Guest Post by Thomas Fuller
The choices we make about energy, the environment and climate will be limited by The Three Chinas.
The Real China
1. One of the Chinas is very real and familiar. It has a population of 1.4 billion.
2. China is developing quickly, trying to do in 50 years what America did in 100. As a result, they have doubled their energy use since 2000, becoming the largest energy user in the world.
3. China’s energy use may well double again by 2020. (The figures in the report did not match reality, but their estimate of 7.5% annual growth looks fairly okay).
4. Coal currently provides 70% of China’s energy. That may drop to 65% by 2020. It may not.
5. If China doubles its energy use (to 200 quads) and 65% of it comes from coal, that will be 130 quadrillion BTUs generated from burning coal, in China, in 2020.
6. China’s coal plants are much dirtier than those used in the developed world.
The Second China
This very real China will be replicated by the natural growth of the human population to 8.5 billion by 2035, and 9.1 billion at its peak later this century. That’s more than the entire population of China. As many of them will actually be born in China, and many more will form part of our third ‘imaginary’ China, it is appropriate to limit the Second China to the size of the real one.
7. Most of these new humans will be born into developing countries.
8. But these developing countries are, in fact, developing now. Their energy use is increasing dramatically–if not as dramatically as China’s. The Second China will spring forth from countries whose energy use is growing by 3.3% per year.
9. And although their use of coal is not as intense as China’s, their reliance on fossil fuels is fairly close (Fig. 2)
The Third China
While China is developing quickly, so is the rest of the developing world. As countries develop, the people living in them get richer. They buy cars, appliances, computers, and begin to use more energy. Again, to avoid double counting (China will be one of the countries talked about, and many of the new middle class will consist of people not yet born), it is correct to think of this as about the size of the current China.
10. Two billion people may join the middle class by 2030.
11. By 2050, countries which are now developing quickly will be called ‘middle-income’ and may account for 60% of GDP.
12. Goldman Sachs believes that China’s per capita income will be $50,000 in 2050 (p.5), and that their per capita GDP will be $70,000. But they also project that Turkey and Mexico will have higher incomes per capita, and that Brazil will almost match China.
13. Mexico currently consumes 69 million BTUs per person per year (Table 1.8). Their average income is $14,000. If their incomes triple, so will their energy usage. The same is true for Indonesia, Turkey, the Philippines, China, India and more.
Discussion
I have written here frequently that I believe current estimates of future energy consumption are flawed. I hope the information provided above shows why. As I have written before, extending current consumption and development trends over a short period of time shows a doubling and perhaps a tripling of energy use over the medium term. That could see global demand for energy reaching 2,000 quads per year by 2035.
I do not know what the sensitivity of the atmosphere is to a doubling of concentrations of CO2 is, and despite pronouncements from partisans on either side of that argument, I don’t think anybody else knows, either.
I do not know what cycles of earth, moon, sun and stars will combine to push or pull global temperatures one way or another, and despite pronouncements from partisans on either side, I don’t think anybody else knows, either.
Recent human history makes it fairly easy to contemplate economic growth and energy usage for the very near future. It is an order of magnitude easier than trying to analyse the factors that influence the climate.
We do not have to guess about the effects of massive coal consumption by developing countries–we have our own history to guide us, from London in 1952 to Manchester a century before, from burning rivers in Ohio to dead lakes nearby.
Commenters to my recent pieces asked why I characterise our situation as an energy crisis. I have tried to provide an answer here. I’m happy to discuss this with any and all. Because I think this is a conversation we can have without referring to magical numbers and thinking, pixie dust or moonbeams.
I personally think that this level of intense development will indeed have an effect on our climate, due not only to CO2, but also deforestation, aquifer depletion and other factors described ably by Roger Pielke Sr. But I don’t know how much and I don’t know what percentages to assign to each.
So let’s talk about energy and why what is described above signals a crisis–or not.
This is a nightmare to some greens, healthy, happy prosperous dark skinned people!
EEEK! also, as they become more prosperous they become cleaner living, better
educated. Time to Nuke up, or lose it, folks…
Oh Mr Fuller.
Crisis? what crisis? The whole essence of a crisis is that it occurs suddenly and was not foreseen although with hindsight it should have been. Was it Pam or was it Gladstone? I can never remember, who said all crises are the same.
Since you you are trying to peer into the future let me remind you according to Yogi Berra very wise people avoid making predictions, especially about the future. Less wise prophets are usually clever enough to specify either what will happen or when it will happen but never both at the same time.
Thus they like to say things like ‘I predict in the future a great bridge, ziggurat or some such will be built here’ but sagaciously forget to say by when. Others prefer to suggest that some great disaster will occur at some defined date in the future but equally carefully avoid specifying quite what this catastrophe will be.
In this respect you are as guilty of hubris and extrapolating meaningless numbers as the climate modellers. It is not possible to peer into the future thirty years hence with any certainty at all beyond some very simple and largely meaningless statements. Fifty years ago they tried setting up think tanks to supposedly do that, was it the Hudson Institute? and see just how wrong they got it.
For all the attempts of politicians to slow it down and divert the rents into their own pockets both the technology and the flow of information is now moving too fast to be controlled by the mass population manipulation techniques that have served them so well in the past.
What do you imagine will happen when the communist party loses its grip on China and when will it happen? The stresses are all too clear.
I do not understand your reference to Manchester or London assuming these are the English cities, as for Ohio I know nothing of it. Please expound.
Otherwise I do not comprehend your obsession with fossil fuel consumption, there is no shortage of the stuff: it has served humanity well for the last three hundred years and there is plenty more for many hundreds of years yet: and who knows where our technology will have taken us by then.
Kindest Regards
Ref – HR says:
October 17, 2010 at 3:42 pm
The Optimist sees a great, shiny, brand New World; the Pessimist sees history repeated and only the names, numbers, and weapons change. Homo Sapien Sapiens ain’t too bright. It’s still a ‘dog eat dog world’ out there and assuming anything, one way or the other, just makes an ass out of u and me. Oh… one more hot tip for the discussion learned from the school of careful observation: If you wait long enough, anything and everything happens.
The population growth in China will likely reverse so they have a declining population in coming years. This is due to their one-child policy, lack of marriageable women for the number of young men, massive environmental damages from pollution/toxins and water and food contamination, among other reasons. Like real estate values, population does not always goes up. History shows that even the most advanced societies (for their times) have suffered calamitous events that reduced their populations by half or more in months or a few years. We are not immune from this.
As world population grows, so does competition for resources. As resources grow more scarce, wars will be fought over them. See: Iraq and Afghanistan, among others. Regardless of the other reasons for fighting in the ME, one of them is surely for the purpose of securing energy resources. Foolish, when you consider the reserves present under US soil (see: USGS for estimates in trillions of barrels/cubic feet), but I digress.
As resource wars ramp up, it is likely that hundreds of millions will die in the chaos, either as direct casualties or due to peripheral causes (starvation, disease, etc). With the weapons so many countries have today (plus the ones we don’t know about), WWIII will kill people more efficiently and in greater number than your worst nightmare of war could envision, using nuclear, biological and chemical means. There may be new weapons that employ even worse. I expect, when it is over, world population will have been reduced by at least half. Add in the potential for climate disasters affecting the food supply (already happening and it could start WWIII) and our near-future (next 20 years) problem is not likely to be overpopulation or scarce energy. It will be digging graves fast enough to bury the dead.
In short, Fuller is right about energy consumption. He’s not the only one that is realistic about likely global energy demand. Growing economies consume more energy. It really is true that energy is life and cheap energy is prosperity. Try living without food for a few months. I live in farm country. One person with a combine can harvest corn (pick, shell, clean, convert debris to mulch and dump grain into trucks) at 8 acres per hour (minimum). Try that by hand. I’ll supply the corn knife.
Fuller is right about we’re really in crisis today since energy consumption has been depressed due to the two+ years and counting recession. In the US it is even more of a crisis than most realize. It used to be energy plants had around a 7 to 10 year lead time. Today, with Obama shutting down the Gulf, oil shale, coal and only whispering about nuclear you are truly screwed. The US will run on hydrocarbons for at least 20 years. At least for those seriously analyzing production, energy density, consumer demand profiles, etc. If and when the world and/or US economy breaks out of recession, energy prices will double, then double again and maybe double once again. By dramatically stopping energy manufacturing we’ll be even more dependent on “foreign” energy and guess what? They’ll be a whole lot of TVs getting turned on in India, China, and, yes, maybe even Zimbabwe. Oh, and toss in the 200 Volts that’ll be sucking electricity off the grid. Things simply will not improve in the US for a decade even if we somehow became sensible and decided to start building capacity to meet demand.
It will be interesting, though, to see Greens having to eat the weeds they grow after the combines grind to a halt.
Tom,
Yes, indeed. That’s why there is a worry about AGW. People say, it’s only been a fraction of a degree. But there’s plenty more to come, whatever the sensitivity.
History shows us that as nations become richer, they start to care more about the environment and eventually do something to clean it up. In effect (as expressed in the economic choices of people in less developed countries), clean air and water are luxuries.
Environmental orthodoxy says that increasing the world’s wealth to US levels (as measured by energy use) will be a disaster for the earth. I say, it is what will save us, if we can make it happen in spite of the environmental movement. When the Chinese and Hindus have comfortable lives, they will be able to afford those luxuries. The same goes for all of the world’s poor countries.
These growth figures presume that the industrialized Nations continue to be a consumer market to power development.
A bankrupt First World will surely severely hinder this.
Evermore an example of why you cannot power the world with wind and/or solar.
America and indeed, the current industrialized world, achieved their prosperity on the back of one key ingredient – cheap energy. While I have no argument with the premise that Chinas one, two and three will achieve middle-class status, it occurs to me that they will need this one key ingredient as well and the basic premise of the article is that cheap energy will be no more. Or at least that what I would naturally deduce from what I know about our current ability to produce crude oil, our #1 source of cheap energy.
So I wonder if the timing of the article’s projections (2035) take into account that oil could well be multiples of current prices if demand were to out-pace production for a couple or three years running. Clearly, America et-al, (the developed nations of the world) would not be where they are today if crude oil was $100/bbl through the 1950’s.
Tom
“2. China is developing quickly, trying to do in 50 years what America did in 100. As a result, they have doubled their energy use since 2000, becoming the largest energy user in the world.”
Not even close to the same thing.
wow. Comparing the special economic zones to the United States of America is pretty extreme. Of course it’s getting harder to tell the difference.
Nick Stokes says:
October 17, 2010 at 4:57 pm
“Tom,
Yes, indeed. That’s why there is a worry about AGW. People say, it’s only been a fraction of a degree. But there’s plenty more to come, whatever the sensitivity”
Like, another fraction of a degree for the next 40% in Co2 concentration rise? I think i’ll crawl under a rock.
The favorite in the All-Or-Nothing Horse Race of the 21st Century is China. Think about it. Please. The current “Champ” is overweight, out of shape, out of breath, up to his nose in debt, and full of beer. If that weren’t enouth, the WEST is playing by a very funny set of new rules –ones some potheaded idiot drew up one night in a trance– and the rest of the World is using the Old Rules and standing behind China screaming “Kick ’em again! Kick ’em again, harder!” Nope… there isn’t going to be a Bright New Future if you live in Europe or North America. It’s shaping up to be another Dark Ages from self-inflicted stupidity in the West. You can’t win anything if you won’t fight.
I know this a tired saying, but at the turn of the last century NYC was worrying about being over run in horse **it.
Perhaps global warming will so absurd in a decade or so.
China’s nuclear electric problem is quite aggressive. They must complete two reactors a year between now and 2020 to meet their current minimum goals. China will be reprocessing , not burying, spent fuel.
Westinghouse alone is expecting to have 18 AP1000 units either complete or nearing completion by 2020. They are expected to be built with 100% Chinese content by the construction of the 6th plant.
China plans eventual construction of 200 plants. That’s a LOT of nuclear power. The US is going to be way behind and we can thank the Carter administration for regulations preventing the reprocessing of spent fuel. It was our plan all along from the 1950s through the late 1970’s to reprocess fuel. Carter is the one who put the halt to the US nuclear industry by starving it of anything to do with the spent fuel. He created a hazardous waste issue we have not yet dealt with. Carter’s decisions are still haunting us.
Your posts always make me feel uneasy, Tom. They have right from the first I read; and I do not mean they make me uneasy because they provide uncomfortable insight, but uneasy because they promote a disguised back door kind of justification for accepting that mankind really is seriously altering our climate whilst on the surface feigning to be riding with those of us who are adopting a healthy scepticism of this.
Dropping back for a moment to your “The Wisdom of Three Dog Night” (Oct. 16, 2010) I note this part of one sentence: “There are things we can do to protect against further climate change…”
Isn’t this saying that mankind certainly does affect the climate (and by implication, in major ways)? I believe it does say that, and therefore puts you firmly in the AGW camp ─ but you protest openness of opinion, and make-believe that you are really just a regular guy way above petty agendas.
I do not believe that is so.
In this particular essay I endorse what P Walker says above: “Sorry , Thomas , but I can see no connection to coal use and burning rivers . Dead lakes maybe , but even that’s a stretch…”
And I would then continue: Sorry, Tom, but, but, but…
Agreed. In the long run of decades and centuries, energy IS the issue. If it is solved, humankind has nothing but asteroid impacts and caldera volcanoes to worry about.
Thing is, why try and solve an issue decades and centuries down the road with sacrifices today?
As time passes, necessity will mother the inventions needed (e.g. practical hydrogen fusion power). Our progeny will take care of themselves as progeny have since the beginning.
Much of the industrial production that used to take place in the West is now being carried out by China. Let’s stop the simple finger pointing as the many of those very goods produced by China are being shipped and flown to the USA and EU.
Mr. Fuller,
I get where you are coming from but you sound just like the pessimists of the late 19th century who thought that London would drown in horse manure in 2000. :o) We keep underestimating man’s ingenuity. If you told anyone back in 1900 about home PCs they would not have a clue what you were talking about.
Carbone says:
October 17, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Nanotechnologies will see a massive surge by the end of this decade making solar power one of the cheaper (and later the cheapest) sources of energy.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
You said it much better than I just did.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/17/the-three-chinas/#comment-509892
One factor not commented on sufficiently by Thomas Fuller, although it is implicit in his whole argument, is the (in itself) fairly reasonable assumption that developing countries will increase energy usage to the same levels as the developed world. Whilst that is likely true, if we cut our energy usage in half in sensible ways, the developing countries will only increase their energy usage to half our current level. The key is that energy saving technologies have to be genuinely useful by offering real cost savings.
Personally I don’t see that we’re going to see a single new technology sweeping all before it, but a whole raft of solutions ranging from gradual improvements in existing technology through to design changes favouring efficiency in end-use. CCS coal plants make no sense because they add to the cost of energy compared to a dirty coal plant, for example, but photo-voltaics are useful in limited areas, as is hydro, tidal, etc. Ground-source heat-exchangers could generate almost all of our energy currently used for heating and cooling. Then again, there are simple things like improving the efficiency of transport systems.
If any of these things are to work, it’ll be because they offer economic benefits, not because coal is bad. Coal may or may not be the devil, but it’s irrelevant to this debate because we can’t force anyone not to use it. The best we can do is find ways to lower the amount of energy needed for our lifestyle – because that’s what they want the energy for.
Warnell says:
¨— sensible global plans for the reduction of urban sprawl.¨
Oxymoron alert: SENSIBLE & GLOBAL
Crisis will occur when competition for resources turns to exclusion.
Escalating tensions will be the result, and we all know what risk that carries.
A country will turn to might to fight for it’s survival.
The devil is in the details as to how such a struggle unfolds, and who are the winners & losers.
At this late stage in Earth’s advanced civilization, there may not be any winners.
The good way out of such crises is to not let them get started.
Don’t blink.
Energy is a resource. It is one of many.
I’m not saying solar energy is for everyone but please note:
“China ‘the world’s leading solar cell producer'”
http://www.solar-pv-management.com/solar_news_full.php?id=72806
also see:
Hyperion: Hot Tub sized nuelcear reactors – Energy for 20,000 homes
http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/news_pub.html
It’s things like the above which is why I am not as pessemistic as Mr. Fuller. Where will Homo Sapiens be in 35 years regarding technology? I don’t know and neither does Mr. Fuller.