Vaclav Smil's “Energy Myths and Realities” - A review
Posted by Gail the Actuary on October 18, 2010 - 10:35am
Vaclav Smil, professor of Environment and Environmental Geography at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, has written a new book called “Energy Myths and Realities.” In the book, he looks at a number of things he considers myths:
1. The future belongs to electric cars
2. Nuclear electricity will be too cheap too meter
3. Soft-energy illusions (local generation, etc.)
4. Running out: Peak oil and its meaning
5. Sequestration of carbon dioxide
6. Liquid fuels from plants
7. Electricity from wind
8. The pace of energy transitions
Smil is well-respected in the world of energy, so I think it is also worthwhile looking at what he has to say. I think that it is even worthwhile looking at what he has to say about peak oil, because it may give us some insights as to where our thinking needs to be refined, or better explained, if it is to be understood by the “mainstream”.
I might note that Smil is not entirely in disagreement with peak oil. He says,
It is fairly probable that its [conventional crude oil’s] extraction will peak within the next two decades, and it is inevitable that its share of the world’s primary energy supply will continue to decline.
A major point he makes in the peak oil section is that he is not convinced that peak oil will have a terrible impact, even if the decline does occur in the near future—something that quite a number of Oil Drum readers would agree with.
Let’s look at a few things Vaclav Smil has to say:
Electric Cars
Smil points out that electric cars have been around a long time and are still expensive compared to internal combustion cars. But his major concern seems to be that the amount of additional electricity required would be more than could reasonably be added within a short time frame. And, given the limitations of renewables, there would probably need to be a big ramp-up in fossil fuel use, to accommodate the additional cars.
According to Smil:
An electric car whose size would correspond to today’s typical American vehicle (a composite of passenger cars, SUVs, vans, and light trucks) would translate to 3 MWh of electricity consumption.
In 2010, the United States had about 245 million passenger cars, SUVs, vans, and light trucks; hence, an all-electric fleet would call for a theoretical minimum of 750 TWh/year. . . The charging and recharging cycle of Li-ion batteries is about 85% efficient, and about 10% must be subtracted for self-discharge losses; consequently, the actual need to be close to 4 MWh/car, or about 980 TWh of electricity per year. This is a very conservative calculation, as the overall demand of a midsize electric vehicle would be more likely around 300 Wh/km or 6MW/year.
But even this conservative total would be equivalent to 25% of US electricity generation in 2008, and the country’s utilities needed fifteen years (1993-2008) to add this amount of new production. As this power for electric cars would have to come on top of the demand growth by households, services, and industries, it would be exceedingly optimistic to expect such an increment could be in place in less than twenty years.
He later goes to explain how much fuel would be needed for all this.
The average source-to-outlet efficiency of U. S. electricity generation is about 40 percent, and adding 10 percent for internal power plant consumption and transmission losses, this means that 11 MWh (nearly 40 GJ) of primary energy would be needed to generate electricity for a car with an average annual consumption of about 4 MWh.
This would translate to 2 MJ for every kilometer of travel, a performance equivalent to about 38 mpg (9.25L/100 km)—a rate much lower than that offered by scores of new pure gasoline-engine car models, and inferior to advanced hybrid designs or to DiesOtto designs. . .
He explains that there would be no CO2 savings in all of this, unless renewable sources were used for all of the additional energy required. He also notes that a European report by the European Federation for Transport and Environment called How to Avoid an Electric Shock offers analogical conclusions. A complete change to electric cars in the EU would increase European electricity consumption by 15%, and would not lower CO2.
Wind Power
Smil’s conclusion regarding wind is
Conversion of wind’s kinetic energy by large turbines by large turbines can become an important contributor to the overall electricity supply, but, except for relatively small regions, it cannot become the single largest source, even less so the dominant mode of generation.
One of the limits he sees on wind power is the quantity of roads needed to service all of the wind power sites. He says:
But even when assuming a large average turbine size of 2—3 MW, the access roads (which are required to carry heavy loads, as the total weight of foundations, tower, and turbine is more than 300 tons per unit) needed to build roughly 2 million turbines and new transmission lines to conduct their electricity would make a vastly larger land claim than the footprint of the towers; and a considerable energy demand would be created by keeping these roads, often in steep terrain, protected against erosion and open during inclement weather for servicing access.
He also sees wind intermittency as a limiting factor. He says that many studies have shown that these variations do not cause any unmanageable problems as long as the total power installed in wind turbines is no more than about 10% of the system’s overall output.
He quotes P. A. Ostergaard, in the 2008 Energy article “Geographic Aggregation and Wind Power Output Variance in Denmark,” saying:
Drawing on the Danish experience, he finds, predictably, that demand and wind variations in different areas help even out fluctuations and reduce imbalances in systems with high reliance on wind power, and that exploiting these variations allows for reductions in reserve capacity in other modes of electricity generation. But, no less predictably, he also finds limits to what can be done: The average requirement for the reserve thermal capacity may drop, “but the same is not generally the case with the maximum required condensing mode capacity. . . . There will simply be times with wind production in neither of the interconnected areas.”
He is also concerned about the high installation rates that would be required to reach high penetrations, and the fact that at this point we cannot be certain of average life spans of wind turbines and of their need for maintenance and replacement requirements, particularly in harsh and offshore environments.
Peak Oil and Its Meaning
In the chapter “Running Out: Peak Oil and Its Meaning”, Smil starts by looking at individual peak oil predictions that turned out not to be exactly correct. He argues that contrary to the assumptions of Richard Duncan in his Olduvai Gorge theory, average per capita energy consumption did not peak in 1978. Instead, based on BP data for all types of energy and UN population figures, world per capita energy consumption was 10% higher in 2008 than in 1978. He also says,
but even a lower rate would not signify anything catastrophic; because of steadily falling energy intensity—the energy consumption per unit of economic product—of the global economy, it could be a sign of progress for the world to use less energy.
It would seem to me that this is one area where there is considerable additional work that needs to be done. Is oil a limiting factor on all other forms of energy use, or will efficiency and other changes lead to higher GDP relative to energy use? There is probably room for a range of views on this subject.
Smil also points out that the predictions of M. King Hubbert, Andrew Flower, Collin Campbell, Kenneth Deffeyes and others were not exactly right, partly because the estimates of ultimately recoverable oil were not correct and partly because the deterministic approaches being used were too simple. Smil says:
The fundamental problem with the notion of predicting a peak for oil extraction is that it rests on three simple assumptions—that recoverable oil resources are known with a high level of confidence, that they are fixed, and that their recovery is subsumed by a symmetrical production curve—which happen not to be true. These three claims mix incontestable facts and sensible arguments with indefensible assumptions, and they caricature complex processes and ignore realities that do not fit preconceived conclusions. There is, obviously, a finite amount of liquid oil in the earth’s crust, but estimates of this grand total remain uncertain.
He mentions Adam Brandt’s 2007 article “Testing Hubbert” from Energy Policy. Smil says regarding Brandt’s article, “the symmetrical model of oil extraction is just one of many possibilities, and we now have a rigorous quantitative proof that it is not either a dominant or a modal choice.”
He also mentions R. Nehring’s conclusion,
The task facing us now is not to continue to use an obsolete and irrelevant method [that is, Hubbert’s model] but to develop further understanding of recovery growth.
Smil also has sections on untapped resources and non-conventional oil reserves.
The point of all of Smil’s analysis is that the amount of oil available could very well be considerably more than what an analysis simply using a Hubbert curve would project. But I think an equally valid argument could be made in the other direction—the amount of oil that can actually be extracted may prove to be considerably less than what a Hubbert curve would project.
It seems to me that Hubbert curves are valuable as giving a first-order approximation to what may happen in the future. In that regard, Hubbert curves have been helpful in saying that the peak in conventional oil production is about now. Smil mostly agrees with this—he says that there is a high probability that conventional oil production will peak in the next 10 to 20 years.
But it seems to me that Smil is correct in saying that Hubbert curves really don’t tell us precisely what lies ahead. Smil lays out the favorable scenario, where untapped resources, nonconventional oil reserves, and higher percentages of oil recovery act to increase the total amount of oil available to society. But Smil never looks at what the real limiting factor is. It seems to me that this limiting factor is declining energy return from the oil that is extracted, and the impact that this has on the world economy and the ability to do reinvestment. After a certain point, net energy obtained is so low that it is not possible to justify the ever-higher energy investment required to maintain production.
If net energy is the limiting factor, one would also expect that Hubbert curves are, as Smil says, not very helpful in predicting what is likely to happen in the future. In the case of net energy being the limiting factor, the result could well be that the downslope is more severe than a Hubbert curve would suggest.
Perhaps we do need to back away from Hubbert curve as a primary way of estimating what will happen in the future. While that approach was valuable as a rough approximation in the past, now that we are approaching the down slope, maybe we need to be looking at other approaches, to give a more refined understanding of what limits we are really up against, and how these can be expected to affect the entire process. More refined approaches are also likely to give us more credibility with the non-peak oil community, who see Hubbert curves as discredited, and see analyses of demand as important as analyses of supply.
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One can say the same thing about Smil. How many books has he cranked out on this topic? Like a dozen so far. Does he need this many publications before he gets it right?
WebHubbleTelescope,
Agreed.
It is not as if exactitude has ever been a criterion.
Take for example the "cost benefit analysis" that has oozed out of the plantation mentality and now into the law.
Also: "After all, most people spend their lives making decisions under uncertainty, and that's what dealing effectively with climate change demands - the same kind of decisions you make when you decide to buckle your seatbelt, or buy insurance for your house or invest in the financial markets." BBC News
Right, he seems worried about roads to wind turbines (which on farms are the field roads the farmers use to access their fields anyway), but seems unfazed by the destruction and erosion caused by mountaintop decapitation to access coal beds.
He seems to be clued in on portions of the problems, but has a soft lander mindset that filters difficult situations away.
I peg Smil as a special type of academic world intellectual who impresses other intellectuals by pretending to be know about all sorts of things that other intellectuals have no interest in knowing about. No one in his circle is at all qualified to question his knowledge, and he likes it to be that way.
The roads in the fields are not paved for heavy highway traffic, but the packed earth of a mining operation (like a mountain top removal are also not paved. In both cases the solution, of course is special oversized low pressure tires that spread the load. Also, lumbermen know how to remove very heavy logs from forests without installing asphalt paved roads. In times past, before ICE, wagons drawn by draft animals on temporarily laid tracks were used in all three applications. All in all a silly objection. Likewise his pretended need for precision in estimates for when peak oil will happen. For peak oil, the issue has always been that some people insist that in will never ever happen, that there will always be plenty of oil. Asserting that precision of a +/- a few years is needed before one can accept the very idea of a peak is also silly. But in a seminar at a University, it can leave the knowledgeable in the audience speechless with wonder.
Its simpler than that. Smil knows how to write, he has some discipline in writing, and has a publisher and editor that will keep on asking him for new material. Without new material book publishers will cease to exist.
This also explains why Deffeyes is on his third book of pretty much the same material.
I lot of money is flowing from fossil fuel (especially oil) companies to university departments to fund research. I suspect that subtle -or not so subtle pressure exists to produce results that such companies marketting departments approve of. So probably, he is protecting his funding sources by painting an overly optimistic picture.
It occurs to me that many people who consider themselves as "influential" take a more moderate stance because they don't trust that Joe Public will react to disturbing news in a positive way, as if Joe Public is listening..........
OK, now we have three theories of Smil. We could engage in an argument over which one is the correct theory, but I think we should just agree that there are plenty of reasons for discounting his contribution to discussions of energy policy, and go on to something more productive.
As to Gail's argument that we should be aware of his thinking because it is likely to be out and about in the popular attitudes toward energy policy. She is probably right, and it is a depressing thought.
How about a fourth theory? One of my brother's-in-law has a PhD from the University of Manitoba, so I can guess where Dr. Smil is coming from.
He's been talking to the engineers at Manitoba Hydro, and they have been telling him a few things that the proponents of electric cars don't want to hear - e.g. there's not enough capacity to handle electric cars. You can argue with them, but they've got the data. They've also got the electricity, but you better bring a lot of cash to the table if you want to buy it. Building new hydro plants in northern Manitoba is not cheap, but it's one of the cheapest alternatives.
They've also been down the "Nuclear electricity will be too cheap too meter" road too, and turned back because they've got the data. There's a nuclear research station nearby which has done a lot of work on it. For Manitoba Hydro, hydro is much cheaper. For that matter, coal and natural gas are also cheaper.
As for Peak Oil and Carbon Sequestration, he will be much weaker on those topics. You have to get a lot further west in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin to find the real experts on them.
You'll also find the experts on wind power much farther west, too. Pincher Creek. Nice place except for the wind. If it ever stopped blowing all the buildings would fall down because they're only have foundations on one side.
That's a joke. However, I don't recall seeing any roads to the wind turbines. They must just drive over the grass to them, honking at the cows as they go.
the engineers at Manitoba Hydro, and they have been telling him a few things that the proponents of electric cars don't want to hear - e.g. there's not enough capacity to handle electric cars. You can argue with them, but they've got the data.
Well, do you happen to have the data, or a link to it?
I would note that even if the capacity isn't there, wind power and EVs are a perfect match. It only costs about $1,500 to build enough windpower to power an EV for life, and wind's night time output and intermittency are perfectly suited for ev charging, which will happen at night and can be dynamically scheduled for cheap power periods when wind output is high.
No, I don't have any hard data, I'm just speculating about what his sources said. Why should I be any different than anybody else here?
"..there's not enough capacity to handle electric cars. "
To handle what, a Thousand?, a Hundred Million? - How big are these cars? What are their assumptions going in?
We already heard how Smil set that one up. Strawman.
Okay, there's probably lots of capacity to support a thousand electric cars, and not enough to support a hundred million. The US has about 250 million vehicles (nearly one for every man, woman, or child), so that represents the scale of the problem.
The critical questions about alternative energy solutions are: How do they scale? What are the repercussions if everyone has one? Usually, that's where they fall apart. They are incapable of scaling to the dimensions needed.
Usually, those are the questions people don't ask until after a solution falls apart.
Wind is very, very scalable.
Again, wind power and EVs are a perfect match. It only costs about $1,500 to build enough windpower to power an EV for life, and wind's night time output and intermittency are perfectly suited for EV charging, which will happen at night and can be dynamically scheduled for cheap power periods when wind output is high.
It all depends on the underlying paradigm, occasionally it's the needed dimensions that might need to be changed... If something doesn't meet your expectations perhaps it's because they have been set unrealistically.
Hi Fred, Isn't it amazing that this machine could replace the lion's share of daily shopping trips. And, commuting also if paired with public transportation.
One stroke of the pen could make these machines (along with bikes, trikes, and other human powered machines) viable: A national maximum speed limit of 35 mph on all public roads. But, not holding my breath.
"The US has about 250 million vehicles (nearly one for every man, woman, or child), so that represents the scale of the problem."
To follow on Fred's and Nicks points, your statement here can be rephrased to say the 'The Scale IS the problem.'
The challenge is NOT, 'How do we get EV's to replace every Car and Truck out there with an Electric Equivalent?' (and to suggest that this is the challenge or the problem at THIS SITE now, is to have actively ignored the other factors that are ALWAYS brought up by me and others when such a challenge is issued, as with the notorious FAKE FIRE BRIGADE episode)
Other factors are, of course,
- Vehicle Size
- Number of Passengers/Vehicle (Carpooling, Mass Transit.. etc)
- Distance to Work
- Insistence upon Vehicle Range
- Communities creating Bike Route options, Vastly Improving Pedestrian Access
- Ultimate Number of Pass. Vehicles needed (after implementing many of these other points)
etc, etc..
The arguments only fall apart if they are pushed apart by people who don't want to find answers outside of 'No'.
That is true. Americans do NOT have to have 250 million cars - they can easily get by with half that many, they do NOT have to be as big as they are - they can easily get around in cars of half the weight,they do NOT all have to have 4-wheel drive SUV - 90% of them never go off a paved road, and they do NOT have to carry one person apiece - people can carpool.
Change the scale of the system, and the problems become solvable. Every morning people get into their tiny little 3-cylinder, 4-passenger car, load up 3 of their closest neighbors (or their spouse and 2 neighbors), and drive to work. Their kids WALK or bicycle to the nearest school (a radical concept for most modern children). They or their spouse WALK to the nearby corner store to buy groceries, and dinner they all WALK around the neighborhood and talk to their neighbors. Everyone is a lot healthier because they get a lot more exercise.
Do that, and there's not an oil supply problem - oil consumption will be a lot less than the available supply for a long, long time. On the other hand, if Americans want to buy 250 million electric SUV's so everyone can drive to work, school, and shopping - they probably won't all be able to afford it. And they will get fat because they never walk anywhere.
if Americans want to buy 250 million electric SUV's so everyone can drive to work, school, and shopping - they probably won't all be able to afford it
EVs are just as affordable as conventional cars. For instance, the Leaf has the same cost as a Corolla. http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2010/10/are-electric-vehicles-cost-effecti...
It will certainly take a while for cheap, used EVs to show up. Till then: yes, carpooling, smaller cars, etc will be the order of the day for used-car drivers.
The trouble with buying a used EV is that sooner or later (5-10 years) you will have to replace the battery pack, and that will be more expensive than replacing an engine in a gasoline car.
Cost of a new battery pack for a Leaf will be $9k to $18k, depending on who you ask. You can buy a new gasoline car for that price. The cost of replacing an engine in a gasoline econobox is about $2k to $4k for a new engine, $1k to $2k for a used engine. However, when it comes time to replace the engine in a gasoline car (after 10-20 years), most people just tow it to the junk yard instead.
All in all, I just don't think it's going to be affordable for the average worker.
The cost of a Leaf battery is $10k, according to the supplier. The cost of li-ion batteries is falling very fast. In 10 years that is likely to be below $5k. Let me break this down:
The battery won't die at 8 years: 8 years is the warranty period, which means that it's likely to last at least 10 years at warranty specification levels, and probably more.
2nd, the likely warranty specification (based on the Volt warranty) is, at minimum, that 70% of the charging depth will remain: many people will be content with an 70 mile range, and not worry about replacing the battery.
3rd, the average vehicle drives 50% of it's lifetime miles by the time it's 7 years old. All in all, I suspect that most Leaf batteries will last the life of the car.
Finally, battery costs are falling quickly, which means that a replacement battery in 8-10 years is likely to cost well below 50% of it's cost now. That puts the battery cost well below the additional 10 year gasoline savings.
Also fuel costs are likely to rise, and maintenance costs are likely to be lower than for ICE vehicles. For instance, Prius drivers essentially have no brake replacement costs, due to regenerative braking.
What did you think I meant by 'The Scale IS the problem'?? Of course I was saying that Carpooling, Vehicle size, Shortened Commutes, Bikes etc will show us that our overall fleet need is smaller, our vehicle size need is smaller.. but then, what do your buddies have to object to with EV's? It's simply disingenuous to make the objection to EV's that 'They can't replace the current fleet'
Do that, and you suddenly have enough battery and Grid supply to handle a modest EV fleet for this adjusted number. You still think they can be gas cars.. well, some will, but I'd guess that the economics of burning gas will still be short-lived at this point..
Bob
I wasn't actually disagreeing with your statement that "The Scale IS the problem", I was really elaborating on it.
My problem with replacing 250 million gasoline and diesel vehicles with electric ones is that I just don't think Americans can afford to do it on that scale. In fact, I don't think Americans can afford to own 250 million conventional vehicles, which is one of the sources of the current American financial debacle. I also don't think that corporations can afford to put in the infrastructure (power grid enhancements, charging stations) to support them.
This is based on the kind of back-of-the-envelope calculations I used to do all the time when I worked as a business analyst in the oil industry. Anytime anybody comes up with a new and innovative idea, I did a few calculations to see if the economics were within range of being viable. If they aren't, it probably won't work, regardless of what the proponents think. In the computer business it's called a "sanity test", in engineering, a "smoke test".
Of course, someone could come up with a startling breakthrough that will make it possible, but the electric car has been around for 177 years so far, and nobody has solved the battery problem yet, so I'm not holding my breath.
"My problem with replacing 250 million gasoline and diesel vehicles with electric ones.."
What is keeping you from hearing what I'm saying?
If we can carpool, crush the commuting distances, use more bikes and walking, busses and trolleys, etc.. then we don't need 250 million EV's EITHER.. and many of THEM can be Scooters, E-motorbikes, NEV's etc.. further dropping avg. Battery Size and grid demand, for crying out loud..
Whatever replaces the fleet is a MUCH SMALLER fleet.. at which point, the effect of many of these being EV's on the grid and the back of your envelope is another matter entirely.. which is what we've been saying all along.. while those nice cheap little gas cars and their fresh spare parts we can easily find today might no longer have the advantages they seem to have now.
As far as battery replacement, I hear (and have posted here) testimonials from EV owners with Nimh batts getting 100k plus on their Rav 4 EV's.. They say they rarely or never have to go to a garage, none of the Oil Change or Emissions issues of most cars, and many charge them in part from their own PV arrays.. so the economics of owning a car will change.. and it might get worse (like everything else after PO).. the point is that the EV route has many viable features that an ICE system may not, as oil availability diminishes..
What is keeping you from hearing what I'm saying?
I am listening to what you are saying, I am just introducing complications that you may not have thought about in depth. Quick sanity test: 250 million vehicles (the number in the US) times $36,000 (the cost of a Nissan Leaf) equals $9 trillion. I fail to believe that US consumers and governments have $9 trillion in spare cash, and I doubt the US banks can lend them that much under the current economic conditions. The Chinese are also getting worried about getting their money back and don't want to lend more. Houston, we have a problem.
If we can carpool, crush the commuting distances, use more bikes and walking, busses and trolleys, etc.
If you could do that, you would be living in Vancouver, BC, not in a US city. Most US cities have been going 180 degrees in the wrong direction for the few decades, and are totally and utterly unprepared for Peak Oil. The newer US cities have been sprawling like there is no tomorrow, which for them there might not be.
The electric car is really just a stop-gap measure to keep them going in the absence of all the measures they should have taken to prepare - more compact neighborhoods, bike paths, trolley buses and rapid transit. Having completely mis-predicted the future, they want some way to keep their huge investment in freeways and vast, sprawling suburbs viable. I don't think it's going to work because they don't have the time or money to make it work.
Most likely, they are just going to have to abandon their freeways and outer suburbs, and accept a third-world standard of living while they adjust to the new reality of expensive gas. It's sad, but those are the consequences of bad planning.
$36,000 (the cost of a Nissan Leaf)
The Leaf is priced at $32.8K, and buyers will pay $25.3K after the US rebate. After the rebate expires, Nissan will reduce the price to $25K.
The average price of a new US car is $28K.
Most likely, they are just going to have to abandon their freeways and outer suburbs
I don't understand. If fuel prices double, why not just buy a Prius (which will reduce fuel consumption by 50%)? Or, if Priuses are suddenly back-ordered (because everyone else has the same idea), put in your order and carpool with one other person (which will reduce fuel consumption by 50%) until it comes??
If they double again, put in an order for a Leaf, and carpool in your old vehicle with 3 other people, or your Prius with one other person until it comes.
Carpooling - the horror.
No, you're not hearing my central point.
We don't need the 250 million cars, EV or otherwise, so EV's don't have to replace the WHOLE F-ing fleet!
Maybe the US doesn't, as a whole accept that today.. but that's not the proposal I'm putting forward, and this string of Posts should have made that abundantly clear, and the fact that you continue to extrapolate this with a StartUp vehicle, priced Prime, as the AVERAGE, and then multiply it times 250 million, while for little gas cars, you predicate the reductions we need to embrace in any situation says that you're still setting up a Strawman that's just painfully easy to knock down. It's hard to take you at all seriously.
How does 'Stop-gap' challenge any of this at this point? It's ALL stop-gap, in order to squeeze through.. if technical society of any form survives this, don't you think Electric Motor powered vehicles will still have a place in it?
Energy Myth and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate
Description and Table of Contents on Smil's site.
I've interviewed Smil a few times and closely read some of his books.
Here's a few critical things to know about him.
He grew up energy poor in Europe and went through the wood/coal/oil transition himself.
He lives in a superinsulated home in Canada, drives an efficient car, and believes Americans need to dramatically reduce their energy consumption.
He *hates* simplistic forecasts and certitude of all kinds, except perhaps his own.
This last point is key: when it comes to the future, we all have a bias.
Vaclav's bias is a profound, grounded-in-history distrust of simplistic forecasts, overly emotional or under-nuanced takes on our energy predicament.
He is very concerned about climate change, not a climate denier, but dislikes Gore/Hansen like pronouncements that suggest we could swiftly move to renewables and carbon free.
He has a sense of humor too. He once wrote me that "we can do quite well for a few decades with declining oil and rising natural gas production. We had a fine world and a clever civilization without oil, and then with little oil, and we can do it again.. It will not be the end of the world, except perhaps for Californians.”
He believes in the Jevon's Paradox.
As for peak oil, I think he's mostly reacting to the overly-inflamed, end-of-the-world-doomer-like takes on our petroleum predicament. Unfortunately, I think this has blinded him to what the future might hold. He doesn't do a honest and complete accounting for the 8x increase in oil since 1950, and what a plateau/decline will mean in contrast.
I'm generally an admirer of Smil, but regret that his contrarian instincts have kept him from investigating and explaining the current oil situation more accurately/thoroughly in his recent books.
Recall that Amory Lovins (whose work Smil generally disparages) didn't think much of peak oil until recently either.
Moral of the story: everyone has blind spots.
If you are new to Smil, read his classic Energy in World History if you can find a used copy at Amazon or elsewhere.
Smil evidently has at least a couple. Here is another:
Smil appears dismissive of wind power as a large scale solution in part because of the intermittency issue. He is blind to the fact that as of 2008, Denmark gets something like 24% of its electricity from wind by using Norway's network of hydroelectric stations as a giant battery, pumping water upwards at night and buying hydro power back from Norway during the day. Note that 24% is more than double the 10% "upper limit" that Smil apparently has bought into by reading studies written by people who, like him, were unable or unwilling to think outside the box.
Some of his other objections to wind power also show that his arguments are a bit too strident for the reader who wants a complete and honest analysis. For example, he highlights the issue of the cost of maintaining roads that lead to the wind turbines. But what about offshore turbines that don't need roads? And isn't the life of a road longer than the life of a wind turbine, anyway?
Wind is well on its way to be a major part of the solution in future. Pumped hydro storage is the cheapest form of storage to pair with intermittent renewables, and it scales easily provided that the right geomorphology is identified. IMHO, the biggest reason these energy generation and storage technologies (whose roots reach back thousands of years) are not yet widespread, is not cost, but the pervasive and corrupting influence of fossil fuel interests.
When Norway sells hydroelectricity to Denmark, it gets a very high price for it because Denmark desperately needs backup power when the wind does not blow. When Denmark sells wind power to Norway, it gets a very low (sometimes negative) price for it because Norway does not really need to import power and probably would prefer not to do so. I don't think there's any pumped storage in Norway, because Norway doesn't really need that either.
Denmark cannot really shut down its coal-burning power plants every time the wind starts blowing because 1) they can't turn coal plants on and off like a light switch, they take a day or so to restart, and 2) Denmark also uses the coal plants for district heating. They can't just shut off people's heat whenever the wind blows. So, in many cases they send their wind power to Norway because they have to keep their coal-burning plants running to heat people's houses.
If you have large amounts of wind power, you need to have large amounts of hydroelectric power or gas fired thermal plants as backup. Denmark has neither. I live in an area (Alberta) that has both, so it's much easier to manage. The main constraint is transmission line capacity, because the wind power is in the south and the backup power is in the north.
There are three types of reserve on the electricity grid, fast-frequency reserve, spinning reserve and the type you are referring to here, non-spinning reserve.
fast-frequency reserve comes from turning up the power output of the already generating plants.
Spinning reserve is plant which has been spun up to full speed but is not exported to the grid. It is this reserve which would fill any gap in demand. There is alwasy enough spinning reserve to take up the slack in the event of a major plant going off-line, or a major interconnect.
Non-spinning reserve is the plant which is idle and would several hours to start up (only a nuclear plant would take as long as two days).
In short, you don't know what you're talking about and we can safely ignore any other opinions you have about this.
In short, you don't know what you're talking about and we can safely ignore any other opinions you have about this.
Excuse me? Did you miss the part about Denmark's coal-fired power plants also providing district heat to their towns and cities. They can't just shut them off whenever the wind blows, and if they're running they may as well generate electricity because it doesn't cost anything extra.
But to deal with the concept of "spinning reserve". I was at the Grand Coulee Dam a couple of weeks ago and had a nice tour of the place (If you're ever in the area you should do it). It's true that Grand Coulee keeps a few of their rows and rows of 850 MW generators spinning at all times in case Southern California has some kind of blackout, but it doesn't cost them anything other than a little wear on the bearings. When the lights go out in Southern California, they can open the water gates and bring the generators up to full power in less than a minute.
Coal-burning power plants are quite different. You can't just start them up instantly, because you will fracture all the pipes by putting hot steam into cold pipes, and you can't just shut them off instantly for the same reason. It takes about 12 hours to bring a coal-fired power plant up to temperature and get it producing electricity, and about the same time to let it cool down. In order to keep it on line as spinning reserve, you have to burn nearly as much coal as you would to generate power. For this reason, coal plants are used for base load. Nuclear plants are similar - they have long start-up and shut-down times - and neither are very good for intermittent operation.
Gas-fired power plants are better because they only take 2 hours to bring up to temperature, but that's still a long time to wait for the lights to go back on. Many wind-power utilities in the US keep reciprocation gas engines as standby because that's not much different than starting up your car after it stalls at a traffic light. In both cases there's a lot of honking of horns, but you can usually get it going before anybody gets too mad.
My brother once negotiated a negative power rate for a big gas plant he was managing - they paid him to use their power rather than vice-versa. He was able to do this for two reasons, 1) The utility needed a base load for their coal-fired power plants overnight, and he was willing to take the power off their hands as long as they paid him to do it, and 2) He could fire up his rows and rows of 30,000 hp gas turbine backup generators and dump power back into the grid if one of their main powerplants tripped. In effect he was acting as their spinning reserve. The gas plant could supply its own customers on line pack (the gas already in the line) for hours to days, so he had a lot more flexibility than the electric utility.
In Denmark, Norway is acting as their spinning reserve because the Danes can't use their own coal plants without burning a lot of coal, whereas the Norwegians can keep the generators spinning at their hydro plants without using much water. However, Norway is not willing to do this for free. The Norwegians are in the same position visa-vise the Danes as my brother was visa-vise the electric utility. They buy Danish wind power for a low (sometimes negative) price, and sell back hydro-electricity at a premium.
good synopsis of his thinking. One of my favorite books is "The Earth's Biosphere."
Hes showing his cards. Books means money so when he makes general statments such as;
"It is fairly probable that its [conventional crude oil’s] extraction will peak within the next two decades, and it is inevitable that its share of the world’s primary energy supply will continue to decline."
he's playing politics rather than being honest. Now if he was to print a graph of oil production in one of his books showing the bumpy plateau since 2004 and giving an explanation then I would be satisfied. That he has written so many books on energy but convienently bypassed this says it all.
Grautr: Smil said something to the effect, that we can't use an old model to solve the problem, or some such, and I thought this one remark was on the profound side, but the rest I found basic or sophomoric. Basic books are good, don't get me wrong, but we need breakthrough thinking, and that was as close to it as I saw. Am I wrong? Has Smil come out with any cutting edge improvements, or realizations of a profound nature?
Vaclav sounds like he has the basics on peak oil about right. No surprise here in my book.
While often obfuscating the peak oil discussion, Smil has also been showing Gaussian oil depletion curves in his books for years.
It seems to me that the central limit theorem provides an awfully good case for something reasonably close to a Gaussian distribution curve, even if it is not exact.
The asymmetry argument does not work in Smil's favour. The demand will ramp up at the same time that production starts to decline, forcing more rapid extraction and thereby reducing total output (i.e. field abuse of another type). All the maximum contact well technology does not extract more than would have been extracted by more primitive means, it just extracts it faster. Extracting faster has negative consequences.
"It seems to me that the central limit theorem provides an awfully good case for ..."
I recommend caution is this line of reasoning. The central limit theorem applies to a situation in which the number of statistically independent random variables is unbounded. We have seen a financial meltdown recently because, IMHO, there were unappreciated correlations in the data that were not properly accounted for in the financial models. Our ideas about the origins of fluctuation in energy markets are very primitive and hardly ready to support a claim that the central limit is applicable. Many of the random variables at issue may have quite small variance, but others are as yet undiscovered and the variance of some of these may be quite large. More generally, be careful about using too much mathematical reasoning when thinking about the real world. The mathematics applies only to your model, not to the actual real world. Smil makes this mistake when he claims to have given a mathematical proof of one of his opinions.
You phrased this in the wrong context and only got it partially right.
For one, oil production is a sequence of stages of flow from one point to another. This is represented mathematically by a series of convolutions and if the variates that represent the time lags have finite averages, then the result will tend to a normal distribution. See here how it applies to the Oil Shock Model (discovery x fallow x construction x maturation x extraction stages)
http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2007/03/central-limit-theorem-and-oil-s...
If the lags are unbounded then longer tails can develop.
Now by itself, this is not bad. Unlike the fat tails which exist in a financial risk context, the fat tail behavior that might hide behind the oil production trajectory is a good thing. It means that oil will hang around longer than a Normal would suggest. Reserve growth is a huge fat tail effect.
Same thing with the idea of super giant reservoirs. Super giant oil fields are in the far reaches of the fat tail of the size distribution. These are huge suppliers of oil and I bet everyone would love to have several more fat-tail or gray swan type events occur.
Contrary to being a financial meltdown, fat tails in oil will be a huge win.
I don't doubt that a lot of fields will have fat tails but a lot of them wont. Most depleted fields in the North Sea do not have fat tails at all. It is possible that world production may have a fat tail but by then we will be down to 10 percent or so from the bottom. Way, way too late by then.
But it will be the constant never ending decline that will kill the stock market, kill all investment because people invest for growth, not shrinkage. There might be a few small victories on the way down but no huge wins.
It simply doesn't matter if we gradually build electric trains or whatever. It is the employment of the people that will count for everything. An ever growing population must be supplied with jobs. And if the population is growing while the economy is shrinking, then every month, month after month, the jobs report will be more bad news... and more bad news.
I would like to lie to myself and say it just ain't so. But it is. We are already deep into overshoot, already in deep trouble without oil depletion. Peak oil will just make the natural course of things play out a whole lot faster.
Ron P.
I think the whole notion of being supplied witha job is going to get old very quickly. Governments and politicians have to get over the fact that industrialisation and teh secure jobs that came with it are over. It is up to individuals to discover for themselves what needs to be done, then go do it. If enough food is being produced and distributed then leisure time may well increase. It is then not jobs that need to supplied but worthwhile social activities that regulate the behaviour of otherwise idle hands and minds.
Points that come to mind that argue for a fast collapse from oil shortages resulting from a Peak in global Oil production:
a) human population growth is exponential. Demands on critical supplies can appear fine now, and be distressingly out of control tomorrow.
b) as Ron mentions above, humans are likely already in overshoot. Climate change is a symptom on the waste storage end of the equation.
c) net energy curves are much steeper than energy production curves*.
d) complexity is increasing just to maintain the status quo. This is never a good sign (see Tainter).
e) humans are herd animals. When stressed, we can expect herd behavior, i.e. stampedes.
f) export land model. You may be fine if you live in Russia, but not in the UK or USA. Worse off still in Japan with zero domestic oil.
g) military "solutions" => WWIII
*Don't arguments about global oil or energy production curve shapes get academic (so to speak) if you happen to reside in an import-dependent, oil-dependent society like the USA? So what if China or some other countries continue to buy oil from the ME and stretch out global production tails if YOUR country or part of it is totally non-functional as a result of oil shortages?
That's funny, didn't you just say this?
Personally I find your thinking to be self contradictory and the implicit desire to control the behavior of what to you would appear to be idle hands and minds quite disturbing, the fact that we already have television notwithstanding.
BTW:
Perhaps someone should supply them with worthwhile social activities that regulate the behavior of their otherwise idle hands and minds, since they apparently aren't capable of discovering for themselves what needs to be done, and actually doing it...
Isn't what's good for the goose supposed to be good for the gander?
Perhpas I was a bit hurried in this comment.
What I was trying to get at is that the formula of school-college-career-retirement is going to be somewhat redefined as the system will find it increasingly difficult to supply the career bit where specialised jobs pay well enough for everyone who wants one to have one. You then get a large number of people who are simply waiting around, often on some sort of welfare payment, with expectations of being given a job which effectively plugs them back into the program and back on track for a cushy retirement.
I already see many of these people in the streets and welfare office in our town. They have effectively given up hope, as they have been trained by the systems to have an expectation of a job being given to them. They have no abilities to see the many things that they could be doing to improve their lives and the lives of their fellow travellers by doing the things that obvioulsy need doing. I'm talking about growing a bit of food. Keeping their homes and neighbourhoods in good order; checking on the elderly among them; organising and supervising their children to teach new skills; maintaining some sort of social cohesion that preserves human dignity and builds on the the resources they do have rather than the hopelessness that comes from lamenting the loss of paid regular employment. Social activities does not mean endless rounds of bingo at the local community centre or sitting in front of the television which is probably the worst thing to be doing.
There is much that governments can do to support and enhance local communities that have been hammered by massive bouts of unemployment. But it begins with a recognition that the jobs aren't coming back in the same form they were and that new jobs may not be as glamourous, or as organised by the giant corporate structures and came with health care and retirement plans, but are nontheless vital for the people concerneed. While you have politicians that are focused on bring back the jobs by artifical stimulus, are working against the emergence of a self starting community by holding out the false hope that it can all come back, and that all people have to do is wait around and be ready for the uplift.
What happens is that the uplift never comes for many and they have become psychologically shattered and lost hope. They give up on education and learning new skills and find themselves excluded from the social benefits of society which are increasingly only accessible to the moneyed classes. Resentment of the unfairness of life can kick in rather early, especially for the young and this can lead to an attitude of indifference to the suffering of anyone else. When you don't care about others and your future looks bleak anyway, it's much easier to abuse, rob, kill or rape. All the government can do at that stage is lock people up. It's too late then.
Hi Darwinian. I was reading through the comments as I do, but then got stuck on part of your comment:
"But it will be the constant never ending decline that will kill the stock market, kill all investment because people invest for growth, not shrinkage. There might be a few small victories on the way down but no huge wins."
"never ending" - this is a strong statement to me. And I know you are a thoughtful contributor to TOD.
Perhaps I am being too literal? Is it your position that PO 'means' sustained global economic contraction to the point of fundamental systemic collapse, or perhaps 'never ending' in the sense that it will 'feel' never-ending as an inter-generational depression.
I am not looking forward to whatever it is that is about to happen/has started - the 'transition period' from oil. But I do feel hopeful about what will emerge. And I do think we will 'get through it'. And I am investing accordingly.
I do acknowledge that if PO hits us hard enough and fast enough that it could cause the 'wheels may come off' everything, but if that happens, pretty much the only things of value at that point will be what you can hold in your hands anyway.
Sorry Calaf but I left out "energy supplies". It should have read:
It is not "peak oil" that means sustained global economic contraction but the decline in oil supplies that will cause the contraction. As the fuel to drive miles contracts, less miles will be driven. As the fuel to produce goods and services declines, less goods and services will be produced. And because the decline in fuel will be continuous the decline in goods and services will be continuous. Which means the decline in employment will be continuous.
We are at peak oil right now and have been since 2005 but the decline has not yet begun. The peak brought only a deep recession, it will be the constant, never-ending decline that will bring the really bad news.
Ron P.
Sustained global economic contraction certainly means the end of capitalism as financed by banks lending at interest. If that is "systemic" then I concur with the position you refer to.
I kept reading after I posted and think I found the answer in a later post by you:
Bundeswehr warning
•A Shrinking economy over an indeterminate period presents a highly unstable situation which inevitably leads to system collapse.
As I said I got stuck on the idea/comment :)
1) 25% could be easily added with nuclear
2) That it took 15 years only says that the demand grew that much in 15 years and not that there is some law of nature preventing deployment faster.
I haven't read Smil myself and might shoot myself in the foot commenting about his work, but it seems that if an argument suits his positions it is a good one;and that if it doesn't, it's not.
Fialure to take energy returnon on energy invested into account is an utterly inexcusable mistake of the sort academics are prone to make;but any illiterate hillbilly of a bygone era gathering firewood for his shack would have understood the eroei argument perfectly;firewood of very poor quality, such as fallen branches, was collected very near to the house.Even the very best of firewood, such a a standing dead oak tree , was left to rot if more than a short distance away , due to the labor involved in getting it home.Dragging a small tree a quarter of a mile with a mule burns up corn and hay and bread and beans at an unacceptable rate.
And arguments such as the one made about cars seems to ignore the more probable actual course of future automotive actuality-cars are likely to be severely downsized and life styles/habits will change to accomodate much less driving.
We haven't yet seen what the market can really do for us in terms of energy efficiency because the market hasn't yet got our attention-fuel and electricity are still too cheap here in America.When the reality of scarcity finally penetrates the national consciousness, the growth rate of the renewable/conservation industries will skyrocket-if the economy is still capable of supporting the investment.
I mess around with cars and trucks all the time- mostly middle aged and older ones.Except for the ones that simply collapse due to rusting away, there is virtually no such thing as a "worn out" car.
We scrap cars because they are cheap to buy-when manufactured by the tens of millions in a cheap energy economy-so cheap that they can be sold as throw away status symbols and expressions of personal taste and style in hundreds and thousands of variations.This of course makes them exceedingly difficult and expensive to maintain, in relation to what actual maintainence costs and difficulties SHOULD BE.
I can easily envision a future wherein a person buys a VERY small plug in hybrib expecting to keep it good operating condition for himself, his children, or a future buyer for thirty, forty, or fifty years or even longer.Such a buyer will invest a substantial portion of the money he saves buying one car after another in his own pv panels, extra insulation for his house, super efficient appliances, active and passive solar heat and hot water, and so forth.
As to the car being maintained for that long-if it is properly rustproofed and standardized, maintaining it will be a piece of cake.If for instance the drivers seat is in need of reconditioning, you should simply be able to pull into an upholstery shop , and get your seat swapped out with one already reupholstered in about the same length of time it takes to get an oil change.
But the truth of the matter is that there are so many variables that can interact in so many ways that nobody really knows what is going to happen except possibly in the very broadest terms.My personal wag is that the probability of collapse/resource wars over the next half century is at least as high as probability of a world such as the one Smil seems to envision..
And speaking as a student (amatuer of course) of history, politics, and human nature, rather than as a person immersed in the world view of an economist, I don't put very much wieght on the theory that the consequences of peak oil will be mild;this might be true, as evidenced by my comments on cars above.
But otoh, we are just as likely to do all the wrong things as the result of corruption,miscalculation, entitlement politics, and ignorance on the part of the people making the critical decisions..
Having known for sure so many things over the years that have turned out not to be so after all, I have learned at last that I at least don't have the ability to predict the future.
I agree totally. More, the numbers of cars is going to drop significantly, as mass transit becomes the norm. There needs to be a fundamental change in attitude toward UMT; it will have to be comfortable and reliable. As more and more middle class (if any remain) and upper middle class people are forced to ride, they will demand it. And, a serious tax on fuels will be a starting point.
Of course, our future will need to see a change in attitudes on government, social spending and taxation. Being somewhat conservative, fiscally at least, my view is that whatever we decide we want, it must be paid for - preferably pay as you go but 15-20 year payout for capital intensive infrastructure is not unthinkable. And, the national debt needs to be paid down during the same time period. And, we need to accept that we will have to be taxed to do that. And, that those who have the most will lose the most if the country falls apart, so they should quit bellyaching and get a life. Sacrifice will be demanded from one and all.
We have some very difficult times with us, and ahead of us. If we don't pull together we are going to fail for certain!
Craig
Why does mass transit have to be the norm?
You can have a EV car today for $13,000 if
1) limit 35 mile range
2) limit top speed of 68mph
There are 250 million automobiles in the US. Replacing all of those with evs will take a very long time. Longer than we have oil. And, it will be expensive. Many will not be able to replace their autos. They will need mass transit.
Anyone who thinks you can have a mass population world without mass transit is in denial.
Craig
You misunderstood me. I was just talking about passenger cars only, not commercial vehicles. How is $13,000 expensive?
You mean Americans won't be able to afford a $13,000 EV car?
pancake - Actually I suspect most won't be able to pay $13,000 to convert their existing car to EV (if their existing car is suitable in the first place). Don't have the link but read sometime ago that the majority of folks need to trade in the old car in order to buy a new one. Certainly some cars would be converted but I suspect it won't be a dramatic number. Perhaps some massive govt loan program would help but then your back to the chicken and egg problem such solutions run into: insufficient production of conversion kits if the finanacing isn't available yet insufficient financing if the conversion kits aren't readily available. IMHO your idea has merit but will have to struggle against two big road blocks: scalability and, more importantly IMHO, the nature of folks to wait too late to take action. IOW few will do a conversion when gas is under $4/gallon but many will push for a EV when gas goes over $7/gallon. But the kits won't be available in large numbers bacause the producers can't afford to build millions of kits and wait for the market to develop. AS TOD often like to note: we have two modes: complaceny and panic.
We had a discussion with pancake about subsidies and electrics not too long time ago. I think subsidies to downsize fleet now is an idea worth considering.
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/7022#comment-731497
You are right that most need to trade in old car for a new one. But the "scrap the guzzler" program (subsidy) has some basic merits from the perspective of reducing consumption. Yes, trade-in - but straight to a recycling plant.
Overall difference is that instead of giving money to Saudi Arabia for oil, one gives the same money to Joe to buy a North American made fuel efficient car.
I think EVs are the cat's pajamas, but I'm not sure this is the best proof of their affordability. Some people may be out of work, and therefore not consider their time valuable, but 4 months of labor is a substantial cost.
What do you think of the Trev? http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/6176 .
"The base model Trev might carry 4 kWh of Li-ion cells, enough for about 40 miles of range (the median daily commute is ~22 miles). At $500/kWh, the battery is $2000; the complete vehicle might go for $14,000. The market at that price would be huge.
Promoting Trev-like vehicles with licensing and insurance breaks (e.g. swap the plate off an ICEV at no extra cost) might push several million a year out the door. Call it 5 million, starting in 2012. That would give 40 million on the road by 2020, which is a substantial fraction of the total US LDV fleet. If they were used at an average of 25 miles/day, they would account for about 1 billion miles/day or 360 billion miles/year. That's about 12% of total US LDV vehicle-miles, and probably the most important 12% (we can cut pleasure trips). Recharging at work could allow regular use for commutes up to 50-60 miles."
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I saw a EV add-on somewhere: it connected an electric drivetrain to the outside of a wheel hub! Can't seem to find my source, but it seemed to be designed to be very easy to install.
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The Leaf is as affordable as a Corolla:
http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2010/10/are-electric-vehicles-cost-effecti...
Back when I lived in NYC and rode the subways I more than once found myself squeezed in between some quasi homeless person and some wealthy banker from the upper eastside who probably worked down on Wall street. People can do this, it ain't that F'n hard, trust me, ask any New Yorker.
Comfort wasn't part of the equation...
It will be if we want to make the transition. Yes, we're spoiled.
Of course, it is the squeeze that makes it uncomfortable. That is b/c there is not enough and it is not scheduled properly.
With the technology we have today, applied rigorously to UMT, it can be done.
Craig
Hey Fred,
Come on - you know NYC is not part of real America. Real Americans would never put up with getting mugged and raped just to get to work. And OMG, the B.O. issues.
Surely you watch some TV - the car defines who you are: powerful, dominant, smart, sexy and able to afford all the luxury you want. Why would you want to give up that freedom, independence and convenience - can you spell "Loser"?
Besides, real Americans are not like those skinny French and Italians - we proudly display our surplus of food by our super-sized butts - how well do those fit in those tiny train seats? If we ever do ride in a train it better be very spacious and comfortable - and serve food.
I was in NYC once - geez, I had to walk everywhere or pay for a taxi. Even with a taxi I still had to do way too much walking. Real Americans need a strip mall with a really big parking lot - walking more than a hundred feet or so is just not going to happen!
Anyway, a soccer mom with 3 kids and related stuff requires a large van to get to all the events and activities - I mean, get a grip, how does mass transit figure into this?
Deep in your heart you know that Americans are special people, blessed by God, to enjoy all the fruits of the earth: oil, air, water, plants, animals - every thing is here for our pleasure. If we run out of something, technology and the human spirit will provide an alternative - that is always the way it works, and always the way it will continue to work.
A train in NYC - what a joke! A Cadillac Escalade taking the X-way to the mall is real America.
Oh, BTW,
NYC does not represent the typical American city.
How many folks in the USA live in a city with a population density of 25,000 people per sq mile?
yeah exactly!
try suburbia aka 3,000 people per sq mile
Do you want to be the one to stand in front of 80% of Americans and say,
"sorry folks you'll have to give up on single family detached homeownership, welcome to PO"
Pre-Katrina, New York City and New Orleans were tied for fewest VMT by residents.
New Orleans did this with much lower density than NYC and some single family detached homes mixed in with duplexes, old mansions cut into 5 apartments, etc. VERY human scale. High levels of home ownership in some areas, like the Lower 9th Ward (59%) but they did not look like the low quality, tacky building you linked to.
Overall density, pre-K New Orleans, 2,518/sq mile.
The re-development since Katrina has seen an increase in density in the better areas.
A density map of New Orleans & our suburbs
http://www.ersys.com/usa/22/2255000/density.htm
You made up that "80% of Americans". Home/condo ownership is not nearly that high.
But I am quite willing to stand up and say that the home you pictured will be boarded up by 2040 and removed by 2050.
Alan
Try Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Population density about 3,700 people per square mile, 64% of whom live in single-family homes. Population (2010) 1,071,515; Total transit ridership: 534,800 passengers per weekday; Biggest complain about transit: Overcrowding. Just because you have low population density doesn't mean you can't have high transit ridership. It's all a matter of providing fast, efficient service compared to automobiles.
Medium and large Canadian cities all have very high transit riderships compared to US cities despite the fact that most of them are similarly spread out and have high rates of home ownership.
The fact is that in the second half of the 20th century most American cities made a conscious decision to abandon their streetcars and interurban rail systems and replace them with expensive freeways (Most Canadian cities made the other choice). In retrospect, the US made a mistake because most Americans can no longer afford to both drive and own a house. Welcome to Peak Oil.
The one time I've visited Vancouver, I was impressed how the highway system seemed to be designed in such a way as to not cut up and divide the heart of the city. I was only there on a brief visit, but I thought it seemed very well layed out.
Edit: I've spent a bit more time in Calgary, and would say much the same thing about that city. I haven't used the mass transit in either town, so I can't comment on that.
One of the real problems with freeways is that they really divide a city into chunks. One of the worst examples is Santa Rosa, in Sonoma County, California. Hwy 101 divides runs right through the downtown, dividing it, and the town, in half, and ruining the character.
Both Calgary and Vancouver have only one freeway each to speak of, and the rest of the traffic is surface streets. There is "traffic" of course, but no worse than anywhere else, and probably better than some. There was an amusing article written by a columnist from the LA times who was in Vancouver for the winter Olympics. He was amazed that the city "worked" even without freeways, and said that he hadn't been on one in the three weeks he was there - and couldn't describe how good that felt!
Freeways work well, until they are overloaded, and then you have few alternatives. Streets work OK, and when they are overloaded, you have more alternatives.
For both Calgary and Vancouver (having lived in both) , to drive through the city, you don;t have to go through the middle of it (except hwy 99 in Vancouver), so it removes a good deal of unneccessary traffic from the core. The industrial areas are fairly well removed to, for the most part, so heavy vehicle traffic is minimised.
Vancouver's downtown is the condo capital of Canada, and has a higher population density than Manhattan, so many people just walk to work.
The rail transit in each city is purely designed for going to/from downtown - and as long as you are doing that, they are both great systems. Naturally, many people, in choosing where they live, will look for transit access, and so housing (and business) density along the corridors has been steadily increasing. In Calgary, 20% of peak hour trips are out of downtown.
Calgary transit's estimate is that their three double track lines going to downtown carry a peak load equivalent to sixteen lanes of traffic. There is also a lot of city space not needed for parking, that can be used for productive, property tax paying purposes instead.
Actually, the three double-track lines merge into one downtown, and that one double track surface line has the capacity of 16 lanes of freeway. It's unbelievable the number of people they can move on a quiet downtown street without anybody really noticing what it happening.
There are constraints of course. They are building a fourth line, and the existing system should be able to handle that. However, the fifth line, whenever they decide to build it, could overload the downtown transit mall. At that point they may have to build the Calgary Subway. There's already a short stretch of subway under 8th Avenue, and a station under the Municipal Building. You used to be able to see the turnoff from the existing line, but they bricked it off because people were going in and wandering around. These are built, mothballed, and ready to go whenever the existing system runs out of capacity. Once they add the subway and the fifth and sixth lines, and expand it out to the design limits, it would be equivalent to about 32 lanes of freeway. 32 lanes of freeway would be about as wide as the entire downtown core.
There is this choice that cities have to make. If you take a surface parking lot, and build a 50-story skyscraper on it, your tax revenues become much, much higher, which is why Calgary has gone the route it has. Many US cities have gone the other way, for reasons that totally escape me.
Vancouver is interesting because, among other things, it is the only major city in North America which has no genuine freeways. Count them, zero. The citizens took a vote and decided not to have any. If you want to drive to work in Vancouver, you better develop a lot of patience. People who live there are used to not being able to drive anywhere, so they don't get upset. They just mellow out and enjoy life in Lotusland.
Calgary has one genuine freeway, count them, one, and it goes nowhere near the the downtown core. Again, the citizens took a vote and decided not to build any freeways downtown. Calgary is the second largest head office city in Canada, and its downtown core is small and heavily Manhattanized, so it's not physically possible for all the office workers to drive to work. If they do drive to work, they better bring a lot of money for parking because it's scarce and expensive.
All of this does contribute to transit riderships, so their rail systems are quite popular. Calgary's light rail system is the most heavily used in North America, and Vancouver's Skytrain is even more heavily used, although it is not light rail. The elevated guideways and driverless trains don't meet the definition of light rail.
Vancouver's SkyTrain (and many of its buses) are powered by hydroelectricity. Calgary's light rail system is powered by wind generators, although its buses are diesel. Fuel costs are not a major factor in either city's transit system.
All of my trips to Calgary have been on business. The oil companies are concentrated downtown, and I really enjoyed being able to take a nice walk from my hotel to every meeting I went to. Never had any need of a car while in town.
A bit off topic, but on a couple of those trips, when we had some down time, 3 or 4 of us geos did rent a car to get out of town. Once we went up to Drumheller to the Royal Tyrell Museum, and it was great! Another time we had most of a day before our flight, so we drove up to the mountains. We hiked up to Yamnuska to lay our hands on the McConnell Thrust, and into Grassi Lake to see the carbonate build up. Great stuff. I would love to spend more time in Calgary!
The Royal Tyrell Museum is very interesting because it is the largest museum of paleontology in the world, with over 200 complete dinosaur skeletons. I grew up in the area, and as kids we used to stumble over dinosaurs on a regular basis (literally - I would trip over a rock, fall down, and it would turn out to be a dinosaur bone.) Dinosaurs are almost a renewable resource along the banks of the river. They dig up all the dinosaurs one year, come back the next year, and there are more dinosaurs eroding out of the riverbanks.
There's one deposit nearby that they think holds 40,000 dinosaurs. They estimated this by digging a narrow trench across it, counting all the left eye sockets, and multiplying by the size of the bone bed. The bone bed is about the size of 280 football fields. The dinosaurs apparently were all killed in one tropical storm.
wikipedia says
Calgary Transit
Annual ridership = 95.3 mil (2008)
95.3 million / 365 = 261,095 passengers per day
//
BTW did you mean "single-family homes" or "single-family detached homes" BIG difference
The total transit ridership of 534,800 is per week day, not an annual average.
wikipedia says
Calgary Transit
Annual ridership = 95.3 mil (2008)
95.3 million / 365 = 261,095 passengers per day
I quoted numbers from the American Public Transportation Authority (APTA) for the first quarter of 2010. Their ridership report is here: http://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/Pages/ridershipreport.aspx
APTA numbers differ from Calgary Transit System (CTS) numbers because their definitions are different. APTA uses unlinked transit passenger trips whereas CTS counts total linked passenger trips. The result is that APTA will double-count a lot of trips (commuters tend to take the feeder bus to the light rail station and get on the train) whereas CTS will only count them once, and of course weekday ridership is larger than weekend ridership.
I tend to use APTA numbers because they collect them for all the major transit systems in the US and Canada so you can compare one against another. You will note that that Calgary light rail system has a higher ridership than any other light rail system in the report except Toronto - and that includes Boston and San Francisco.
When I said "single family homes", I think the number was actually for detached and semi-detached homes, but not townhouses or apartments. There's not a great deal of difference between detached and semi-detached houses, and that's what I found so that's what I used. In reality, Calgary is not much different from Denver, for instance, in its overall layout and home ownership structure. Its transit ridership is much higher, however.
You mean Americans can't afford a $13,000 EV car?
or
how about a $10,000 ICE car?
//
wikipedia say:
"In July 2004, Edmunds.com published a report stating that the average sticker price on a vehicle sold in the United States was $29,746.[8] However, in the US, passenger vehicles are commonly sold at considerable discounts and customers rarely pay the sticker price or MSRP (Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price)"
Can Americans afford both home ownership and $30k cars? --> no
But where is the evidence that $10k cars are out of the reach?
If you look at the unemployment statistics on this site.
http://www.shadowstats.com/
At the moment 17% of people are not able to afford a new car of any type, and are having it hard enough just getting food and clothes.
According to http://www.shadowstats.com/ , there figure says it is most likely 22% and not 17% per government figures.
But at this point, we have not gone into oil decline yet, so unemployment will dramatically increase in the near future.
Those are the people who will not be able to afford any type of new vehicle.
The main problem after the peak in oil, will be shown as the dramatically increasing unemployment.
.
You might have better luck at convincing them to buy an electric car before they loose their better paying jobs.
So far, most people I know, do not even want to read about peak oil.
.
.
No, I mean that Americans can no longer afford to buy a 2500 square foot house and a $41,000 Chevy Volt. If they had to pay $13,000 to convert a 1983 Rabbit to electric power, I think they would opt for another alternative, like taking the bus. If there is a bus.
In the near term, downsizing to a 1500 square foot house and driving the $10K Hyundia to work is a viable option, but I think in the long term Americans will find they would have been better off if they had opted to leave the streetcars and interurban rail systems in place, and forgot about building the freeways.
I'm just visualizing two scenarios: One is Toronto, with the Toronto streetcar system still clanging down the streets, the subways still running with their spiffy new "Rocket" cars, and the bilevel GO Transit trains still bringing in commuters from the suburbs. On the other hand, there's Detroit. Well, you can look at Detroit on Google Earth. Don't go there, it could be a bad experience.
Back when I lived in Calgary and rode the wind-powered light rail trains (I keep tossing that in to annoy the "No, it can't be done so we're all going to die" crowd), being squeezed between a quasi-homeless person and a banker was more or less a daily experience.
Also, there were usually a lot of East Indian floor cleaners, a bunch of Chinese engineers, a few Russian oil experts, and the odd black Jewish Swiss cowboy to round out the experience. There were about 600 of us jammed into a train that seated 180, and they came every 2.5 minutes to keep the crowds on the platforms from getting too thick.
Anyhow, back to the "No, it can't be done so we're all going to die" crowd. Yes it can be done and we're not going to die. So shut up and enjoy the smell of curries, garlic, armpit sweat, and cheap whiskey. You'll get used to it after a while.
Rocky, please try a littler harder not to be so rude and crude. No one is telling you to shut up. This is a forum where the pros and cons of every viewpoint is discussed... hopefully. When you tell your opponent in a debate to "shut up", then all discussion is over. That is not how we do it on this list.
But back to your argument. You did not present one. When oil production starts to decline it will decline a few percentage points every year... forever. Simply saying that you can cram 600 people on a train designed to carry 180 gives us no reason to believe that everything will be okay as oil production begins to decline and continue to decline forever.
Perhaps deep down you realize that and that is the reason you just wish everyone reminding you of that would just shut up.
Ron P.
Ron,
I didn't get the impression that Rocky was actually telling anyone in particular to shut up or that he was trying to be rude, I think he was just telling those that are constantly whining à la Eeyore, to just suck it up and deal with the facts of life as they are, because they really aren't all that bad.
Fred
Fred, let's get one thing straight, telling it like it is is not whining. I can fully understand that people who do not wish to hear what awaits humanity when oil supplies start to decline... forever, would wish those messengers would just shut up. I can fully understand that you do not wish to hear of the terrible fate that awaits humanity when the food supply, provided by cheap and abundant oil, starts to decline. But telling you the simple facts is not whining.
The whining is covering your ears and saying "shut up, shut up, shut up because I don't want to hear the truth."
Oh, almost forgot. The facts of life, circa 2020 to 2040 or so are really that bad. Sorry to inform you but please don't start whining.
Seriously, we can disagree, we can debate, but we should not tell each other to shut up or accuse each other of whining. That adds nothing to the debate. Let's act like adults and not let the discussion to degrade to those levels.
Ron P.
There will be a number of serious consequences to the peaking and decline of global oil production. The above is not one of them.
This is the reason I get annoyed at some of the doom and gloom messages proliferating here. They introduce issues that don't follow from the original problem, and suggest solutions that are not necessary.
The main consequences of oil peaking are a lack of transportation fuels, which means that a lot of the people who currently rely on automobiles for their lives will find their lives will be a lot more difficult.
However, the food production and distribution systems will continue to work and deliver sufficient food to the stores. You may not be able to drive there to pick it up, but if you do manage to get there somehow, it will be waiting for you. Then your only problems are, how do you pay for it, and how do you get it home.
If you had to, you could probably grow enough at home to keep yourself supplied, but I doubt that will be necessary. You can count on the farmers to produce enough, even if they have to run some of it through the tractors to keep them running. You can run a tractor on straight vegetable oil, you know.
Yes, the world did actually exist, and food was actually produced, and people actually travelled, all over their cities/countries/world, before cars and planes.
We did it differently before, and we can do it differently again - those countries that choose to do so first - will win. Those that don't, well, that;s their choice.
Their is a huge price to be paid for the "personal freedom" exemplified by American style suburbia, so high that the suburban dwellers have had to give up "financial freedom" in the process, and, arguably, so has the country itself.
RMG - can you get in touch with me via email? (in my profile)
Cheers,
Paul.
Such nonsense as this is why I keep posting. To believe that things will only be slightly more difficult as oil declines forever is sheer nonsense. Almost everything in our lives was made from oil. Everything in our homes, office or workplace was delivered by oil. Every job in the developed world depends either directly or indirectly on oil.
Oil production hitting a plateau in 2005 eventually caused a deep recession. But oil has not yet started to decline. When it does it will decline forever. The decline will cause a deep depression. Then as the decline continues, and it will, will cause that very deep depression to get worse, and worse, and worse.
Some people, like Rocky above, seem to believe that we will reach a point, a plateau, where things are only slightly worse than they are today. But otherwise, they believe, things will settle out on that "slightly worse plateau" where most people grow some of their own food but supermarkets will still be well stocked and tractors run on vegetable oil. Dream on.
People like Rocky never even attempt to explain where all the jobs will come from when oil, the lifeblood of industry, starts going away... and just keeps on going away...
There will be no plateaus during the decline because the decline will be never ending. It will not stop until all the oil stops flowing. Sometime after that point the plateau will begin. And it will likely last for thousands of years.
Ron P.
Almost everything in our lives was made from oil. Everything in our homes, office or workplace was delivered by oil. Every job in the developed world depends either directly or indirectly on oil.
Ron, this is...highly unrealistic. I sometimes link to the following, rather than quoting it in full, so as not to use much room, but often people don't like to follow links, and therefore don't read it. So, here goes:
People who are pessimistic about dealing with Peak Oil wonder: which processes happen to use oil today, because of historical accident, and which truly have to do so? What part of manufacturing, transportation etc, is specifically reliant only on oil? Can we possible replace oil in all of these applications?
The answer is yes, primarily through electrification of surface transportation and building heating. Aviation and long-haul trucking can be replaced with electric rail and water shipping, and aviation will transition to substitutes.
This will proceed through several phases. The first is greater efficiency. The second phase is hybrid liquid fuel-electric operation, where the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) is dominant - examples include the Prius and, at a lower price point about $20K, the Honda Insight. The 3rd phase is hybrid liquid fuel-electric operation, where electric operation is dominant. Good examples here are diesel locomotives, and the Chevy Volt. The Volt will reduce fuel consumption by close to 90% over the average ICE light vehicle. This phase will last a very long time, with batteries and all-electric range getting larger, and fuel consumption falling.
The last phase is, of course, all electric vehicles, which are are slowly expanding, and being implemented widely (Here's the Tesla, here's the Nissan Leaf). Electric bicycles have been around for a long time, but they're getting better. China is pursuing plug-ins and EV's aggressively. Here's an OEM Ford Ranger EV Pickup, and a EREV light truck (F-150).
Here are electric UPS trucks. Here is a hybrid bus. Here is an electric bus. An electric dump truck.
Trucking: trucks can reduce diesel consumption very quickly with speed reduction and improved aerodynamics - Walmart plans to reduce truck fuel consumption by 40% in the next several years. In the medium term, inter-modal rail can replace trucks fairly quickly. In the longer term, trucks can be electrified - Kenworth Truck Company has introduced a new Kenworth T370 Class 7 diesel-electric hybrid tractor for local haul applications, including beverage, general freight, and grocery distribution. Kenworth, a division of PACCAR, already offers a T270 Class 6 hybrid-electric truck. Volvo is moving toward hybrid heavy vehicles, including garbage trucks and buses. Here is the heaviest-duty EV so far. Here's a recent order for hybrid trucks, and here's expanding production of an eight ton electric delivery truck, with many customers. Here are short range heavy trucks: http://www.balqon.com/ . Here's an EREV UPS truck http://www.evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=23156 . Here's a good general article and discussion of heavy-duty electric vehicles. Diesel will be around for decades for essential uses, and in a transitional period commercial consumption will out-bid personal transportation consumers for fuel.
Mining is a common concern. Much mining, especially underground, has been electric for some time - here's a source of electrical mining equipment. Caterpillar manufactures 200-ton and above mining trucks with both drives. Caterpillar will produce mining trucks for every application—uphill, downhill, flat or extreme conditions — with electric as well as mechanical drive. Here's an electric earth moving truck. Here's an electric mobile strip mining machine, the largest tracked vehicle in the world at 13,500 tons.
Water shipping and aviation can also eliminate oil: see my separate post on that topic.
Here's a terminal tractor that reduces fuel consumption by 60%.
Farm tractors can be electric, or hybrid . Here's a light electric tractor . Farm tractors are a fleet application, so they're not subject to the same limitations as cars and other light road vehicles(i.e., the need for small, light batteries and a charging network). Providing swap-in batteries is much easier and more practical: batteries can be trucked to the field in swappable packs, and swapping would be automated, a la Better Place. Zinc-air fuel cells can just be refuelled. Many sources of power are within the weight parameters to power modern farm tractors, including lithium-ion, Zebra batteries, ZAFC's and the latest lead-acid from Firefly Energy, and others.
It's very likely that an electric combine would be an Extended Range EV: it would have a small onboard generator, like the the Chevy Volt. Such a design would be 50-100% more efficient than a traditional diesel only combine, and would allow extended operation in a weather emergency.
Most farmers are small and suffering, but most farm acreage is being managed by large organizations, and is much more profitable. Those organizations will just raise their food prices, and out-bid personal transportation (commuters and leisure travel) for fuel, so they'll do just fine. As farm commodities are only a small %of the final price of food, it won't make much difference to food prices. The distribution system, too, will outbid personal transportation for fuel. Given that overall liquid fuel supplies are likely to only decline 20% in the next 20 years, that gives plenty of time for a transition.
Finally, diesel farm tractors can run on vegetable oil, with minor modifications. Ultimately, farmers are net energy exporters (whether it's food, oil or ethanol), and will actually do better in an environment of energy scarcity.
Iron smelting currently uses a lot of coal, which isn't oil, but is a fossil fuel which we'd like to eliminate. Iron used to be made with charcoal, and iron oxide can be reduced with hydrogen from any source. Most of the steel used in the USA is reclaimed from scrap (and when industries mature, essentially all of their steel can be recycled) ; all it takes is an electric furnace to re-melt it, and the electricity can come from anything.
The US Navy plans to go reduce it's 50,000 vehicle fleet's oil consumption by 50% by 2015. They plan by 2020 to produce at least half of its shore-based energy requirements on its bases from alternative sources ( solar, wind, ocean, or geothermal sources - they're already doing this at China Lake, where on-base systems generate 20 times the load of the base), and it's overall fossil fuel consumption by 50% by 2020 with EVs and biofuel.
Some question the stability of the electrical grid, in an environment of expensive fuel. Utilities like the idea of "eating their own cooking". Here's an electric utility boom lift. Here's a consortium of utilities considering a bulk purchase of plug-ins (and a good article). Here's an individual utility buying electric cars. Similarly, utilities are buying hybrid bucket trucks and digger derricks. Here's a large commitment by two major utilities .
Even hydrogen fuel cells could be used, though they're not likely to be cost-competitive soon with the alternatives. PV roofs certainly could be used to extend battery life, though the cost effectiveness of that will depend on how much of the year the tractor is in the field. Electric drive trains are likely to be much more cost-effective than liquid fuels, but it should be noted that locally produced bio-fuels would certainly work. Also, fuels synthesized from renewable electricity, seawater and atmospheric CO2 would certainly work, though it would be rather more expensive than any of the above.
Any and all of these is several orders of magnitude cheaper and more powerful than animal-pulled equipment. One sees occasionally the idea that we'll go back to horses or mules - this is entirely unrealistic.
Here's a good quote from the Governor of Michigan: "For automakers, replacing the internal-combustion engine with an electric powertrain is both revolutionary and daunting. In a world where economic Darwinism threatens slow adapters with extinction, U.S. automakers know that they can either lead this historic transformation or become history themselves. Even today, as they engage in a struggle to survive, the Big Three are leading the way: General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are scheduled to introduce electrified vehicles next year."
France is planning for a market share for EV's of 7% by 2015, rising to 27% in 2025.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/10/france-20091002.html#more
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What if our current system is less like a train running out of power, where it will just slow down and stop, and more like a jetliner running out of power, energy which it crucially needs to have a safe landing? Do we really have the resources to build out an alternate energy infrastructure?
Well, at least in the US, there's so much energy used for things with very marginal value that we have a very big cushion. We have an enormous surplus of energy (used for single-commuter SUVs, for example) , so we have quite a lot of flexibility.
EVs don't require significantly more energy than ICEs to manufacture. Wind turbines have a very high E-ROI.
Even if PO reduces the energy we have available, we currently have such a large surplus that we have plenty of leeway to reduce consumption in some places to free up the oil needed for such an investment.
Isn't this a tricky transition, with fragile balances between politics, communications, labor, logistics, public-calm, etc?
It's true - a transition away from oil will put stress on a lot of institutions. But, isn't it good to know that there technical solutions?
Where will the needed electricity come from?
From wind, mostly. Wind has a very high E-ROI, and is plentiful. Solar, nuclear, geothermal, etc will also be important. Coal is extremely abundant, but we have to hope that we don't use it.
Aren't we going to have to live within the limits of our environment?
Sure. Fortunately, energy isn't one of those limits. I'd say that climate change and species extinctions are much larger problems.
That is not the issue that bothers us pessimists.
Instead, it is the invested-in infra-structure for our oil-based life style and what it will take to tear down the old infra structure and replace it with an entirely different one. Kunstler calls it the Cluster-f**k.
BTW, thanks for all those good and useful hyperlinks !
Your welcome!
Now, as to infrastructure.
Yes, we'll have to toss out some ICE trucks and cars before the end of their natural lifetime. On the other hand, we do that all of the time: the average US car/SUV/pickup gets 50% of it's lifetime mileage by the time it's 7 years old. They could last 25+ years, if we wanted them to, but we throw them away. The premature retirement of commercial trucks will hurt investors in some trucking companies, but that's a sunk cost.
The real question is, can we afford to build new infrastructure, and the answer is clearly yes: new rail tracks and rolling stock aren't that expensive, and EVs are no more expensive than ICEs.
We won't have to toss out housing - Kunstler is just wrong, completely wrong. A Nissan Leaf will allow a 50 mile commute, or 100 miles with workplace charging.
EVs can be built with the same factories - for instance, the Volt shares a factory with 2 other cars. They drive on the same roads.
Nick, I just want to say thank you for a spectacular post. I am really enjoying TOD.
You're very welcome!
Every job in the developed world depends either directly or indirectly on oil.
Now that is true nonsense. When I worked as a business analyst developing software for the oil and gas industry, it was perfectly obvious to me that my job depended indirectly on oil. But to say that the jobs of the software developers at Microsoft or the iPhone developers at Apple depend on oil is ridiculous.
As a business analyst working for oil companies, it was perfectly obvious that their customers used oil just because it was the cheapest and/or most convenient alternative. If it ceased to be the best alternative, the customers would switch. Many industries use what they call "burner-tip switching", that can switch between fuel oil and natural gas at the flick of a switch. Given the relative prices of oil and gas at the moment, I suspect all the switches are at the "Gas" position now. Electricity and coal are other options, and they require a bit more investment, but if the price of both oil and gas went high enough, you would see a lot of companies switching to them.
Diesel-electric locomotives are really just electric locomotives with their own portable diesel generators (an engineer once explained this to me in some detail). Most North American railroads use diesel fuel, most European ones use electricity. However, if the price of diesel goes sufficiently higher than that of electricity, you're going to see a lot of railroad crews in North America out stringing wires over the tracks, and a lot of shops ripping the diesel engines out of those locomotives, replacing them with power electronics.
Shippers tended to use trucks in the last half century because, given the low price of diesel fuel, trucks were cheaper than trains. However with the current high price of diesel, the railroads are doing really, really well because of their vastly superior fuel economy. And as I say, if the price of diesel goes too high, you will see the railroads busy stringing electric wires over the tracks.
Even farmers have a lot more flexibility than you think. Tractors normally run on diesel fuel, but that is just because it has been cheap. I have seen tractors running on propane because the farmers could get propane cheaper than diesel, and if propane is too expensive, it is fairly easy for a farmer to buy a natural gas compressor and run his tractors on compressed natural gas. Getting a gas pipeline into the farm is more difficult but generally possible. However, it is also possible to buy kits to convert diesel tractors to run on straight vegetable oil, and if the price of both oil and gas are high, these kits are likely to start flying off the shelves at farm supply dealerships everywhere.
Probably the worst positioned consumers of oil are the commuters in American cities. The US has basically burned all its bridges since WWII - abandoned almost all of its streetcar systems, all of its interurban rail systems, and built freeways everywhere. The older cities were highly walkable, but it in the new car-only suburbs is not possible to walk to anything anymore, and the bus service ranges from little to none.
I never said anything of the sort, and I don't believe that is true. I think the true picture is that we are at the peak of something resembling a classic Hubble curve. It just looks like a plateau now because we haven't reached the part where the slope starts to get steep.
The US has had lots of warning of impending trouble since its own oil production peaked 40 years ago. It has not taken advantage of it to restructure its society for the upcoming era of declining global oil production. Its citizens are already suffering for the lack of forward planning, and they will suffer even more for it in the near future because the transition will be too fast for them.
But don't say that everybody's job depends on oil, because they don't. There are lots of jobs that are relatively independent of oil. And don't say that it is the entire developed world that is in crisis. I'm in Canada, none of our banks have gone bankrupt, home foreclosures are at record low levels, and the entire drop in economic activity is due to reduced sales to the US. Sales to China and India are doing really well, and some of my friends and relatives are now working for Chinese and Indian owned companies. (Australia is in a similar position to Canada.)
It helps that Canada didn't assume that the era of cheap oil would last forever. It didn't build nearly as many freeways and didn't commit itself totally to the automobile - public transit ridership is 2 or 3 times higher than in the US. The billions of dollars it spent developing the oil sands is really turning out well, too. For Canada, peak oil is more of a transition phase than a crisis.
KAPOW!
Yes, that's true, I wasn't telling anyone in particular to shut up. I was just pointing out that they may have to resort to solutions that they may not like, e.g. taking public transit. And, there is the possibility that some of their fellow passengers may be a bit odoriferous (based on my experience). It really bothers some people, but nobody every died from garlic breath.
If they don't have public transit, now would be a good time to start agitating for it, because once the crunch hits, their local governments may not have the money to put it in place. In fact, now may be a bit too late.
And even if they do get public transit, they may have to travel with 600 other passengers on a train that seats 180 (based on my experience) - but that may be their best case solution. Worst case may be living in a cardboard box and eating weeds because there's no public transit and they can't buy an electric car.
Electric cars are one of the solutions I really would not count on. Everything I see suggests that it is a solution that will not be implemented on any useful scale. Economics are unfavorable, politics won't help. Looks good, won't happen.
sarcasm
I really can't wait until we reach that "slightly worse plateau" and all these solutions kick in that will keep us on that plateau forever.
/sarcasm
Ron P.
Hi Fred,
I hope you "got" that my reply to your comment up-thread was another one of my feeble attempts at tongue-in-the-cheek humor. (ie the Tung Oil to prevent tongue chaffing). Geez, how did this turn into so many comments?
All joking aside, I don't think that the current human inhabitants of the center portion of the North American continent have any kind of god-given right to anything (issues of supernatural beings aside). In the long view, it’s a pretty marginal discussion to debate how much crowding, on a train, a person will accept. It is interesting to note that the average American simply assumes that they would never have to face the kind of crowding that is a fact of daily life with trains in India – somehow, our presence on this continent seems to guarantee perpetual privileges unavailable to many other people on the planet.
We have a car (truck-bus-train) culture purely as a result of exploiting a very finite set of resources. Like drunken sailors breaking into the captain’s liquor cabinet, unless we jump ship, we face some unpleasant consequences in the morning. Once the resource “cabinet” starts to dry up, it remains to be seen if the car culture can endure – I suspect not.
It is far from certain that the humans can use any combination of technologies, efficiencies, and behaviors to mitigate a dramatic decline in the quality of life for most “developed” countries. This does not mean such mitigation is not possible – the real question is how likely is it that an effective combination will be acted upon soon enough to avoid a very unpleasant sequence of events (which could involve a multitude of scenarios).
I truly admire Nick’s creativity, energy and tenacity! But, I have major reservations about his optimism:
- His assumption that our planet could support 20B people and therefore human population reduction is not high on his priority list – he assumes that humane strategies to reduce population is too fraught with problems to have a positive ROI. I think all other solutions are useless without this being the highest priority.
- I believe the rate of change (progress on his recommended technologies, efficiencies, and behaviors) is far too slow to achieve his vision. This is directly related to denial and under appreciation of the problems. Fueling this denial is systemic delusion (religion, politics, economics, etc) and disinformation from all the powerful entities that profit from BAU. It would take a war-footing to make the transition Nick advocates – collectively, we now act like this transition is just a fuzzy option that needs more work. I would like to see a very powerful and militant movement for radical change – something that could unite all the so-called “green” movements that are all over the map.
- Nick has said that he views climate change and species extinction as more difficult issues for human welfare than oil depletion. Kind of reminds me of that old saying: “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play”. This is a package deal that requires an integrated approach. Oil depletion is one component along with other fossil fuels, mineral depletion, air pollution, water shortage/pollution, top soil loss, ocean damage, deforestation, and species extinction – a whole host of impacts on the biosphere that supports the existence of nearly 7B humans. There is a serious argument to suggest that we are currently in “overshoot” and a “bottleneck” is coming that will impose harsh remedies as the biosphere makes adjustments to the new realities of its makeup. It has done it before. I suggest reading http://www.amazon.com/Under-Green-Sky-Warming-Extinctions/dp/0061137928/...
-
Yeah, I even posted a reply but it somehow vanished into the internet >;^)
Since you mention Nick's optimistic vision of the Nissan Leaf version of BAU I have to admit every time I hear him mention how affordable these vehicles are, I cringe, precisely because I've actually met many of the poor Americans who can't now, nor will they ever be able to afford such pie in the sky amenities. That train has left the station... (no pun intended).
If I had one wish granted to me I'd like to be see people who think like Nick live for a year in someplace like Bangladesh. OK, maybe I'd settle for them living someplace in western Europe...
The only EVs I can imagine being a part most people's near future are electric bikes and my idea of the Rolls Royce of such vehicles would be an electric velomobile.
Since I work with solar and things like lithium ion batteries perhaps my perspective isn't as rose colored as his, that and the fact that I've lived in other cultures around the world might also have something to do with it.
I agree - the poor will suffer disproportionately due to PO. OTOH, the middle class of the world consumes far more oil than the poor, and if the middle class switches away from oil, that will free more for the poor who are making do with old ICE vehicles.
A Leaf is far less expensive to buy and own than the average new car. The median point for cars on the road is 7 years old, so it won't take that long for the majority of people to be able to have an EV.
I truly admire Nick’s creativity, energy and tenacity!
Thanks! I just try to call it as I see it...
- His assumption that our planet could support 20B people
That was in the context of farming. My point: we could feed our current population with 25% of our current agricultural output with little more than changes in our diet: a reduction in calories; vegetarianism; and elimination of coca, coffee, and other non-food non-necessities. That means we're not looking at a problem of carrying capacity. We're looking at economics, development, and public policy. If people starve, it won't be something forced on the world by resource limits, it will be due to the world's collective choices.
and therefore human population reduction is not high on his priority list – he assumes that humane strategies to reduce population is too fraught with problems to have a positive ROI. I think all other solutions are useless without this being the highest priority.
Is it futile to try to influence population growth?
No, I just think it's the wrong paradigm with which to approach resource issues. Our impacts on the environment, including CO2, species extinction, and resource consumption (especially FF consumption), are much, much easier and faster to change than population.
Family planning is certainly a good idea, especially because the most effective policies are the humane thing to do: there are many, many families kept in poverty by lack of contraception and education. We don't have to coerce anyone to limit their family size: as a practical matter, everyone will do that with the proper help.
But, it's not going to have a big impact in the next 20 years on climate change, PO, or other things like that.
Further, I think our current way of life is unsustainable whether our population is 500M or 10B (what was the population of Australia or N. America when all of the large mammals were extinguished 10k years ago; what was the population of the US when the passenger pigeon was extinguished?), while a sustainable lifestyle could be achieved with either 500M or 10B.
Over-population growth has little to do with food availability.
More food in the world won't help local poverty. Malnutrition in the world has very little relation to overall production. There are many, many more people who are obese in the world, than those who are starving. In fact, overweight causes more health problems in the world than malnutrition.
We don't have an overall shortage of food, we have a distribution problem, due to national economic poverty, etc. Having fewer people (or more food) in the world won't change that.
It's worth noting that most of the world is dealing with population. China deserves credit for facing this issue. Most of the world is at or very near replacement fertility levels. My understanding is that the demographic transition is already well under way in most of the world. Mexico, for instance, has reached fertility levels of just above replacement, and fertility appears to be continuing to decline. My understanding is that this the case for the great majority of S America and Asia. AFAIK, the transition has not yet happened in large parts of Africa due to obvious poverty.
I'd like to see better policies in the US, including elimination of subsidies for children, much better contraception/family planning, etc., etc. I'd like to see much better policies towards family planning in other countries, especially with regard to the "gag rule".
Still, these things are emotionally difficult for many people, and I think the priority for our limited resources for economic/social change have to go more towards eliminating our environmental per-capita impact, rather than our number of "capita".
Put it this way: it would be a truly radical change to eliminate all births for the next 20 years, and yet it would only reduce world population by perhaps 20%. OTOH, we could reduce our FF consumption by 100% with the same level of commitment.
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I believe the rate of change (progress on his recommended technologies, efficiencies, and behaviors) is far too slow to achieve his vision.
Well, those changes are almost inevitable, it's really a question of how much pain we go through in the transition to it. I think the reality will be less than ideal, but far better than TEOTWAWKI.
This is a package deal that requires an integrated approach. Oil depletion is one component
I've looked at the details of the quantitative support for several models for a human "environmental footprint". The calculations I've seen for human environmental footprint are heavily weighted towards energy: PO and climate change in particular. Fix our energy problems, which is eminently doable, and we fix most of the resource consumption, and reduce our footprint dramatically.
There is a serious argument to suggest that we are currently in “overshoot” and a “bottleneck” is coming that will impose harsh remedies as the biosphere makes adjustments to the new realities of its makeup.
Again, that overshoot is based on our "footprint". If you've seen something that quantifies the other impacts you mention in terms of carrying capacity, I'd be interested to see it. I agree that things like species extinction are important and carry serious risks, and that we should do something about them ASAP. Nevertheless, their impact will is still highly speculative, and I would suggest that speculations that we have already "gone over the waterfall" are not evidence-based, and they're counterproductive: they damage credibility and give ammunition to deniers.
Nick,
I just posted a link here:
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/6978#comment-734586
This PDF doesn't provide supporting detail, but it's clear that AGW is a large component. I think I looked at this or a very similar study previously: the calculations were heavily weighted towards energy: PO and climate change in particular. Again, fix our energy problems, which is eminently doable, and we fix most of the resource consumption, and reduce our footprint dramatically.
Hi Nick,
I wish I had the time to debate each of your arguments (I do appreciate the thought you put into your comments) but I can only hit a few points:
It is probably true in the sense of dividing available calories of food by global population. It is also true that many millions of people are starving or under-nourished with scant evidence that any redistribution plan is going to address that in the foreseeable future. Proper nutrition is also more than just calorie supply - fresh fruits and veggies involve more complicated logistics. It is also possible that today's large scale agri-business practices are not sustainable as soil, water and ecosystem "services" become degraded. As has been discussed here before, small scale, truly sustainable, organic style of food production would have great difficulty feeding 9B people.
However, my concern is not just food availability for humans. I'm concerned about balance of nature that has a good chance of providing a rich and rewarding environment for generations to come (which includes good coffee and wine). I simply don't understand how any kind of technology is going enable this for 7 to 10B people.
I do agree with most of your population related comments and suggestions with 2 exceptions:
- I think the "better policies" you mention need very proactive support - I hope you agree and will send a little money (as I do) to an excellent organization like Population Connection.
- I don't agree with your fertility comments and the transition being underway. I'm sure you have seen my comments about this before. Bottom line is that fertility on a country by country basis is just one component of the "growth" problem. The fact is that we are headed for 9+ billion on the planet and I still think this is a problem. And, there are scenarios that might cause fertility rates to rise again.
Don't want to belabor this (we've been here before) but the degree of "pain" will be directly related to how soon we (collectively) honestly recognize the problems, set goals, and implement useful strategies. I see only marginal progress in this regard. And yes, I think that TWAWKI in terms of BAU will end one way or the other. And yes, it could even be a much better world - but, I'm not going to hold my breath for this to happen.
I read your comments carefully and value them. However, I remain unconvinced that your total vision will ever materialize. I wish I had the time to itemize every reference to support this position - but I don't. The bottom line for me (and, I suspect many other regulars) is that we bring to bear life experiences and the result of doing a lot of reading. Currently, I'm reading "Storms of My Grand Children". I realize that this probably does not meet your standard for being "evidenced based". But, many highly credible authors have presented a mountain of scientific evidence that persuade me to believe that our best hope is to address issues of population, consumption, etc without undo reliance on technological "fixes"; but rather on political policies that "curtail" (as in Plan C) our impacts on the biosphere.
I suspect that we would agree on the great majority of these policies - but, with a few notable exceptions.
Also, it seems to me that your basic goal is solve the energy problem. If I were setting goals for the planet, my first two would be to achieve, by the end of the century, a human population of about 3B and GHG equivalents of about 350 ppm http://www.350.org/. I think achieving these 2 basic goals would resolve many other issues.
, small scale, truly sustainable, organic style of food production would have great difficulty feeding 9B people.
That's an important question. Some people I've read, including Bill McKibben, disagree. Here's what he said:
"What about conventional versus organic? Could we take away the fossil fuel which means, most of all, the synthetic fertilizer), put people back on the land in larger numbers, and have enough for dinner? The proponents of conventional agriculture scoff at the idea... However, organic farming techniques have steadily improved in recent decades, especially in their use of cover crops, or "green manures," which enrich the soil without needing animal waste.
The best data come from an English agronomist named Jules Pretty, who has studied two hundred "sustainable agriculture" projects in fifty-two countries around the world. They might not pass the U.S. standards for organic certification, but they're all low-input, using far less energy and chemicals than industrialized farming. "We calculate that almost nine million farmers were using sustainable practices on about 29 million hectares, more than 98 percent of which emerged in the past decade," he noted in 2002. "We found that sustainable agriculture has led to an average 93 percent increase in per hectare food production."
These were not tiny, isolated demonstration farms; Pretty studied fourteen projects where 146,000 farmers were raising potato, sweet potato, and cassava, and he found that practices like cover-cropping and fighting pests with natural adversaries had increased production 150 percent, to seventeen tons per household. With 4.5 million grain farmers, average yields rose 73 percent.60 When Indonesian rice farmers switched away from pesticides, he found, their yields stayed the same but their costs fell sharply."
McKibben Deep Economy p. 68, 2007 paperback .
I'm concerned about balance of nature that has a good chance of providing a rich and rewarding environment for generations to come
I'm not sure what you mean. Are you thinking of destruction of species habitat? If so, I agree. Have you seen a good discussion of what could or should be done in this regard? I'd be interested in seeing creative thinking - I suspect that this could be addressed in ways that allow humans and other species to co-exist, and that this hasn't been done so far simply because it was a very low priority.
The bottom line for me (and, I suspect many other regulars) is that we bring to bear life experiences and the result of doing a lot of reading.
I've found that this kind of intuition is often deeply mistaken. We really have to insist on good quantitative evidence, where possible.
There are many examples. For instance, a common idea is that the US has hollowed out it's manufacturing, sending all of it to China or Mexico. In fact, US manufacturing is 2.5x larger than it was 30 years ago. Why is "common sense" so off? Because US manufacturing employment has indeed crashed, due to fast labor productivity increases.
Another example: people often think that US teen pregnancy rates are currently historically high and rising. In fact, US US teen pregnancy rates are at an historic low (though they're still higher than other countries). Why the confusion? I think it's due to low rates of teen marriage, which is related, but different.
There are many other examples.
without undo reliance on technological "fixes"; but rather on political policies that "curtail" (as in Plan C) our impacts on the biosphere.
This is precisely what I would consider the wrong approach. Why "curtail" driving, when what we want to do is reduce oil & FF consumption? Why not buy an EV instead (which eliminates oil, and supports wind power), and get what we want with no sacrifice in other things we want?
goals for the planet...GHG equivalents of about 350 ppm
Actually, I'd like to see GHG lower than that.
a human population of about 3B
If, say, the world were to gradually reduce fertility levels over the next 20 years to a "one-child" level, what population would we get by 2100?
Hi Nick,
Once again short on time (I suspect you type much faster than I do!) but I'll try to reply to a couple of key points:
Yes, yes, of course - I completely agree that intuition, common sense, gut feel, etc are absolutely no substitute for scientific methods. I did not articulate my point very well in this regard. What I was trying to says is that I try to read books from authors that best adhere to scientific methods. From there, I try to form opinions - just as I use your arguments to help inform opinions. I don't claim to be a scientific expert in any area - I just try to be a good student. I believe my basic worldview comes from following good science.
For example, I recently read http://www.amazon.com/Weather-Makers-Changing-Climate-Means/dp/080214292... by Tim Flannery. As one reviewer said:
I also recently read http://www.amazon.com/Dominant-Animal-Human-Evolution-Environment/dp/159... and http://www.amazon.com/Six-Degrees-Future-Hotter-Planet/dp/1426203853/ref...
However, I don't totally discount my own life experiences. For example working in India or Israel or bicycle touring alone in Ireland and France. Or, growing up in Northern Minnesota. I think we all weave our personal history into our worldview.
I'm unconvinced that this will scale for 7B or more people - I just don't see the "put the people back on the land" part.
Approx population of metro areas:
NY Metro Area - 19 Million
LA Metro Area - 13 Million
Washington-Baltimore - 7 million
Chicago Metro Area - 10 Million
Mumbai Metro Area - 18 Million
New Delhi - 15 million
Mexico City Metro Area - 22 million
San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose - 7 million
Tokyo, Japan - 35 million
Sao Paulo, Brazil - 18 million
Moscow- 10 Million
Paris - 10 Million
Soul - 10 Million
We just fundamentally disagree on this issue. Long discussion - but I don't "want" the current car culture paradigm. I can envision a much better quality of life with a much different transportation paradigm (although I think cheap Neighborhood EVs are a good idea).
I used 350 ppm because there is an established organization promoting this - lower would be fine with me.
This is a good research question for which I can only venture a WAG. First we need some concepts and data:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth
Basic data: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html
Nice presentation: http://chartsbin.com/view/xr6
Nice meter: http://www.poodwaddle.com/clocks2.htm
We can see that the US growth rate is about 1% and using an Excel SS we can easily run this out 50 yrs and see that a continued 1% growth rate would raise US population from approx 3M to 5M.
Using this same logic in reverse and assuming a 1% decline (which currently only a few countries approach) for the next 90 years, we can see that global population would decline to around 3B.
Obviously, this does not really answer your question, but it shows what the old power of compounding math can accomplish over time: just a 1% decline each year would get us to a very good population number by the end of the century.
I agree that AGW is a very large problem. I also agree we're changing our world in a lot of ways, including tragic species extinctions.
We need to ask: what are the direct effects on humanity? It seems to me that food production is the main area of concern.
As best I can tell the world could sharply increase ag output under existing conditions. Further, it looks like we could feed our current population with 25% of our current ag output. So, our ability to produce food would have to decline by something like 80% or more to make it impossible to feed a population roughly the current size.
I'm unconvinced that this will scale for 7B or more people - I just don't see the "put the people back on the land" part. Approx population of metro areas:
He's not talking about everyone going back to the farm, or raising their own food. On page 67 he says: "The small farm grows more food per acre, but only because it uses more people per acre—low-input farming in Great Britain employs twice as many people per acre, according to a 2005 study (James Morrison, Rachel Hine, and Jules Pretty, "Survey and Analysis of Labour on Organic Farmers in the UK and Republic of Ireland," International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability, vol. 3, no. 1 (2005).)"
So, twice the food, twice the labor: no more labor per unit of food. Also, half the land cost, and sharply reduced FF costs.What's not to like?
I don't "want" the current car culture paradigm. I can envision a much better quality of life with a much different transportation paradigm (although I think cheap Neighborhood EVs are a good idea).
Oh, we mostly agree. I live in a dense city, use electric rail for most of my travel, and drive only about 2k miles per year. Still, thinking that's a better idea is very different from thinking we'll be forced into it. That was just an example of how reducing our consumption/environmental foot print makes more sense than a "hair-shirt" curtailment approach.
Let me stress that I'm not suggesting the "delayer" approach of R&D and no serious effort. I'm suggesting that we can and should reduce our footprint right now.
just a 1% decline each year would get us to a very good population number by the end of the century.
Sure. But...
1)We still have to deal with the lag effects of the demographic transition: if death rates are low enough, absolute pop growth will continue for a long time even with a one-child policy. and,
2) We don't have 90 years to fix our environmental footprint. 20-40 years is what's needed.
Again, imagine the level of social commitment required to get to a one-child policy for the whole world in 20 years? Consider that such a path would probably only reduce population by 10% vs what it would have been otherwise at that 20 year mark.
The same level of commitment could reduce FF by 95% in the same time.
3)BAU is unsustainable at almost any pop level.
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Again, I'm not arguing against an aggressive pop planning policy. I fully support that, both to help all of the unfortunate families with unwanted children, and to provide all of the indirect benefits you discuss. But, pop planning just isn't a primary solution.
RockyMtnGuy: I love public transportation, for its social aspects. I do not like extravagance and waste though. I was a NRTA (Nantucket) bus driver for the first three years of its operation, and the experiences were good. I also drove for the CCRTA (Cape Cod). After reading your post I realized how much I loved the systems, socially speaking. Good public transit, we need, and should have. And we Can Do. But it takes some brain work. I did a redesign of Nantucket's bus route system, and it was better, it had a 20% better population density coverage than the existing system designed by the Nantucket Board of Selectmen, so they loved their system. Part of my re-design was a concept for having smart cards and interfacing the island's 70 cabs into the bus service. I had provisions for zip cars, as a part of the system, and bicycles, boats, and planes.
The new modular monorail systems I see on the internet hold promise, but I prefer my own designs, which use dual purposed energy utility pipes as the monorail structural members, killing 3 birds with one stone. Peace. www.environmentalfisherman.com
Anyhow, back to the "No, it can't be done so we're all going to die" crowd. Yes it can be done and we're not going to die. So shut up and enjoy
god stars and atta boys all around for mass transit and those who point out that using it sure doesn't require people to die just because they can't drive a hummer to work.
On an unrelated note, Calgary is a great town and I was there a month ago and wish I could stay. Again. Lived and worked in the area during the 90's.
What work? That is the one point that all these "pie in the sky" bicycle-mass transit just can't seem to ever understand. The problem will not be getting to work because for an ever growing percentage of the population, there will be no work.
Because oil production has not grown in almost six years the unemployment rate is now about 17 percent if you count those who are so discouraged that they have quit looking. When the oil supply starts to drop, that unemployment percentage will start to rise. And as the oil supply drops even further, and it will, that unemployment percentage will start to rise. Then as the oil supply drops even further, and it will....
Ron P.
When the oil supply starts to drop, that unemployment percentage will start to rise.
You assume causality. I certainly do not.
Darwinian, I googled some world oil production charts for the last few decades and a chart of US unemployment configured for the same period, and didn't see the consistent correlation that you imply. There have been periods when unemployment dropped as production dropped, or rose as production rose.
Further, you assert that the causality is one way, overlooking that recession depresses production; I mean what's the point of producing more oil if folks can't afford to buy it? Your argument isn't useful because it is too simplistic.
You do not understand the way the economy works.
As Saudi Arabia reduces their supply of oil, they push the price higher. The reason that people cant afford to buy the oil, is because they reduced the supply of oil. , pushing the price up.
If they reduced the supply so much further, that oil reached $900 dollars / barrel, many many more people can not afford to buy it.
So you then say
"what's the point of producing more oil if folks can't afford to buy it?"
.
It will not be long before there is no need to reduce the supply of oil to keep the price higher.
Depletion is going to reduce the supply of oil again, in the near future , and push the oil price up to another price spike.
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And you apparently don't know how to read. I was describing behavior of consumers in a recession. Your response is about an imaginary embargo on some other planet where the Saudis own all the oil.
If you want to read something about Saudi Arabia and oil prices on this planet, this is a nice article:
http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htm
Sorry to have annoyed you. I have heard that statement so much that it has irritated me.
It does not matter what the price of oil is, It is not good to say
"what's the point of producing more oil if folks can't afford to buy it?"
The point applies whether oil is 5/barrel or 900/ barrel or anything in between.
When there is a recession, it just means that people can't afford pay as much as other times.
.
Probably what is meant, and would be better, is to say :
"what's the point of producing more oil if folks can't afford to pay me the minimum amount of money that I want for my oil?"
.
.
And of course, the minimum that I would want, is more then it cost me to produce.
.
What work? That is the one point that all these "pie in the sky" bicycle-mass transit just can't seem to ever understand.
In what sense are bicycles and mass transit are "pie in the sky"? If the oil supply falls, these may be your only options. I used them for decades, and they seemed to me to be a lot more practical than driving to work. Certainly they were less expensive than driving.
However, you have to have the infrastructure in place to make them work. Early in my career I got busy and helped campaign for the city to build more bicycle paths and more rapid transit. The city fell right in line and built the biggest bicycle path system and the most successful light rail transit system in North America. Of course, I wasn't alone in campaigning for this, but the key rule is: Always lead from the front. It's a waste of time pushing from the rear, you have to get out in front of the crowd and show them which way to go.
Other people in other cities campaigned for more freeways and more parking, and that's what they got. They were unable to see that the light at the end of the tunnel was illuminating a "Dead End" sign. Freeways and parking are a bad, bad choice in the post-peak oil world. Bicycles and electric trains are a better way to go. Electric cars, sadly, will probably be only for the rich and frivolous.
You should not overgeneralize on what is going to happen. When oil supply starts to drop (and it already has in case you haven't noticed), certain jobs will become obsolete - automobile manufacturing leaps to mind as a really good industry not to be in. However, other jobs will be unaffected - software development leaps to mind, or iPhone designer for Apple. And some jobs will experience growth - driving a 400-ton truck in a Canadian oil sands mine or an Australian coal mine are examples.
You just need to be in an occupation and a location where jobs will grow, not shrink. You are probably not there now, so you might want to consider a career move. The average person changes jobs and vocations numerous times in their career, so it pays to be flexible. And keep a couple of years' income in the bank because there are often long flat spots between jobs.
Sounds pretty reasonable.
One quibble: a Nissan Leaf has the same lifecycle cost as a Toyota Corolla (which is $10K cheaper and gets 40% better MPG than the average US car). see http://energyfaq.blogspot.com/2010/10/are-electric-vehicles-cost-effecti...
I agree that number of cars is going to drop significantly. But its not going to be people switching to transit. Refer to Termoils comment above. Full employment is not coming back.
the new normal is going to be 20%, even 30% unemployment. All these people are going to be staying home, or staying at relative's home and playing video games. Or maybe living in tent cities. But they arent going to be driving SUVs; and they arent going to be commuting on public transit. Maybe lots of people will have informal jobs, maybe we will be like the third world with lots of scooters, mini-cars, bicycles, rickshaws, and electric-bikes.
But we arent gonna have electric cars and electric suvs and CNG escalades. And we arent gonna have significnat new transit systems. THE US is broke and peak-oil will further marganlize our currency. We arent building much of anything. We are going to the party with what we, have and alot of us are going to be staying home, if we are lucky enough to have a home.
Totally agree with you, especially on the car example, Smil reasoning seems to be : "Electric cars cannot provide the same functions and performances as today's ICE ones at the same price, therefore they will not exist", but at the same time he more or less integrates the peak oil aspect, it's just that he doesn't really integrates it. In any case the "car concept" will be very different from what it is today, be it through much less today's style ICE cars per capita, or by way downsized ICE or electric vehicules.
How many 'millions/billions' of gallons of oil every year have been burned toting around mandated safety equipment. I ride a motorcycle part of the year and take a calculated risk that I might be injured or killed. My safety is dependant on the gear I wear on my body. I bypass the crap the government mandates for me and my safety that 'they' have built into my automobile.
We could easily shed 500 to 1000 lbs in safety equipment and still keep the built in collapsing body made to keep the cabin safe and take acceptable losses. Face it, we aren't going to save 'em all anyway. In addition if we were to work carbon fiber into the 'safety cage' and the rest of the construction we would lighten the vehicles considerably and increase the safe zone of the vehicle. Composite materials would increase the cost of the vehicles, but would also increase the MPG and the durability so you wouldn't have to replace the damned things every 150,000 miles. By shedding 1000 lbs or more in the designs you would make alternate fuels mixed with electric drives much more feasible. Mix that with a huge increase in the use of public transportation in urban/suburban areas and we stretch out the peak oil plateau quite a bit longer. As we saw with the last spike in oil prices, people will go to public transportation willingly when private transportation costs get too high. I live next to a park and ride parking lot and the number of cars parked there quadrupled during the spike. It is still doubled or more that of pre-spike times. The only reason I haven't joined them is my CNG car is 1/2 the cost of using the 'bus' and I get to work in 1/2 the time.
Will it any of this happen? Only if there is a slow decline, so no, I'm just dreaming....
Yes, and we went exactly in the reverse direction with cars, went through the site of a guy lately, Michel Kieffer, who he is trying to formalize this by calling it the "spiral coefficient" or "mass amplification coefficient", that is :
- take a car from generation n
- add 100 kg of safety or comfort equipments for generation n+1
- if you want the n+1 car to have the same performances as n, you need slightly more power (heavier engine), slightly stronger body, slightly bigger tires, etc, so you end up with a car which isn't 100kg heavier but 100kg x Cs (spiral coefficient) heavier.
As a "theoretical" evaluation of Cs would be too difficult, he then goes through evaluation by looking at actual generations of cars through the years, and ends up with a Cs around 2, that is 100kg of added equipments -> 200kg heavier next generation car.
Below the doc (but in French) :
http://www.hkw-aero.fr/pdf/coefficient_spirale.pdf
All his docs are quite well done, concise with concrete key data, done as short comic strips, maybe he could publish some translated ones here (don't know him)
One thing is that all these added equipments are good for the auto industry, especially in developed markets : you end up with more expensive cars, bigger industry and often higher margins on them.
Other docs :
2 litres per 100km car :
http://www.hkw-aero.fr/pdf/voiture_2_litres.pdf
car of the future 1 and 2 :
http://www.hkw-aero.fr/pdf/voiture_du_futur_1.pdf
http://www.hkw-aero.fr/pdf/voiture_du_futur_2.pdf
on planes :
http://www.hkw-aero.fr/pdf/avions_et_co2.pdf
Also an analysis of the prius which shows that if instead of adding the hybrid part including getting back the braking energy, you make it lighter for equivalent performances, the efficiency isn't 42% higher as communicated but 4.7% compared to diesel and 25% to gas (and that is valid only in city traffic, tends to 0 on freeways)
http://www.hkw-aero.fr/pdf/hybrides.pdf
complete list :
http://www.hkw-aero.fr/energies.html
Goodmaj: I agree about weigh reductions being a good idea. If we in the USA took all the spare tires out of our cars, and used the phone to call for a tire, what would be the weight saved? I have an idea that this would work. The fuel costs to drag an extra tire around, compounded, must be pretty significant. Up north, where the AC isn't used for half the year, could a snap in and snap out AC system be designed? How about standardized wheels made of carbon fiber? Now I'm groping.
In most cars the AC system is used in defrost mode to dehumidify the air, making the defroster more effective. Just pointing that out.
Why does everyone think that anything to replace steel has to be carbon fibre? It needs more energy to make it (and the epoxy resin) than does steel!
Now, we can use Nature's carbon fibre - wood - to make perfectly good wheels out of - paper!
These wheels were the preferred wheel for the Pullman sleeper cars, because of their better ride than steel wheels. They dominated the market for passenger cars from 1870 to 1900, until they started making the cars out of steel instead of wood, and they were too heavy for the paper wheels.
Still, if they were fine for a train, they' be fine for a car!
Full story at;
http://www.midcontinent.org/rollingstock/dictionary/paperwheels.htm
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi758.htm
Paul Nash, So then we're in agreement. We will replace all the wheels in USA with paper. I did read that link for the paper wheels, very cool, and makes sense. I know for boat building wood is often preferred over expensive CF or Kevlar, because wood will flex longer with less fatigue. That's why I also think that my track pipe system could do well to use the bamboo as a cheap and good fiber. Bamboo is heavy, but very strong. Bamboo is a grass, like corn. Wood has great strength to weight characteristics. Years ago I was interested in spring spoke wheels, and I wonder if anyone is working on that. As a fire fighter we drilled using titanium fires, Oh My God. The titanium would burn. And it could be buried, but the water didn't work. I'm tired.
Interesting link, but note that those were paper machie sandwiched between iron hubs. Don't think that's going to fly on today's highways. Solid tires aren't what you're after, tires mostly are replaced due to wear on the treads, not blowouts.
Now, how about tracks for semis? Or schlep them onto piggyback rail cars en masse, after building out double tracking.
Well, I didn't make it clear they were *train* wheels, with a steel "tire" (in railroad terms) and I wouldn't propose to use steel tires on a road, but you could make wooden wheels with a steel rim for rubber tires, like this guy;
http://www.joeharmondesign.com/index.html
But, really, the alloy wheel is just fine, it's the car frame and body that can benefit the most from being made of wood. Wooden cars, properly built are lighter and seem to last longer than steel ones;
Marcos GT, 1967
or, you like human power, you can have this;
Thanks, interesting. Harmon's rig maxes out at 240 mph, that's nuts. Forget who built wooden bodied luxury cars in the 1920s, might search a bit more tomorrow. Wood composites can have some really amazing strength characteristics so no surprise someone's having a crack at it again.
We should not easily forget the founder and engineer/designer of Costin Cars. Frank Costin was a legend in the development of light strong automobile structures and small displacement sports/racing cars. His plywood chassis cars were a remarkable breakthrough, not wood for decorating the body, but wood as the actual structural chassis. He was a pioneer in aerodynamics and one of the first, along with his collaborator Keith Duckworth, to apply aerodynamic thinking to the inside of an engine, resulting in the Cosworth engine (Cos+Worth), the most successful and efficient sports racing engine in automotive history. How said that such men are being forgotten.
RC
Having built a cedar strip canoe myself , I can thoroughly agree that it is better, and lighter than ordinary fibreglass, and cheaper than CF.
Paper is a different beast again, they used to build racing boats out of that too;
http://kcupery.home.isp-direct.com/
In the 1870's a six oar shell, 49 ft long, made of paper-shellac mache weighed just 100lbs a modern boat of the same length is 110!
And, just for fun, a (news)paper house! 90 years old!
http://www.paperhouserockport.com/
Not every problem has to have a high tech solution
Reduce the weight on safety and teach people they are not safe so they have to take more care, maybe show them what happens to the human body in a crash and tell them it could be them. After taking out all that weight of safety gear out, replace the driver side air bag with 3.5lbs of claymore mine, that should encourage a little more care.
NAOM
I see a lot of 2) in this crowd.
Well, yes. We know any transition to electric is going to take longer than that. And, unless battery costs go down substantially most electric vehicles will be smaller than todays typical car. That they will be small cars is a simple consequence of economics. So he has it partly correct in that electric cars don't really allow at continuation of BAU (large vehicles, driven lots of miles at high speeds), but they look like they will be a viable way to continue something like BAU-lite or perhaps BAU-extra-lite. And that may be the best option nature makes available to us.
"And, unless battery costs go down substantially most electric vehicles will be smaller than todays typical car."
That little three-wheeler (2 in front, one in back) what was one of the winners in the X-prize a few weeks back is entirely reasonable for commuting. Good range, good speed, enough room for the groceries.
The problems are governmental. Too much trying to make it perfectly safe, and a screwy licensing system. That three-wheeler requires a "trike" license, which is even harder to get than a motorcycle license. Your state may be saner.
Thinking about it, I wonder if a special license would be a way to approach it. Some people are willing to accept less safety to ride a motorcycle after all, including me. So would an EV license where they stress that your light and somewhat slower vehicle is not up to bumpercars with SUVs at 0.1c help? It would also cover what to do when the battery goes dead, how to best use regenerative braking, and how to dump power if the computer locks up at full speed. (EV's had better come with a Big Red Button or I'm not buying one.)
the good news:
A new coal fired or natural gas power plant built today would only be 10 years more advanced then the previous. But for nuclear, because of the long dry spell, a new nuke plant today would be 40 years more advanced. Imagine what a 40 year gap in technology would make. The efficiency gains would be staggering.
the bad news:
Because of the long dry spell putting 100 new nuclear plants online within the next 15 years would only replace the old ones that are very near the end of their service life. If you're a nuclear power plant operator, there's only so many "service life extensions" you can request from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) before they shut you down. *grin*
IMHO the money is there but the politics unfortunately isn't.
Or a TMI level event will happen at a geriatric nuclear power plant, and the NRC will put a moratorium on service life extensions...
You're just hoping! (grin)
Naw, actually, I hope there will be no such event at all. (grin)
I personally support the replacement of the current fleet, and expansion if we can get a firm handle on the availability of fuel in a post-peak oil economy.
I'd also support taxpayer money to be spent on multiple, competing advanced reactor development projects, in hopes of a breakthrough.
wikipedia says: Generation III reactor
How's that for a "geriatric nuclear power plant", 120 years of operation.
Yeah that's my vision for a post peak oil world, 100 years from now a nuclear power plant operator will be requesting a service life extension.
//
Environmentalism is a belief that stresses reducing and reusing resources.
What can be a greater act of conservation than using something for over 100 years!
Therefore the greatest supporters of Gen 3 nuclear power plants would be environmentalists. *wink*
They'd better be buyin' you dinner if they're making promises as sweet as that!
I'm pretty sure that there is not much difference between the design of any plants that are in or near the licensing phase anywhere in the world and the plants built 40 years ago. I am aware of several newer designs being touted but I am not aware of any commercial plants near the construction phase that incorporate any significant design improvements.
Anyone have info on that subject?
I believe you're correct about the Gen 3 reactors now being built, they're not radically different than existing units, mainly more efficient and somewhat better safety features. However, the Gen 4 reactor designs now coming available should include passive safety, which means that the units are inherintly safe for the operators to simply walk away from in any emergency, eg. they're simply not capable of melting their cores. Of course that's very generalized, there's a lot more in the details.
How dumb is this idea? If we had the Navy build 25 or 35 stock nuclear plants, and run them. Would that be worthy of being on the table as a possible idea?
The Navy's reactors are small, expensive, and fueled with highly-enriched uranium. So they're not really useful for civilian power generation. On the other hand, Navy personnel can, and often do, go to work in power plants after leaving the service.
Navy reactors are not optimal for civilian power generation. But the 'let's build a lot of the same thing' is a good plan. At one time, the Navy had over 100 S5W reactors commissioned. It made the parts inventory simpler, and the training much more consistent as well.
But even this conservative total would be equivalent to 25% of US electricity generation in 2008, and the country’s utilities needed fifteen years
He is way of the mark here.
The US could increase total generation (kWh's) by near 25% today, if it wanted to. However, to increase total generating capacity (kW) will take time.
There is substantial capacity available in off peak hours, which is the primary charging time for electrics.
In fact, filling in that off peak time increases the average efficiency of electrical generation, as plants run at their sweet spot for more hours per day.
If new generation is required (other than wind) , for this flattened load curve, it can be CCGT, which is 60% efficient, and even with the line, battery loss etc,you still end up with 30% getting to the wheels, under real driving conditions, so it is no less efficient than the IC engine.
If need be, we can burn oil in the turbines instead of cars, but really, with so much coal and NG, why bother?
This is not to say that EV's won;t have a slow adoption curve, but as long as we charge them at night, lack of electricity for them is not one of the reasons.
It is easier to discredit what Hubbert's work didn't do while not offering a alternative predictive tool that could be used in 20/20 hindsight in predicting the declines that we are aware of.
Thanks Gail, you have produced another fantastic special thread. It confirms the opinion of Smil I formed when I read his first essay on the net.
I will take these so-called assumptions in reverse order.
Smil assumes that Peak Oilers are blooming idiots. We all know that the peak will not be symmetrical because it has been on a plateau for almost six years now. We all talk about when it will fall off this plateau. Anyway the shape of the curve has little to do with the actual peak. The peak is when it peaks and does does not depend on the shape of the curve.
Assumption two is another place where he assumes we are idiots. We all know that reserves are not fixed because they change on a regular basis and those changes are reported on TOD again and again. We know that new fields are being discovered every year and those are reported on TOD. And we all know that not nearly enough fields are being discovered to replace depletion.
But his first point is where he makes his biggest mistake. Again, we all know that resources are not known with any high degree of accuracy but Smil gets it backwards. He assumes that reserves are likely a lot higher than reported but we believe, most of us anyway, that reserves are much lower than those reported. He obviously believes the data reported by the EIA, the IEA and BP that reserves are around 1.3 trillion barrels. He obviously buys into those vast reported OPEC reserve numbers.
Any estimate of when oil will peak that takes as fact those vast OPEC reserves is simply wrong.
And finally I would like to give my opinion on this quote you gave from his book:
Any opinion here is just that, an opinion. But all opinions require an explanation. Recessions are defined as two successive quarters of decline in GDP. The health of our economy depends on growth. If the economy shrinks then people are thrown out of work. The purchasing power of the general public is diminished. If the economy continues to shrink it gets worse. And if the economy shrinks even further it gets even worse, and worse and worse, eventually leading to a depression, then even worse. Only if the economy starts to grow will there be any relief. And only if the energy supply starts to grow will there be any recovery.
I believe instead what the German Military Study states, the Bundeswehr warning, as reported at the latest ASPO meeting in Washington as shown in this slide show.
The Emerging Liquid Fuel Crisis: Military concerns vs civilian inaction (page 11)
Emphasis mine.
Ron P.
What does The German Military know that quite a few TOD readers don't know ???
Could be they and others are exaggerating for emotional effect or something.
Okay you are really confused now Aardvark. There is absolutely nothing in Smil's book or my post above that says anything about "quite a few TOD readers". I was commenting on Smil's assertion that:
The German Military report had another opinion. The opinion of TOD readers did not enter the discussion whatsoever. That came later in Gail's comments and further down the thread in readers comments.
Ron P.
I'm sorry Ron for injecting my sarcastic comment.
I agree with you and the german military, and apparently disagree with a "quite a few" TOD readers who like Smil are "not convinced that peak oil will have a terrible impact."
Maybe it depends on the definition "quite a few" and the definition of "terrible impact" and whom the impact impacts.
Again sorry for the distraction.
Not a problem Aardvark.... Ron P.
ROFL! Whatever else one might say about the Bundeswehr, their tendency to exaggerate for emotional effect would not be high on the list of things that comes to my mind.
I am a retiree of the U.S. Air Force and the last thing you will ever get in a military report is someones opinion or emotion. That is one thing that will get an officer's career derailed quicker that greased crap on teflon and officers live for their careers. I can assure you if a US or German military report is saying oil is a serious problem, them oil is a SERIOUS problem.
I trust the military more than anyone that talks in vague generalities about how Hubert was off a little and that the shape of the curve is a little different and asymmetric than expected. This is splitting hairs and not addressing what needs to be done to mitigate the peak which is upon us.
While engaged in a war the military does not worry about the color of socks, it actually fights the war.
This man is not dealing with the war which is Peak Oil.
"..it could be a sign of progress for the world to use less energy."
That line stood out for me as well. He seems to paint it as if 'we would be healthier, by going on a diet', and while there's a sparkle of truth in the idea, right now, oil is more like Oxygen for us than Food. We breathe more of it because our populations and our appliances have all been growing .. painting the idea as 'we'd be better off if we just breathe less' fits the PO conundrum a little better.
Actually, his description sounds unfortunately similar to those Climate Change Opponents who insist that a warmer world with more CO2 will make things grow better, and more people in temperate areas will be 'comfortable' .. there's far more under Heaven and Stars that is missed in those Philosophies!
We now have Google Sky... no more excuses!
http://earth.google.com/sky/index.html
Smil is right if he thinks some 'Peak Oilers' are idiots. Obviously, to the rational, it is not likely that he thinks all people who conclude that oil production has peaked or will peak are 'blooming idiots', since he himself expects oil production to peak.
Working from the basis of observation and measurement, Smil notes that energy intensity is declining, that is, the amount of energy employed per unit of economic output is decreasing.
Working from your biblically-rooted apocalyptic framework you repeat incessantly that economic growth, call it recovery if you will, requires a growing energy supply. Yours is an evidence be damned, you've seen the dark approach.
Citing a study which posits a relationship between a shrinking economy for an indeterminate period (ten years? a hundred years?) and system collapse in order to counter the evidence that economic growth is fully compatible with declining energy intensity misses the mark.
The adjustment to declining oil availability will be more or less successful, from an ecological and civilizational perspective, depending on the quality of public policy, especially those policies effecting market design.
A lot of things can adversely affect the public policy process, notably including the selfishness of segments of the political elites. But I don't think anything is going to cause more unnecessary suffering than the "give up, doom is upon us" mantra of people like yourself.
And by the way, what does noting the length of someone's registration period at TOD have to do with anything? You, who always gets on your high horse about ad homs, appear to use this reference as though it had something to do the credibility of someone's post.
This hints at the crucial economic question, in my opinion. It is surely possible, in theory and in fact, to use energy more efficiently and thus move from a position in which, say, three units of additional GDP require three units of additional primary energy, to one in which three units of additional GDP require only two units or even one unit of additional primary energy. But is it possible to generate additional units of GDP with zero additional inputs of primary energy, or in the face of an absolute decline in primary energy inputs?
In other words, while energy and economic growth can be relatively decoupled, is it reasonable to suppose that they can be absolutely decoupled? Color me skeptical.
Of course, energy and economic growth cannot be absolutely decoupled.
But we have multiple examples of renewable energy generation technologies with very positive EROEIs (wind, hydro, solar thermal, PV, direct biomass combustion, etc.) so only by proposing a new Dark Age (which some on TOD of course do) is it reasonable to suppose that primary energy production goes to zero. In the case of continued renewable primary generation, absolute decoupling of energy and economic growth is only a theoretical concern.
The degree of relative decoupling that is practically and economically practical is of much more serious concern. I work in building energy efficiency and I have no doubt that extreme reduction in building energy consumption is already both practical and economic, and declining fossil fuel availability will only improve both the economics and practicality of building energy efficiency.
Ok, so why do we even need economic growth? Is that the only possible model?
The question in my mind, and I'm not even quite sure how to accurately formulate it is... is it possible to create or even conceive of an economic system that doesn't necessarily require growth or unsustainable consumption of physical resources.
Is it possible to imagine an economy in which value is associated with non material concepts which are coveted and confer status in ways that today are associated with physical things such as a shiny new car?
Furthermore could such an economy exist and still be able to supply the basics of food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education etc... if they were placed outside the realm of individual profit motive? Would it then still be possible to have an entrepreneurial wealth or value seeking class focused on the non material status symbols but still continuing to be creative and innovative with the beneficial results flowing back to the rest of society.
I realize what I'm postulating must sound like a profoundly utopian fantasy but I can't see an ecologically sound economy based on biophysical principles, that doesn't somehow get away, once and for all from this idea that the only possible economy is one that is based on perpetual growth.
Since most here accept that such an economy can't and therefore won't continue, the question remains what could we put in it's place?
Perhaps this could be a topic for a campfire discussion sometime.
You can certainly have a growing economy that uses constant or diminishing energy per capita -- it's just not this economy.
Change is the hard part. The US has too much invested in:
- the wrong types of buildings in the wrong places,
- the wrong types of tools and equipment to make the wrong products in the industrial sector (although that is down to 11% of the economy now), and
- an energy-intensive services sector (such as in retailing, food services, and hospitality).
Overall, the US will be hurt by increased oil prices more than other countries, and within the US some regions and business sectors will be hurt much more than others.
Huge amounts of money will be lost in stranded investments in the wrong things.
Google "Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy."
Thanks for the tip, P.Coyle. It's certainly a starting point.
I think like it or not, with peak oil we are going to have steady state or declining economy. One would hope that we do it in such a way we don't have people falling off the edges as it gets smaller and smaller. I'm conservative, but not heartless. I also realize that the moderated capitalist model that the United States has enjoyed the last 100 years is coming to an end. Steady state economics sounds like a reasonable replacement to me, especially where it is managed more at the local level than at the national.
My parents were products of the Great Depression and I grew up with stories of how people got through it. It was through sharing what resources were available locally. You can talk all you want about FDR, the New Deal, WPA and such, but survival was accomplished at the community level. Working together is what pulled people through. People helping people -- extended families working together and neighbors helping neighbors. Where that didn't happen, people suffered more because of it. Unemployment was in the 20+ percent range, but where the 70+ percent employed were willing to help out the 20+ percent that were down and out, thing were much better off.
My parents grew up more rural so I hear what happened in small towns not big cities. History tells me what happened in the large cities wasn't as nice. So my view of what will happen post peak oil is flavored by my upbringing and what I've read in history. As I've said before, I don't want to be any where near a big cities when the economy starts going south. I don't think they will handle a steady state economy let alone a declining one very well.
Whether the economy is increasing or declining is usually measured by GDP, the expenditure for final consumption, i.e. a measure of the monetary value of all the goods and services that were consumed.
Value is not a direct function of the energy consumed in producing a good or service. For example, very little energy is consumed in distributing an ebook to a Kindle, compared with making paper, ink, and printing, distributing, retailing and traveling to/from a bricks and mortar book store.
As for the necessity of producing energy consuming "stuff" - we produce more than enough food already and there is an epidemic of obesity, we produce far more clothing than is needed and the average closet contains a supply good for years, we have more residential and office square feet per capita than most countries have.
Furthermore, it is not clear whether we actually need anywhere near the proportion of people employed that we have. In the '50s a smaller proportion of the population worked and we had a much more labor intensive economy.
All very good points. But, I think the 'little woman staying at home taking care of the house thing' is out of the bag and ain't going back in. That said, who do you suggest we make unemployed like the 50's.
The people who can't find someone to hire them.
Don't bet on it. I know plenty of women who are mightily pissed off that they are forced to work outside the home and don't have the "choice" that their mothers fought so bitterly hard for. Not having a cadre of omen working in the home is actually going to be one of our weaknesses as we have lost many of the basic household managment skills that are now outsourced to the "real" economy.
A steady- state economy is very difficult as expansion is fundamental outcome of labor specialization.
It is the flow of specialized goods - such as shoes, hats, roofs or flour - that determines prosperity. Making one pair of shoes will not support any worker, only by making a lifetime's worth of shoes. This lifetime requirement demands a quest for new markets for shoes, better shoes, more customers for hats, etc.
The unit supplies of any good are in and of themselves insufficient to produce returns capable of supporting the specialty. The asymmetry - the lifetime cost of making the shoes versus the return on any given pair - drives the supplier to find more customers and use any means available to persuade that customer to accept them. This asymmetry drives growth. Growth drives the expansion of money/credit.
The shoemaker will lend shoes to his potential customers - which is a form of money and credit. The search for more customers leads to the creation of money and the corresponding expansion of credit, whether it is called this or something else. More money/credit allows more specialization which expands in a virtuous, self- reinforcing cycle.
The only 'real' model of static or steady- state economy is Herman Daly's:
Growth economics as demonstrated by the very simple model is linear. It's also experiencing the 'bends' right now.
Steady- state model would be topological and would have fat tails in some sector out of phase with fat tails in other sectors. The idea is to use some of the shoe- making surplus capacity to 'hedge' the lifetime period to a period something less than a lifetime ... to allow more shoemakers, for instance or other specialties to coexist side by side. The hedge would have the side benefit of putting excess credit to work rather than creating unserviceable credit bubbles or funding destructive excess capacity as is the case now.
More to come. Steve Randy Waldman has an interesting take on steady state (which was not his intent). There is more to this than meets the eye but coming up with a functional steady- state is a bit like solving Fermat's Theorem:
http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/507.html
We know that linear or steady states rarely occure in nature for very long. Concidering that our economy is based on the exploitation of natural resources, and that all systems must have adequate material and energy inputs, How can a steady state economy be achieved with the innevitable decline in oil production imminent?
No problem...
QED! So now that that's done, we can get on with solving a functional steady economy... >;^)
steve from Virginia: Thanks for that post. I signed onto the steady state petition a few years ago. I went to the web page, to search me up, and there were the 5000+ signatories in chronological order. My political history is small town meeting based. I still do believe in simple conservative government. If you want something save up your money and then spend it. I don't like the attitude of our economy: something for nothing. But on the other hand, we can print the money, so the temptation is real. We own the reserve currency, and that is indeed special. We will rue the day our abuse of the situation backfires on our country. Economically sometimes, less is more.
Thanks for that post. Patience is a virtue: posses it if you can. (Seldom had by woman, and never had by man)
I think that economic problems and unemployment will change our social organization. Fewer people may work on the open market and cooperative living may become more prominent. I have no idea how much this might take place, but it is a logical response that more people may share fewer incomes. Some may care for children while others bring home the money. Many will not be able to afford daycare. A civil society might bloom. I'm envisioning an economically poorer society, but perhaps a socially richer one. Sharing automobiles, mass transit, local living. Middle and Upper-class Americans have forgotten hardship, but I anticipate that once denial is breached that many will make adjustments. Some will not. I haven't a clue how this will play out, but I can see possibilities of change in response to hard realities. World War II was a hard reality which was not welcomed. Up until Pearl Harbor, a large portion of the public was isolationist. That did change.
Good question, Fred. I guess it would have to be based on fundamental needs and drives... food, shelter, comfort, sex, security, and interpersonal communications.
Given our numbers, transportation will be up there (for food) as well. Of course, numbers will likely drop as depletion of soil and NG drops levels of production and we starve ourselves into submission.
How do those needs motivate a new economic paradigm? I have no idea. Since the present system is a kluge that evolved from present factors, my guess is that the new one will do the same. And, that prediction or direction will be very difficult if not impossible.
So... maybe we're screwed. Maybe not.
Craig
"fundamental needs and drives... food, shelter, comfort, sex, security, and interpersonal communications" Craig, you forgot the most expensive one: STATUS.
Yes, but that was actually part of my comment to which Craig was responding.
+64
That's the 64 Trillion dollar question.
FMagyar:
There are all kinds of other societies and cultures, all kinds of other ways of living, that have and had existence on this earth.
The book " MAN'S RISE TO CIVILIZATION AS SHOWN BY THE INDIANS OF NORTH AMERICAN FROM PRIMEVAL TIMES TO THE COMING OF THE INDUSTRIAL STATE" - (1968) by Peter Farb, describes many. Some cultures valued "visions": Visions were the door to power. State religions need artwork and an artist class to produce it. The PBS series "Faces of Culture" is very wonderful. Each installment illustrates an aspect of human organization using several different societies. http://www2.dsu.nodak.edu/users/cummiskclasses/faces_of_culture.htm America is based on slave labor. "Guest workers" are allowed free-flow to their sites of exploitation. Unions have been busted by outsourcing. A current popular drive is to eliminate minimum wage, education, regulation, medical care, and retirement. A vast, free, and disposable energy pool can replace that of oil, as it has in the past.
tommyvee,
The "Dark Age" is the now, the "Light Age" is ahead of us, or not, depending on our behavior, seeing as how we are obviously in the darkness of bitter dispute.
It is a mistake to deal with the subject, at this point, with foolish "scientific" this and "scientific" that.
We are not enlightened to peak oil / climate change yet when we are in the dark of confusion uncertain of which uncertainty is relevant:
(Energy Expert). Shall we not buy insurance because we have driven 12 times in a row but there has been no accident, gone to sleep 29 times but the house did not burn?
Insurance policies are based on the certainty that there is a real danger, but equally based on the fact that we are uncertain if or when those dangers shall impose on us. But that does not obviate the enlightened understanding that insurance is a staple, not a willy nilly optional luxury.
In the peak oil, climate change realms we need a policy and philosophy based on insurance principles so that we err on "the safe side of uncertainty" and the right side of certainty.
We have been decades too long getting to that enlightened point by confusing certitude with the need for action now, which confusion by definition is a Dark Age.
The certainty is that civilization needs as much insurance as is possible to meet the uncertainties, not as much as is cost effective in a realm of certainties.
Has everyone given up on geothermal, that one was alway my favorite. I never see anyone mention it in the mix any longer. Did the hot rocks thing totally flop? (I haven't been keeping up obviously).
There was hot water vapor coming up from the Chilean mine where the 33 were trapped
So all we've got to do is bore a few more 26 inch holes
(I wonder what the EROI is on that process?)
Well down here in the sunshine state the rocks only get hot during the daytime so personally I'm more of proponent of solar but if you have access to geothermal, more power to ya!
Apparently, 'they' have not given up on geothermal. Give this Economist article a read, maj:
http://www.economist.com/node/16909897?story_id=16909897
Geothermal is great. But like hydropower, there are not many places where you can do it. There needs to be a heat geothermal source relatively near the earth's surface. So in those few places . . . it is great. Iceland can power itself pretty much completely on geothermal power. But for most areas, it just isn't an option.
I recall several different location reporting earthquakes caused by geothermal projects.
Sad, Geothermal seemed pretty sexy to me.
Goodmaj: I love geothermal, and like wind the "deeper", or hotter the better, IMO. I have a geothermal system drawn up that uses the great heat and pressures to create quick made crude oil from bio-materials. The system would be long term and expensive. It would be a centralized theory plant that would produce electricity for local use, which would not be too much, and then produce Hydrogen (call hydrogen "frozen electricity"), Compressed air and ORCA, or oxygen rich compressed air, for gasoline compressed air hybrid cars. We are very hung up on the need for electricity, so much so that it blinds us to other genre of systems. As Smol said paraphrasing: we need to not use old models in the new thinking. The electrical philosophy, or "near the need" centralization criteria is wrong, that is why geothermal is passed over. If we could think in another mode of energy. Conversions, re-conversions, new sustainable source compatible fuels: that's the job. That's the future of energy. The main problem here on the oil drum, besides the peak oil perseverations. You can ask people to think. But the ego problems are insurmountable. Ask people to have a look at a machine, and they puff up. Geothermal, I believe has a potential to provide us with lots of energy, but only if we are smart enough to figure out what kind. So far we're not. The source of power dictates the fuel needed to transfer power, and not sentiment.
I think you are assuming that the only change in energy efficiency comes in the newly added (for growth) part of the economy. If efficiency is also applied to the legacy parts of the economic system, it is at least theoretically possible to have both decreasing energy usage, and an increasing economy. Because there is an eventual limit to energy efficiency, there is also a limit to how large the economy can grow (i.e. the time span over which exponential growth can be maintained is still limited), but that doesn't necessarily apply to the next few decades. The key is to increase overall energy efficiency at a rate that is considerably faster than the economic growth rate we think we need for social/political stability. We haven't done that yet. But, we haven't really tried either.
No, I'm not making that particular assumption, but I am inclined to think that applying efficiency to the legacy parts of the system quickly enough to make up for decreasing energy inputs will be sufficiently difficult that what might be theoretically possible may be unachievable in practice. Lack of capital comes to mind as one likely problem. For example, one might speculate that in an era of economic stringency brought about in whole or in part by declining energy supplies, many people might be unable to scrap their older, less fuel-efficient cars and buy newer, more fuel-efficient cars. Even where such scrappage would make financial sense in the long run, many people might not be able to afford the long run. And this assumes that the up-front of a new fuel efficient vehicle is not significantly higher than the cost of a less fuel efficient vehicle. The result could be demand destruction uncompensated for by efficiency gains -- in other words, at some level, a simple decline in economic activity.
Another very crucial question. In my view, the number of the those few decades is probably on the order of two (and not, say, five or seven).
Changing legacy systems quickly.
Switching freight from truck to electrified double stack container rail trades 20 BTUs of diesel for 1 BTU of electricity.
If we electrify with the same effort that we boil tar out of sand, we could electrify 35,000 miles in 6 to 8 years. Expand and speed up rail enough to take half of truck traffic under current conditions in a decade. 85% in an oil supply shortfall.
Slightly longer with urban rail expansion. Comparable #s.
Best Hopes,
Alan
Alan,
Going from truck to diesel rail would reduce fuel consumption by 2/3, right? How hard would it be to expand and speed up diesel rail enough to take half of truck traffic under current conditions in a decade?
Not sure.
The maximum economic speed for diesel container trains appears to be 70 mph (LA - Chicago express). Apparently refueling with crew changes.
Refrigerated cars each require their own diesel generators (fuel + maintenance).
One target for electrification is fruit & veggies (and fish). Higher speeds + simpler electrification of refrigerated cars could give electric rail an advantage that diesel lacks.
More later.
Alan
This is an attempt to discredit anything I write by suggesting it is based on my biblical fundamentalist family and past environment. In other words my opinions are defective because of the way I was raised. It is an attack upon my person, a purely ad hominem attack.
If you must attack the person making the argument in order to strengthen your argument then your opinion is not worth reading.
I wonder if the Germans who issued the Bundeswehr warning had Bible thumping parents like me?
Ron P.
Sure, energy intensity per economic output is decreasing. But hasn't debt generally outpaced growth for 30 years or so? Is growth really a big deal if debt is growing faster? And is the only way to increase growth faster than debt to increase energy intensity? I think yes, no, and yes.
In fact, whole empires can collapse during peak oil due to its geo-political, socio-economic and financial feed-back loops. There are military and strategic implications, too:
4/10/2010
Russia's oil peak and the German reunification
http://www.crudeoilpeak.com/?p=1912
But Vaclav is right about electric cars
19/6/2010
Primary Energy Dilemma for cars
http://www.crudeoilpeak.com/?p=1631
Strange that Vaclav hasn't noticed that peak oil started in 2005.
Personally, I am very relieved to know quite a few Oil Drum readers are not convinced peak oil will have a terrible impact ( I must have missed that poll).
I think there are some who believe that the decline will be slow and gentle with very little adverse effects. People will just go gently, and pretty well fed, into that good night. Yes there are perhaps half a dozen Oil Drum readers, or I should say posters, that believe that. Whether they could be considered quite a few or not is another matter.
Ron P.
And then there are some of us who believe it will be long and slow, but not at all gentle and with many adverse effects. This generalization of what "Peak Oilers" believe is frankly stupid, as if we are of one mind. One of the things I have found interesting about TOD is that there are some here with whom I share an understanding of PO, but pretty much nothing else at all. You can get PO, but have totally different ideas on what the implications will be. You can agree on the implications and have totally different views on how to respond.
And then there are some who, when faced with the facts and obviously with enough intelligence to understand them, simply go massively into denial and cling to silly techno fix fantasies, rage against those who present the data, deny the obvious, etc. That's all this junk from Smil is - whistling past the graveyard. Of course he understands PO - it scares him and he wants to deny it. Not worth getting upset about it, as that is how most people will deal with it.
Sadly true. "...that is how most people will deal with it."
Also sadly, we will be unwilling observers and participants in the events. At least while we are among the living we will.
If there were a poll, put me down as uncertain. I think that PO will have severe repercussions in the economy, and that those will damp oil use and extend the plateau. At some point, maybe, there will be a 'cliff' over which we will all tumble. That remains to be seen. We have never been down this path before, and the terrain is uncertain at best. Much depends on how fast the species adapts to the quickly changing conditions.
Far more dangers than opportunities loom ahead. Our children and grandchildren will be challenged.
Craig
The stance I take is: "Prepare for the worst and hope for the best".
A poll on the question might be interesting (though registration here is undoubtedly somewhat self-selected).
I agree Len - do a poll.
It's okay about the self-selection, the question refers TOD readers POV.
We just need a good definition for "quite a number" and "terrible impact."
A POLL RESPONSE
Terrible for the people: Population curve rises and falls with the presented oil curves covering 1820-2070. Exponential decline over time.
Wonderful for the aristocracy: We are at peak people. Consume them as slaves. Times couldn't be better. Exponential growth at ramp-up.
Depends... on your world-view. How much is a girl going for in America, these days? $30 a month buys you live-in in China.
He's right about EV's only insofar as the False Fire Brigade series was right in its contentions..
He presumes a rapid buildout to replace the entire current fleet of ICE vehicles, and he sized them as some averaging of Cars and current Trucks/SUVs..
To avoid the expected incendiary label, I simply have to say that such assumptions are built on very unstable expectations, hence making it much easier for the Senor to Topple these Windmills.
I have to wonder if his whole list wouldn't change radically if he were to see #4 as even a little more immediate..
" 4. Running out: Peak oil and its meaning "
Judging by the information that Gail presented, Smil missed a few other considerations in his analysis of EV's. If all of the oil refineries and pipelines are eliminated, some electricity would be freed up to power the EV's. Exponential population growth would tend to increase the demand for transportation. He makes no mention of PHEV's which would increase demand for electricity by about 7% or 8% (instead of his 25%) and reduce demand for materials to manufacture batteries.
As for wind turbines requiring access roads, Alan Drake's proposal to electrify the existing long distance freight rail lines uses the rail lines to access the wind turbines. Offshore wind turbines, being accessed by ships, do not use access roads. Even his basic premise, that the U.S. use wind power to generate all of its electricity, is a strawman because no one is seriously proposing to do that. Hydroelectic, geothermal, photovoltaic and solar thermal can contribute a fraction.
Smil is NOT right about electric cars. He completely misses the point that we already have the power generation capacity to power some 70 million electric cars. That is not from me, that is from the DoE:
http://energytech.pnl.gov/publications/pdf/PHEV_Feasibility_Analysis_Par...
And he misses the point about the comparison to gasoline cars . . . the point is that oil is getting scarce whereas there is plenty of coal, natural gas, solar, wind, and nuke to generate electricity.
He seems so intent and telling everyone else that they are wrong that he completely misses huge points.
So, we have enough to power 70 Mil cars; there are 250 Mil... we need to more than triple just to handle the cars. And, what about everything else that depends on oil? Heat (especially in New England), diesel power for trains and trucks, etc.
The real point is that personal autos for long distance commutes is not going to work. Yes (see post above) with a 38 mile radius, you can drive to the train and to the store (so long as there are goods available there). The future will depend on mass transit, though. Remember that oil is not the only finite resource.
Craig
I was wrong, it wasn't 70 million it was 70% of our current cars which far more cars. And that is w/o adding single new power plant. And the fleet won't be replaced fast, we'll have plenty of time to build new electrical production capacity.
New England needs to move to natural gas. Diesel power will continue to be diesel power. Oil production will decrease, not disappear. We'll have plenty of oil for things that really need oil if we move light-duty transport to electricity.
And the 38 mile range is a joke . . . that is some random guy's home conversion. A typical consumer EV will have a 100 mile range. That is a good number since it covers typical daily driving, it keeps the car cost reasonable, and it can be charged up fully with a 240V charger overnight.
I fully agree that mass transit is also needed . . . but we are not going to plow down the suburbs that we have built. An electric car makes the suburbs accessible w/o a drop of gasoline.
Smil appears to be taking an extremely rational and dispassionate approach to a topic that is rife with emotion and catastrophism. This is a dangerous enterprise, since most believers are firmly committed, and will not tolerate doubters.
Nevertheless, it is important to follow the reasoning of people like Smil. Otherwise, one is not thinking, only believing.
Spoken like a true doubter Aloysius, TOD member for 22 minutes and 22 seconds as I write this.
And it all depends on what you mean by "follow" the reasoning of people like Smil. We choose to "analyze" his reasoning. If that is what you mean by follow then we do exactly that as I do in my post above.
And that is what we do on this list Aloysius. We discuss the pros and cons of the peak oil debate. Otherwise this would be a church rather than a forum.
Ron P.
I agree with Ron about not blindly following Smil's reasoning.
He mentions the assumption of high level of confidence and fixed resources.
There are actually 4 possibilities here:
1. High-level of confidence of fixed
2. High-level of confidence they are growing
3. Low-level of confidence of exact fixed amount
4. Low-level of confidence of the amount growing
I would say that most oil depletion analysts fall anywhere but in the first camp.
You can still make reasonable predictions.
I had a model with close to 3 trillion URR and an asymmetric peak and it still landed at 2008.
And that is what we do on this list Aloysius. We discuss the pros and cons of the peak oil debate. Otherwise this would be a church rather than a forum.
Well....the cons anyway. But you are quite correct where that does...and perhaps already has...led.
"Otherwise, one is not thinking, only believing."......which is exactly what Smil seems to be doing.....
......and what about his opinions on 3. Soft-energy illusions(?) (local generation, etc.)? Does he posit that millions of individuals and groups, worldwide, have adopted the illusion of local generation, with quite a bit of illusive success?
Regarding Deffeyes
His prediction was for a global conventional crude oil peak between 2004 and 2008, most likely in 2005 (and an erroneous observation does not count as a prediction; he never backed away from what his model showed). Based on EIA data, global annual crude oil production has still not exceeded the 2005 annual rate, despite a slow increase in unconventional production, and it appears that four of the five post-2005 years, from 2005 to 2010, are going to show year over year annual increases in oil prices. All of this is in marked contrast to the steep increase in crude production from 2002 to 2005, in response to rising oil prices.
But of Course, Then There is the Net Oil Export Picture
A reasonable first order approximation is that global post-2005 CNE (Cumulative Net Exports) may be about 50% depleted some time around 2021, eleven years from now. Sam Foucher's more detailed projection is that his best case for the (2005) top five net exporters--which account for about half of global net oil exports--is that they will have shipped about half of their post-2005 CNE by the end of 2013, three years from now.
A high CNE depletion rate in the early years of a net export decline is one of the key characteristics of net export declines, and a relatively slow initial rate of decline in the volume of net oil exports tends to mask a very high initial CNE depletion rate.
If 2010 were to reach 2005 production levels we would need to see 74,100 mb/d for the period August-December
My latest crude oil graphs are here:
http://www.crudeoilpeak.com/?page_id=51
For newcomers an oldie but goodie - 3 years ago:
Did Katrina Hide the Real Peak in World Oil Production? and Other Oil Supply Insights
10/10/2007
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3052
Short summary of our ASPO presentation:
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-10-18/peak-oil-versus-peak-ex...
If you have a battery and wish to charge another battery, the most energy you can transfer is 50%. I think you have to double his numbers on energy needed for electric cars.
Why would you do that? You connect the second battery to a solar panel and a charge controller... >;^)
The energy in a capacitor may be expressed as W=0.5*C*V^2
If you have two ideal capacitors each of capacitance C, where one is charged to V and the other at 0 and you connect them in parallel, then the net amount of energy you will have at the end of the operation, after the voltage has equilibrated to half, will be:
W=2*(0.5*C*V^2)/4.
In other words 50% of total energy will have disappeared.
The enigma is: Where did it go?
Add in some resistance into the circuit and you can see it is dissapated as ohmic resistance. Even in the limit as the resistance is decreased towards zero, that should hold. Of course if you added a circuit component, called do useful work, you could have used it for something useful.
In any case, batteries are far from ideal capacitors. They tend to have a pretty flat curve of charge versus voltage, so the same analysis would show comparably small energy loss. (I think you meant to say that).
Where did it go? It did NOT go. It stayed.
It's like having two containers at the same level and trying to siphon liquid from one to the other. You cannot move more than half.
Craig
It went.
It went bye bye.
There is a cost for moving the electrons. They do not move (transfer) without aid of kinetic energy.
I don't off hand recall the equation for kinetic energy of moving electrons, but consider instead the case of the frictionless car having mass M that accelerates from zero to velocity V over a first distance and then decelerates from V back to zero over a second distance. In order to get that acceleration, one has to apply Force over the distance (per F=m*a), which translates into the doing of physical work to move the car from one place to another place. Braking wastes an equal amount of energy.
heat is where all energy ends up eventually, so that is the easy answer to this enigma.
But you bring up energy loss due to braking. This is one way in which the electric vehicle can shine -- through regenerative braking. At least some of your deceleration or potential energy on the hilltop can be recovered this way. No go for the idling ICE which throws energy away no matter what it's doing. Electric cars could also help train a populace in the trade-offs between speed and range. If driving 70mph means one can only go 50 miles on a charge while driving 50mph boosts the range out a bit --that might get more attention. We also become more sensitive to the costs of things like heat & air-conditioning which feel like "freebies" (especially the heat) to us now with ICEs, but will certainly not be free in an electric vehicle. Great behavior changing potential there.
For the case of perfect capacitors, th energy is C*V*V/2. We halve the voltage, but now have two partially charged capacitors, but each one only has a quarter of the staring energy, so half has been lost. Of course energy is never lost/gained (to nature), just converted to another form, usually heat, but possibly electromagnetic waves (light or radio say). But as far as human systems are concerned it is for all practical purposes lost.
Now if we use two ideal batteries, the voltage is still the same, so no energy has been dissapated.
There is a unit of energy called an electron volt, the amount of energy gained/lost by moving an electrons (or protons) charge up/down a potential difference on one volt. I think that most chemical reactions energies are roughly in the one electron volt range. Also IIRC if the average particle had one electron volt of energy, the temperature would be something like 11,000 degrees Kelvin (twice the solar surface temperature).
Interesting [capacitor] enigma. You might note that two vertical tubes of water (one full & the other empty) connected by an opened tube at the bottom will yield an analogous situation with a more obvious answer. Simple calculus shows that here too, after the water levels in both tubes have leveled out at the half full level, that half the fluid potential energy is now gone. In this case the loss is due to fluid viscosity (frictional flow loss which ends up as heat). Since no wires are going to be perfect in the real world, you will have electrical resistance loss, but if you insist on keeping all components and wires theoretically ideal, then you get infinite current spike (impulse). Not sure how a circuit simulator would handle that one. But real world probably gives you a slight bit of inherent inductance which might provoke severely damped oscillatory behavior (just like the water could shoot up the empty tube and overshoot the half point, bouncing back & forth before settling into equilibrium). Without fluid friction the water could bounce back & forth forever in an infinite exchange between potential & kinetic energies. Probably more answer than you wanted there, but thanks for the challenge. Now, back to pondering our "oil-free" (in the not-so-good sense of that word) future.
Ho hum, a false paradox. The voltage will not reduce to 1/2. Please note the square in the equation. I will leave you to recalculate for the true voltage.
NAOM
A number of responders provided correct answers.
Yes , "ultimately" the missing energy is dissipated as heat into the atmosphere and then it dissipates as IR radiation into outer space. In the interim the missing energy may dissipate in a variety of ways including as radio waves output due to oscillation of the electrons as they slosh back and forth in the antenna wire (parasitic inductor, parasitic resistor) between the capacitors until equilibrium is reached.
However, the above answer claiming that voltage will not go to 1/2 is incorrect.
The voltage will balance out to half of its original value.
Imagine two plastic tubes connected at their bottoms with a valve at the bottom of the resulting U-shape, where one tube is filled to height H with water and the other is empty.
When the valve at the bottom is suddenly opened, water from the filled tube will rush into the empty tube. Due to inertia, it will actually over rush into the empty tube. However, after sloshing back and forth a number of times, it will settle into the equilibrated static state of H/2.
It is left to the reader to use calculus for computing total energy (dW=(dm)*g*h) in the before and after states.
"However, the above answer claiming that voltage will not go to 1/2 is incorrect.
The voltage will balance out to half of its original value."
..By which, I'm assuming you mean Half the DIFFERENCE in voltage between the two batteries, since, in practical terms, one is rarely charging any battery from 0 volts.
Might sound like a nitpick, but 'Half of it's original value' can be quickly misunderstood if you're not clarifying whether it's a 'Zero-based Graph'.
This just doesn't make sense to me. It would appear to require unreasonable assumptions, then and extrapolations from them. It makes sense that two identical batteries, one charged and one not could only equilibrate towards two 50% charged batteries, if the terminatals are connected to each other. But this says nothing about the efficiency of the batteries, or how well they work. The only thing you can say from basic physical reasoning is that battery efficiency is less than 100%. But, to go beyond that rather useless constraint on efficiency you need to use actual data, or detailed electrochemical analysis of a particular battery.
Connecting battery poles with wires is just stupid. They are resistors and dissipate energy lost in voltage potential conversion - or they just vaporize in a big bang. Use a DC-DC converter to match voltage levels and transfer the energy with minimal losses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck%E2%80%93boost_converter . It also allows one to draw the source battery empty and fully charge the destination, minus the small losses.
In order to move net charge (i.e. electrons) from one place to another, there must be a potential difference. Otherwise there will be no electric current. I=V/R
You correct however that a large potential difference will lead to poor efficiency.
If you have a battery (or solar cell), it has an internal resistance. The most power you can deliver to another resistor (or any impedance) is half. The rest is dissipated in the internal resistance. By the same token the most charge you can take from one capacitor and put on another is half. The final voltages are equal but not half.
Huh?
Is this an extension of George Orwell's law?
All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others?
___________________________________
(For simplicity, the puzzle stated that the two capacitors are equal.
If they are not equal, charge is still preserved and then you may use the formula, V=Q/C to determine the final voltage as a function of the before and after effective capacitances.)
Sorry. If you have a charged capacitor and then hook it in series with an identical uncharged capacitor, half the charge from the first moves to the second and the voltages across each are equal and equa1 to 1/2 the original voltage. But the energy in each capacitor = 1/2 Q* 1/2V *1/2V or 1/8QV*V. The original energy was 1/2 Q*V*V. So half the energy has been lost. It was lost because as the second capacitor gets charged, it requires more work to push the remaining charge onto it.
Wiki human equation for energy in a cap is here
Canine physicists may of course have their own theories.
I would side with Step Back on this one. Lots of interesting behaviors that are counterintuitive here and engineers have come up with some clever ideas on efficiency with regards to capacitors.
Read this comment thread on EEStor:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5557/520371
Physical limits are just that.
Canine or not, the equation holds.
You have a "Q" in your comment (Q for charge)
That's wrong. It should be C for capacitance.
And as shown by the Wiki link I provided, it is accepted to be E= 0.5*C*V^2
_____________________________
p.s. I do accept the idea that a "doug" on the internet could have a PhD
Why not?
You can push energy "uphill" to higher voltage potential with suitable electronics as I explained, and with small energy losses. Simply, think of transformers.
In water analogy, this would be a small water turbine taking some water from the first container to spin a pump to lift the rest of the water to higher level at the second container.
The first part of what the electronics can do is not easy to move to water analogy. The electronics can take energy in the higher potential, and convert to lower voltage potential without losses in resistors. Like what power supply does in a computer, taking 230 V (or 110 V) in and 12 V and 5 V out, without using the 200+ V to heat a resistor.
You can double voltage using a transformer but you can only draw half the current and once you try to get useful work out of it, you can only get 50% of the stored energy.
How is this related to the discussion of EVs? Who is suggesting this kind of battery to battery transfer?
The late Petr Beckmann on "nuclear power is too cheap to meter"
http://www.fortfreedom.org/p06.htm
The 'too cheap to meter' was something from the 50's debunked in the 70's. Why would that even be brought up like that?
"2. Nuclear electricity will be too cheap too meter "
Which energy source does he claim is or will be too cheap to meter?
Dismissing nuclear with a shallow and irrational standard is itself shallow and irrational. The weakness of this argument supports nuclear. However we need to do the R&D to develop improved designs that can be factory mass produced at affordable cost.
Oh, and read this from Vaclav who thinks we can "safely ignore the problem of climate change because it won’t hit with “full force” any time soon, and its full impact is as yet unknown."
http://deepclimate.org/2009/10/19/vaclav-smil-no-global-warming-in-past-...
Well, if something is unknown then you have to be extra prudent. In engineering, we call it safety factor, which is higher with higher uncertainty and higher still when many people could be harmed. It is unbelievable that people can come to conclusions which would have landed me in the jail house if I had applied a similar methodology in my professional life as a structural engineer.
This is from NASA climatologist James Hansen
http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/mailings/2010/20101001_SummerTemperature...
The important thing here is the primary energy which has to replace oil. It can't be coal.
Exactly my position. Kudos.
The process by which coal will replace oil as the world's primary energy source is well underway, and can be seen to have triggered starting 8+ years ago in the data. This process will complete in the next several years, and of course no plan is in place to prevent it. It's grim, to be sure.
Best,
G
If you have a battery and wish to charge another battery, the most energy you can transfer is 50%. I think you have to double his numbers on energy needed for electric cars.
By use of an inverter - conversion to AC - and a transformer, the potential can be raised such that the donor battery can be fully discharged. There will be losses within the system but an entropy limit of 50% isn't there. Besides, a battery is different from a cell, being an array of cells which will have a voltage potential depending upon how they are connected.
Has the effect of raising one container to allow all fluids to drop to the other container... it does have a bit of cost to it, but not that much.
Using direct connections 50% (less loss from impedance) is max transfer.
Recall that we can use hydro power to produce electricity; we can also use electricity to move water up to a reservoir (during low use, high production periods) and later recover a lot of the energy as it drops through the turbine. There is loss, but not 100% and it is a good means for storage of energy.
Craig
Doug, what is that doctorate in? (If that is your paper hanging up there on your handle..)
I can show you a lot of ways to charge a battery, and I'm just a BFA in Film/TV.
Light propagates by alternating as an electric charge charging the capacitive "unit permittivity" and as a magnetic field filling the magnetic "unit permeability" of the medium. These two values for vacuum determine the speed of light in these parts. Light propagates with little loss in a vacuum. So... use a coil to transfer the energy from one capacitor or electrochemical cell to another. I made a boost-converter for a homeless car-mechanic living in the weeds. He could then charge a functional car battery from a dead one. "Takes a couple of days", he told me, "but you can start the car". This turns the dead battery into total paste... but dead batteries were plentiful.
No, we don't need to add much new generating facilities for electric cars as they will be mostly charged at night--when electric demand is much lower.
Right. What Smil said as quoted above was:
In other words, existing generating capacity might be adequate (or nearly so), but that capacity will need to generate more electricity, by generating it at (formerly) off-peak hours. Insofar as we are talking about coal-fired generating capacity, for example, that would translate into the need to burn more coal -- or, if you will, into reaching peak coal more quickly.
That makes it all the more important to develop more renewable energy sources.
The nice thing about electric vehicles is you can use coal, renewable energy, natural gas, etc to generate the electricity. With a ICE, everybody is stuck with either gasoline or diesel...
Not quite. You can run car an ICE on ethanol, methanol, natural gas, coal, wood even cattle dung if you want. You just need a gasifier for the solid fuel options. But that;s been done before, and involves far less tech than electric vehicles.
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/01/wood-gas-cars.html
Of course, a steam engine can run the car on any of these fuels too
www.cyclonepower.com
If we want the fuel to be renewable, we then look for the best pathway. Electricity is not always it, especially if you look at the energy cost of the batteries.
Paul,
The NREL says the energy cost of the batteries is a small % of lifetime fuel/power consumption.
109,700 joules per KM for Volt battery manufacture
44,500 for Prius
or in watt-hours:
Volt: 30.5
Prius: 12.4
http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/HV/458.pdf page 17
That's much, much smaller than the energy needed either for liquid fuel, or for electricity to power EVs.
From correspondence with the Center for Transportation Research, Argonne National Laboratory, the correct way to calculate the embodied energy of the battery is to multiply the 109.7 KJ per km (30 watt-hours per km) by lifetime range of about 250K km. That gives 27.4 GJ.
Now, the average US vehicle would use about 859 GJ, and a Volt would use about 190GJ (82 gas, and 108 from electricity), so the battery represents about 3% of an ICE and 15% of a Volt's lifetime consumption.
It's a right brain thing.
Look out of the window. We see the flagship of western civilisation tottering on the brink. Froth and bubbles everywhere. Like a drowning rat.
The left hand brain keeps up a narrative that it is comfortable with. It is in a hall of mirrors. It is incapable of generating new ideas. Any disruption to the narrative is explained away with prevarication and creative fiction.
It happens all the time.
It is easily spotted once you include the left brain narrative into the left brain narrative.
Cut Vaclav some slack.
The delayist elements of his message should be cut as much slack as Biophysical Reality will cut us when the fossil energy rug gets pulled out -- i.e. none
http://deepclimate.org/2009/10/19/vaclav-smil-no-global-warming-in-past-...
Another one our denier friends, which makes his other analysis smell bad.
I think I saw him on Jabber The Whut? this morning with a nice cup of Starbucks in his hand.
They are planning to stop
citizenshipcensorship on that morning show soon, so they may ask him back."In the book, he looks at a number of things he considers myths:
1. The future belongs to electric cars
2. Nuclear electricity will be too cheap too meter
3. Soft-energy illusions (local generation, etc.)
4. Running out: Peak oil and its meaning
5. Sequestration of carbon dioxide
6. Liquid fuels from plants
7. Electricity from wind
8. The pace of energy transitions"
I think it was a poor decision on Gail's part to make this post: it would have been much better to make a post on each separate myth and have a discussion of that myth (although some are not needed since they have been recently discussed). Discussion is much more productive when it is focused rather than the kitchen sink type posts this one is.
This post is not an isolated example. The more significant one is the "fake fire brigade" series where Hans makes several dozen assertions about an extremely wide variety of topics--it would have been so much better to have gone through them one by one.
That is an excellent observation, and suggestion. Why not assign each 'myth' to a contributor (or better, ask for volunteers) as a post, and do one per week for a few months. We certainly have the time that would be required, and the analysis by a high level contributor (adequately resourced) would add much to the conversation. It would also give varied input, rather than seeking all of it from a single author. I mean, J. Michael Greer covers most of this in his Long Descent, but I would like to see other viewpoints as well.
Craig
What this again indicates to me is the importance having a reasonable understanding of a topic before accepting the statements of a "well known" person at face value. This, of course, flies in the face of our dumbed-down society where the expert of the day is always right in his/her opinions.
Todd
1. The future belongs to electric cars
As Thomas Edison said to Henry Ford in 1896, talking to him about his radical, new gasoline car: "Young man, that's the thing: you have it. Keep at it. Electric cars must keep near to power stations. The storage battery is too heavy. Steam cars won't do either for they have to have a boiler and fire. Your car is self-contained—carries its own power plant—no fire, no boiler, no smoke, and no steam. You have the thing. Keep at it."
None of that has changed in the ensuing 114 years. The electric car is still the wave of the past. If you want to replace the gasoline car, you need to invent something new, not try to exhume something that died a century ago.
There's a basic principle in biology which explains it well - evolution never goes backwards.
On the other hand the bacteria and viruses will still be here long after the more evolved pkants and animals are gone.
Well, we don't know that. After all, they just eliminated rinderpest virus, and they eliminated smallpox years ago. A few more centuries of medical advances and even the common cold may become extinct.
Not to go too OT, but imagining the elimination of all microbial life is folly in the extreme. You can sell me the idea of a 100% efficient heat engine easier. The flu virus, and its distant cousin of similar notoriety that is HIV, won't be going away any time soon.
Those are but a few species out of many many millions. Obviously the number of unknown bacteria and virus being driven extinct vastly outnumbers those we know about (or did deliberately). But to eliminate them all would require the destruction of the planet, down to a depth of at least a few kilometers. Even an impact of a large asteroid, which would give the earth an atmosphere of superhot rock vapor for a few years wouldn't accomplish that (i.e. the rock vapor over lava sea would cool before the heat penetrated deeply enough).
In any case I think the biologists/ecologists could make a pretty strong case that without the ubiqiuitous little guys (bacteria, viruses, yeast etc), the complex life forms couldn't exist.
One of the best 24 minute talks ever given... Compared to this the implications of Peak Oil are almost irrelevant.
E.O. Wilson: TED Prize wish: Help build the Encyclopedia of Life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-txR1WSPBs
Eliminated the virus or created a new ecological niche?
NAOM
Unsupported. Asks us to believe that everything that could be known about electric auto technology was known 114 years ago, an obvious error. The transistor inverter alone is more significant to the electric auto than any development of the IC engine in the time period.
"The transistor inverter alone is more significant to the electric auto than any development of the IC engine in the time period."
....as are more efficient electric motors, aerodynamics, improvements in rolling resistence, better batteries, lightweight composit materials, regenerative breaking, etc, etc. Evolution indeed moves things forward, even in our extra-evolutionary techno-world.
It seems that electric vehicle "evolution" has progressed more in the last century, in a physical/efficiency sense, than our genus has evolved in the last 2 million years.
That said, comparing technological progress to biological evolution is not productive, IMO. One is merely a remarkable artifact of the other.
Well . . . to be fair . . . aerodynamics, rolling resistance, and lightweight composites can all be applied to gas cars too. But I think the technology has changed massively since 2000 when CARB tried to get EVs into California, let alone from 100+ years ago. (Batteries are much better than 10 years ago, when Li-Ions were still pretty new. But the EV controllers & regen systems have also improved.)
I've got tempered optimism. EVs are no magic bullet replacement. Range, charge time, and cost are still significant issues. However, when gas starts costing $10/gallon, that 100 mile range EV is going to start looking pretty damn good for your day to day commuting.
EREVs like the Volt reduce fuel consumption by 90% compared to the average US light vehicle (or 99%.5, if you stay within 40 miles). They need an onboard generator, but the savings from a smaller battery pay for that.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
You are wrong on both counts. Batteries and power transmission have changed quite a bit since 1896, so that doesn't apply to today. But more importantly, peak oil will make oil an expensive fuel to burn thus making alternatives such as electricity attractive.
I'd like to see it, but 100 years has passed and no one has introduced anything new except fuel cells . . . and fuel cell cars remain WAY less practical than electric cars.
And evolution DOES move 'backwards' . . . there is no guaranteed 'forward' path of evolution. It merely goes in whatever direction propagates the species best. And if this means going backward to a previous iteration or 'simpler' form then that is exactly what evolution does. Check out some Richard Dawkins books.
To even talk about forwards and backwards you have to have some way to measure "progress". Is it the total number of active genes in the genome? Some measure of the expressed complexity of the organism? Otherwise your post is right one, declaring something as infeasible because the first implementation wasn't a success is not a correct inference. It does however stymie progress. And of course there is no law of nature that says eveolution can't relicate a long extinct organism (although getting all the details the same can be shown to be very improbable).
I fully agree and that is why I put 'backwards' in quotes. And by reverting to the exact genetic sequence that had been used in a previous generation, I think one could call that 'backwards' in that a previous genetic sequence was used. I agree that it is improbable but it certainly could happen . . . think of a bacteria that may have a change and then a change back.
What has changed?
- solid state power electronics,
- more efficient electric motors,
- regenerative braking,
- batteries, such as lithium ion, with higher energy/weight ratios,
- microprocessor systems to control motors, braking and other vehicle functions,
- widespread availability of the electrical grid,
- time of day metering of electricity with differential pricing,
- excess generation capacity at night for charging, which can be further increased by LED outdoor lighting,
On the other hand, it is improbable that electric vehicles will "replace" ICE vehicles, since technology replacement cycles tend to be neither complete nor very rapid. The more probable future is that the field of use of electric vehicles will increase significantly, the field of use of ICE vehicles will decrease, the mix of vehicles in terms of their size, speed, acceleration, etc, will change, and the number of vehicles in use will decline.
Exactly, and with over 2 million Toyota Prius cars on the road today, the vehicle mix already includes a significant fraction of electric/battery propulsion, despite Smil's claims that electric vehicles are a myth. In Boulder Colorado, electric-powered hybrids are a "myth" I see in reality every single day.
Shall I add that new batteries can be quickly recharged (almost as fast as you can put juice into them).
That is not the case with old lead-acid batteries.
LED outdoor lightning will vastly increase the amount of power needed at night. Jevons will come into play here.
Technology shifts can be fairly swift and complete. Is there even production of CRT screens anymore? When the cost curves of electric and ICE cross each other, the change may come faster than anyone realize today.
The LED fixtures are expensive enough that only replacements are economical. Due to constrained state and local budgets you will not see any significant expansion of outdoor lighting. In fact, as the outer suburbs revert to rural, you will probably see less outdoor lighting.
Jevons does not apply.
Yeah I imagine municipalities will say, "Let's install more expensive LED lighting to then add to the high installation costs a higher electric consumption bill too.
Makes perfect sense in a parallel universe, where money in no object.
Al giorno illumination of Walmart parking lots and every street you can find in the city is not only about our fear of dark. In many places it is about burning off excess baseload.
Ontario baseload + renewables production exceeds consumption every once in a while to the tune of $67 million paid to a nuclear plant NOT to produce electricity.
A big lampost on a multilane highway may have six 1000W HPS lamps. Average street light will be 250 to 400 W. That is a lot of power available for charging cars:
An impressive video of amount of light we create at night.
a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEiy4zepuVE">Youtube video
In other words, a lot of nighttime power consumption is for very low-value uses, which would decline if night time power prices went up a bit. This would make room for EV charging.
Excellent point.
You don't even rise to the level of being wrong on this one... Hint, forget the damn grid!
I'm currently (pun intended) installing small low cost off grid solar PV sytems and 12 volt DC LED lighting. What you see in this picture is the lower corner of a custom built (yellow) 45 Amp/Hr lithium iron phosphate 12 volt battery pack and an off the shelf solar charge controller. this is charged by a 205 Watt 48 volt Sanyo, mono crystaline panel. The light fixture is a 12 volt high lumen output 18 watt LED light fixture. There are four such fixtures plus another 31 1watt high intensity LEDs powered by this set up. There is also some extra draw because there are remote on off switches wired up since the owners are somewhat physically handicapped. Total draw of this system is under 10 Amps. The brightness of these lights has to be seen at night to be fully appreciated.
Here is a solar powered yard light that I am using as a security light in my garden between the corn stocks:
It cost a few dollars at Walmart and uses one Nickel-Cadmium AA battery recharged by a solar cell. It runs all night even when charged on a cloudy day.
Notwithstanding the technological advances in electric cars since 1896, the same old problems are still there. The batteries are still too heavy, they still cost far too much, and they still don't have nearly enough range to be practical for highway driving.
The gasoline car has seen considerably more advances than electric cars in that time. The original Ford Model T, introduced in 1908 had a 2.9 litre 4-cylinder engine that produced 20 hp and got about 20 mpg. Its top speed was about 45 mph. The current Ford Focus econobox has an engine about 2/3 as big which produces about 7 times as much power and gets fuel economy about twice as good. Its range is at least 3 times as far. Although Ford doesn't like to talk about top speed, it will probably go almost 3 times as fast.
The current all-electric cars manage to beat the old Model T on everything except range, but that's comparing them to a 1908 car. The upcoming Ford Focus Electric will have a range less than 1/3 of what the old Model T had, and about 1/7 of the gasoline Ford Focus, and it will cost far more. Ford hasn't said how much more, but the upcoming Chevy Volt will be $41,000, while the current gasoline Focus starts around $15,000.
Compared to a 2011 gasoline car, electric cars just don't make sense except as a very expensive "green" status symbol. If you want to be practical and conserve oil at the same time, buy a Ford Focus gasoline model and leave it parked in the garage while you take the electric train or bicycle to work.
That is the fundamental issue I have with electric cars - modern electric trains are far more practical. The fundamental problem I have with American cities is that almost all of them have abandoned their electric train systems, and they are going to find that electric cars are not a practical substitute. This is going to be a very bad learning experience for Americans. I can see it coming.
I don't think you can compare the progress in IC powered cars to that of electrics so easily. Assuming that in 1900 there was an obvious advantage in pursuing the IC engine because of the technology, economics and infrastructure of the time. That enabled an incredible investment in IC technology and adaptation of the supporting economics, technology and infrastructure to continue use of IC vehicles. Competing technologies now have to overcome that 100 years of effort just to accomodate the now changed/changing environment. There are a lot of probable technological and economic futures that lean towards electric cars becoming more viable than ICs. Few of them look like sprawling suburbs with two SUVs in front of McMansions and gasoline at $2.50/gal.
A lot of the difference is caused by the hugely disproportionate investments in the two technology types. Technology is a case of those with a slight edge, gaining more development so their initial slight edge becomes overwhelming. It is very much a winner-take-all type of arena. So we don't get to see what the losers could have become, because they don't attract sufficient scale of investment. I used to work for a computer company that relied on Bipolar transistor technology. Bipolar was faster than CMOS, but the later was attractive for consumer electronics, so its investment/growth curve was steeper. It was inevitable that CMOS was going to kill off Bipolar, and it did! Scale of investment/research/development is a very big factor.
So now we (perhaps) have the chance to throw enough money at electric vehicles to get at least a glimpse of their potential.
They did throw a lot of money into electric cars in the early days, but it wasn't effective in overcoming the physical limits of the batteries. That's the problem with physical limits - throwing money at them doesn't necessarily overcome them.
By contrast, technological breakthroughs seem to come out of the blue. Somebody has a "Eureka!" moment, goes into his workshop, throws together a product that is simultaneously cheap and useful, and the result is that he takes over the market and makes a fortune. Henry Ford and the Model T are a case in point.
Ah, if only that Hollywood cliche were true.
It's not.
Innovation is a long and lonely and often dead-end road.
As in the old Hollywood saying, "It took me 20 years of hard work to become an overnight success!".
You are right we are entering into a period in which many different technologies compete, and nobody knows what will emerge as a winner or whether or not there will even be a winner.
The big problem with EVs is the lack of a charging infrastructure and the fact that most of the inputs including coal, natural gas, and elements are finite. If you are burning coal or natural gas to power vehicles, might as well put them in the vehicles directly.
This is to say nothing of the fact that even the most sophisticated EVs will not be able to match the speed and distance capable of oil powered ICE vehicles.
In addition, widepsread adoptation of EVs would only allow more fuel to be burned by the remaining ICE vehicles (or for oil to be used for any number of other things, as it were).
In a world in which Wall Street and the high priests of "growth" call the shots, EVs make little to no sense, because you can't grow with them, you can, at best, replicate some of the features of ICE vehicles, and allow some semblance of road transport and infrastructure use to continue.
And even if Wall Street were to invest in EVs, and they were sold all over the world to 10 billion humans, what then? At some point even this market would be saturated, and stop "growing" and the priests of finance would have no more money to make.
Yes, but Edison also said this to Mr. Ford:
Ironic isn't it? Obviously he understood even then that oil is but a stop gag measure on the road to a renewables based civilization. Though it seems he was probably wrong about waiting till we ran out to tackle it...
There's a fascinating article on the past future of electric cars here:
Why the electric car has no (wireless) future
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/01/bumper-cars-o-1.html
Extract from the introduction:
Meh . . . I can already see that article is probably filled with outdated misinformation. For example, people just assume from past experience that batteries are toxic things. Well, that is no longer true. Lithium Iron-Phosphate batteries are very non-toxic. To prove the point, the CEO of BYD drank the electrolyte from his battery (google it).
Old lead-acid and NiMH are toxic. But not (most of) the newer Li-Ion batteries for cars.
"the need for batteries makes them eco-unfriendly by nature.."
This is like that howler from the other day, where opponents of Mass Transit complain that buses and trains are always nearly empty. Have they counted how many personal autos are carrying more than the Minimum Operating Level of humans?
Electric Cars at least keep their toxins contained, with the opportunity for being recycled and disposed of decently. They don't drip oil either, and many won't have to grind down brake pads, either, sending those fine, wastefully heated particles into the city air..
What's spewing out of your tank?
I think that lead from L-A batteries is the most highly recycled material in industrial society. Other than venting a little H2SO4 I don't think there is much harm being done by them.
Yes, LA batteries are highly recycled. But they have to be considering the toxicity. But no maker of EVs uses lead acid batteries except as maybe for a side 12Volt electrical system so it can use off the shelf parts. Lead-Acid is just too heavy practical use in an EV or PHEV.
How do you know for sure?
10 years ago hydrogen fuel cell cars and EV's were given the same amount of attention as a possible future alternative for ICE cars. Fast forward to the present after plenty of experimentation the battle was decisive. EV cars have beaten hydrogen hands down. There were no shortage of hydrogen supporters back then who thought they were smart enough to predict the future. Now with the power of hindsight, they don't seem very smart anymore do they?
//
How do you know for sure society will ultimately choose Lithium over Lead-acid.
People might decide they don't want to pay double the cost for an EV car for double the range.
time will tell...
You could use lead-carbon in hybrids.
But regular lead-acid is just too damn heavy. It is basic physics. You can't build a car with a decent range with lead-acid. Lead-acid batteries have very short life spans. You whine about 500 cycle life LiMNs in the other thread well lead-acid only have lives of 200 to 300 cycles. I swear you are nothing but a troll the way you contradict yourself.
And besides, in the long-run lithium-ion batteries are now cheaper. If you get a LiFePo4 or other long-lasting Li-Ion battery then you won't have to replace it whereas you'd have to replace the lead-acid batteries many times over.
Lead-acid just doesn't make sense. If it did, we'd be driving EVs today since lead-acid cars have been around for more than a century. Lead-acid batteries were actually discovered more than a 1000 years ago!
I agree that li-ion is better.
OTOH....
1) Conventional lead-acid really would be good enough, if it was needed. It could be used in an EREV like the Volt. It would be heavier, and less convenient to design around, but it would work. The problem of weight historically was caused by braking energy loss, which is mostly solved by regenerative braking.
2) Major commercial R&D in lead-acid pretty much stalled out for the last 50 years, because better performance wasn't needed. It's only been the last 10 years that companies like Firefly Energies and Axion have been advancing the state of the art. These companies have had a hard time competing with li-ion, but it li-ion really had trouble scaling, due to cost or lithium supply issues, it's very likely that these LA variations would work. They're likely to reduce the weight of LA by 50% or more, increase it's lifetime by 2-4 times, and reduce cost per discharge cycle by 50% or more.
Cars don't have dead head miles.
Cars, especially in Suburbia, have MANY dead head miles.
Mom drops off children at school (they cannot walk or bicycle !!). Her trip returning to home are dead head miles.
Etc. Etc.
Alan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTheG--2NE0
.. besides which, what would you call the collective value and combined MPG of the daily traffic jams that have Single Occupants slurping down surplus volumes of Starbux and DunknDonuts as they sit there idling and stop/starting, sucking in CO and all the special spices that also come with it?
In other words, what's your point?
Actually, the more appropriate article from the Low Tech Magazine is this one, which was posted and discussed here on TOD;
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/05/the-status-quo-of-electric-cars-b...
His opening paragraph pretty much sums it up;
So there it is, all the components have gotten better, more efficient and lighter, but the cars have gotten bigger and heavier and faster, so the net range is about the same.
If we are prepared to have smaller, lighter, slower cars, we can have electrics, today,
Mind you, if we had smaller, lighter, slower cars, we wouldn't have an oil crisis today, either.
I agree. Tax cars based on weight and horsepower and a lot of the problem will go away.
All the gains in electric drive are going to pushing a massive vehical with 3500 lbs of curb weight and tons of "safety" features and other gizzmos.
Now reduce the size of the car and the expectations of the driver with $8 gasoline prices and you will see electric cars/bikes/et al. are the next item in the evolution of transportation.
The electric system need not be improved further. The infrastructure and the transportation's weight and so forth require optimization.
Then the grid can handle the load, which is supplemented by increased renewables.
A collapse will occur but this is the only mitigation that will work long term.
The ICE is yesterday.
I have owned two, two door hatchbacks. The first was a 1985 Honda Civic, which weighed approx 2200 lbs. My current hatchback, a 2007 Volkswagen GTI, wieghs 3200 lbs.
What did that 1000 lbs get me? Six airbags. Power steering, power brakes, fat tires, and a bunch of other stuff that I could most likely live without.
The Honda Fit is a 4 door hatchback that weighs about 2550 pounds. It would be more comparable to your '85 Civic. The Civic has since become quite bloated. The Fit is equipped with all that unnecessary stuff.
The future in my eyes:
Walking, biking... Maybe electric bikes for some. Electric cars for the wealthy. Travel by ship or rail. Oil used for agriculture (what is left)... Food production becomes even more localized.
We'll burn everything to keep the lights on (coal/nukes/forests)...
I have to run to class, but my immediate impressions:
Why give credence to someone who immediately flaunts the straw man argument, "running out of oil"?
As I've posted earlier, if 2005 holds as the onset of plateau/peak, then Hubbert was essentially RIGHT, and the evidence is on video:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7043#comment-732137
All this hoo-hah about the exact moment of peak is futile and ignores the point that Campbell has been stressing since the beginning:
It's not the date of peak that matters so much as our vision of the long decline that comes afterward.
Pffft. He contradicts his own thinking. A big thing he always says is that transitions take 40+ years. And then he says this . .
Well, we are NOT going to become ALL electric in 10 or 20 years. It will be gradual transition.
But more importantly he is ignoring that WE ALREADY HAVE MOST OF THE ELECTRICAL GENERATION CAPACITY NEED. This is NOT "new" production. It is called excess "off-peak" capacity. During the middle of the night, when EVs are charged, there are gigawatts of unused electrical generation capacity. Duh.
And this . . .
I don't if his calculations are correct but he completely misses the point here . . . the point is OIL WILL PEAK . . . we have lots of coal, natural gas, nuclear power, wind, and solar to generate electricity.
Many good points. I also find his calculation suspect, but not having the input assumptions, think it pointless to refute. 1) I note that he appears to be going "well-to-wheels" with electricity, but assumes petroleum fuel magically appears at the corner gas station. 2) I note that by my math, 38 MPG = 6.2 litres / 100 km, not 9.25.
MPG 38
miles/km 0.62
litres / gallon 3.8
km / litre =38/(0.62 * 3.8) = 16.13
litres / 100 km =100/16.13 = 6.2
Am i wrong? I'm guessing his 9.25 litres / 100 km USA average is about correct, but that works out to 25.4 MPG by my math.
(340 wh / mile = 210.8 wh / km)
So here's the relevant calculations: NB: above quotes "plug-to-wheel", so battery, charger (onboard presumeably) and driveline losses are already in
Natural Gas:
To get 210.8 wh to the Volt's batteries, from a Natural Gas CC generating station at 50% HHV effic. with 5% elect transmission losses, 5% gas transmission losses , requires 210.8 x (100/50) x (100/95) x (100/95) = 467.1 wh / km
Coal:
To get 210.8 wh to the Volt's batteries, from a Typical coal generating station at 38% HHV effic. with 5% elect transmission losses, 2% fuel mining/transport losses, requires 210.8 x (100/38) x (100/95) x (100/98) = 595.9 wh / km
Renewables (?and nuclear?):
To get 210.8 wh to the Volt's batteries, from a Typical renewable generating station with 10% elect transmission losses, requires 210.8 x (100/100) x (100/90) = 234.2 wh / km
Chevy Volt on electric drive 210.8 wh / km (340 wh / mile)
Chevy Volt on electric drive 467.1 wh / km raw wellhead Natural Gas input
Chevy Volt on electric drive 595.9 wh / km raw minesite coal input
Chevy Volt on electric drive 234.2 wh / km typical renewables (?and nuclear?) generation input
Chevy Volt on gasoline only drive 627.6 wh / km gasoline extended range input, (gas pump to wheels)
Avg. US Auto 9.2 litres gasoline / 100 km = 817.8 wh / km (gas pump to wheels)
Also notable is that, at eg. even $0.20 / kwh for electricity , the volt's fuel cost comparison to a gallon of gasoline is about
$4.22 / 100 km on electricity at $0.20 / kwh
$5.57 / 100 km on gasoline at $3.00 / gal
So a person doing 20,000 km / yr (12,000 miles) could expect to save $271 / yr by going all electric.
gasoline at $4.00 / gal, a person doing 20,000 km / yr (12,000 miles) could expect to save $643 / yr by going all electric.
gasoline at $4.00 / gal, a person doing 20,000 km / yr (12,000 miles) on a typical SUV getting 9.2 litres / 100 km could expect to save $1,014 / yr by going all electric on a Volt.
gasoline at $5.00 / gal, a person doing 20,000 km / yr (12,000 miles) could expect to save $1,014 / yr by going all electric on a Volt.
A typical current Ontario, Canada driver going from a SUV to a Volt, $4.00 / gal gas, off-peak charging at $0.07 / kwh doing 20,000 km / yr (12,000 miles) could expect to save $1,191 / yr by going all electric on a Volt.
Well the average rate in the USA is like $0.11/KWH, so your comparison with $0.20/KWH doesn't apply. And the USA has off-peak rates that also go below 10 cents per KWH. But that said, the electrics are not yet economically on par with gas cars. But with rising gas prices the electric vehicles will become competitive. And if peak oil shoots the price up real high then electrics will become the cheaper option.
PHEVs aren't, but pure electrics probably are. They aren't economically competitive like hybrids are, but their TCO is very close. Take something like the Leaf at $33k versus a high end Versa at $18k, would be at least 7c/mile cheaper to run in terms of fuel, and probably closer to 9c/mile cheaper including maintenance, so after a lifespan of ~150k miles they would be neck and neck w/ the Leaf being ~$13.5k less to operate.
Where on Earth are you going to get your Lithium to scale up in any meaningful amount (say 2 million PHEV per year)? Current new vehicle purchase rate is 10 mln for the US. Lets not forget the EU and Chinese and everyone else who in their hearts of hearts want to go "green" too.
I think we should include another myth here.
#0. As oil get expensive alternatives will appear magically. sure, "whateva"
China, Bolivia, maybe even the U.S. if prices get high enough.
The US produce Li too, I believe in Utah. Take all the Li the laptops and cell phones that your family currently own and use, and now multiple this amount by 100. The world is struggling just keeping up with current demand, and you are asking them to produce 10X or even 100X more? Don't be silly.
Regarding lithium, 'Cinch' writes,
Show your gravitas, then, by supporting your assertion that the world is struggling to produce lithium at the present rate. What fraction of the working population does that verb represent? Ten percent? Is ten percent of the world's labour force dedicated to mining lithium? I think it might be somewhat less, and since you oppose silliness, you won't mind putting in a good, evidence-based estimate.
(A good estimate need not be precise. 0.0001-to-0.01 percent would be quite imprecise, and yet, if evidence were presented to back it, would still convey useful information.)
(How fire can be domesticated)
Reading comprehension skill? I don't think anyone who read my above post believe that I imply the amount of our labour force use to mine Li.
The few economically extractable mines in the world e.g. China and Utah are being exhausted just to keep up with current demand. Of course, Bolivia is a new play, but this too in absolute terms is small considering how much we need to even remotely scale up Li/electric cars.
If you're correct about mines being exhausted then why not put your money where your mouth is? I'll put my dollar against your thousand dollars in a wager that when the data becomes available, we'll see that world lithium production isn't struggling and in fact increased from 2009 to 2010.
Cultural aside: a typical EV car, with current technological innovations needs about 15 to 20 kg of Li and a current laptop needs just 5 grams. Conservatively you will need about 3000 laptops worth of battery supply to just make one EV car. Let say an iPhone only needs 2.5 grams of Li, this translate to 6000 iPhones per EV. To supply just 2 million EVs per year world wide, the Li suppliers need to supply about 12 billion iPhones worth of Li per year. I believe a little over 1 billion phones were sold in 2009.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLL7042220090721
I was wrong to underestimate the scale of this intrinsic problem.
Regarding the reuter's article, they speculating that the battery of an EV will be ~3000 (15000g/5g) to 4000 (20000g/5g) times the size of a laptop battery. A quick search indicates an 8 cell laptop battery is ~50Wh-80Wh. That's ~ (3000*50Wh)=150kWh to ~ (4000*80Wh)=320kWh. The upcoming PHEV Volt has a ~16+kWh battery if I remember correctly, so the reuter's article was only off by what, a factor of about 10-20?
Anyway... How about that wager? I mean, you are sure about this, right? It'll be an easy buck!
It's a bit difficult to feature lithium being incurably scarce when presently every shop tool I use regularly is battery operated.(skill saw, drills, jig saw, reciprocating saw, etc.)... there's even a company here promoting battery operated garage door openers "for that occasion when the power's out and you need to get out of your garage" (presumeably with your battery operated car) I guess.
US Geological Survey - Lithium
Then there's this statement, from Compact Power Inc., a subsidiary of LG CHEM/CPI
I note that LG's stated availabliliy of lithium worldwide, at 7 million tonnes, is only recognizing about half of USGS stated resources. They're calculating a "strong hybrid" battery pack using 212 grams of Lithium.
Regulation Eolica con Vehiculos Electricos - Nissan confident over future of lithium: 4 kg of lithium in each electric car battery
At 4 kg per car, USGS's 13.75 billion kg resource would produce about 3.5 billion vehicle battery packs....
I think that should pretty much settle the bet?
Of course, if it becomes a problem, Livermore's Zinc Air rechargeable battery would step in, though it's a bit slow to discharge it can co-operate with other smaller and faster batteries for long-distance operation (claims 1/2 the cost of gasoline at present US zinc prices, fast re-charge by simply pouring in new zinc pellets in 10 min., essentially unlimited resopurces within USA)
lengould, being a member of TOD you have no excuse for referencing reserves of lithium instead of the rate of production of lithium. Do you expect the industry to use natural gas instead of solar evaporation ponds to concentrate the lithium to speed up production?
Not all lithium is the same. Lithium carbonate is used to make batteries, but not lithium iodine, which might explain the difference between the USGS's estimate of reserves and LG's.
The Earth contains a lot of lithium, but most of it is not concentrated into commercial grade deposits. Increasing amounts of energy are needed to concentrate and purify the rarefied and contaminated deposits. The world is entering a time when crude oil will be high priced and scarce placing greater demands on the other energy sources.
The USGS states 13.76 million tons. Since 1 ton is 2,000 pounds, their total reserve estimate is 12.5 billion kg., but only a fraction of this is lithium carbonate. All of the lithium can not be used for EV batteries to the exclusion of all other uses.
The Trouble with Lithium 2: Under the Microscope, Meridian International Research, 2008 May 29 (738 kB PDF warning).
In table 4.2 MIR estimates 4 million metric tonnes of global lithium carbonate reserves and estimates a production rate of 45 million (kg of Li2CO3)/year in 2020 will be available for EV batteries, of which about 19%* is lithium or 8.6 million (kg of Li)/year. Assuming 4 kg per EV battery (Nissan Leaf), the system will be able to manufacture 2.1 million EV batteries/year. With 800 million cars world wide, humans would need 380 years to electrify all of the cars which is obviously too slow. To convert all the cars in 20 years, the average production of lithium would have to be increased to 160 million (kg of Li) / year excluding the other uses. In 2007 the total global production of Li2CO3 amounted to 16.2 million (kg of Li) / year for other purposes. The world would have to convert 40 million cars per year over the next 20 years. The article's reference to producing 500,000 Nissan Leafs per year by 2015 is woefully inadequate. The global production of Li2CO3 will have to increase substantially (>10 times) over the next two decades while Export Land Model robs importing nations of their supply of crude oil. I am doubtful humans can achieve this feat, and expect something else to happen to the majority of automobile owners.
*Amount of Li in Li2CO3 = 2(6.939) / (2(6.939) + 12.01 + 3(15.999)) = .188 = ~19%.
The USGS data is in metric tons of Lithium content, not lithium carbonate or lithium iodide. In terms of world reserves, the USGS went from ~14 million tons in 2006 to ~26 million tons as of last year, so unlike oil, where reserves/production didn't increase a whole lot even though prices increased a bunch, lithium is still in it's infancy and as a resource will probably see more growth.
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lithium/mcs-2010-lithi.pdf
I'd also be careful about making wide ranging assumptions about production needs. It's doubtful that we would even need to increase lithium production by a factor of ten. Even if oil peaks this year, it won't be completely exhausted in 20 years, and I doubt mitigation will be only through EVs. Some people use mass transit and/or electric two wheelers, some will still need conventional cars, although if production peaked they would be a lot more efficient, some would pick hybrids, and others would pick EVs. There's also no guarantee that all EVs would be Leaf sized. If production was constrained then higher prices would require smaller more efficient vehicles. Otoh if production isn't constrained, then by definition we may be able to produce a lot more than we currently do.
"The world is struggling just keeping up with current demand, and you are asking them to produce 10X or even 100X more?"
Yeah, the price of cellphones and laptops have been skyrocketing in recent years due to the lithium shortage. Oh wait . . . they haven't. There has been no lithium shortage. There is no evidence of a lithium shortage. And don't post a Jack Lifton shill article.
String together 100 cell phone batteries and make your EV car. Lets see how far you get.
I know, the magnitude of scale trip up a lot of people.
Ghung "Still bargaining"
......................om........................
Unfortunately this is not my cell phone battery car, and the (IIRC) 6813 standard Li-ion cells it uses are, I think, too big for cell phones -- about right for cameras -- but it goes 200 miles.
I used to be a hydrogen car fan, and have photoshopped the world's operator-purchased hydrogen car fleet into the foreground, in front of the Tesla. Behind it, a Corolla.
(How fire can be domesticated)
Actually 6831.
(How fire can be domesticated)
This seems a good summary of Lithium production
http://www.ensec.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=213:th...
and it also notes
Chemetall has pointed out that the cost of lithium in a lithium-ion battery is approximately 1% of the total battery cost so in this application, expected to be the leading application in the future, the price of lithium is not a significant factor.
Additionally, of course, lithium is not consumed in the process of storing energy and, in time large volumes are expected to be recycled.
and another slant, on the same question :
In a good many installations, Lithium may not be needed at all.
Indeed, this technology gives a good alternative cost/performance choice.
Looks ideally matched to Stop-Start ICE, which can ramp very quickly.
http://www.furukawadenchi.co.jp/english/rd/nt_ultra.htm
http://www.furukawadenchi.co.jp/english/rd/ultra_03.pdf
The life of the conventional lead-acid battery was reached at as early as 4,000 cycles and that of the lead-acid battery for idling-stop vehicles at 10,000 cycles.
The life of the UltraBattery, however, was more than 40,000 cycles, a cycle life more than ten times longer that of the conventional lead-acid battery and more than four times longer than that of the lead-acid battery for idling-stop vehicles (ISS).
IIRC the scaling problem isn't much of a problem at 2million units per year. A hundred million, which is a closer match to the world car market, might be a bit of a stretch though. But, it is quite possible that other non lithium battery types will prevail. There is a generic type of battery which uses the Oxygen in the air as one of the chemical reactants. Theroetically these have energy densities approaching those of fuel. And not all types being reseached need scarce materials. Whether they become practical is another matter. We will have to wait and see.
Isn't 50 million is closer to the world car market?
www.worldometers.info/cars/
Considering that Li prices only make up a percent or so of battery costs, and those are only about a quarter of vehicle costs, it's not impossible for an increase in Li prices to increase production while increasing price by a very small amount, but you're also right that there are many other options. If prices increase enough we may see NiMH EVs again.
The article certainly emphasizes the point that mitigating the economic effects of peak oil by shouldering the electrical grid with the burden of providing transportation energy is going to be extremely difficult. Replacing our internal combustion fleet one-to-one with EVs is not ever going to happen. We need to invest in electrified rail transportation between cities and light rail within cities. Personal motorized vehicles larger than a moped are going to become a luxury item for the few.
The coming coal stampede isn't just going to be about shoveling as much coal as we can mine into as many coal-fired plants as we can build, it will also include Fischer-Tropsch liquid fuels for vehicles.
Well, in the near-term (my lifetime and my child's lifetime), the ICE will continue to be around. But eventually, we will completely get off it because it will run out. But that is beyond a range for predictions.
But I think the price of oil will go up so that the oil will be rationed out to the most important uses . . . things like aviation, military, long-haul & heavy transport that requires the energy density, and other such uses. But for light-duty consumer transport, electric vehicles will become a rational choice due to expensive gas prices.
Oh, and here is a link from a study that says the electric grid can handle many millions of electric cars TODAY as long as they are charged during the night.
http://energytech.pnl.gov/publications/pdf/PHEV_Feasibility_Analysis_Par...
Its lifespan will not be limited by the availability of buried stuff that already can burn, because very abundant energy sources can be used to turn ashes back into fuel and oxygen.
(How fire can be domesticated)
Most of those cars will be scrapped to build high speed rail in China, along with more nuclear power plants. The Chinese have a good thing going with all that slave labor.
Quite right, as at this point in his argument, Smil for reasons unknown conflates production capacity with production.
Coal and natural gas will peak also. The only question is when. Certainly this century, and very probably in the first half of this century. Patzek claims that coal will peak within the next couple of years (I think he's wrong, but he's a geologist, and I'm not). Nuclear is a bit more difficult to call. It depends on the technology you're talking about, and some technologies have yet to be proven commercially. I dare say that at some point wind and solar will peak as well; we can't cover every square foot of the planet's surface with windmills or mirrors, and other factors will surely prove limiting long before we reach that point.
If I were a betting man, I would bet that the world reaches "peak energy" about the time that it reaches "peak fossil fuels," which I would guess to be in about twenty years or so. That allows for twenty years of growth in coal and gas more than offsetting a roughly twenty-year decline in oil.
Yes, certainly coal and natural gas will peak. But it is generally agreed that the first to peak will be oil so moving some transport off oil and onto electricity help deal with the peak oil problem. Yeah, I saw that 2 to 3 years for coal and was a bit shocked at that estimate.
And the nice thing about electricity is that it is energy agnostic. Electricity is just the conduit for moving energy around. And it is a pretty good one since the grid transmission is some 93% efficient. But the electricity can be generated many different ways. And as different energy sources become expensive or politically unpopular, you can just switch to another one. And we can generate electricity with pretty much every energy source . . . oil, coal, gas, nuclear, wind, solar, biomass, hydro, geothermal, etc.
Oh don't be so pessimistic. I think we'll harness fusion eventually. It might take another 100 years but I think we can do it.
Recognizing the likelihood of peak coal and peak natural gas within a fairly limited period of time is, I think, an essential first step in thinking about how to deal with peak oil. It would suggest that measures such as coal-to-liquids, natural-gas-to-liquids, or widespread adoption of natural gas automobiles are at best, stopgaps, and at worst, just plain bad ideas.
Ramping up the renewables to replace coal in electricity production will be, certainly not impossible, but difficult and expensive. With wind and solar you've got the dispatchabiilty issue. We have to lick the storage problem, or replace the existing grid with a smart grid -- probably both. I expect we will, but it could be painful.
I should live so long.
I tend to agree with your statement - in America, nearly every household is able to all at once operate several (CRT) TV's, video gaming systems, the dryer and dishwasher, many rooms unnecessarily lit ... and so on. It's during the day that some areas suffer and Soccer Mom can't wash out the ketchup stains on a hot(ter than before) day.
So why can't it be done, read a book and charge the car?
Yeah, capacity is really only an issue at peak times. On hot summer afternoons when every and their brother has the AC cranked up, cooking food, watching TV, etc. And for those times we need demand-response and peak generation systems like natural gas turbines that can be fired up within minutes. But in the middle of the night there are huge quantities of generating capacity that goes unused. And worse, they often just pour electricity 'down the drain' since it would cost more to turn off some generation systems and turn them back on than to just let them keep going even though the power is not needed.
So . . . time-of-use metering. And nation-wide, smart meters are being rolled out. They are often doing this for other reasons such as the ability to read the meter with RF transmissions instead of sending a meter reader out. But those new meters can do TOU metering. Just offer cheap electricity in the middle of the night. ALL of the new electric cars (the Volt, the Leaf, etc.) being introduced can be programmed to charge at the most efficient times. You can do it from your cell phone.
Look . . . if EVs were going to create a huge problem for the electrical companies they would try to push people away from them. No . . . they want people to buy them in droves. They have special rates for EVs. They buy EVs for their own fleets. They participate in corporate groups pushing for an electrified vehicle future. Etc. Why? Because having rate-payers 24 hours a day instead of just 16 hours a day will increase incoming cashflow w/o requiring new plants. They'll be able to pay down their capital costs faster and be more profitable. In theory, electricity rates could actually DROP because they would be running more efficiently (since currently unused capacity would be used).
As I understand it, there would still need to be an increase in capacity because not all generating capacity can be run at capacity for 100% of the time (for a variety of reasons). What the increase needs to be I'm not sure but have seen a calculation (a few years ago) which came up with about 30%.
You are correct, and I am disappointed in Smil.
To quantify this:
by eia.gov -> electricity, summer generation rating in the U.S. is 1.010 TeraWatts, winter is 1.040 TW.
Total usage of electricity in 2007 (peak year) was 4,157 TW-hrs.
There are 8760 hrs in a year.
A bit simplified (ignoring capacity factors, etc.), but 1 TW x 8760 hrs/yr = TWICE what was actually made/used.
His 750 TW-hr/year is small change, representing only 18% of what was generated/used in 2007.
We have plenty of generating capacity RIGHT NOW, as long as charging in time-shifted off peak electricity demand, a simple timer will do that.
While most people themselves could not/would not do an electric car conversion themselves, when push comes to shove (aka TSHTF), one of the family cars can easily be converted by people who would/can. The only custom parts are an adapter plate to the transmission/clutch and a battery box to fit the vehicle, and I bet a thriving cottage industry will spring up for common ICE models.
(when TSHTF, heaters, A/C, AM/FM/stereo will be luxuries. Power brakes and power steering can be done with electric motors.)
FYI, the Electric Auto Association's conversion flyer (pdf) has lots of references to further information on conversions.
Electric Vehicles won't solve every transportation issue, but it can sure beat walking or nothing. Don't forget electric bikes too - a 20 mile/way commute on an e-bike would take about an hour, walking would take all day - each job saved in the long emergency is a bit less pain.
BTW - this Friday's Wall Street Journal has several articles on EVs.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870465400457551789161689622...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870436150457555259343495830...
Vaclav Smil is a climate change denier as in,
Gloomy Smil is mainly a 'false firemen' critic intent on proving that change is impossible.
He hates biofuels and carbon capture and sequestration.
He doesn't believe in renewables either.
Forget electric cars and energy efficiency.
Do we really need the likes of Vaclav Smil to warn us that adaptation is futile (even though it isn't)?
Increasing renewables and CCS can substantially increase available energy even if it can't maintain BAU. I could comfortably live on 1/3 of the energy I do now if I changed my lifestyle.
If we are to survive people have to believe that change is possible.
Apparently Smil has the ear of the uber-rich like Bill Gates and what will be the result if our rulers think that all is lost?
BAU becomes the only option and you have a self-fulfilling prophecy.
deleted
And then almost on queue, in come a story saying 2010 is on pace to be the warmest year on record:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20101018/sc_livescience/2010tiedforw...
But whatever. Humanity is not going to do a thing about it. It is too abstract and long-term for people to care.
Since 2010 correlates with El Niño there is no surprise that global average surface temperature is high.
Actually, based on your link it's more than a little surprising. Compared to the previous hottest year (1998) the El Niño effect is much lower, and the first half of 2010 was during a surprisingly strong solar minimum. Lookout for 2012, it looks to be a scorcher after the current La Niñia ends, and the sun will be on the upswing of its cycle.
BTW, I highly recommend http://climateprogress.org/ for the sort of coverage on climate that TOD does on energy.
Very simplistic analysis. Worst case (old coal plants) electric vehicles CO2 and primary energy efficiency is as good (bad?) as ICE engine running on petrol (which doesn't need producing or refining) More balanced analysis show that most charging will be done off peak and future electrical capacity will come from more efficient and low carbon energy sources (CCGT's Wind and Nukes)
If we have large numbers of electric vehicles, heat pumps and interconnected grids, we can increase contribution of wind well above 10% Something along the lines of.
30% nuclear
25% wind
30% CCGT / IGCC / supercritical coal
15% hydro
His analysis suffers significantly from lack of systematic thinking.
He assumes that EVs MUST be as big as current cars AND Americans must drive as much. This translates into 25% of current generation.
Cut the average size in half and the VMT by 1/4th (both easily doable, and more is quite possible) and 25% becomes 9 3/8ths %.
Can conservation, negawatts, generate 10% of our total consumption ?
Relatively easy, even with population growth. Reduce retail sq ft significantly + more efficient appliances & light bulbs + less/more efficient street lighting + cut cooling electrical demand significantly (SEER 25 a/c - on sale today - coupled with better insulation, windows, caulking, insulating curtains, etc.). Many more conservation opportunities. A USA with the same GDP & population and half the electrical demand is doable.
I prefer the much more efficient solution, Urban Rail, couple with a significant reduction in total electrical demand. 3.5% of current electrical demand can supply all the electrified railroads and Urban rail and eBicycles I can realistically imagine.
As for wind, there are many holes in his argument. Wind can easily supply 25+% of total generation with some pumped storage (I figure 1 MW pumped storage can effectively balance 6 to 8 MW of wind nameplate in a 50% wind grid).
Add HV DC to match demand with supply (4 hour delta from EST to PST, western Oklahoma wind can supply Georgia or Los Angeles or pumped storage in Sierras or around Chattanooga).
"Roads", which can be dirt in dry weather, are required only for original installation and major maintenance (replace blades and/or nacelle) every decade or two. Annual maintenance is easier with a road, but many other options exist (4WD pick-up would be choice #2).
Existing farm to market roads (paved or gravel) can do.
The numbers of WTs he assumes are excessive.
Best Hopes for Realistic Assessments !
Alan
You're imagining a techno-fantasy. There is no way you can increase the population of the U.S. as projected and have energy consumption remain static via conservation. You will wind up with such a massive underclass I will have to live in a gated compound like you find in South Africa or Mexico. There won't be any rail because it won't be possible to fund it, where will the trains take you? The ruins of Detroit?
Ah, we poor Americans would be forced to live like those malnourished Swedes in their notorious shantytowns !
It VERY easy to significantly reduce US electrical consumption with increasing population and keep the same GDP and a higher quality of life.
For example, a series of actions by President Gore, post 9/11 (not in order of priority)
1) Any home not under construction by 9/11/01 would get a home mortgage deduction on the first 1,800 sq ft. So a 3,600 sq ft McMansion could only deduct half of the interest costs. A severe blow to the underclass !
2) A new National Energy Code would require leak-proof ducts (retro-fitted when new a/c is added). 8% of our residential heating and a/c is lost in duct leaks today. Air conditioning their attics in July is what keeps many Americans out of the breadlines ! (Or is it the other way around ?)
3) The NEC would require insulation, windows, etc. comparable to existing Swedish & German codes, adjusting for climate zones, in new construction. Failure to meet these standards eliminates the home forever from gov't supported mortgages and the mortgage interest deduction (rental property or home owner) and depreciation deduction for rental property. Adds 3% to 4% to purchase price, cuts utility bills in half forever.
4) 45% tax deduction for insulation, tankless gas water heaters, better windows, etc. (comparable to today's 30% tax credit but also for rental property).
5) GWB lowered Clinton's new minimum a/c standard from 13 SEER to 12 SEER. Pres. Gore would raise it to 14 SEER and then, by steps to 21 SEER. With tax credits for higher. Again, a step towards national impoverishment !
6) All stop and warning lights would be converted to LEDs (saved 65 MW in California). Saves on labor replacing bulbs.
7) Reduce street lighting. A 500% tax on all advertising sign electrical bills.
8) A federal tax on business parking spaces. First 8 free. $100/year for next 25. $1,000/year for next 100 spaces. $3,000/year for every space after that. Malls count as one business.
9) All retail business utility bills would be subject to a 75% surtax, phased in 15%/year over 5 years.
8 & 9 should reduce commercial electrical demand (and sq ft).
10) In the name of national security, states would be required to maintain all roads and streets from gas taxes and not property taxes, general revenue, etc. All federal gas taxes would be used for other, better purposes.
11) No residential refrigerator can be sold after 1/1/2004 that uses more than 500 kWh, an energy waste tax for over 400 kWh/year. Comparable for freezers. Also taxes on large TVs, computer monitors, etc. (Which hit the poor SO hard, paying a $1,000 in taxes on a 56" TV).
etc. etc.
Alan
6)
All new traffic lights going in down here are LED. They are VASTLY more visible than the old incandescent ones and a transition could be argued on purely safety grounds.
NAOM
EDIT
9)
Store roofing not used for solar electricity taxed, make that double, one for loosing the solar electricity and one for heat gain to store that could be shaded by solar panels.
In regards to number 8, that is the worst idea I have ever read in regards to Peak Oil. Not only would something like that never pass and become law, it would most likely lead to metered parking everywhere. I would end up doing even more shopping online and many others would follow suit. It would severely hurt all retail establishments. I imagine I'd go to a small business and end up parking on the grass. because they decided they didn't need a parking lot.
The idea is to reduce the number of retail business sq ft by more than half (preferably 3/4ths). A 75% reduction would still be above EU levels (like those poor Swedes, suffering from a budget surplus this year) and 250% more retail sq ft than the USA in 1950.
Other than my local WalMart, it would have almost no impact on the retail business I buy at. And our local WalMart has less parking, by a third, than "normal" WalMarts.
Less retail sq ft means less energy used to heat, cool & light store. I am showing ways to reduce energy consumption without the dire results you predict.
There is no way you can increase the population of the U.S. as projected and have energy consumption remain static via conservation. You will wind up with such a massive underclass I will have to live in a gated compound
Metered parking will not create massive slums of poor people. In fact the opposite will result.
And parking space taxes can pay for bike lanes and urban rail.
If GWB could use 9/11 to invade Iraq, why do you say that it would have been impossible for President Gore to use 9/11 to pass a parking space tax ?
Best Hopes for an end to socialist parking ! Free market rates on all car parking !
Alan
It could be argued that there's already a tax on parking. Landlords pay property taxes plus maintenance and security costs (which are taxed) for parking areas, and pass these costs on to leasees, who pass these costs on to customers. Free market wealth redistribution. Adding an additional tax on top of these costs seems like another layer of complexity that may not provide the returns (or deterent) you expect.
Oh my.......what a tangled web we have weaved (woven?).
But the difference is that parking fees are a user pays tax - what you describe is included in overhead, and paid by all customers, whether or not they park.
Many city restaurants have a parking area equal, or greater than the restaurant itself. The customer who lives around the corner and walks, is paying the same price as the one who drives. When it is user pays, the customers are rewarded for leaving the car at home (or not having one at all). Better still, build something else, useful, on that parking space.
The City of Calgary has among the highest city parking fees in N. America - there is no free on street parking anywhere, though there are numerous city and private parkades (not free, of course). This has been credited as a contributor to the success of Calgary's LRT, which has the highest ridership in N. America. It has also meant that a lot of downtown space that would have been given over to parking, has been developed into property tax paying buildings.
http://www.calgarytransit.com/pdf/Calgarys_LRT_1st_25Years_TRB_revised.pdf
Once you separate out car related costs, like parking, people can start to avoid them, by not using their cars. Urban, car free, living becomes not only possible, but affordable.
The City of Calgary actually prohibited companies from putting more parking in the downtown core. The real reason for this was not that they hated cars, but that the downtown streets didn't have enough capacity to move any more cars in or out of the downtown core (many cities seem to ignore this limitation in their planning)
The LRT system, though, has the capacity of a 16-lane freeway running right through the middle of the downtown core, so anybody who can get to an LRT station can get in or out quickly and efficiently. The LRT operates as a downtown people mover running across the downtown core, and the core is small enough that anybody can walk anywhere from the LRT line.
It is very efficient from a corporate perspective. The head offices of 90% of the oil companies in Canada are located within walking distance of each other, the banks are right in the middle of them, and the consultants and service companies are within walking distance around them. Even the government regulators and courts are within walking distance. Nobody ever has to drive anywhere unless they are going out of town. It saves a lot of time and money in running an oil company.
The problem is that US cities require businesses to provide parking.
Just drop that requirement, and eliminate free street parking, and "free parking" would greatly decline.
Yeah, as Steven Chu likes to point out, California has been able to keep its electricity usage in check by decoupling electric utility profits from electricity usage. So there are rebates for efficient appliances, there are discounted CFLs in every store, there is a tiered electricity rate that gives people a financial incentive to make sure they are not wasting power, etc.
There are lots of simple things that can be done to severely reduce electricity waste . . . more efficient appliances, swap out incandescents with CFLS (or better yet LEDs), get rid of electrical heat appliances and swap them with natural gas versions (dryers, hot water heaters, pool heaters, stoves, etc.). Insulate, weather strip, better windows, etc. (yes, that helps in the summer for cooling).
As some like to say, this isn't low-hanging fruit . . . it is sitting on the ground.
We already have, whether it's likely just depends on the context. Oil consumption in the late seventies is pretty much the same as oil consumption now, but we've got ~100 million more people, mostly because oil prices have increased a bunch since then. If electricity doesn't scale up while keeping prices the same then we'll see the same pattern there that we've seen w/ oil.
-my Error- post errased-
How does one obtain the authority to decide who suffers from a "lack of systematic thinking"....why yes of course you have self declared yourself that privilege.
Now that sure is convenient!
Will not have a terrible impact? Many on TOD would agree? I'm not on that list.
Terrible is a pretty vague word. But the views on the effect of peak oil vary from total societal break-down and rioting on the Defcon 1 end to just having to adapt to higher gas prices (be more like Europe) on the Defcon 5 side. There are survivalists and there are people thinking they'll have to buy a hybrid.
This isn't really encouraging. In Brandt's analysis, the Hubbert curve was something of a best-case scenario. The other models he matched to the data (linear, exponential, asymmetrical) all showed sharper peaks and/or more rapid initial decline rates. Brandt was thoroughly convinced that oil production would peak, he just wasn't sure how.
So really, the Hubbert curve is the most likely possibility, but it is also possible that we may experience a sharper peak and/or a more rapid decline than Hubbert predicted. Be aware that if Hubbert was wrong, that is not necessarily grounds for optimism. A non-Hubbert curve would most likely be worse than Hubbert predicted.
I have just got this book and it is heavy going. Mr. Smil is a professor of the environment and he certainly has a good vocabulary which sometimes gets into the way of his message. He very clearly sets out the evolution of energy usage over the past centuries. His main point is that energy transitions take a lot of time and that past changes are no predictors of future changes. He reckons that it is of no use to increase energy efficiency without actually reducing the total energy used.
I was born in 1949, in 1950 the total energy used by the world was just over 100 EJ (the equivalent of 2,400 Million tons of oil per year). In 2008 it was over four and a half times bigger!
In this time the consumption of oil went from about 20 to 140 EJ - seven times more!
In this time the consumption of coal went from 45 to about 130 EJ - three times bigger and gas went from 7 to 104 EJ - fifteen times bigger!
Bio-fuel usage in my lifetime has only doubled from 20 EJ in 1950 to 42 EJ in 2008.
The simple question is - How much longer can such extreme energy consumptions of fossil fuels be sustained?
I've interviewed Smil a few times and closely read some of his books.
Here's a few critical things to know about him.
He grew up energy poor in Europe and went through the wood/coal/oil transition himself.
He lives in a superinsulated home in Canada, drives an efficient car, and believes Americans need to dramatically reduce their energy consumption.
He *hates* simplistic forecasts and certitude of all kinds, except perhaps his own.
This last point is key: when it comes to the future, we all have a bias.
Vaclav's bias is a profound, grounded-in-history distrust of simplistic forecasts, overly emotional or under-nuanced takes on our energy predicament.
He is very concerned about climate change, not a climate denier, but dislikes Gore/Hansen like pronouncements that suggest we could swiftly move to renewables and carbon free.
He has a sense of humor too. He once wrote me that "we can do quite well for a few decades with declining oil and rising natural gas production. We had a fine world and a clever civilization without oil, and then with little oil, and we can do it again.. It will not be the end of the world, except perhaps for Californians.”
He believes in the Jevon's Paradox.
As for peak oil, I think he's mostly reacting to the overly-inflamed, end-of-the-world-doomer-like takes on our petroleum predicament. Unfortunately, I think this has blinded him to what the future might hold. He doesn't do a honest and complete accounting for the 8x increase in oil since 1950, and what a plateau/decline will mean in contrast.
I'm generally an admirer of Smil, but regret that his contrarian instincts have kept him from investigating and explaining the current oil situation more accurately/thoroughly in his recent books.
Recall that Amory Lovins (whose work Smil generally disparages) didn't think much of peak oil until recently either.
Moral of the story: everyone has blind spots.
If you are new to Smil, read his classic Energy in World History if you can find a used copy at Amazon or elsewhere.
I love the fact that the paper that Smil refers to by Adam Brandt won a best student paper award.
Once again we have to go to amateurs and students to get decent information and new ideas in how to analyze our predicament. And not surprisingly, another epic fail by the oil industry and the US government agencies in providing any good policy positions.
That depends entirely on what generates the electricity, and that changes over time.
The statement also completely omits mention of the real gain, which is to remove Finite Oil dependence from Cars.
I'm not sure what point he thought he was making here, as the fleet turnover will not be less than twenty years anyway.
The fleet has a variable age-VMT curve, and the newest cars dominate, but that sets the time to get a 50% VMT replacement. The time to get 75% and 90% VMT coverage, will be the time to replace those older, less frequently used vehicles.
The numbers sound doable, if you bring the real world into play, and say 50% of VMT displacement will cost +12.5% of the power (USA) or 7.5% (EU).
If the numbers needed indicated ten times the power, then we have a problem.
Yeah, it would take decades to swap out the fleet even if everyone bought electrics. But right now NO ONE is buying electrics. They'll start at the end of this year and sell maybe 20K . . . along with 9 million gas & hybrid cars. Any demand changes on the electricity infrastructure will be so slow that the utilities could easily adapt.
I just find it odd that he constantly talks about how long changes take but then when he wants to hate on EVs he then brings out the fast-transition strawman.
Smil is particularity clueless about EV's
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2010/10/vanvliet-20101018.html#more
"Study Finds Coordinated Off-peak Charging Can Support Large Scale Plug-in Use Without Additional Generation Capacity; TCO and GHG Abatement Costs for BEVs Projected to Remain High"
In regard to EV batteries.
Recent developments in supercapacitor technology are indicating the complete obsolescence
of chemical-electrical storage of energy in the medium term. This is a micro-electronics carbon-nanotube technology which will definitely follow Moore's law. Right now this technology is about 2 orders of magnitude off the pace. I will have to leave it to our erudite members to follow thru on this. Just google supercapacitors and follow the prompts. There is a rich literature out there.
I am not in a position to write a full comment right now. However I felt that the discussions on this thread were missing the 800Kg gorilla in the room, in regard to the energy storage issues for EVs.
Cheers to all TODers Juan.