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 …
Don K:
Yes, I agree what you say in your post addressed to me at August 22, 2013 at 3:04 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/21/double-the-burn-rate-scotty/#comment-1397565
Also, please see my post at August 22, 2013 at 3:34 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/21/double-the-burn-rate-scotty/#comment-1397592
Richard
Willis, only do from 2005 to today as I did: http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=5&pid=53&aid=1&cid=ww,&syid=2005&eyid=2012&unit=TBPD Then compare that small fluctuation with the period before then.
“w wasn’t talking about 80% more oil (which IMHO won’t happen), he was talking about 80% more energy.”
I know that. The problem is there isnt an alternative to oil that replaces oil. Electric cars everywhere? Right… Oil is needed to make those cars.
“I asked you the percentage of the gasoline price you cited which is taxation,”
Ah, sorry. Yes, taxation doubles the price at the pumps. We even have a consumption tax (GST) on top of the fuel taxes. That said, oil just moved from 95/barrel (109/ltr) to 104/barrel (129/ltr) a 20% increase.
“The constraint is that if the crude oil price were to rise too high then it would be economically viable to produce syncrude from coal using the LSE process. This would take some of the available market for crude.”
Only if the flow rate from LSE can replace the flow rate of oil. If not, it will only have a minor influence on the price of oil. US demand is down, hence less oil needed, yet the price is rising. China is increasing consumption some 8% per year.
“The maximum is ~US$94/bbl so the crude price rarely rises to this level and cannot be sustained at this level.”
Sounds like a number from thin air. It only APPEARS to be a ceiling. Like the climate, future oil prices are near impossible to predict.
jrwakefield:
I am getting fed up with your refusal to read anything put to you.
Now at August 22, 2013 at 3:50 pm you assert
Absolute rubbish!
Willis explained that synthetic crude oil (i.e. syncrude) is a possibility in his above article and in the subsequent thread I have repeatedly discussed syncrude.
Please read and think before posting. We know you believe in ‘peak oil’. And it is clear that your faith is unshakeable. But it is annoying that you refuse to register anything which refutes your faith. Please address the refutations and stop pretending they don’t exist.
Richard
jrwakefield:
I take severe exception to your assertion in your post at August 22, 2013 at 4:00 pm.
I repeatedly said, first at August 22, 2013 at 2:36 am
And you queried the LSE price to which I answered
and your reply to that is
Just because you make stuff up (see Willis’ comment at August 22, 2013 at 3:17 pm) does NOT mean others do.
Withdraw your offensive remark.
I shall refuse to respond to anymore of your twaddle until you do.
Richard
Of that $104.00 per barrel, just how much it is “in-country” -= that is, “getting-it-out-of-the-country” taxes?
If OPEC, by political decision, drove the price of oil from 5.00/barrel to 35.00 dollars per barrel, then their “tax” on the oil is 30.00/35.00 or 6/7 of its “price”. Further, how much of that 4.00 gallon price added to (or required by) the government’s added taxes on each employee and its purchase made for the oil company?
If I pay an engineer 45.00 per hour for a year, 50% of her wages are going to state, local, and federal taxes in one way or another over that year.
jrwakefield:says @ur momisugly At August 22, 2013 at 7:59 am you comment on something I wrote saying
Fact: Hay is grown to meet demand, oil is not.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Fact: You don’t have a clue what you are talking about.
You didn’t have to put together a group to buy hay in Canada and arrange to ship a 53 ft load down to North Carolina because the hay crop failed.
You didn’t almost roll the equipment or have your neighbor killed because his equipment rolled while haying. (Actually I did roll a tractor but jumped clear)
Your horse/mule/oxen is good for about 15 to 30 miles in a day (remember they are grazers) so how far out can you go before it is uneconomical to haul the hay into the city? What about the competition with the land needed to grow human food?
And then there is the problem of what to do with the ERRrrr processed hay.
“Peak Oil” is just another “Great Horse-Manure Crisis”
Gail Combs:
Indeed those are concerns. There could be particular suffering in the third world in event of price spikes and countries like the U.S. having unexpected downturns in the amount available for export.
I actually hadn’t heard of farm dust regulation before, but that is informative.
And dropping the national grain reserve is a bad idea.
Some notes on one particular other matter, though:
Fertilizer is not primarily fundamentally dependent on oil. The Haber process for making nitrogen fertilizer most essentially just needs an energy source, a hydrogen source, and a nitrogen source (from air). Ammonia is NH3 after all. Most ammonia production today is by using natural gas (such as in the U.S.) and by coal (such as in China). Although hydrogen from steam reforming of natural gas tends to be cheaper, hydrogen can be made from water via electrolysis, like Iceland made thousands of tons of ammonia fertilizer using excess electricity from hydroelectric plants.
Even nuclear power can make ammonia fertilizer. In fact, decades ago, the U.S. Army once considered using nuclear power to synthesize ammonia as fuel for vehicles, since having engines burn it as fuel is unconventional but doable. (More common unconventional vehicles are ones running on compressed natural gas: rare in the U.S. or Europe today but 15 million worldwide).
I don’t actually expect to see ammonia-fueled vehicles much, though, as:
(a) Gasoline, diesel fuel, plastics, etc. could be synthesized more by Fischer-Tropsch methods which can use basically any carbon source and any energy source: coal, natural gas, inedible biomass, etc., if conventional gasoline wasn’t usually slightly cheaper than it. For example, even at current prices, most diesel fuel in South Africa is so synthesized by Sasol.
In fact, while not quite as cheap as the conventional competition at current prices, synthesis of jet fuel, gasoline, and other hydrocarbon fuels using CO2 from seawater as the carbon source, water as the hydrogen source, and nuclear power as the energy source has been estimated by U.S. military / national lab studies to be doable at a few dollars per gallon.
Technically we could turn (some of) the oceans and air into hydrocarbon fuel if we really wanted: a practically unlimited fuel supply.
(b) There is a lot more oil, including with fracking, than commonly realized, and it may continue to mostly be cheaper than alternatives for a long time.
But, anyway, from fertilizer to means of powering tractors, agriculture is less fundamentally dependent on oil than sometimes assumed.
Of course, that doesn’t prevent price spikes and economic troubles from cooling and frost harming agriculture, though.
A couple topics brought up by others:
EROEI:
Batteries have an EROEI of less than 1, but such are used for good reason. Fissioning a few kilograms of thorium to provide the energy to produce many thousands of tons of ammonia fertilizer or hydrocarbon fuel is fine. (And, like the Cohen quote in my first post in this threat discussed, there are enough billions of tons of fissionables for eons upon eons). Some forms of energy can be worth more than others, like portable fuel is worth more per joule than thermal power more suitable for just a large stationary facility. Economics are what really matter and what EROEI alone can mislead on.
Waste heat:
Earth is hit by 200000 terawatts of solar energy. Human energy usage averages just a few terawatts, minuscule in comparison, and, while waste heat can have a local effect, it has very little global temperature effect. (Bigger effects of human activity include how converting an area to irrigated agriculture changes its average temperature).
Jimbo says: @ur momisugly August 22, 2013 at 6:49 am
Ooops!
“The hypocrisy…..”
…..I hear some big financial institutions and the US govt. are now blocking funding for coal powered stations for developing countries.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
That is because the World Bank got caught with its pants down.
While the World Banks was producing an Alarmist Report and World Bank President Kim was saying “A 4-degree warmer world can, and must be, avoided” World Bank funding for coal power stations has soared 40-fold over the last five years to hit a record high of $4.4 billion in 2010.
So the World bank was lending gobs of our tax money to China, India and other countries to build Coal Plants while having discussions with the US treasury about how to get a Carbon Tax passed in the USA. graph AND they got caught. Ain’t the internet a wonderful thing?
So yeah Ooops! “Your hypocrisy is showing…..”
“Willis explained that synthetic crude oil (i.e. syncrude) is a possibility in his above article and in the subsequent thread I have repeatedly discussed syncrude.”
Syncrude is still oil. I was referring to non-fossil fuel alternatives. The question is still, will syncrude production rate be fast enough to make a significant dent? I dont know, and no one does at this point.
“Withdraw your offensive remark.
I shall refuse to respond to anymore of your twaddle until you do.”
I read that. I wasnt trying to be offensive. Economics is one of those unpredictable realities. Oil price has shown that it can, and will, break $100. At 140 is subsequently collapsed big time, only to steadily rise again. Predictions are difficult and often wrong, but I would not be surprised to see oil break it’s all time high this cycle. Depends which crisis hits first, oil spike or debt wall. An oil spike will definitely provoke a debt crash, but a debt collapse would tank the price of oil. Maybe…
And no, I do not believe anything. Faith and belief are the realm of religion. I just disagree with your assertions that the oil crisis will be easily solved. Things are rarely easily solved.
“Your horse/mule/oxen is good for about 15 to 30 miles in a day (remember they are grazers) so how far out can you go before it is uneconomical to haul the hay into the city? What about the competition with the land needed to grow human food?”
The number one biggest logistics nightmare of WWI was feeding horses. More than half the supplies was hay to feed horses used in the war. Entire shiploads of hay came from NA across the Atlantic.
The problem of transportation distance is a real issue and shows how thermodynamics is so important. If it takes 6000 calories of food to deliver 600 calories each soldier consumes, you have a serious problem.
“Earth is hit by 200000 terawatts of solar energy.” Meaningless number. 70% of the world is ocean, hence that energy cant be harnessed. Of land, how much can actually be covered in panels? Puny hundredths of a percent. Of that, panels turn less than 5% of the sunlight into power.
We are having an explosion of panels on farms around here. So the data on what they actually produce is well known. Two pillars of 15 panels each, over the course of a year, produces less power than the house the homeowner consumes.
And the people of Ontario are paying as much as 80c/kWh for that power, 20 times the spot price.
richard verney says: @ur momisugly August 22, 2013 at 7:31 am
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….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That is a variation on the Broken Window Fallacy You are looking at the world as a fixed pie and figure the first world nations are getting a bigger slice. That is not the case. The key is how many people are just treading water, just trying to stay alive? That is working as hard as they can as subsistence farmers to feed their family with no time over for learning or building or the arts?
I will repeat what I had above in very short couple of sentences.
FOOD
1810-30 Transfer of manufactures from the farm and home to the shop and factory was greatly accelerated
1830 – About 250-300 labor-hours required to produce 100 bushels (5 acres) of wheat with walking plow, brush harrow, hand broadcast of seed, sickle, and flail
1840 – Farmers made up 69% of labor force
(This is the stage most third world countries are IF they are lucky.)
…..
1930 – One farmer supplied 9.8 persons in the United States and abroad
1930 – 15-20 labor-hours required to produce 100 bushels (5 acres) of wheat with 3-bottom gang plow, tractor, 10-foot tandem disk, harrow, 12-foot combine, and trucks
1930 – Farmers made up 21% of labor force
…..
1970 – One farmer supplied 75.8 persons in the United States and abroad
1970 – Farmers made up 4.6% of labor force
1975 – 3-3/4 labor-hours required to produce 100 bushels (3 acres) of wheat with tractor, 30-foot sweep disk, 27-foot drill, 22-foot self-propelled combine, and trucks link
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Industrial Revolution and the Agricultural Revolution freed mankind from spending all his time just trying to feed, cloth and shelter himself. How many brilliant minds are wasted across this world because they can not read or write or worse died before the age of five. How many inventions were never discovered? How much art was never created?
Raising others to our level DOES NOT IMPOVERISH US.
Steven Mosher posted a video about http://www.suncatalytix.com/
The man says the average home uses 31 KW/h per day. That sounds like a lot to me.
On the graphic Willis posted, the very poor countries are on the bottom, and the countries on top are interesting because they are often the very hot and very cold ones, countries you would not want to live in without heating and/or air conditioning. Without cheap energy, many of us would be climate refugees (not climate change refugees).
So take away the heating and cooling energy used; what would that graphic look like then?
Why don’t you want anyone to use less energy? What about people who would even increase their bottom lines by using less energy, by eliminating wasteful factors? For example in and near Philadelphia, where there is a large number of poor homeowners, I see people refusing to spend about $40 more on a refrigerator to use $40 less electricity in just 2 years. I have seen people buy cheap brand 100 watt incandescents no brighter than 75W ones that cost no more at home centers, despite the lumen figures being in clear view on the packages. I have seen consumer electronic products that consume a couple to a few watts more than they need to when they are off. What about people with few or no children having an Escalade used only as a peronal vehicle, often mainly for commuting with no passengers?
Willis Eschenbach: 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,
OK. More than 46 years left. You haven’t somewhere posited that fossil fuels last more than a century, have you? I think it’s fair to consider the case that there are no backup diesel generators.
Solar and wind are decreasing in price. If we figure 5% reduction per year, in 46 years they’ll cost about 10% of what they cost now. If we figure 10% reduction per year, in 46 years they’ll cost about 1% of what they cost now. I don’t exactly “believe” such a simple extrapolation, but I wouldn’t rule it out either.
Don Easterbrook says:
August 22, 2013 at 10:27 am
….. Here are the U.S . census figures for population…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
How much of that population growth is from immigrants and their second generation children?
26 years ago, Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty for 3 million illegal immigrants. Today the estimate in the news is 11 million but on top of that there are 4.5 million US citizen children (Anchor babies) with undocumented parents. “Instead of 11 million people we’re talking more about 16 million,” Passel said.
If you then look at the demographics you find in Mexico the total fertility rate (TFR) is 2.25.
Another Article (PEW) shows birth rates of:
WHITE:…….. 1.8
ASIAN:…….. 1.8
BLACK:…….. 2.1
HISPANIC:… 2.4
The total Fertility Rate for the USA in 2013 is 2.06
Since 2.1 is considered the replacement rate I don’t see much of a problem except for that resulting from illegal immigration.
Jtom: In the meanwhile, the philosophy you support is consigning millions to a nasty, brutal, and short life.
One of the themes of this discussion is providing electric power to people who now have none. I did not consign them to a life without fossil-fueled electric plants, I commented that they are not likely to get any power that is more reliable or cheaper than solar and wind any time soon. Current PV technology is not what you played with as a kid, but is used to power A/C and ventilation in stores and assembly plants, as well as telecommunication.
Matthew R Marler says: @ur momisugly August 22, 2013 at 11:22 am
………..How many people here do not understand that in some poorly developed parts of the world wind and solar are less unreliable (though reliably “intermittent”) than deliveries of fossil fuels?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If you are talking windmills they build themselves and can repair themselves I am all for it. Wind used to grind grain or pump water is a great idea BUT they need the technology and know how to do it themselves.
Ye Ole Chinese Proverb: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
My biggest problem with many ‘Progressives’ or “Socialists’ or whatever
parasitepolitician is masquerading as same, is they do not heed that very wise saying. Instead they prefer George Bernard Shaw’s “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” A lose-lose for all parties except the politician who gains the lion’s share of the wealth and all the power.Willis: No, I didn’t say that. I said that if we divide the current proven reserves by the current usage plus the amount to bring the world’s poor up to Spain’s level, we get about fifty years.
Fair enough. What you said was that you didn’t care what happened later; now you are fairly confident that fossil fuel will last much longer, as long as there is what I called “investment” in the more expensive kinds. Energy returned on energy invested is higher for wind and solar than for shale and tar sands, but drops dramatically if the electricity is converted to fuel. This just shows that more than one metric is needed for evaluating different energy sources. It would be foolish to use liquid fuel from tar sands to power the air conditioning for a school in AZ, whereas solar looks cost competitive against all alternatives. Contrariwise, it would be foolish to use liquid fuel made from solar powered electricity to power diesel freight trains hauling coal.
Gail Combs: Wind used to grind grain or pump water is a great idea BUT they need the technology and know how to do it themselves.
No argument here, but the same consideration applies to coal-fired power plants: they need regular maintenance and someone to guard the transmission lines and repair the step-down transformers after storms.