent on numerous factors, a key one being economic viability. Similarly, the size of the resource increases all the time due to exploration as new deposits are found around the world or existing deposits are increased in size due to new data being obtained. As extraction technology advances what was previously uneconomic, becomes economic and hence the resource now becomes a reserve.
This ever changing balance is not captured and conveyed to the general public as it does not have the newsy feel of alarmism that is constantly rammed down out throats. I ask anyone on this blog to think back on their primary school years and I will bet you were taught we were going to run out of metals, coal, oil etc, but we are still using them. That is because more of the earth’s resources have been upgraded to a reserve status.
There are still many sedimentary basins around the world that have not even been mined yet for coal. It is not because there is no coal resource present,it is simply that at present they are uneconomic to mine for various reasons, but given time and need they will become a reserve, and the timeframe for depletion will move further into the future. Just how far this will extend is anyone’s guess.
cheers, Basil
Willis, this is brilliant. This is now one of my favorites – and now Anthony has a dilemma, which one to make the sticky. 😀
The way is so clear – if only people would get out of their own way, stop living in fear and thus limiting themselves (and wanting to do the same to everyone else).
Let’s go for it already!
But cheap energy for the developing world would make people happier, healthier and wealthier. Population growth would slow, and productivity would increase. This just can’t be allowed! The luxurious life style of a great many of the elite regulating class depends on claiming to care for the poor and oppressed. If this means keeping the developing world in poverty and oppression, so be it. After all, the developing world will never agree to global socialism under a framework of UN global governance if they are happy, wealthy and healthy. /sarc
Fortunately we should be spared the inanity of a manufactured “peak energy” crisis. It’s not just that full baseload thorium power can supply all our needs for centuries. It’s not just that deep sea volcanic vents are producing enough He3 for further centuries of fusion power. No, the main reason we should be spared this next hoax is that the global warming hoax will result in mass species extinction. Right now the Spittle Flecked Doom Screecher and the Red Beaked Green Lyre Bird are top of the endangered list.
The fellow travellers who were using AGW as a stalking horse will have to pick a new scare. They would be ill advised to try science or technology scares again. These clearly don’t work in the age of the Internet. Of course before they try an all new scare, they are going to need all new people. Every pseudo scientist, activist, journalist or politician involved in AGW is hopelessly compromised.
I’m no statistician, but I think you’ve left out one important factor, the ‘get-to’ energy cost. That is, the cost of the infrastructure needed to maintain the 2.75 TOE per capita consumption. For example, part of that energy useage would be petrol, but for that consumption to take place you first need massive investment in roads, petrol stations, car dealerships, and repair shops. That would add significantly to the total energy cost in bringing the below-2.75’s up, although it will be spread over a longer period.
If oil is evil, why not let it — even encourage it to — run out then it will cease to be a problem?
rgy A few small notes. Looking at the table, there is a difference between “reserves” and “recoverable resources”. We have 81 years of the former, but well over ten times that in recoverable resources. The former has proven to be a rather flexible and hence perhaps pointless number as it keeps changing as new resources are discovered and proven, which is why we haven’t reached “the end of oil” quite yet. In particular, there is a LOT of coal that is recoverable, and nothing prevents us from using a venerable process for converting coal into gasoline but price — the general availability of cheaper gasoline produced directly by refining crude oil.
Second, you deliberately (I imagine) did not address nuclear energy and its reserves. Uranium is problematic — perhaps — because high pressure light water cooled reactors have technical risks of meltdown and associated risks of nuclear proliferation, but nevertheless there are at least hundreds, possibly tens of thousands thousands of years worth of Uranium reserves (the latter if we use breeder reactors and actually burn all of the Uranium instead of a pitifully small fraction of lightly enriched U-235). Of course breeder reactors that are efficient in this regard burn plutonium for most of the energy they produce, and plutonium is bomb material at this point for pretty much any country that gets it as the concept of implosion lenses and critical density is hardly either secret or technically inaccessible any more even to a very poor and backwards country. Still, we have 30,000 years of Uranium WITHOUT using Uranium from seawater from proven reserves if we use breeder reactors. If anyone works out how to economically extract Uranium from seawater we have an effectively infinite supply — humanity would evolve before we ran out, as the 60,000 years in seawater would be amplified by 100 to 6 million years. Admittedly, this is “at current consumption rates” so it would be less if we converted over to using fission reactors on a broad basis, but I think that it makes the 81 years entirely moot.
Third, that doesn’t include Thorium, either. Thorium has a number of advantages over Uranium as a reactor fuel, the principle ones being that it is somewhat (but not decisively) more difficult to use as the basis for a clandestine bomb building program, it produces anywhere from 10 to 10,000 times less nuclear waste depending on the fuel cycle selected, and it is MUCH more difficult to make a thorium reactor “melt down” the way existing solid-fuel LWR Uranium designs can. The most advantage fuel cycle appears to be liquid salt reactor designs, which literally cannot melt down, have reduced (but nonzero) proliferation concerns, and which could literally be used to burn EXISTING nuclear waste and in the process would release a lot of the unburned energy in existing spent nuclear solid fuel (currently only around 1% of the available energy is being recovered in LWR Uranium non-breeder designs). Estimates of thorium reserves and available energy necessarily vary because only prototype reactors have been built of the various kinds and because little effort has been put into developing Thorium reserves (Thorium is currently a radioactive waste byproduct of mining rare earth metals and has only a handful of industrial/commercial applications as things now stand) but it is at LEAST tens of thousands of years. As a side effect of adopting Thorium as an energy fuel, we would completely solve the problems with global shortages of rare earths and hence e.g. rare earth magnets and exotic semiconductors, both essential components in other aspects of efficient energy production and transmission and utilization
I know that we don’t necessarily agree on the eventual utility of solar power, but IMO there is also no question at all that over the next decade or two solar cell technology and engineering will progress to where the cost per watt at over the counter retail rates drops below fifty US cents (to as low, eventually, as ten cents or even less). This will correspond to wholesale prices that are roughly half of these retail prices. This will push the amortized cost recovery for large and small scale solar energy projects to well under a decade, with an expected plant lifetime of at least twice that, and IMO will make solar a no-brainer energy resource for the entire tropical and subtropical band. Although without efficient energy transportation and storage (which are both more speculative and less predictable) solar alone is not a viable single energy resource for a steady state global civilization such as the one you propose, they can easily eke out both nuclear and carbon-based resources and double or triple any of the numbers above for years of available energy.
If (say) high temperature superconducting transmission lines are discovered/invented that facilitate the transport of electrical energy distances on the order of 10,000 miles with minimal loss, and/or high capacity high efficiency multicycle energy storage is ever worked out (say zinc oxide batteries are eventually developed that have charged energy densities that are roughly comparable to gasoline) it would both permit the eking out of “fossile” resources (carbon, Uranium and Thorium) to “indefinitely long” and could even serve as the basis for a truly steady state civilization, which I believe should be our long term goal regardless of greenhouse issues.
Finally, on the speculative front, is low temperature fusion. Fusion in some sense is the holy grail of energy production mechanisms. If economically feasible deuterium-based fusion is ever worked out, we will literally never run out of energy. It would take us tens of millions of years of utilization to BEGIN to deplete deuterium even if you provided energy to every person on Earth at levels equal to or in excess of US consumption per capita, and with that much energy we could cost-effectively mine e.g. Europa, Titan and the gas giants if we should ever actually significantly deplete the Earth’s oceans. A mix of solar and fusion energy production would make the human species secure well past the point where it is no longer recognizably human, time frames longer than the interval from the end of the Cretaceous to the present, geological time scales. The human species might well die off over that sort of time frame, but probably not because we ran out of energy. To ensure survival of the species even beyond that would likely require at least interplanetary if not interstellar colonization, and still more speculative advances in physics and technology for the latter to become even imaginatively possible.
Otherwise, yes, I agree, we have little excuse for not ending energy poverty worldwide. Nor do I think Spain/Italy should be the standard — our goal should be lifting people up to e.g. the rate of energy utilization in the US. Eliminating poverty might actually facilitate a reduction in the rate of population growth or even initiate a period of population decrease, and that too is a way of extending and improving per capita consumption. Finally, there is a world of undeveloped technology that might reduce per capita consumption without impacting quality of life. The past conversion from incandescent to CF light bulbs, the future conversion from CF to LED bulbs (that use still less energy and have far longer lifetimes) are a prime example. Houses that use integrated local solar for local daytime AC are another. Smart houses that deliver e.g. light or AC only when and where it is needed (without loss of comfort or utility) yet another. A lot of this is technically feasible right now; it simply isn’t implemented because the cost-benefit is marginal with energy being as CHEAP as it is, but as energy prices increase over time, the marginal return from these technologies and their broader implementation and economy of scale will greatly reduce the real dollar cost and eke out our energy resources further still.
It would be a whole lot easier to establish a stable and sustainable global civilization with a billion humans than it is or will be with 7+ billion humans. OTOH, I’m not quite ready to go out there and pick 6+ billion humans to be “culled”. Nature — via pandemics, asteroid collisions, ice ages — might do it anyway. Or, we might get there by simply improving the standard of living worldwide to the point where humans (apparently) stop reproducing at rates that lead to population growth, and then gradually ramp it down by having fewer babies than people who die of natural causes for a century or two.
Either way, I won’t be around to watch most of this, probably. Interesting to think about, though.
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They deserve a painful aneurism. What we need is fewer elitists. So far in my experience pressure for equality has come from the bottom up, not the top down. Nobody defends poverty at the point of a gun. Can’t say the same for the wealth of the first and second worlds. You are very correct – we can’t make anything better by destroying our own life style but we can do much to help or stay out of the way of those that are struggling to improve. Our consumerism has created economies of scale that have uniformly driven down the cost of essentials (except health care which is a clever monopoly). If your numbers are even close to being accurate it would make no sense for the elitists to wring their miserly hands over the fate of the third world. The best thing they can do is leave the heavy lifting to those willing to make it work and get the hell out of the way.
Sometimes I think the world needs an annual “Kick the crap out of an elitist day”. If I weren’t a pacifist I’d buy a ticket.
There are trillions of tons of uranium in Earth’s crust, billions of tons in the oceans, while even common granite rock contains the energy of 50 times its mass equivalent in coal due to the 13 ppm thorium+uranium in it.
That is the power of nuclear power.
Much as a few kilograms fissioning pack the energy to blow up a city (although only in a bomb: reactors can’t explode), each kilogram fissioned is equivalent to millions of times its mass in chemical fuels.
Anti-nuclear, anti-industry creative lies like “peak uranium” try to obscure such facts. However, as Dr. Cohen noted and explained in further detail in the following publication:
“We thus conclude that all the world’s energy requirements for the remaining 5×10^9 yr of existence of life on Earth could be provided by breeder reactors without the cost of electricity rising by as much as 1% due to fuel costs. This is consistent with the definition of a “renewable” energy source in the sense in which that term is generally used.”
http://sustainablenuclear.org/PADs/pad11983cohen.pdf
The only kind of civilization which could truly run out of Earth’s main resources, the millions of cubic kilometers of crustal resources and oceans (with even the average rock rich enough in aluminum and much else), would be one orders of magnitude beyond modern day civilization in industrial & economic output, but, long before anything like that, space colonization becomes easier. (And once expanding into space, there is enough out there to be still more to reach practically forever, even about all of the way until the end of the universe under most timeframes for it; some say you can’t have perpetual growth in a finite world, but actually you can for practical purposes and timeframes).
Returning to more immediate near-term matters, while less than nuclear’s potential, even natural gas “reserves” have already been increased multiple times in recent years due to fracking improvements, and the amount of natural gas plus methane hydrates is on a level nominally lasting for centuries easily.
The global warming excuse for trying to stop such will further flounder once substantial global cooling occurs in coming decades. That will be the consequence of the end of the Modern Maximum of solar activity, due to how climate actually works (as illustrated in the match of five peaks and five troughs in sea level rise rates, humidity, cloud cover, and temperature with forcing from cosmic ray flux over the 1960s-2000s period of neutron monitor data in http://s24.postimg.org/rbbws9o85/overview.gif ).
I vote for going nuclear. It’s going to decay anyway. Lets put the stuff to good use instead of wasting those neutrinos….
A lot of energy use in developed countries is for heating in winter. I would guess that a large number of undeveloped countries are in locations that do not require much if any energy to keep warm for a large part of the year. So my guess is that your calculations are far too pessimistic.
As has been said before, the poor are being asked to let their children die so that the grandchildren they will never have leave a “better” planet for our children and grandchildren.
Nice job Willis!
I was embarrassed when Obama went the Africa about a month ago and told crowds of young Africans that it isn’t feasible for them to have as many cars, air conditioners, big houses, etc., as Western countries have, as it would cause, “the planet will boil over”…. Oh, my…
Africa and other impoverished nation deserve decent living standards, which will be impossible to achieve on expensive, diffuse, intermittent, inefficient and thin gruel of solar/wind electrification.
That’s why it’s imperative that Liquid Thorium Fluoride Reactors be developed and built as quickly as possible to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, not for the CAGW scam, but rather for an affordable and inexhaustible source of energy for thousands of years.
The other great thing about LFTRs is that the waste heat coming out of the gas generators (900C) is sufficient to synthesize diesel/jet fuel and ammonia for fertilizers as well as other hydro-carbons needed for other essential products such as plastics. The “waste” heat can also be used to desalinate ocean water to address drinking water and irrigation requirements.
LFTRs are the only feasible technology available that can address all these needs.
Another factor is that even if there are still about 100 years of fossil fuels available as Willis calculates, as fossil fuels become increasingly scarce, prices will necessarily increase, which will inhibit economic growth and development.
This energy scarcity will also increase the threat of war as world powers vie for control of dwindling resources. Thorium is available everywhere and the world only needs about 500 metric tons of Thorium a year to provide the world with present energy needs (or around 1000 Metric tons under Willis’ calculation to bring impoverished countries to Western Standards). By the way, just one average rare-earth mine produces about 500 Metric Tons of “waste” Thorium a year… Hmmm.
You know I sympathize with you Willis, but the population is growing (slowly and the rate of growth is slowing down) and they ain’t gonna stop at the level of Spain or Italy.
Willis, I think that you are missing an important detail: much of the goods consumed in developed countries are actually produced in poor contries, with energy which is produced and used there. You don’t replicate Spanish way of living by replicating their energy use, but by replicating it and IN ADDITION increasing energy use in third countries. If Spain produced all of its own goods, our energy use would be quite higher. And I think this is true also for most of the developed nations. You need a new metric for the energy. The real energy cost of a given way of life in a country is the energy used in that country minus the energy used to create the goods that it exports, plus the energy used in foreign countries to create and transport the goods that it imports.
I don’t think that metric is available anywhere.
I don’t know whether to be elated or saddened by this. The goal of eliminating poverty in the world is within reach, but there’s a certain element who want to prevent this. I can remember a conversation with a green activist a few years back on the UTas campus. He was so proud of having been instrumental in preventing a dam being built in the 3rd world that would have provided clean water and affordable energy for a desperately poor community. His response: they are used to it!
Hi Willis,
Perhaps we should look in the future when we will have about 9-10 Billion people, which is quite a lock considering the number of people on earth now and their age distribution, and the U.N medium prognosis for 2100.
(This is obviously only right if no major catastrophy will wipe out a large number of people, but i hope this will not happen)
So we have about 3.2 Billion additional people and get about 8800 MTOE addidionaly per year at that level of consumption giving in total 29500 MTOE/yr, about 2,56 of the present rate.
BTW: As large parts of the population live in hotter regions where cooling will be a main cause for energy consumption and their need for it grows and shrinks with daily solar irradiation PV-Energy should work out well. But lets not cherry pick, it just would be nice to develop a simple speculative scenario. Time to fire up a spreadsheet….
@ur momisugly Energetic
The prognostication for future population is predicated on keeping the poor impoverished. It is quite clear that improved standard of living (i.e. affordable energy) leads to a lower birthrate.
I burn my candle at both ends
It will not last the night
But ah, my foes and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light.
Surely you are joking Mister Eschenbach. I live in South Africa where grinding poverty is still the norm yet you say that we are better off than Italy or Spain. Why don’t you perform some basic reality checks before you indulge in far-flown speculation?
Actually we have hundreds of years of fossil fuels left. There are MASSIVE oil reserves in Alaska/canada discovered in recent years and untapped.
Putting aside naturally occuring “fossil fuels”, the nuclear folks can generate enough electricity to manufacture all the hydrocarbons needed while producing, um, electricity for things like water pumps, filtration systems, iPhones, etc. And they can do it economically. Even France.
Call this “the final solution” since, with human ingenuity, we can/will build thorium reactors which means we would have a few billion years of fuel. Billions of years.