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 …
Owen in GA:
re your post at August 22, 2013 at 6:53 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/21/double-the-burn-rate-scotty/#comment-1397042
Yes, the use of existing transformer yards for relatively small distributed energy storage is potentially possible for supply to domestic consumers. Whether it is economic is another matter (I doubt it, but I could be wrong).
More importantly, it ignores the point that large industrial electricity consumers are not distributed like domestic consumers: they exist in relatively few large installations. As I said in my post at August 22, 2013 at 6:04 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/21/double-the-burn-rate-scotty/#comment-1397002
Richard
“Oh dear! Anyone been to the website? I wonder how we can run a besemer converter on current solar and wind technologies.”
Neither will replace oil. Wind is pathetic in output, and the more wind and solar you put into the grid the more unstable the grid becomes. That’s Germany’s experience.
Here in Ontario, half the time wind produces less than 7% name plate. 30% of the time they produce nothing at all. The wind comes and goes as frontal systems move over the province. See http:\\OntarioWindPerformance.wordpress.com.
Peak oil?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-24/major-oil-discovery-in-outback-sa/4481982
As I recall from my geology lessons, find salty rock, you will likely find oily deposits.
Thanks for the video link Mosher. It is always interesting to hear other view points. I do take exception with him on the point about where he admits that CO2 was much higher in the geologic past but that there were not 6 billion people. That isn’t the point. The point is could a planet with higher CO2 support 6 billion people. I’ve yet to see anything to change my current understanding that a warmer, higher CO2 (within reason, ~1000-1500 PPM) world would be unable to support 6 billion. In fact the argument I have is that if it could support so much more life in general, quantity and variety, how could it not support 6 billion?
I do like his solution to the population “situation” (it is only a problem because we make it one). Educate the poor and especially the poor females. That takes a higher standard of living and more energy.
jrwakefield:
At August 22, 2013 at 7:59 am you comment on something I wrote saying
Fact: You don’t have a clue what you are talking about.
Read my post at August 22, 2013 at 2:36 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/21/double-the-burn-rate-scotty/#comment-1396883
and try to understand it.
Richard
“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.”
Studies done show that “break even” for society is an ERoEI of 4:1.
“Just because a given resource requires too much energy to be worth going after today doesn’t mean it is forever unusable. ”
True, but that’s an expression of the Energy Trap. The more energy we need to divert to get more energy is less energy available for society to use.
Thanks Willis. Others have pointed out the problem is more complex, but looking at it with only the parameters you have makes it comprehensible. Adding and subtracting other issues becomes just that, arithmetic.
sergeiMK says:August 22, 2013 at 5:07 am
I’m sorry to say this is totally thoughtless comentary.
No-one wants to see people live in poverty – yet in USA people still do despite cheap energy.
Cheap energy in the US, under this administration, does not exist and never will. The only thing cheap energy can bestow is a chance at improving one’s personal and/or families’ lifestyle, another thing this admin. does not want, also known as individual freedom. I’m still waiting for the collective-awaiting-salvation to make one technological advance. So far they have all come from individuals.
That 80% agrees with what a glance at the graph shows. That red line of the global average use runs right through the markers for most of the world’s population. Doubling the red line puts it around Spain’s marker. So, yes, approximately doubling the energy is right.
Nylo says:
August 22, 2013 at 12:51 am
Mil gracias, Nylo. Pero desgraciadamente, I doubt very much if it’s a meaningful amount. For the overwhelming majority of industrialized countries, the net of the imports and the exports are not over 10% of the economy. Hang on, let me check Spain …
…
…
OK, here’s the data. Overall, Spain is a slight net importer, with net imports of about $20 billion dollars and an economy of $1.34 trillion dollars. That’s about a percent and a half of the total economy … and not only that, but the exports are typically high-energy items (machinery, motor vehicles, chemical, ships) and the imports are low-energy items (fuels, foodstuffs).
As a result, the cross-border energy use for Spain is trivially small, and may actually be a slight flow in the other direction. Your theory, while true, is one of the many “true but immaterial” facts about our lovely planet.
All the best,
w.
PS—A note to the wise. RUN THE NUMBERS before you make statements about your whizbang theories … it saves embarrassment in the long run.
“Read my post at August 22, 2013 at 2:36 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/21/double-the-burn-rate-scotty/#comment-1396883
and try to understand it.
Richard”
I did. Understood it, except this:
“In the real world, for all practical purposes there are no “physical” limits to natural resources so every natural resource can be considered to be infinite.”
Once a resource is completely spent, its gone, period. Once a resource is uneconomic to develop it’s gone, doesnt matter how much is left behind. This is why individual oil fields die. They arnt spent as in every drop extracted, typically 40% is extracted, the rest cannot be. We will never get 100% of the oil in a deposit.
sergeiMK says:
August 22, 2013 at 5:07 am
I’m sorry to say this is totally thoughtless comentary.
No-one wants to see people live in poverty – yet in USA people still do despite cheap energy.
=======================================================
While technically accurate in pointing out some Americans live in (relative) poverty, this is not the same as the absolute poverty of other parts of the globe. American “poor” still have high ownership rates of PCs, TVs, cell phones, cars, refrigerators, etc.
I doubt Willis intended to imply higher energy usage cures both poverty and human stupidity.
“PS—A note to the wise. RUN THE NUMBERS before you make statements about your whizbang theories … it saves embarrassment in the long run.”
Except your numbers are based on some flawed assumptions. I cant prove that right now except to go on some fundamentals like Peak Oil, the Red Queen Principle and the Energy Trap.
Mike Mellor says:
August 22, 2013 at 1:51 am
Dang, is everyone in South Africa blind and crabby, or just you? First off, it’s not my graph, it’s Graphminder’s graph. If you think there’s an error, complain to them. But the only error I see is “pilot error” …
Second, the graph at the head of the page says that Spain and Italy have an annual income per person of $26,000.
It also says that South Africa has an annual income per person of only $8,000. And that low an average income, as you point out, means lots of grinding poverty …
Why don’t you perform some basic reality checks, Mike, and perhaps learn to read a graph, before you indulge in ugly rhetoric?
w.
Don K says:
August 22, 2013 at 3:18 am
Thanks, Don, but if you are using BTU, then I have no interest in following the calculations. Come back with the calcs in TOE like mine, and provide the sources for your numbers as I’ve done, and we can talk. I’m not going to get stuck in unit conversions.
w.
sergeiMK says:
August 22, 2013 at 5:07 am
It’s “despicable” of me not to want to sentence the poor of the planet to decades of misery? It’s “despicable” of me to want to raise the standard of living of the poor today?
I’ll tell you what is despicable, and that is waiting one minute longer than necessary to provide the poor with access to cheap energy. Your plan can be summarized as follows:
LEAVE THE FOSSIL FUELS IN THE GROUND, AND LET THE POOR STARVE IN THE MEANTIME
I’ll let the readers decide which of us they think is despicable … I know which way I’d vote.
w.
August 22, 2013 at 8:14 am
Studies done show that “break even” for society is an ERoEI of 4:1.
===============================
As I said several posts ago, I find that quite incomprehensible.
Perhaps you should consider the possibility that the folks that did those studies don’t know what they are talking about.
Are there faulty studies out there? There certainly must be. It’s not uncommon to find studies that come to diametrically opposite conclusions about various things. For examples, try http://www.sciencedaily.com. pick some articles that interest you, click on them and read the Related Stories section. Shouldn’t take you long to find some pairs of studies where one or both must be false.
One example that has stuck with me. About a decade ago, the two most prestigious English language medical research journals managed to publish articles in successive weeks that came to completely opposite conclusions about the affects of dietary sodium on hypertension in non-sodium sensitive individuals.
Or, more simply, why the hell would anyone believe that inputting more that 1 million btus to yield 4 million btus of usable energy doesn’t work?
Patrick says:
August 22, 2013 at 7:47 am
No.
It’s a per capita graph, it says nothing about total amount of energy consumed.
Regards,
w.
Wu says:
August 22, 2013 at 3:57 am
However there is a need for foresight here. Alarmists keep harping on about our children and our childrens’ children. Well our grandchildren might have to contend with powerful warlords if we’re not careful. It might happen or it might not happen, but we must consider all possibilities. It would be highly irresponsible not to.
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While this may be true, the one certainty is that our childrens children will have to spend all their lives trying to repay the money spent on all the unsustainable green subsidies being accumulated in such an irresponsible manner by our left wing/socialist/green governing bodies.
SteveT
jrwakefield says:
August 22, 2013 at 8:24 am
Ask me if I care about your opinions of my math. If you truly have a problem with math, you need to do more than handwave and mumble spells in Capital Letters. You need math of your own.
JR, perhaps you’re not as old as I am. The Peak Oil crowd have been predicting we’d hit peak oil within five years or so, just as you are doing now … the problem is, I’ve watched them doing it for half a century now, same prediction, same lack of results. They’ve been predicting Peak Oil is just around the corner, quite steadily since I was a teenager, and likely before that as well … and now, here you are, the latest in a long line, to tell us that this time you’re really truly right, honest, the Red Queen says so …
As a result of overwhelming failures of the predictions, Peak Oil doomcasting is selling at a huge discount these days … and with the discovery of horizontal fracking and the tight oil hitting the market, the production in the US is actually rising, not falling.
So you’re free to cast your spells and mumble your prophecies, JR, but I fear that the dozens of folks that preceded you and made the exact same doomcasts you’re making today have kind of poisoned the well. At a minimum, your predecessors’ failed claims have cleared the smoke from most folks eyes … so I doubt if you’ll get much traction selling alarmist ideas that have been pushed unsuccessfully for half a century or more.
Cue the wailing and the gnashing of teeth, Peak Oilers love to do that …
w.
So many comments. First, natural gas has begun to replace oil, and if NG rates remain low, will begin having a major impact on both oil and coal.
The comments I find most disappointing are those who imply impoverished nations are incapable of becoming more energy-consuming, more developed countries (e.g., the people will steal the infrastructure; who’s going to build the infrastructure, etc.). The developed countries were not created developed and/or rich. Who built the infrastructure in the US? Did the impoverished significantly impede that construction? If you don’t think the US experienced periods of extreme deprivation, then you must know nothing about the South after the Civil War, or the consequences of the Great Depression, so named because it was worse than several other depressions previously suffered in the US. To imply that other areas of the world are unable to replicate the success of the US (with only the need to COPY our development, not create it from scratch!) is, what? Racist? Jingoistic? Arrogant? IMO, the biggest need in third world countries is effective, enlightened leadership, and that is also true in the pockets of poverty found in industrialized countries. Otherwise, people are essentially the same all over the world.
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 …
That would just mean that more people starve later. What we need to do in the next 46 years is invest consistently in all reasonable alternatives: solar, wind, biofuels, diverse nuclear options, and so on. I support increased fossil fuel use, but I don’t support diving off cliffs into unexplored water.
I’ll tell you what is despicable, and that is waiting one minute longer than necessary to provide the poor with access to cheap energy.
“than necessary” is uselessly vague. It will take time to increase fossil fuel production by 80% and we can’t be sure that we can do it anyway — known unknowns and unknown unknowns and all that. So think of it as a rate problem: with a particular rate of investment, whatever looks possible now, can we increase energy availability to thousands of underpowered villages faster by investing in large fossil fuel infrastructures and delivery systems, or by investing in smaller more localized solar and wind systems? (Here’s a review of US prices for solar installations:
http://www.solardaily.com/reports/Installed_Price_of_Solar_PV_Systems_in_the_US_Continues_to_Decline_at_a_Rapid_Pace_999.html) I think the answer to the question can only be arrived at on a case-by-case basis. In the US which has the distribution system and reserves in the ground, solar and wind are competitive only in a few places for a few niche uses. But your graph shows that we are already rich. In rural Africa, India and Asia where the desperate people you write of actually live, and where the US and China bid up the price of what fossil fuels there might be, contemporary wind and solar technologies have advantages — including the tremendous advantage that a entrepreneur does not have to wait (“one minute longer than necessary”) for the entire rest of the country to reform. Put differently, in large poor rural areas of the world, solar and wind are both cheaper and less intermittent than coal, petroleum and natural gas.
I am sympathetic to the main thrust of your argument and not sympathetic to people (e.g. World Bank) who want to halt construction of fossil fuel powered electricity generation. But you (or “we”) should not airily dismiss the problems that we leave to the future nor should we put all of our eggs in one basket.
Thanks, Don, but if you are using BTU, then I have no interest in following the calculations. Come back with the calcs in TOE like mine, and provide the sources for your numbers as I’ve done, and we can talk. I’m not going to get stuck in unit conversions.
=========
Sorry Willis — I have much the same problem with not wanting to mess with unit conversions. I will check your calculation some time and see if I can find out why your answer is so low. But not this morning because I’m at any age where my mental facilities fade fairly early in the day. If I try anything complicated this late in the day (I’ve been up for 9 hours) I’d surely botch it
The reason I work with btus and btu per capita is the same as the reason that a lot of other folks do — they are a convenient size and aren’t quite as mind boggling as joules or confusing as the two different kinds of calories. I’ve found that most of the material I want to look at either uses btus or is easily converted to btus.
Sources: Try Tom Fuller’s excellent: http://3000quads.com/ I’m pretty sure (perhaps mistakenly) that he has come up with about the same answers I have. My stuff is summarized at http://donaldkenney.x10.mx/#ENERGY
“jrwakefield says:
August 22, 2013 at 8:21 am
They arnt spent as in every drop extracted, typically 40% is extracted, the rest cannot be.”
Typically, its ~40% that is left behind. You will find many capped oil wells in the US with ~40% still in the ground.
One last thing: the word poverty is sometimes a comparative term only applicable within the confines of a nation’s borders. A person earning an income defined as ‘poverty level’ in the US would be in the top 2% wage earners in the world. With free school breakasts and lunches, and Snap cards (food stamps), a child living in poverty in the US would go hungry only if the parent totally abdicates their responsibilty. In other countries, such a child would be scraping the dirt looking for an edible root or grub, regardless of parental efforts. You cannot honestly compare those ‘poverties’.
@Steve Mosher
The company Prof. Nocera got involved with was Sun Catalytix that as of Mar. 2013
has abandoned (put on hold) pursuing energy storarge via PV->H2 storage and instead is working with some sort of “designer molecules”. You see, the theoretical possibilities are sometimes easy to explain, but are then dang hard to actually achieve effectively.