Guest post by Thomas Fuller
I have been broadly correct about two important things in my career as an analyst. (I wasn’t the only one and I wasn’t the first–just far enough ahead of the curve to make a difference.)
The two things were the demographic decline of much of Europe and the rapid adoption of the internet following the release of the world wide web. I was not studying or researching either topic at the time–the two phenomena leapt out of other research I was conducting and were obviously more important than what I was doing at the time, so I dropped what I was doing and started looking at them exclusively.
So now it’s time to try for the trifecta. (No, I really don’t care about that at all–but this is the third Capital Letter Issue that has jumped out at me, so what the hey…)
Inadequate projections of latent demand for energy are leading to poor decisions now and are muddying the debate about both climate change and energy policy for the rest of the century.
The U.S. Department of Energy and the United Nations both project global consumption of energy at 680 and 703 quads respectively by the period 2030-2035 (a ‘quad’ is one quadrillion btus, roughly the energy you could liberate from 36 million tons of coal).
However, consumption trends, if extended, are far higher–they could reach 2,100 quads by 2030, if adequate energy was available consistently and at decent prices. This is because of the confluence of several important demographic trends.
The overall population is rising–it will be about 8.1 billion in 2030, the equivalent of adding another China to the planet. The comparison is fairly apt, as most of these new humans will be born into societies that look like China does now, or like China did 15 or 20 years ago.
These new humans will be stepping onto the energy ladder and consuming vastly higher quantities of energy than did their parents–if it’s available. They will be moving from farms with no electricity into slums with a minimum of electricity–but shortly thereafter, development and globalization will start them on the road to refrigeration, television, washer/dryers, computers, motor scooters, cars, ad infinitum.
These new humans will be joined by yet another virtual China–existing people who benefit from the same processes of development and globalization and jump on the energy ladder with both feet and both hands.
Obviously, many of both type will actually be in China. But even more will be in places like Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, large swathes of Africa and the rest of the developing world.
They will want what they perceive as a modern lifestyle–in America that amounts to 327 billion btus per person per year in energy consumption. In Denmark, it’s a much more modest 161 billion btus. But in either case, latent demand for energy will far exceed the 700 quads currently projected by the DOE and the UN.
Assume 7 billion people will be on the energy ladder (changing from wood and animal dung on their way to coal, petroleum, natural gas, nuclear and hopefully arriving some day soon at the promised land of renewable energy). This means there are 1 billion people we have failed. (And I don’t want to ignore them–I just want to present believable numbers for this exercise.)
If those 7 billion consume energy as Americans do it comes to 2,289 quads. (The total will obviously be less, as they won’t all be near the top of the ladder by 2030). If they adopt a Danish model and develop towards that (efficient use of combined heat and power, high taxes on gas, generally high prices for energy, conscious drive to conserve), global energy demand will be 1,127 quads.
Although I would wish that people new to the modern world would automatically choose the far better Danish model, I predict that they will opt for the easier, softer American model and their energy needs will skyrocket.
However, in either case, we will need far more energy than is currently predicted. If they do not get it, they will not fully participate in what the modern world has to offer–education, good healthcare, clean air and water. Nor will they participate in the modern economy, further enriching the rich world with purchases of video games and expensive perfumes. We all will lose, although the losses of the poor will be heartbreaking.
It may well be that the DOE and the UN have correctly identified what governments are willing to build and provide in the way of new energy–but if they are correct, we are condemning billions of people to needlessly live a wretched existence that they would avoid if they could. Because using energy is not just a sign of success at development, or a reward for doing it right or a ‘welcome to the club’–it is often the key mechanism that enables development.
The poor–the two new Chinas–will fight and scheme to get the energy they need. They will burn coal, oil, whatever is available to escape the life sentence of the poor–lives that are nasty, brutish and short.
This conversation is not really about global warming at all. But it is certainly relevant to discussions of our planet’s future climate. China has doubled its energy consumption since 2000. There are two new ‘Chinas’ eager to do exactly the same, mimicking our behaviour of the last two centuries and following the original China’s current example.
The sources and quantities of energy we make available to the world will determine what our planet will look like in the medium term.
There’s no getting around that.
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
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Robert of Ottawa says:
August 13, 2010 at 2:14 am
It makes nop sense to have coal energy production remain constant; it is the most abundent and cheapest source of energy.
Is coal really that much cheaper than the potentially limitless ( and less polluting) energy from the sun, wind, tide, geothermal etc?
It seems to me that the tax breaks and subsidy the coal industry and fossil fuel industries already recieve from the tax payer, far outweigh the comparative investment in alternatives, especially more sensible alternatives to corn ehtanol.
http://www.elistore.org/Data/products/d19_07.pdf
Spare a thought to how liberating energy independence on a household and national scale would be towards truely free markets.
Some points:
1. Peak Oil theory is not a scientific fact.
2. Petroleum is buried biomass is not a scientific fact.
3. Plate Tectonics is not a scientific fact.
4. The Big Bang is not a scientific fact.
5. AGW is not a scientific fact.
These are, instead, technically sophisticated “Beliefs” based on an intellectually based consensus that is otherwise known as “peer review”. It isn’t science by any stretch of the imagination.
With regards to population growth, what is interesting is that it is in the developed Western world that population growth is largely static, if not declining in some parts. It is in the undeveloped world and the developing world where the greatest population growth is happening.
The natural population of the UK is in decline, and is only propped up by massive immigration from the EU and the developing world.
So the way I have it figured is that the best way to control population numbers is to encourage the developing world to develop as fast as possible to a stable economic and energy provision status.
The reason so many regions of the world have booming populations is both cultural and religious. Part of the reason is that the poor have large families as a sort of pension provision. They need to know that they will have enough children grow up to be able to look after them in their own old age. Economic development would solve the need for such large families. The other part is religious, where religions ban contraception and birth control, that leads to an increase in numbers too.
There are more models of energy consumption than the Danish and American models. This is where your projections fail.
Since we are talking about a third China, why not use the Chinese model of energy consumption? Let’s also look at the already modernized urban populations of Indonesia, Brazil, etc. to see how the urban populations of those countries use energy?
For instance, the Hong Kong energy consumption per capita runs around 29% of that of the US, less than the Danish model by a significant margin (almost half).
Your projections also fail to account for the fact that it is well demonstrated that once per capita income exceeds approximately $10,000 US (in 2000AD dollars), that energy consumption per dollar of GDP drops significantly, so as the three China’s improve their per capita incomes, while their per capita energy consumption rises, it will be a diminishing returns curve, not a linear one, wrt its relationship with income growth.
Mindbuilder wrote: “If it makes any difference, I expect that battery technology will have matured and electric cars will dominate over gas. With 15 minute charging, it’s almost there already.”
Batteries are not a solution, only a storage system. And every link in a system compounds inefficiency. As for “almost there already” you’ve been reading the spin on manufacturers’ brochures.
In the 80s, when computer storage was expensive, a forward-looking individual wrote an article, head-lined “What if mass storage were free?” and came up with many enlightening ideas. Laughable those days, almost reality 30 years later.
I am convinced that there is a similarity with energy:
1. Technical progress will make energy generation cheaper and less damaging for the environment.
2. Having abundance of cheap energy available anywhere will make human life much more enjoyable.
Let’s get ready for such a future, instead of turning the wheel of progress backwards, as the doomsayers do.
The joker in the deck to all these projections is war. People act as though war is some kind of anomaly while through history it is actually a norm.
MAD could keep the major powers from launching nukes, but India and Pakistan or the Muslims and Israel??
The genetic engineers are well on their way to accomplishing designer bugs. That technological genie will not stay in the bottle. The laboratory equipment needed to create a population thinning disease will be within the reach of any determined nation or well financed rogue group.
This analysis seems to be pretty much the same, in terms of depth & sophistication, as Paul Ehrlich used to develop his warnings about the “Population Bomb” that never happened.
Thing is, as societies populate the citizens tend to have fewer children on average. There’s a whole bunch of factors that interplay. Those apply to this analysis & None of them have been included. For a benchmark check out the late Dr. Michael Crichton’s official website — he addresses this at some length, noting his observation that when alarmists, like Ehrlich with his warnings of population overgrowth, sound thier alarms the solution to the problem is usually well underway. Crichton uses a specific example from the population expolosion fear — presenting data illustrating how population birth & growth rates had been in decline for some years prior to Ehrlich’s warnings; in many countries these fell to below population maintenance levels.
For this grossly superficial analysis to have any merit, such things need to be addressed…but from what’s presented it appears such things haven’t even been identified, much less considered.
This is just like the global warming models that reach sensationalistic conclusions, but cannot predict or explain unexpected trends parodyed here — but at least much of what they don’t incorporate in thier models is unknown, or largely unknown/highly uncertain.
Its ironic this blog would perpetuate the same sort of oversimplified analytical logical error… I expect more/better from here.
Why is that GreyMonk, or any post exposing the same idea (that we would have an easier life with less humans on planet earth) is immediately answered by: “Why don’t you start by removing yourself from existence”, or “and who do you propose to kill first?”
I certainly share the idea of GreayMonk (that it would be much easier to provide better standard of living to everybody in a smaller population) without any desire to kill anybody. Only thing that is needed is to encourage the (already heavy) tendency towards less children per women in modern societies. Just let the individual selfishness do the trick: in societies where people with less children have a higher standard of living and where contraceptives are readily availble (like in the western world and unlike agricultural societies), population naturally decrease. Nothing wrong with that…
I am firmly in the skeptic camp and do not like at all the AGW-cult that pass for environmentalism nowadays, but the “growth and multiply” mentality is not something that I find constructive, logical or ethic either. It inevitably leads to some kind of limitation by resources at one point, and populations limited by resources do not live a happy live, being animal populations or human populations….
“evanmjones says:
August 13, 2010 at 2:36 am
I find the Gray Monk’s post appalling. The planet can easily support the six billion it has, and many more besides. Perhaps four times as many. Even more. In affluence and with little pressure on natural systems.”
Totally agree. We are nowhere near the limit. For example Greater London [nice place to live] isn’t that overcrowded and you could fit all the worlds population in 600 Londons – and you could get them in England with plenty of room to spare AND nobody else anywhere on the planet. Not exactly Bladerunner high rise overcrowded just yet.
cheers David
[REPLY – Yup. And you can even go further than that. London today with 7.5 million inhabitants is incomparably less crowded than London when it had 1 million inhabitants. ~ Evan]
“Louis Hissink says:
August 13, 2010 at 4:20 am
Some points:
1. Peak Oil theory is not a scientific fact.
2. Petroleum is buried biomass is not a scientific fact.
3. Plate Tectonics is not a scientific fact.
4. The Big Bang is not a scientific fact.
5. AGW is not a scientific fact.”
I’m with you on all except number 3? Not proven physically, measurement, observation??
cheers David
I’m not sure the author has taken into account the startling demographic problems that are about hit most if not all G20 nations. Europe (including Russia), as well as Japan, China, and most of North America will have an inverted population pyramid. That is, these nations will see thier largest population concentrations amongst the eldery. The fertility numbers are quite stark. Many nations have fertility rates that are near 1.1/female (Japan, Russia, Italy, Greece, and Spain come to mind). China continues to have fertility rates below 1.5/female, and North America isn’t much better (the US varies between 1.8 and 2.0). Africa contnues to be plagued by war and AIDS. Nations like Indonesia and some South American nations have healthy birthrates. But, thier population growth cannot compensate for the falls seen in the rest of the globe.
This does not bode well, for most of the world’s wealth is tied to aging populations. To make matters worse, the nations with the fastest rates of aging also have the most generous entitlement programs. For the next 30 years, these nations will be drawing down thier stored wealth, as well as redistributing it to care for thier aging populations. This means less wealth creation. In the US alone, the amount of unfunded liabilities is staggering. Through 2080 it stands at over $70 trillion. The total assets in the US is around $49 trillion.
I do not see our demand for energy increasing over the next 50 years. It will probably peak this decade before it begins to slowly but surely decrease. The kind of growth the world saw between 1983 and 2007 cannot be duplicated for the simple fact that there will not be enough younger people with the incomes needed to sustain it.
kai says:
August 13, 2010 at 5:01 am
“Why is that GreyMonk, or any post exposing the same idea (that we would have an easier life with less humans on planet earth) is immediately answered by: “Why don’t you start by removing yourself from existence”, or “and who do you propose to kill first?” […]”
The Gray Monk didn’t say what you just said. He said that there were already 4 billion too many on earth. I’ll admit to conclusion-jumping in response to The Gray Monk, but it wasn’t really a jump so much as a tiny step to get to the only viable solution, given the premise, that somebody has to go.
If one claims that there are 4 billion too many right now, then it’s fair to ask for a proposal for how, and how fast to get rid of the excess population. (I suppose there’s an Ap for that available for download on http://www.malthusiansforparadise.com.)
One fair-enough reply from The Gray Monk could be, “I expect it will all sort itself out when everthing crashes and burns from the excess population burden. Do nothing and let the strongest survive.”
We did all of the Malthusian arguments on imagined population numbers in the post on nuclear power stations a few days ago – can we just link people back to that one?
While Tom may have picked right in the past, isn’t that what they warn in all the adverts for brokerage houses and stock tips:
“Past results are no guarantee of future performance”
This post ignores the biggest factor in human development – humans and their ingenuity. Call me an optimist, but I have travelled extensively in these “New Chinas” Tom talks about and, yes, they are dirt poor, but they are orders of magnitude better off than they were 15-20 years ago even with double the population.
Every time I sit in a traffic jam in a city like Dhaka or Mumbai, I marvel that there are so many people with places to go and things to do. Of course their growth has outstripped their infrastructure and – in some ways – it is good that it has because this is the driver of development: the need to do more with less.
Sorry Tom. I think you’ve picked the wrong horse in this race.
China’s growth already dwarfs all Kyoto promises. We need a new Saudi Arabia of fuel every 2-3 years to keep up with global fuel demand on top of depleting light oil resources.
YetDeclining oil exports increased oil prices from $60 in 2005 to $100 in 2008.
Lloyds of London warns:
Former OPEC member Indonesia went from maximum light oil production to 50% drop in exports within 5 years. The UK’s exports dropped 80% in 4 years!
The five largest oil exporting countries could easily stop ALL exports within 25 years.
Geopolitical Peak Oil Feedback Loops will cause massive impacts.
Welcome to the 21st Century. Full of opportunity for those who can see.
great analysis.
one little typo.
when you said, “They will want what they perceive as a modern lifestyle–in America that amounts to 327 billion btus per person per year in energy consumption”
you meant 327 million btu per capita, right?
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec1_13.pdf
mindbuilder says:
August 13, 2010 at 12:27 am
I’m sure this has all been done before, let’s see if I can wing it. From http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_Thinking/jeep_to_estimate.htm it seems my car (Saturn SL2, 30 mpg[1]) needs some 900 Kj per mile of engine output. Love those mixed units. If it’s good enough for NASA[2], it’s good enough for me. Or maybe that was for the author’s Jeep. Close enough. 2.7Mj per gallon.
That seems backed up by http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/ArthurGolnik.shtml which has energy input to the engine (the NASA page assumes 20% engine efficiency).
One joule is one watt-sec, so a Kwh is 1,000 * 3,600 = 3.6 Mj.
I have a long commute, about 3 gallons roundtrip, 8.1 Mj. I do it 4 days a week, say 16 days a month, 129.6 Mj, or 36 Kwh/month. That seems a lot lower than I’d expect and would make electric cars a lot more cost effective than I thought they are – did I screw up? Time to get to work.
2.25Kwh per day, charge time of .25h, 9Kw, 37.5 amps at 240V.
My point – where does that energy come from? That’s an important part of the equation for getting past peak oil – whenever that happens. (Me, I like nukes. Good baseline supply. NH can build a waste chamber ala Yucca Moutain under Mt Cardigan and charge lotsa money for storing out-of-state waste.[3])
[1] Some gas I’ve been getting lately gives me about 10% better milage. I wonder if it doesn’t have ethanol. On trips to Mt Cardigan, (rural highway, speed limit 35-50 mph), that gas gives me over 40 mpg. Not bad for a car with 274K miles.
[2] Yes, I know about the Mars lander lost due to ft-lb vs. nt-m confusion. Sorry, I forgot to include the :-). 🙂
[3] As long as they don’t have nighttime lighting. Starlight is a terrible thing to pollute.
The issue of Demographics get raised quite a bit here. And also peak oil. Here’s a book that argues that the current U.S. economic situation is caused by demographics – that of a population that is entering retirement. It also looks that the history of oil crisis’ – for that last 200 years.
http://www.longwavepress.com/Baby_Boomers_Generation_X_SCv1a.pdf
>> mikael pihlström says:
August 13, 2010 at 4:11 am
Renewables are subsidized, but so are, perversely, fossils.
<<
Don't keep repeating lies that have been refuted in other threads. 'Renewables' are subsidized by taking money by force from poor people (taxes) and giving it to 'renewable' manufacturers. Fossil fuels are only 'subsidized' if you count the failure to double-tax them and the government purchase of furnace fuel to help keep the poor from freezing.
“Everything has it’s time, and everything dies.” (h/t to Dr. Who 😉 ) In any case, the issue will be resolved sometime around Dec. 2012, according to various prognosticators. 😉
This has been well known for years at IEA. There is a strong correlation between GDP and energy consumption. China and India are simply doing what the US did 50 years ago, albeit with a higher population, which suggests the impact will be greater on overall demand.
You can find information about this on the Oil Drum as analysts have predicted this for at least 5 to 10 years. China began importing Oil in 1993 – so this is not news at all.
If you believe this article then you may as well believe on the Hockey stick, they are the same, both based on few decades.
Wolfgang Flamme says:
August 13, 2010 at 2:55 am
@Kum Dollison
“Did you know, Portugal gets 45% of its Electricity from Renewables?”
Check Ecotretas: <<
Interesting read. To summarize for those who don't want to click the link, most of that is hydroelectric. That works great if your region of the world has a river that can be dammed and the lake created in the process isn't an ecological disaster. Since those lucky locations are being rapidly used up, I wouldn't call it 'renewable' by any stretch.
As the number of these ramp up we will be seeing “installed” solar in the vicinity of $2.00/watt.
Multiply that by 3X to account for day/night etc. Then add $1 for backup. That is the real number.
I live in sub-Saharan Africa and we are already experiencing black outs because the energy infrastructure inherited from colonialism has not been maintained adequately and the necessary investments in new energy sources and distribution has not been made. As a consequence we have widespread deforestation as individuals need to cook their food and warm themselves. It is true that we have governments that don’t care a fig about their populations or economic development beyond that required to keep the ruling class in Versace, Blue Label and Mercedes but we also have a bunch of “well meaning” eco freaks who don’t want to see hydro power or coal power plants and definitely not nuclear here. These well meaning types continually push for “renewables” and green solutions which all keep the poor living like stone age scavengers but they have a solar panel or two to drive the local propaganda radio. No wonder so many of my countrymen head off to the west at the first possible opportunity.
As long as these NGO’s are able to try out their experiments in sustainability here , while bribing the ruling class with Aid there will never be an upsurge in energy use as described by the author.
Another point I would like to make is that this continuing canard about using up finite resources will lead to us having shortages of everything over time is just silly. Where has everything gone? Isn’t it still here on Earth? It will be used again and again as new technology arrives to make such a thing economically viable. If that doesn’t happen remember the Earth’s crust is between 10km and 100km thick and it is everywhere. Has anybody taken a stab at what percentage of that crust has been exploited so far, to say nothing of the nodules at the bottom of the sea. Surface area is definitely finite but the volume is essentially unlimited and just awaits technology ( e.g. deep offshore drilling ) to be developed.
The single biggest constraint right now on human development is poor governance while energy available to all mankind is essentially limitless. Energy drives development and the current drive by the warmistas and incompetent governments to deny all citizens access to cheap energy is all about control and nothing more.
Energy leads to so many good things. Education, small families, leisure, a clean environment, the list is as long as you would like. It can also lead to war, oppression and worse it all just depends on good governance. If you care about your environment, your self actualization, the future of your children and the wellbeing of Earth then be a democrat. Push democracy everywhere you can whenever you can. It may not be perfect but it at least allows us to strive towards something more perfect and nothing else does.
Population is not a problem. Resource availability is not a problem. Those who think it is , having found themselves a nice place on the big boat that is Earth just want to keep anybody new from enjoying what they do already. Science, technology, engineering can solve all of the energy and resource issues but it takes good governance to create the environment for progress to happen. Not through the wicked coercion we see far too often but through the enablement of society to progress as it sees fit.
Yes there will be wars, pestilence, plague, floods and worse but those are the price humankind has paid throughout history for progress and I believe we are the most evolved generation so far seen on Earth and the young ones coming up behind us now show even more promise than we do. Push back these anti-democratic anti-scientists and lets move ever forward in the evolutionary game. We will not destroy ourselves , not even nature has manged that so far, and the more we know the more likely we are to survive and spread.
Sorry about the rant but I am not of a dystopian nature and I do believe we are , collectively and separately unique. The anti-science brigade are just nostalgic for a badly remembered halcyon past that never was because like all of our childhoods things seemed so much simpler then.