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 …
Studies done show that “break even” for society is an ERoEI of 4:1.
I’d like to see those studies. But they don’t make much sense to me. The relevant characteristic of advanced societies is large amounts of per capita energy, not large EROEIs. Nuclear fusion, among others, could provide humanity a huge amount of per capita energy and thus enable unparalleled levels of economic development at a very low EROEI.
richardscourtney: That would still leave us 20 years to deal with it; e.g. by building nuclear plants to replace power plants that reach the ends of their operating lives.
So we both favor more nuclear power. Meanwhile, what is the cheapest and fastest way to get electricity to the people who don’t have it?
jrwakefield says:
August 22, 2013 at 2:22 pm
Gail The Actuary from the Oil Drum has her own blog posts continuing now the Oil Drum is sut down. Last year she posted about this very topic.
http://ourfiniteworld.com/2012/07/18/how-much-oil-growth-do-we-need-to-support-world-gdp-growth/
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I think you missed a bit of the point. Even with outoil but WITH technology you go from subsistence farming to farms being able to feed 5 to 10 extra people. Heck Chiefio had a good post on work done by a researcher in India. By introducing some simple changes the good Dr. took a farm from the ‘Brutal and Short’ stage to a net exporter of food. What did he do?
1. PEN THE GOATS (Willis I am sure understands that one if you don’t these photos explain)
2. Have the kids cut and carry fodder to the goats.
3. The fodder? Why the Leucaena leucocephala or Bean Tree which is very drought resistant and fixes nitrogen in the soil. (The goats have to be acclimated to the fodder)
4. Instead of burning the goat dung, it is collected and fermented in an anaerobic digester (made of local materials – bricks in a hole in the ground)
In fifteen years by keeping the goats from eating anything that sprouted AND placing the fertilizer (goat compost) back on the land the place went from bare dirt to a ‘Jungle’
On Mosher’s video in the first comment, @55 Minutes in, this guy’s group has come up with a new whiz-bang way of electrolyzing H2 and O2 out of water. @107 he admits he still needs a better fuel cell to use it. Good luck.
Here’s the best essay I’ve seen on hydrogen:
http://www.caranddriver.com/columns/the-case-for-nuke-cars-its-called-hydrogen
Matthew R Marler:
In my post at August 22, 2013 at 2:03 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/21/double-the-burn-rate-scotty/#comment-1397499
I adopted your assumptions, as I said,
and I concluded saying to you
At August 22, 2013 at 7:38 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/21/double-the-burn-rate-scotty/#comment-1397764
you have replied to that saying in total
For the benefit of others, I point out
you have conceded that “even on your own terms your argument is plain wrong” and you ask a question which has been answered.
The cheapest and fastest way to get electricity to the people who don’t have it” is to build thermal power stations and to distribute their power by building a grid.
There are several reasons for this
1. Proven technology
This is how developed countries did it.
2. Minimal training and equipment.
Centralised infrastructure requires a relatively small number of ‘expert’ engineers to operate, maintain and renovate the system, together with a centralised store of ‘spares’.
Distributed infrastructure requires – at a minimum – a trained maintenance ‘operative’ in each locality together with local income sufficient for purchase of spares. This never works (e.g. the rapid introduction of agricultural tractors in Nigeria).
The supply of electricity from a grid is greater and more reliable (i.e. less intermittent) from a grid system.
3. Greater security
Local gangsters take on the government (i.e. the army) when they sabotage an electricity grid.
They steal from the locals whom they already control when they ‘take over’ a local electricity system
(This was explained to you by RACookPE1978 in the concluding two paragraphs of his post at August 22, 2013 at 10:04 am but you have ignored it).
4. etc.
Richard
PS I will be absent for at least a day after this so unable to reply.
The Low Band UN Population Survey, the only one ever even close to accurate, has population peaking at < 8Bn by 2045 or so, and declining thereafter. The fundamentals of the scare-mongerers' case are egregiously erroneous.
jrwakefield says:
August 22, 2013 at 3:48 pm
JR, your claim was:
The info you cite above, eight years worth, goes from a low of 84.5 to a high of 89.2 million barrels per day. That is called a “6% increase in oil production”, not eight years of “no increase in oil production”.
Let me present my chart once again. It is from your exact same site you link to above.
Yes, there was a short plateau around 2005 … you can see how trivial that is in the overall picture.
Look, JR. You made the claim that oil production had stalled for eight years, and implied that it could even be the peak.
In fact, as the graph shows, production is rising unabated, except for the slight depression from the 2007-8 global financial crisis. There’s no sign of any kind of a peak.
Now, I said you’d already lost credibility. Continuing to fight for a nonsense claim of an imaginary 8-year plateau in production is not helping. Admit you were wrong, that there is no sign of a plateau, that oil production continues to increase, and move on.
And this, folks, is why I don’t like dealing with peak oilers. Nothing gets through to them. JR may never admit he’s been pushing nonsense, and that there is no sign of any eight-year plateau or potential peak in the data.
w.
Donald L. Klipstein says:
August 22, 2013 at 7:03 pm
Oh, I’m perfectly happy with people using less energy, or using the same amount more wisely. I support “reduce, reuse, recycle”. In fact, in large measure that’s what technology is about, using our energy more efficiently. My electric bill is as small as I can comfortably make it … with the emphasis on “comfortably”. As my friend Wally used to say, “We’re not put on this earth to see what we can do without” …
I just don’t want to do what the “green” folk do and design a future where people are forced or compelled or expected or coerced to use less energy. To support that possibility, I calculated what it would take just to bring the bottom up, without taking the top down. You’re free to make any alternate calculation you’d like, that’s in part why I posted the spreadsheet.
w.
Willis, that is total over all supply, not just crude oil. Plot just crude oil. http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=5&pid=57&aid=1&cid=ww,&syid=2005&eyid=2010&unit=TBPD
“I’d like to see those studies. But they don’t make much sense to me. The relevant characteristic of advanced societies is large amounts of per capita energy, not large EROEIs. Nuclear fusion, among others, could provide humanity a huge amount of per capita energy and thus enable unparalleled levels of economic development at a very low EROEI.”
They were posted on the Oil Drum a few years back.
Fusion is a pipe dream. How many decades have they been working on it without success? 60? How many more years do we wait for it?
We can have all the electrical power we will ever need within 10 years with Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors. We know it works. We just, for some reason, dont have the political will to start. It’s almost like some people of power dont want humanity to advance.
“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.”
Number pulled from thin air. If anything our experience in Ontario is wind is costing more each year.
Over all wind will be the biggest folly humanity has ever undertaken. The reason is simple. Wind cannot be relied on for 24/7/365 “there when you need it” power. Second, studies now show that turbines lose ability with age, by several percent per year. They only last some 20 years, and hence will need to be replaced everywhere every year, after the first 20 years. Hawaii and California, and others, have hundreds of dead turbines rusting away. In 20 years time we are going to be burdened with thousands of useless wind turbines which will all have to come down.
Henry Clark says….
on Farming….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Thanks for the information on fertilizers.
What I was trying to get at was the use of current technology + energy allows modern farmers to feed 75 extra people instead of 0 to 10. You still have to mine the ore and smelt the metal, manufacture the chemicals, transport the food and the seed (Seed saving has been all but banned) Take away the energy needed to do modern farming and you are back to farmers feeding ~ 10 extra people instead of 75. That puts you back to 1930s level of farming and when farmers made up 21% of labor force instead of 2.6% and that is IF you are lucky.
Without the energy to mine and refine metal and manufacture the heavy equipment it is made into, you are back to subsistence farming. In 1840 farmers made up 69% of labor force this dropped to 58% with the invention and addition of farm machinery and the move from human energy to animal energy, that is with 2-horse straddle-row cultivator steel sulky plows, grain drill, mowing machines, threshing machines, irrigation, and chemical fertilizers (Self-governing windmill perfected in 1854)
Between 1850 and 1890 there was a burst of technological invention by 1890 – Most basic potentialities of agricultural machinery that was dependent on horsepower had been discovered and Farmers made up 43% of labor force. So without tractors you STILL had 50% of your labor doing nothing but feeding the nation.
The more people you have occupied in growing food and nothing else the less wealth (durable goods and services) the country can produce and therefore the lower the standard of living and the lower the level of civilization. In the USA, out of the 2.1 million ‘farmers’ only 70,000 are GROSSING over $500,000 (net income of $25,000 and up.) Most farmers have other jobs outside the farm or their wives work often both. Producing food is a minor blip in the work force BECAUSE of the substitution of chemical/nuclear energy for muscle energy.
Matthew R Marler says: @ur momisugly August 22, 2013 at 7:04 pm
….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….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You are missing the entire point.
Solar and wind are NICHE energy sources and actually of less use than horse/ox/mule muscle power because they are intermittent where as your draft animal is ‘on demand’. Solar is fine for running city street lights and especially traffic lights. Solar is absolutely great for running an electric fence in the middle of your farm where there is no access to electric. Windmills are decent for pumping water into livestock watering troughs. BUT there is a darn good reason farmers in the USA quit using windmills and went with diesel generators instead.
Solar and wind are NICHE energy because solar and wind are intermittent and batteries, solar and wind are OLD technology. (If you really want to go ‘alternate energy’ at home go Geothermal for heating and cooling.)
the first genuine solar cell was built around 1883 by Charles Fritts As I said above the self-governing windmill was perfected in 1854.
That makes the technological breakthroughs well over one hundred years old. Al we have done sice then is to ‘refine’ the concept.
On top of those problems is the entire energy system has to be revamped to deal with the intermittent problem. You need a ‘Smart Grid’ and you need ‘Smart Appliances’ that allows energy companies to individually shut down private residences or appliances via ‘Rolling blackouts’ without disrupting power to the government or industry. The ONLY reason to go this rout is to assert the government’s authority over the individual.
So why in heck are we wasting all our time and effort on a less than optimum system? The ONLY reason I can think of to go this rout is to assert the government’s authority over the individual. The Thorium Salt reactor was proven technology designed to power aircraft in the 1950s. The US navy has used nuclear subs for years. There is even talk of a nuclear powered car. from General Electric no less.
Norway Begins Four Year Test Of Thorium Nuclear Reactor
Solar and wind have been nothing but a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich and a means for the government to assert authority over individual lives. If there was true concern we would ALL have geothermal heating and cooling systems. Instead we have bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco crucifixes.
Richard S. Courtney: The cheapest and fastest way to get electricity to the people who don’t have it” is to build thermal power stations and to distribute their power by building a grid.
That might be true if the grid could be protected. Or even approved without excessive government “oversight” in the kleptocracies.
On August 12 I posted links to recent reviews of costs and installation rates of current solar and wind technologies on the Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup.
recent reviews of solar and wind power:
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/08/11/top-10-gigawatts-installed-solar-capacity-infographic/
http://www.winddaily.com/reports/Price_of_Wind_Energy_in_the_United_States_Is_Near_an_All_Time_Low_999.html
it says the current cost of contracted wind power in the US is $0.04/kwh.
No energy panaceas yet, but steady progress.
One of the fun parts of this topic is that we get to review it again every year.
Meanwhile, I do hope someone remembers that I favor development of more fossil fuels and nuclear power, and I don’t think the case for anthropogenic greenhouse gas induced global warming is very strong (I have called it “full of cavities”, “Swiss cheese”, and “aerogel”.) If someone thinks I am a “socialist” because I called government support for the Panama Canal and turbine engine development successes (let me add Hoover Dam and Gran Coulee Dam; as I recall, Willis praised the TVA, and I might as well add the REA) — well, “sticks and stones” and all that. See you next year.
Any predictions? On the basis of recent reviews I expect that by this time next year worldwide production of electricity from wind and solar will have each doubled, and each will be 10% less expensive than now. Write your expectations today, and we can compare notes on August 23, 2014.
“Matthew R Marler says:
August 23, 2013 at 7:08 am”
That has to be another $10,000 bet?
Patrick: That has to be another $10,000 bet?
No. We’ll just compare mean squared prediction error.
“Matthew R Marler says:
August 23, 2013 at 7:08 am
Any predictions? On the basis of recent reviews I expect that by this time next year worldwide production of electricity from wind and solar will have each doubled, and each will be 10% less expensive than now. Write your expectations today, and we can compare notes on August 23, 2014.”
My expectation is that almost all predictions are wrong. We will see.
Most of Norway’s energy comes from hydro.
“Canman says:
August 22, 2013 at 8:57 pm
On Mosher’s video in the first comment, @55 Minutes in, this guy’s group has come up with a new whiz-bang way of electrolyzing H2 and O2 out of water. @107 he admits he still needs a better fuel cell to use it. Good luck.
The most important takeaway of the video is to dispell the nonsense that you can bring energy to the poor by building the same kind of infrastructure we have.
The silly notion that you will power the poor by building grids and centralized power for them.
Norcera’s solution, his particular implementation of personalized power, in the end didnt work, but that doesnt negate the fundamental insight that you cannot “cost down” or scale down
centralized power to fit poor countries.
“TimTheToolMan says:
August 22, 2013 at 6:14 am
JJB MKI writes “Perhaps you’d agree though that an uncritical assumption that high energy usage in the developed world automatically equals ‘terrible’ is a bit irritating, as is the posting of long videos and links with no commentary or summary from the poster?”
That’s (often) Mosher’s MO.
##################
The point is to test your intelligence and also your willingness to sit through something were you may disagree with some of what is said.
Its why I read comments at WUWT. you never know when you are going to learn something.
The fundamental point that I hope people would get from the video centers around the insight that we cannot be stupidly focused on trying to bring our style of energy production ( centralized with a grid) to poor people. aint gunna work.
The problem is not transitioning the “haves” to new forms of energy production. we could of course afford to go all renewable. The costs would be huge but it would not drag us down to the level of the poorest of the poor. plese note, I dont think wee should do this, but we could.
In the other hand you cant solve the “energy for the poor” by giving them our style of solution.
The cant afford our style of solution, whether that centralized plant is coal, nuke, gas, wind farms.. whatever that approach wont work. They cant afford our kind of solution.
“TImothy Sorenson says:
August 22, 2013 at 9:32 am
@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.”
yes, Im well aware of it.
I expected several kinds of stupid replies to the video. You fulfilled my expectations.
Lets review the bidding.
by 2050 we can expect, but nothings sure, to have around 9B people on the planet, maybe 8.5, its matters little call it 8 billion.
There are curently 3 billion people who are energy poor.
There are another 2-3 billion coming.
you wont service those 6 billion people with cheap energy by using a centralized approach.
thats the opportunity.
Norcera failed in his implementation.
Put it another way, given the realities of trying to cost down our current approach (centralized)
and given the political resistance to adding more C02, there is an opportunity to attack the problem of powering the poor from an entirely different angle.
To date both sides have focused on either
1. denying the poor affordable power by promoting taxes on carbon
2. Pushing expensive solutions as the answer.
there’s a third way, or rather an opportunity to change the game entirely.
since I think we will innovate our way [out] of the c02 problem and the power for the poor problem, I of course like to focus on the opportunity and not old ways of thinking.
JJB MKI says:
August 22, 2013 at 4:13 am
@Steven Mosher
I got as far as “Look at where the US is, we’re terrible!” (delivered with requisite smugness) before I gave up.
###########
this too was an an expected reaction.
in my experience its often useful to listen for those points where I can agree. Its easy to find points of disagreement, but as a good skeptic I realize that I shouldnt fool myself and decide too early that there is nothing worthwhile in a presentation.
But 46 years is twice the lifespans of windmills and solar panels.
“rogerknights says:
August 23, 2013 at 8:40 am
Most of Norway’s energy comes from hydro.”
And Australia is largely coal, and yet we have almost the same per-capita emissions, as Wills pointed out, with ~5 times the population.
jrwakefield says:
August 23, 2013 at 5:16 am
Glad to. I plotted the old one from your old citation, now you’re unhappy with it, so here you go, from your new citation.
Note how in the few years immediately prior to the big financial crash in 2007, production ramped up to meet the world’s lunatic spending and expansion. The crash knocked that back, but since then we’re back on track.
Now, once again I say, your claim was:
Obviously, that’s a bullshit fantasy. There has been no eight-year plateau. There is no sign of a slowdown in production, we’re right on the long-term trend line. And over the last four years we’ve seen the normal growth in production.
Now you can admit that you were wrong and that there is no sign of the dreaded “peak oil”, and earn everyone’s approbation.
Or you can continue to fight for your claim, a claim which has been proven to be wrong
Your choice,
w.