Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Encouraged by the response to my post on Adrian Bejan and the Constructal Law, which achieved what might be termed unprecedented levels of tepidity, I persevere. Here’s a lovely look at the energy use of the United States:
Figure 1. US 2002 Energy production and consumption by sector.
There are some interesting things which can be seen in this diagram.
1. Almost none of the power for electrical generation comes from oil. This means that even if the US could generate every Watt of electricity from solar/wind/whatever, it will not directly replace our consumption of oil.
2. Generation, transformation, and transmission losses eat up most of the energy used for electrical generation. Overall efficiency is 31%
3. Transportation is worse, with only 20% efficiency.
4. Nuclear is three times the size of hydro.
5. Wood, waste, alcohol, geothermal, solar, and wind electrical generation together are 3% of total energy use.
However, as interesting as I found those, that’s not the reason I started looking at energy use and GDP.
I was sucked into this subject by what I thought was an interesting quote from Adrian Bejan here (PDF, worth reading. My emphasis):
To summarize, all the high-temperature heating that comes from burning fuel (QH or the energy associated with QH and the high temperature of combustion; cf. Bejan 2006) is dissipated into the environment. The need for higher efficiencies in power generation (greater W/QH) is the same as the need to have more W, i.e. the need to move more weight over larger distances on the surface of the Earth, which is the natural phenomenon (tendency) summarized in the constructal law.
At the end of the day, when all the fuel has been burned, and all the food has been eaten, this is what animate flow systems have achieved. They have moved mass on the surface of the Earth (they have ‘mixed’ the Earth’s crust) more than in the absence of animate flow systems. The moving animal or vehicle is equivalent to an engine connected to a brake (figure 4), first proposed by Bejan & Paynter (1976) and Bejan (1982, 2006).
The power generated by muscles and motors is ultimately and necessarily dissipated by rubbing against the environment. There is no taker for the W produced by the animal and vehicle. This is why the GNP of a country should be roughly proportional to the amount of fuel burned in that country. (Bejan 2009).
I must confess, I had thought about GDP and energy before, but never from a thermodynamic standpoint. Here is a graph of per capita GDP and per capita energy consumption for a number of countries:
Figure 2. Per Capita Energy Consumption vs Per Capita GDP for Different Countries. PPP values are used. Image Source
OK, call me slow. I knew that depriving the developing world of affordable energy would impede development. But I had never realized that energy use is development, that there is a thermodynamic relationship between the two. I hadn’t noticed that if a country wishes to develop, it can only develop to the extent that it has energy, and no further. Lack of energy doesn’t merely hinder or slow or delay development of poor countries as I had thought.
It puts an absolute ceiling on development.
Given the number of people in the world living on a dollar a day or so, that’s a discouraging insight in the context of the current war on fossil fuel energy.
“It puts an absolute ceiling on development.”
Yes! I believe this is the crux of AGW based on what I’ve been researching. It’s not to save us from global warming, it’s to ration our energy use so that there’s more for the rest of the developing world to use. Imagine if we don’t reduce our use, as the developing countries use more, the higher demand is going to result in higher prices thereby slowing down the growth of developing nations. And I’ve already read that the view of the World Bank (an organization created by FDR’s communist infested administration) is that developing nations are going to be using more and more fossil fuel for the next 4 or so decades to help them grow and catch up to us.
I believe the scary scenarios of AGW are way over-exaggerated and thrown at us in order to scare us into accepting massive cuts of energy.
What they don’t tell us is, our standard of living is going to have to significantly drop in order for those cuts in energy to be realized. There are over 400 mostly everyday items made from oil, all of these items are going to cost more, stop being made, or be made in other countries. Since 70% of our economy is consumption, we are going to be in a world of hurt.
I also find it oddly coincidental that an organization (the World Bank) created by an administration (FDR’s) that had communists in it (Harry Dexter White was the key man in the creation of the World Bank) is now resulting in the demise of America, both by the offshoring of jobs (i.e. redistribution of jobs, we’ve shipped almost 6 million jobs overseas in the last 10 years) and now by the pressure for us to reduce our use of oil and other natural resources.
As Maurice Strong was quoted saying (I’m paraphrasing so the copyright people are happy) in a Nov 22, 1973 NYTimes article, large energy consumers (such as the US) might have to racially change their consumption patterns, our 200 million people in the US when using air conditioners use more energy than the entire population of all of China for all of its purposes, and he questioned whether a country has a right to a disproportionate use of the world’s resources. Interesting that Strong now resides in China, which is a communist country benefitting from the 30 years of development assistance from the World Bank.
Or, in terms of tangible objects, what is, or what may be.
Willis, be careful though, you may be wandering into a study that may be a (gasp) soft science!(economics)
I harp on this, but it is a game changer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_4S
http://nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nuclear_power_news/archive/2010/01/27/under-the-hood-with-duncan-williams-toshiba-4s-01272.aspx
http://www.fastcompany.com/1594671/bill-gates-goes-nuclear-with-toshiba-tie-up
Ready to “Light the Candle!”?…
There is a fundamental disconnect between people advocating “green” jobs. It takes energy to manufacture something. Without that energy, no job. Why did your job go to China or India? Because the greens sent it there!
Somebody explain the economic benefits of paying more for energy? How can we make energy more expensive and improve our economy? Really explain it, and give examples of how it created jobs in other countries.
BTW: Anybody see the ABC News segment last night titled “Green China?” “Green China?” Really? Did China decommission all those coals plants? Did China put catalytic converters on all those automobiles? Did they put scrubbers on all their smokestacks? Did they stop their plans to build all those new coal plants?
I’ll tell you how China is going green — they’re getting our money for building things we can’t build in our country. Want a wind turbine? China will design and build it for you. We get an unreliable power source and they get our green(backs).
Great diagrams, Willis! It’s interesting that nukes are still over 20% of electricity even though (if I recall correctly) none have been built since the 70’s!
However, —
— you were right the first time. Although energy may be an essential ingredient for development (elasticity of substitution less than 1 in a CES production function), proportions are not fixed unless the elasticity of substitution is 0, which it rarely is.
Kyoto-like curbs on fossil fuels will surely be catastrophic for world GDP, sort of like the 1973 Arab oil embargo and ensuing OPEC output restrictions on steriods, but the decline will be less than proportionate.
In economics, the Jevons paradox, sometimes called the Jevons effect, is the proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource.[1] In 1865, the English economist William Stanley Jevons observed that technological improvements that increased the efficiency of coal use led to the increased consumption of coal in a wide range of industries. He argued that, contrary to common intuition, technological improvements could not be relied upon to reduce fuel consumption.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
I figured this out over a decade ago while studying information theory. It should be fairly obvious that the greenies do intend to destroy civilization. All of the talk of “Green Economy” is just smoke. Notice how the promoted “Green Tech” is always unworkable, but any workable solution to the propagandized “problems” is aggressively resisted?
Greenies are not just wrong, they are evil.
“Another lesson from the graph is that the United States is paying a high price in CO2 emission for its only slightly higher GDP per capita.”
Crosspatch already (mostly) answered this, but I will put it bluntly: CO2 is not bad. CO2 emissions cost nothing. CO2 has been much higher on Earth than at the present day (long before humans evolved), and Earth did not positive-feedback itself into Venuslike hell. CO2 is plant food, and higher CO2 means plants grow better and make more food and oxygen for animals, including cute baby seals and Siberian tigers.
If you are concerned about changing climates and species going extinct, may I suggest a general survey course in geology? While you’re there, look into the Carboniferous era, and the Permian die-off. Spoiler alert: Humans weren’t around for either of these events.
In other words, the way to reduce fuel consumption is to make it less efficient through the addition of artificial costs (taxes), or reduced demand (recession).
No , it’s more about demonising coal. When the oil crisis hits there are two main contenders : coal and nukes.
Creating carbon markets, and in europe there’s a lot of talk about artificially enforcing a “floor” of 30 euros a tonne for carbon, is all a back-door way to subsidise nuclear power. An energy that has never been able to stand on it’s own feet. It was only ever viable as a spin-off of a military program.
UK governments have never been able to sell of nuclear power because the markets won’t touch it. They don’t want to undertake the cost of dismantling and insuring the risks and the eternal storage of ever increasing volumes of waste.
The government is now saying the tax payer will cover the eventual cost any nuclear accident , again a back door way of the taxpayer taking the risks so the energy companies can take all the profit.
The whole AGW spin is to con the green movement that a vital , non toxic trace gas is more dangerous than radioactive waste.
So far they seem to have swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
This is why I argue the rule of thumb for judging environmentally “good” is “If it’s [amortized] price is less, it is more environmentally ‘friendly'”.
When people start adding “Environmetal benefit” to the equation, they are missing the point. The environmental benefit is contained in the cost.
PS, but otherwise I agree with your point . They don’t want to panic the world with the reality of oil supplies and are trying to use climate as the reason we need to change to other energy sources.
Willis
I very much appreciate the work you have done.
When my own work comes out, you should be able to understand it (and its implications, and the implications implications) pretty quickly.
Roger Pielke Jr’s book, the Climate Fix has more discussion on this issue.
He nicely breaks down the decarbonization issue into segments such as
1) energy use per $1000 of GDP and
2) carbon emissions per units of energy.
He then goes on to look at possible ways to reduce carbon emissions to the levels needed to stabilize CO2 at various levels. It is very evident that we aren’t going to get there by the means commonly proposed. This is even more obvious when one looks at the effect of low GDP countries improving their economic situation, and thereby increasing their energy use.
Erik Ramberg says: November 16, 2010 at 10:18 pm
I come to a very different conclusion. …..
Another lesson from the graph is that the United States is paying a high price in CO2 emission for its only slightly higher GDP per capita.
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Erik Ramberg. What precisely are you implying by saying this? I would be grateful for a clarification from you.
Douglas
Mosher (natural variation causes nothing; I hope you are playing with sematics here; natural variation can explain things, not cause them)- go to Bob Tisdale’s site and demolish his latest dissertation for me.
GNP of a country should be roughly proportional to the amount of fuel burned
An obvious corollary is: the price of a product is roughly proportional to the energy consumed in its production.
“It’s not to save us from global warming, it’s to ration our energy use so that there’s more for the rest of the developing world to use.”
We could double our electricity production without reducing in any way the amount available for developing areas. A fast breeder can convert natural uranium into fuel (converts U-238 to P-239). If the processing plant is ON SITE with the conventional reactors, there is no need to transport radioactive enriched U-235 around. The P-239 never leaves the site, it is “burned” in the local conventional reactors. No need for expensive enrichment once the fast breeder is started and depleted fuel can be recycled on-site.
This article should be REQUIRED reading for everyone in Congress:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=smarter-use-of-nuclear-waste
Here’s a list of everyday products that use oil:
http://www.texasalliance.org/admin/assets/PDFs/The_many_uses_of_Petroleum.pdf
What’s going to happen to all of these when the price of oil starts to rise? And what’s going to happen to our jobs (the ones that are still left in the USA) listed in the above pdf file?
The author’s first point is a bit misleading. True, increasing green energy sources (or nuclear) will have essentially no impact on oil imports. However, if successfully implemented, they could significantly affect the amount of other fossil fuels consumed, i.e. coal and natural gas.
My suggestion is to subsidize balloons for livestock farmers. Have them attach the balloons to the nether end of their animals. When their hind legs float off the ground, they’re ready for harvesting. Failure to implement such a plan is tantamount to connecting an electrical substation directly to ground.
Gene Zeien says:
November 17, 2010 at 10:21 am
GNP of a country should be roughly proportional to the amount of fuel burned
“An obvious corollary is: the price of a product is roughly proportional to the energy consumed in its production.”
GNP is an aggregate over all economic activities, so a rough correlation is to be expected. For a single product the enormous diversity of production techniques for economic goods will overwhelmingly dominate the very limited effect of energy cost; in any economy, the ratio of value to energy will range through many orders of magnitude (eg., from a found diamond valued at £100/J to horse manure at anything from £10^-8/J down to nothing).
Alexander K says:
November 17, 2010 at 7:16 am
“I am considerably puzzled by the number of posters who repeat the mantra ‘when better/more effective/more eficient/lighter batteries are available’. As I understand the history, scientists and inventors have been working at achieving the wished-for battery for well over a century without getting much nearer their goal, but so far, this has been a dead end when cost is factored in.”
Yes, battery technology has been under development and continual improvement for over a century. We have much better betteries now (higher energy densities, and lower costs per unit energy stored) than we had even five years ago. Battery powered vehicles have been utilised for special purposes for a considerable time, but the technology is now at last reaching the point at which general purpose vehicles will become viable. We will probably get there in another ten years, or thereabouts. Mind you, hydrocarbon fuelled vehicles may still have the edge; even if we were to run out of fossil fuels (unlikely), it would still make sense to manufacture petrol or diesel for automotive use, because it has the big advantage over batteries of instant refuelling.
Re: Erik Ramberg (10:18 pm)
How much manufacturing is there in Switzerland? How about agriculture? Do they export many products? How about oil refineries, iron works, smelting plants, etc.? All those things add to the energy consumption of a country. If you include the things consumed by the Swiss but grown or produced elsewhere, how does the calculation change?
Excellent article. Warmists, and their blind followers, claim that reducing CO2 is a no cost strategy and therefore, even if the benefits are not proven, it’s good insurance.
The truth is that the real cost is to be paid by developing countries, as they are deprived of the plentiful energy that the developed countries have enjoyed to become developed.
Insurance is not a good strategy if the premium is that much greater than the potential benefits.
Tepid this is not. The fascinating graphic really grabbed my attention, and I’m thinking this has to be integrated into a course I teach – if only I had more time…. The engineering students would love this. Thanks, Willis, for another excellent post.
Desert Yote: I tend to agree re greenies being ‘evil’ in preaching hopelessness and fighting against a system that has produced peace and prosperity. One wonders how we end up in a world where people can hold such diametrically opposing views of reality.