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 …
jrwakefield says:
August 22, 2013 at 6:35 am
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You’re correct about peak oil being about extraction rates (although it’s also about how much is left). But the argument that the 85 mbpd has been limited by supply ignores the fact that there has been a great deal of demand destruction after 2007. Even if more oil could be produced, it couldn’t be sold. If you check, you’ll see a similar plateau in US oil production during the great depression.
That said, even the sunniest optimists don’t see infinite oil. I think the EIA (or was it the IEA?) once had the peak around 2030 at something over 110 mbpd. And that’s way on the high side.
But remember that other fossil fuels can replace petroleum in many applications. US homeowners are slowly phasing out fuel oil for home heating and replacing it with natural gas. Iran and Pakistan have a lot of natural gas fueled vehicles. Fuel substitution is a slow process because it requires infrastructure investment. Joe homeowner doesn’t switch to gas until the repairman shakes his head and says “This oil burner is on it’s last legs. You better think about replacing it” My guess is that over the next few decades US energy use will go from 40% petroleum to 20% and natural gas will go from 20% to 40%. (And, yes, I’m wrong sometimes).
And I think you’re incorrect about higher standards of living necessarily requiring more petroleum. In point of fact the principle inflexible use of petroleum is transportation and the cars in my driveway get twice the gas mileage of the cars we were driving 5 decades ago when I graduated from college — despite have many energy gulping features like air conditioning and automatic transmissions.
EREOI? Well, a low EREOI is hardly a desirable feature, and it decreases the effective size of the resource. But the idea that it somehow limits resource availability makes no more sense to me than the notion that the greenhouse effect can’t heat the planet.
thomaswfuller2 says:
August 22, 2013 at 12:38 am
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.
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The reason the population grows in third world countries is because of CHILD LABOR. Cheap energy replaces that child labor and families no longer see children as adding to the family income. In first world countries children are a substantial drain on the family’s purse not free farming labor… or worse.
And it is not just Iran An estimated 5.5 million children are victims of human trafficking globally. Everyone, but especially young women, must stay alert when traveling abroad… However you are not going to stop child labor with laws.
I think that many do not know what is mean to be not poor but lack of money, We have almost daily brown out, and at that moment I charge every day two rechargeable light and give to the neighbor for night because they don’t have have money pay the bill, income for them is 50 to 100 peso per day and the family need also eat. Luckily I can even little help them. South Philippine
Mike Mellor says:
August 22, 2013 at 1:51 am
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?
Energy use is only an entry ticket, but an entry ticket it is. One also needs high level of education, which takes time (many decades). Recent heroic efforts to improve education in South Africa (the country spends 20% of its GDP on it) comes after forty years of “bantu education” for blacks and it still has to bear fruit. Illiteracy among adults is ~16%, a rate preposterously higher than in either Italy or Spain (~1%). However, with no ample energy, one can’t even read at night, which leads to nowhere.
“But the argument that the 85 mbpd has been limited by supply ignores the fact that there has been a great deal of demand destruction after 2007. Even if more oil could be produced, it couldn’t be sold. If you check, you’ll see a similar plateau in US oil production during the great depression.”
Yes, but China and India have been taking up that slack. China is expected to surpass the US in oil consumption some time around 2015. China’s economy is still increasing some 8% per year. Some can argue that that US demand destruction is because of peak oil. Peak oil wont hit every country evenly. Because of the economics of oil, coupled with debt financing of highly indebted nations like the US, some countries will experience peak oil sooner than other countries. Check out the oil situation in Greece. It is no co-incidence that the turmoil in Egypt started not long after that country reached peak production and now has to import oil. Previously, they paid for imported food with oil export money. That is gone, now the country is on the verge of collapse and civil war.
Gross world product (GWP) ~ $8 x 10^13
What GWP would be at $30,000 per capita: $20.4 x 10^13
Current Total millions of tons of oil equivalent/yr (MTOE): 11,685
MTOE needed at $30,000 GDP per capita: 11,685 MTOE x $20.4 / $8 = 29,797: 155% increase.
However, the current energy use per dollar of GWP is high, since the denser-population countries, whose GDPs are now low, can increase their GDPs with less energy expenditure than, say, Canada, because their transportation costs will be less. Additionally, efficiency increases will continue.
I’m not concerned.
Nylo says:
August 22, 2013 at 12:51 am
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Willis
The point Nylo raises is relevant, but he has not fully extrapolated it.
The fact is that people living in the developed world have a good quality of life because much of which they buy is produced at cheap rate in developing countries or 3rd world countries or due to the global nature of markets, even if the goods are produced in developed countries, the price of the goods is kept down because of the need to compete with similar goods (may be of inferior quality) produced in the developing countries/3rd world countries.
The upshot of this is that when those in developing countries/3rd world countries have an annual income of $26,000, it will no longer be possible to produce goods in those countries at a cheap price. This will mean that everything coming into the developed world will become more expensive, and home grown goods will also rise in price since the global market rate for similar goods has risen. This will have a knock on effect on living standards for those living in the developed world. $26,000 will no longer provide an reasonable standard of living indeed, it may well be that each citisen will need to earn at leats $40,000 if not more to enjoy the standard of living that they were enjoying when they had just $26,000pa. this begs the question whether the developed world could afford to increase wages this amount in order to enable their citizens to enjoy the same standard of living that they enjoyed when there was a significant gap between rich (those in developed countries) and poor (those in developing.3rd world countries)..
Personally i consider it immoral to deprive those in developing countries/3rd world countries the basic comforts of life that we take for granted provided by 24hr per day reliable electricity (I do not know how long this will remain reliable given the push towards renewables) and the benefit we get from industrialisation and the burning of fossil fuels.
i agree with the thrust of your article, but people need to recognise that the developed world enjoys the life style it enjoys because of the gap between it and the poor of the developing/3rd world countries. So if the living standards of those in developing/3rd world countries is to be raised, even if the developed world do not cut down on its energy use, living standards in the developed world will inevitably fall since I do not see how the developed world could increase its GDP by more than 50% which would be needed if it is to keep its standard of living. .
jrwakefield says:
August 22, 2013 at 7:02 am
“A “Manhattan Project” for fusion energy is what we need. ”
There are fundemental barriers to fusion.
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More accurately, there may be fundamental barriers to fusion. The most serious effort – ITER might tell us something in 2020. Or not. Large scale research projects are notorious for not meeting schedules. And even if ITER is on schedule and works, it’ll be a decade until the first prototype of a commercial fusion generating plant comes on line. If it doesn’t self destruct or simply not work.
Nothing against Thorium technologies (which are really U233 technologies) but they have many — not all, but many — of the same issues as U238 or Pu239 technologies.
What we really need are nuclear power plants built so that even TEPCO, Entergy, crazed Russian technicians, or a mongolian goatherder can’t do much damage to/with them. I don’t care whether it’s pebble beds, or liquid fluoride, or some sort of idiot proofed boiling water reactor. The world badly needs some sort of guaranteed pretty safe nuclear power.
Mike Mellor says: @ur momisugly August 22, 2013 at 1:51 am
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….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If you look at the graph South Africa, Italy and Spain are at about the same energy per capita use. You say grinding poverty is still the norm in South Africa. So why would you have a problem with bringing the countries that use less energy than South Africa, where the lives of the people are “Nasty, Brutal and Short” at least up to the level of “grinding poverty” ?
Personally I would like to see everyone at the level of civilization of Canada Norway and the USA.
“EREOI? Well, a low EREOI is hardly a desirable feature, and it decreases the effective size of the resource. But the idea that it somehow limits resource availability makes no more sense to me than the notion that the greenhouse effect can’t heat the planet.”
Let me put in into something more understandable. You need 600 cals per day to survive. If you grow or catch your own food you are fine if your supply exceeds 600cals per day. If you need to expend more than 600 cals per day getting your daily requirement you starve to death. ERoEI drives biological evolution. It determines the Carrying Capacity of all populations. ERoEI is the Law of Thermodynamics. Without a positive ERoEI society dies.
{ Nick Stokes says:
August 22, 2013 at 1:35 am
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. }
But then I’m wastefull and quite dull as one can plainly see
For in the darkness of the night I need no light to sleep
Using foresight I will plan for evening only light
And purchase candles for the time I need to use my sight
There is one infinite resource not considered here: the mind of man. If left free to function, it can build a technological civilization that spans the globe and reaches into the solar system. How do I know? It already has. Unfortunately, there is a vital resource that has been artificially restricted since the first organized tribe was formed: FREEDOM. Without the freedom to think, discover, know, and act upon that knowledge, the mind cannot function.
Unfortunately, we have far too many people who have the attitude that “all those people out there doing all those things without permission must be and will be stopped.” These kinds fill our governments, NGOs, and countless so called green advocacy gangs. Uniformly, their motto is “Protecting the future by prohibiting change.” Sadly, the future cannot happen unless there is change so really what they all are striving for is the end of the future.
Their dirty little secret is that to live by permission is to live as a slave. Thus their goal is even worse than ending the future, it is to make all of us slaves. So much for “It’s for the Children.”
I think there is an amplifier to the energy per capita equation. That’s energy efficiency. By that I mean the amount of economic activity generated per unit of energy used. In the absurd case, you could have an oil producing country set their oil wells on fire and show a high energy usage per capita, so how you use it can be as important as how much. Realistically the higher the technology the more efficiently your energy is going to be used. If you take a 20 yr time frame (one generation) and use today as a baseline, your 2.75 TOE/capita/year will probably raise the standard of living of those raised to that level above that of the present inhabitants of Spain or Italy just because technology will allow more efficient usage of that energy. That’s assuming they or their governments don’t squander that energy. Of course the Spanish and Italy standard of living would have gone up too, even if they didn’t increase their energy usage per capita just because more can be done with the same energy.
jrwakefield says:
August 22, 2013 at 6:35 am
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Whilst I agree with the point that you make about the rate of oil extraction and the unlikelihood that this rate can be significantly raised, you overlook the fact that base energy is coal.
Coal is in abundance, and there is no problem is significantly raising extraction of coal and no problem in shipping it worldwide to where it is needed.
Developing countries and 3rd world countries need coal powered generators to roll out cheap and reliable electricity. China recognises this and this is why it is embarking on such a substantial building programme of coal powered generators ( about 2 a week). These do not need carbon capture, but do require scrubbers to keep down polution.
With abundant cheap energyagriculture and irrigation problems can be solved. They can then grow grain for ethanol to use in more mobile forms of transport (motor bikes, cars, buses), so need to rely as heavily as the West does on oil.
jrwakefield:
At August 22, 2013 at 6:58 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/21/double-the-burn-rate-scotty/#comment-1397049
you quote my having written
then you reply to that saying
It is a fact – not an analogy – and you have quoted me out of context.
At August 22, 2013 at 2:36 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/21/double-the-burn-rate-scotty/#comment-1396883
I actually wrote
Are you really trying to claim we should behave now on the basis that technology will not change over the next three centuries?
Such a claim is as daft as fears about ‘peak oil’.
And contrary to your claims, peak oil is NOT “about extraction rates” and NOT about ROEI.
Read my post that you have misrepresented by selective quotation. The ROEI of synthetic crude is positive.
If oil peaks it will be because it has been supplanted by something else. Any other suggestion is an example of economic illiteracy.
Peak oil is a false scare which is only swallowed by the uninformed and gullible.
Richard
Wu says:
> … there’s a need for fewer children to achive those goals, i.e. old-age security.
How many people are out there that actually think that old-age security is a worthwhile goal? You got it all backwards. We have the instinct to have children and grandchildren, and it is so strong it pretty much determines everything we do. If we were left alone to our own devices, each of us would strive to maximise the number of his offspring. That is not a “goal”, that is simply how life works.
The notion of a goal is totally fictitious. It comes with civilisation. It makes us pursue careers, hobbies, and other commitments instead of making children. It makes our children, when we do have them, less adapted and less fertile. Civilisations offer lots of ways to interfere with our reproductive instincts, and none of this interference is positive. You may get what you call old-age-security as an upshot from a civilised loss of fertility — fine, but you don’t get it because you had it as a goal; you get it because you haven’t spent all you had to help your children survive.
To me, all talk of old-age security is just one of the signs that we’re dying off.
Am I reading this graph right? Australia and Norway (Yes I know it’s cold there!), “per person”, consume similar volumes of “energy”. Yet Norway has a population of ~4.5million, Australia ~23million. Lets make this easy, round up. Lets set Norway’s population at 5mil and Australia’s at 25mil. So Norwegians consume 5 times as much energy as Australians? Norwegians earn ~10k more than Aussies? And political propaganda in Australia states that “we” are the “biggest emitter” per capita (Apparently) of CO2 emissions?
“Realistically the higher the technology the more efficiently your energy is going to be used.”
That is true, except the older society gets the more maintenance is required to keep society going. It’s no co-incidence North American aging infrastructure is going unfixed. It takes disproportionately more money and energy to keep society going because of it’s age.
“Peak oil is a false scare which is only swallowed by the uninformed and gullible.”
Peak oil is a geological and thermodynamic fact.
BarryW:
You make some good points in your post at August 22, 2013 at 7:43 am
but it seems you are not aware of the Jevons Paradox; i.e.
increased energy efficiency increases energy use.
This should give you a start
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Richard
One of the points left out is the problem of introducing newer technology into desperately poor areas. The technology is sabotaged, destroyed or stolen. We see it in the USA in government housing projects were plumbing and wiring is yanked out and sold.
There is another nasty type of sabotage shown in this FBI Report
“jrwakefield says:
August 22, 2013 at 7:35 am
Let me put in into something more understandable. You need 600 cals per day to survive.”
Apart from water, that is clean water, let me put reality into something you won’t understand. The cost of “green policies” is making the basics, in Ethiopia for instance, teff (A very good grain IMO), unaffordable to most. Peoples being forced off their lands in favour of “food as fuel” programs etc. These people are predominantly subsistence farmers and have no concept of “ROEI”. These farmers won’t appreciate your “understanding” on hunger and poverty.
Fact: Hay is grown to meet demand, oil is not. The two cannot be compared.
“Are you really trying to claim we should behave now on the basis that technology will not change over the next three centuries?”
Technology cannot overcome the Laws of Thermodynamics, only work within it.
“And contrary to your claims, peak oil is NOT “about extraction rates” and NOT about ROEI.”
Peak oil has always been about extraction rates “Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production is expected to enter terminal decline.[1]” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
“The ROEI of synthetic crude is positive.” Some are, some arnt. Kerogen to oil is not positive ERoEI.
“If oil peaks it will be because it has been supplanted by something else. Any other suggestion is an example of economic illiteracy.”
Peak oil has already happened, and has not be supplanted by anything else so far.
“jrwakefield says:
August 22, 2013 at 7:50 am
Peak oil is a false scare which is only swallowed by the uninformed and gullible.
Peak oil is a geological and thermodynamic fact.”
Oh dear! Anyone been to the website? I wonder how we can run a besemer converter on current solar and wind technologies.
Peak oil? Forget the expanding coal to liquid (CTL) programs in China.
jrwakefield says:
Let me put in into something more understandable. You need 600 cals per day to survive. If you grow or catch your own food you are fine if your supply exceeds 600cals per day. If you need to expend more than 600 cals per day getting your daily requirement you starve to death. ERoEI drives biological evolution. It determines the Carrying Capacity of all populations. ERoEI is the Law of Thermodynamics. Without a positive ERoEI society dies.
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No argument with any of that except for the unimportant quibble that EREOI is usually expressed as energy out divided by energy in which make break even 1.0, not 0. You probably knew that. My point is that even a very low EREOI doesn’t preclude exploiting a resource. It just makes the effective size of the resource smaller. e.g. The deeper beds of the Alberta oil sands may have an EREOI as low as 2.0 because it takes so much energy to get to them. That just means the effective energy yield from those beds — were anyone to exploit them — is only half what one might expect from the nominal number of barrels of oil there.
And keep in mind that the effect of improvements in extraction technology is to improve EREOI. Just because a given resource requires too much energy to be worth going after today doesn’t mean it is forever unusable. I suspect that might be the case with the kerogens in the Green River beds of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.