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
Dave Springer says: (August 14, 2010 at 9:14 am) “I built an experimental setup for producing fuel grade ethanol. ….”
Kudos to you for doing so. My point was that at industrial scale when you calculate the net energy balance ethanol prodution is poor – and we need to be striving for maximum net production, not inefficient processes. Vacuum distillation is still an energy intensive process. As energy costs continue to rise, the net cost of that energy used in ethanol production will bite Also – you said yourself (August 14, 2010 at 7:15 am) “only high value feedstocks such as corn or beets are utilized and even then it’s still not economically viable without subsidies.”
In response to my comment “The bottom line is that ethanol does not have the energy density of oil so the per bbl net energy yield on the process is not in the same league.” you said: “Not sure what the point is. The differences don’t put alcohol, gasoline, and diesel into different leagues. They all play in the same ballpark and the distribution infrastructure is the same and extant.”
Well to pump energy analyses put gasoline at about 80% energy efficient vs 40% for cellulosic ethanol. Crude oil has a specific energy (MJ/Kg) of 46; ethanol is only 30. Per volume is the same ratio. It is less economic to transport ethanol long distances as part of a fuel distribution network.
BTW for small scale gasification I was thinking 1MW.
Richard S Courtney says: (August 14, 2010 at 9:18 am) Good comment, in fact one of the best on the thread.
@ur momisugly Dave Springer: re hydrogen storage
“Hardly. It’s a huge issue. It has to stored and distributed either under great pressure or in cryogenic conditions. The infrastructure exists for neither. Either way it isn’t suitable for transportation fuel. While there is some progress being made in storing it with chemical absorbants the progress is glacial and holds no promise of becoming practical. Hydrogen as fuel would be moer aptly called hypedrogen because that’s pretty much all it is – hype.”
This is, in fact, not at all an issue. Hydrogen has been generated, used, and stored at industrial scale for decades, and distributed via pipelines also. see e.g.
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/delivery/current_technology.html
Hydrogen as a transportation fuel is hopeless, of course. No one can seriously argue that it is. The hydrogen fuel cell technology exists for vehicles, but is far too costly to ever compete with liquid fuels.
But, as a renewable and inexhaustible fuel for electric power generation, it is a complete game-changer.
I was one of those few who predicted home computers before the Apple II. The year was 1977.
Arggh…Why do people say this sort of stuff on the internet? Is it meaningful in any sense? Is it verifiable? Oh, btw, I predicted that in a forum where people are basically anonymous and held to no verifiable standards they will say anything. Sheesh.
@Kum Dollison
Proof that your stuff is a bunch of BS: We still have something of a free market. If the numbers were even close to what you cite, it would be exploding all over it. And, don’t come back with any crap about Exxon gobbling up all the patents. They’d be at the forefront if they had the patents and the numbers were even close to what you say.
This is all Jimmy Carter crap. God, we need another Ronald Reagon to come along and replace the current Jimmy Carter in the White House.
Very nice, Mike. I love a “factually” based argument.
Verity, the new 2.0L TDI engine pushes that 3,600 lb Buick Regal around to the tune of 140 MPH, and gets, essentially, the Same Mileage on E85 as on gasoline. This is just the first of many engines on the way that can utilize ethanol’s ridiculously high (114) Octane Rating. BTW, The XPrize Winner was an E85 fueled car.)
BTW, you may not be aware of this, but there are only a handful of “Corn” ethanol plants left to come online. From here on out it will be All Cellulosic, and those will be powered by waste biomass (lignin from cobs, switchgrass, etc.)
In fact, within a decade, I’d say most “corn” ethanol plants will be powered by cobs, or biogas derived from cobs.
Things are changing fast.
Kum Dollison,
The point I was making was about well-to-pump energy efficiency rather than pump-to-wheels. I think we’ll see a lot more efficiency gain in vehicle powertrains in the next few years (and I’ll be very happy to see it).
As I said earlier – ethanol will likely be part of the fuel mix for the future and will remain important in some geographic areas, however heaven help us if we have to rely on it as a main source of fuel/energy in any future scenario. Using waste biomass for power just allows plants to claim that all their production is CO2 neutral. Even if plants are all cellulosic, are powered by waste biomass and make some energy efficiency gains, they will still be a very inefficient means of producing fuel. For every MJ of energy produced as ethanol ~0.6MJ is used in the production process – it doesn’t matter whether the plant is powered by fossil energy or biomass. This is a parasitic load of 60%; for gasoline production and biogas the equivalent is 20% max.
About fusion;
Dave S. is correct to state that materials able to withstand fusion are not going to happen. This, IMO, rules out what I call the “meso-fusion” (human-scale) regime. Stellar mega-fusion and micro-fusion remain. Until we become a Type II civilization, able to harness the full output of our star, mega-fusion is not accessible (as a direct tool; I’m not talking about converting radiant energy to electricity). But micro-fusion, now ….
There is a firm, LPP, Inc., which is working with a process called Focus Fusion. Containment is magnetic, within a sub-microscopic “plasmoid” generated by kinking a magnetic filament in plasma just so. It is completing its preliminary D-D calibration runs and tweaks not, and will be moving into the final proton-Boron11 regime within a couple of months. This is a waste-free, non-neutron-emitting fusion. It claims to have solved (in theory and simulation) the X-ray cooling problem by tuning the High Magnetic Field Effect some had predicted so that electron heating is minimized.
It won’t be free, but the planned “product” is a 5MW generator installed in about the housing size of a home garage, with capital per-watt costs and output pricing at source per kwh both around 1/20 of current best N.A. retail, or maybe 1/50 of European prices. It is easily adapted to distributed generation, and could end up bypassing most of the current grid, if necessary.
Timeline around 3-5 years to come up with a proven licensable design, to be made openly available at reasonable prices to all manufacturers wanting to produce and distribute it, world-wide.
typo: “completing its preliminary D-D calibration runs and tweaks now“
DT says:
August 13, 2010 at 5:55 pm
______
You misread the graph. Coal and nuclear are not declining on it. Their use is the WIDTH of their bands. The downslope you see is all from the green ‘conventional oil’ band.
We have organisms that eat CO2. They’re called “plants”. Also most algae, which are not plants.
Actually, Verity, it’s 0.43 in to 1.0 out according to the latest figures in a dry-grind ethanol plant.
Of more interest to most people is the $1.79/gal at the pump ($2.20 w/o subsidies – or foreign wars.)
Brian H, re fusion as a power source.
Fusion has, and always will have, two problems that are insurmountable.
1. Temperatures that obliterate any material that is used to contain the fusion core.
2. Inability to run continuously due to the magnetic bottle having no inlet nor outlet. Inlets and outlets disrupt the bottle and end the fusing.
40 years ago, Tokomak reactors were the “in” thing, using a magnetic pinch bottle and hydrogen plasma. How many billions have been wasted on that technology?
The LLP technology sounds interesting, but they cannot overcome the fundamental problems of 1 and 2.
Roger Sowell says:
August 14, 2010 at 8:57
40 years ago, Tokomak reactors were the “in” thing, using a magnetic pinch bottle and hydrogen plasma. How many billions have been wasted on that technology?
The LLP technology sounds interesting, but they cannot overcome the fundamental problems of 1 and 2.
50 years ago there was the Stellatron in fashion and as an undergratuate in physics I was tempted towards that direction, since also a greek had invented it. Fortunately it was too applied for my physics tastes; it finally disappeared from the scene.
The Tokamak has not disappeared and the impossibilities you are stating have not been convincingly calculated, because about 17billion $ are programmed for the completion of the ITER international collaboration to build an industrial prototype that will produce megawats.
Considering the billions spent on the war machines and imperial clout and the billions spent on so called climate research, the price is low and late, in my opinion.
Here is a link for ITER, http://www.iter.org/
Real work is going on.
On the complexity:
If you tried to describe to a19th century physicist how the car engine works, you would get the similar “impossible” reaction.
Anna v, re Tokamak.
I would love to see such a machine finally work, but as an engineer I am too much of a realist to believe those two fundamental problems I described will be overcome. Those problems are not something original to me, rather they were explained to me and other freshmen at University of Texas in Austin, as we toured their Tokamak system in September of 1972.
Can you describe the current approach? Is there some super-material of which we are unaware? Or will the fusion reaction simply be located a great distance from any solid matter? Will the bottle have inlets and outlets? Or will this be a batch reaction with multiple batches brought into the heating zone, one at a time?
Note that throwing money at a research project is certainly no guarantee, and also no reassurance that there will ultimately be a viable technology. In fact, most such research returns zero. I would love to be proven wrong on this one, but it seems to be a very expensive bunch of metal and electricity at which investors throw their money.
Roger Sowell
from:
http://www.iter.org/
The goal of the ITER fusion program is to produce a net gain of energy, and set the stage for the demonstration fusion power plant to come. ITER has been designed to produce 500 MW of output power for 50 MW of input power – or ten times the amount of energy put in. The current record for released fusion power is 16 MW (held by the European JET facility located in Culham, UK).
There is a lot of information on the site.
Kum Dollison – 0.43 – interesting number – where did that come from? Still a ways to go then in terms of efficiency.
Yes things are changing fast. That Buick may appeal on perfomance and give same mpg on E85 as gas, but it is a heavy car whereas the trend is for efficiency. What’ll it do – 30mpg? Hmm. Also a TDI engine is more expensive than a standard engine. Even with the cheap ethanol you cite, I think I’d rather spend on a diesel and get more mpg 😉
@Verity Jones
TDI is trademarked by Volkswagen and it is exclusively diesel.
I’d love to own a nice little Jetta TDI for everyday driving, by the way.
Jaye says:
August 14, 2010 at 12:27 pm
“Arggh…Why do people say this sort of stuff on the internet?”
In my case because it’s true.
“Is it meaningful in any sense?”
I qualified it well enough. One prediction, one success. Not much of a track record but take it for what it’s worth.
“Is it verifiable?”
Possibly. Pepperdine University probably has a record somewhere of me attending the class mentioned 33 years ago and while unlikely the professor might have kept my term paper in a box somewhere.
“Oh, btw, I predicted that in a forum where people are basically anonymous and held to no verifiable standards they will say anything.”
Unlike you, I’m not anonymous.
“Sheesh.”
Indeed.
@roger Sowell
re; hydrogen pipelines
You panned the problems stated in the first paragraph of the DoE link that you provided.
Try this for a dose of reality:
http://www.ika.rwth-aachen.de/r2h/index.php/Hydrogen_Transport_by_Pipeline
While not insurmountable the problems are great enough that it isn’t going to happen. The huge capital cost of upgrading NG pipelines won’t happen until there is a greater demand for H than for NG. There won’t be a greater demand for H until there is adequate distribution infrastructure in place and equipment converted to burn it instead of NG. It’s a classic Catch 22 situation.
Whatever form our alternative energy takes it has to work with existing distribution and point-of-use infrastructure. Compatibility with that infrastructure will separate the winners from the losers.
@Brian H
I don’t like to be harsh but Lawrenceville Plasma Physics is a garage shop run by a non-scientist crank (undergraduate degree in physics) named Eric Lerner. As recently as 2007 he was the sole employee.
Don’t get me wrong. Many times in history the unexpected breakthrough comes from a crank. The problem is that for every crank with something real, exciting, and promising there are a thousand of them trying to sell the proverbial bottle of snake-oil.
Lerner is promising something approximating a perpetural motion machine. That should send up a red flag wherever and whenever you see it. I won’t discount it but I wouldn’t invest real money or hope in it either. Seeing, in this case, is believing.
anna v says:
August 14, 2010 at 11:03 am
“Wasn’t A.C.Clark who wrote about the space elevator?”
Clarke popularized it 30 years ago it but the concept has been around for over 100 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
Dave;
There are numerous others involved, now, including PhD physicists. Get current. Here’s an excerpt from a comment by one of the principals to a question I posed recently about whether the “pinches” (plasmoid collapses) were hot enough for pB11 fusion, or whether the extrapolations from current results was consistent with being able to get to that stage on schedule:
“Brian, without going into details or complicated formulas, the pinches are not “hot” enough yet, but the extrapolations are there. However, pB11 is a completely different animal than deuterium.
…
the results we have gotten are very encouraging, and we’re only getting started. We’re at the cutting edge of this research. With the upgraded switches, we should have vastly improved performance by having all capacitors discharge, with better synchronization, at higher voltages. We’ve barely started to test the effects of the angular momentum coil or the magnetic field effect, so we really can’t say just how much those will ultimately improve the results. We’re also getting all the diagnostic instruments installed and the noise eliminated, so we can better see what’s going on,
…
I’m very optimistic that by late September, we’ll have some newsworthy results. When all the pieces come together at the right time and place, that’s when things get interesting. ”
Just to elaborate a bit, the timelines currently call for “scientific break-even” to occur late 2010 or early 2011. So you and we won’t have long to wait.
As for your equating of p + B11 –> 3xHe4 + energy with “perpetual motion”, that’s just bad-tempered ignorance.
Here’s a link to an early paper on the theory. Note particularly the application of HMFE:
http://www.arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0710/0710.3149.pdf
While we’re talking about fusion, there is also the POPS approach; trying to improve Bussard-style fusors by using a Periodically Oscillating Plasma Sphere.
http://www.lanl.gov/p/rh_pp_park.shtml
Looks like a promising idea IMHO.