The Newest Guest at Your Dinner Table: Your Car

Some 250,000 people are being added to the world's population every day. Of the more than 6 billion people now on earth, 3.7 billion suffer from some form of malnutrition. For these reasons and others now does not seem like a good time to embark on a program to turn a significant portion of the world's food crops into fuel for automobiles. So says David Pimentel (pronounced: pim-men-TELL), the Cornell University agriculturalist whom many regard as the world's leading authority on the energy content of biofuels and their effects on food and agriculture as a whole.

The growing drive for energy "independence" coupled with heavy subsidies has led to a scramble to build biodiesel and ethanol plants across the United States. "I wish that ethanol and biodiesel would save us," Pimentel said at a conference entitled "Peak Oil and the Environment" held in Washington, D. C. recently. Unfortunately, green plants collect relatively little solar energy, he explained. Less that 0.1 percent of the sunlight that falls on plants gets converted into usable energy. That compares with about a 20 percent conversion of sunlight to energy by photovoltaic cells.

This means that biodiesel and ethanol production facilities end up being voracious though hidden guests at the world's dinner tables. Humans get 99 percent of their food from the land and only 1 percent from the oceans, according to Pimentel. (This is in part due to the collapse of the world's fisheries brought on by new forms of industrial fish harvesting and by high demand for seafood.) The more that we demand from the land in the way of fuel, the less that will be left over to eat, and the catch from the oceans is unlikely to make up for this loss.

Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of the recent book Plan B, spoke at the same conference. He said that as long as oil remains above $60 per barrel, it will be profitable to produce fuel from crops. "The price for oil is becoming the floor for agricultural crops," he explained. "We're setting up a competition between service stations and supermarkets. The prices of agricultural commodities will be determined by their fuel value." (my emphasis)

If oil prices remain high or even rise, they would continue to put upward pressure on grain prices. This could lead to political instability in countries such as Indonesia and Mexico which rely heavily on grain imports, Brown said.

But if, for the sake of argument, we didn't concern ourselves with the effects of biofuels on food supplies, just how far could plant-based fuels go toward solving our looming liquid fuels problem? The U. S. Department of Energy now reports that currently less than 1 percent of all vehicle fuel consumed in the United States is plant-derived. According to Pimentel, even if we devoted all the corn raised in the country to making ethanol, we would be able to supply only about 7 percent of the country's needs. Any claims that biofuels will make us energy independent just don't hold up.

Even if biofuels could be produced in more substantial amounts, there is reason to believe they would not help us address energy shortages in the future. According to Pimentel's work it takes 25,000 kilocalories of energy to produce one gallon of corn ethanol which contains 19,400 kilocalories of energy. That's a loss of more than 22 percent (dividing the loss of 5,600 kilocalories by the 25,000 kilocalories of inputs). Other studies which claim to show an energy gain for ethanol leave out many inputs such as the energy used to create farm and processing machinery, the energy used to irrigate and the costs of the environmental impacts, he said.

(Pimentel's critics argue that his methods underestimate the energy return on ethanol. He encourages them to submit their findings to refereed scientific journals where all of his research articles on the subject have appeared. So far none have done so.)

Many other biofuels perform even worse. Pimentel and his co-author Tad Patzek determined that it takes 45 percent more energy in the form of fossil fuels to turn switchgrass into liquid fuel than that liquid fuel returns in energy. The results for wood biomass, soybeans and sunflowers were 57 percent, 27 percent and 118 percent, respectively. In short, we are currently subsidizing the production of biofuels with fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas which provide the heat and electricity to process those biofuels.

So, given all of this, what is driving the biofuels market? The simple answer is money, said Pimentel. For instance, U. S. government subsidies mean that companies producing corn ethanol receive payments totaling $7 per bushel of corn processed. The corn farmers alas receive less than a 2-cent per bushel subsidy related to ethanol production.

Pimentel offers a simple test for whether ethanol producers really believe their own hype. If ethanol offers such a magnificent energy gain, then why don't ethanol plants run on ethanol instead of coal and natural gas? Not surprisingly, this question has so far been met with dumbfounded silence.

What Clive Crook Doesn't Know About Energy Will Hurt Him (And Us Too!)

The incurious mind often doesn't know what it doesn't know and so, not surprisingly, doesn't think to ask questions. Such is the case with Clive Crook in his recent piece in The Atlantic Monthly (subscription required, but even if you can't read it, I will outline his main points). While misleading articles about oil and energy are so numerous in the media these days that responding to them all would be an impossible task, it is occasionally worthwhile to critique a typical specimen so as to remain in practice.

In a nutshell, Crook appears to be channeling Daniel Yergin who contends that the main obstacles to an energy-secure future are political, not technical or geological. But Crook should have been more careful to conceal his ignorance of the world's energy landscape. He tells us the following:

Even if prices somewhat lower than those already seen this year were sustained, an array of existing but not yet widely applied technologies would make it economically feasible to extract oil from tar sands or shale, or to convert coal to liquid fuel.

If Crook doesn't know that for many years it has been economically feasible to obtain oil from the tar sands in Alberta and that it is being done currently to the tune of 1 million barrels a day, what else doesn't he know? Apparently, he doesn't know that coal is already being turned into liquid fuel on a large scale in South Africa, either. And, though he tells us in amazement that the economy has not been slowed appreciably by $70 a barrel oil, he doesn't seem to know that this price is about $25 to $30 below the inflation-adjusted high that oil reached in 1980.

Crook also tells us that the American economy is far more efficient in its use of oil and energy in general than it was in 1970. The absolute amount of oil that we use is greater, he admits, but the amount we use per unit of GDP is considerably less. This makes it easier to absorb price increases without hurting economic growth. True, but it never occurs to him to ask how our economy would fare if the amount of oil available actually declined. Then, I think we would find out that we are not less dependent on oil, but, in fact, more dependent on oil since we now balance much more GDP on a given unit of oil. Could our economy grow after even the partial withdrawal of oil supplies? Here we must consider Liebig's Law of the Minimum: an organism's growth is limited by the amount of the least available essential nutrient. In the case of the world economy, that nutrient would be oil.

Crook launches three other obvious canards: 1) that the move toward a service economy is making us less energy dependent, 2) that reserve estimates for oil prove that we have enough oil for decades to come and 3) that some vague group of people is saying that we are running out of oil.

Let's take the claim about the service economy. First, those who work in the service economy depend on mining, agriculture and manufacturing to make what they need to live and work. Those basic sectors of the economy must use more and more resources including energy to make it possible for more people to work in the so-called service sector. But the service sector isn't necessarily all that energy lean. Ask someone who has had to pay the utility bills for a university or a large hotel lately. In fact, some service businesses and institutions are from an energy standpoint nothing but sprawling energy sinks as our large state universities have been finding out recently. Growth in the economy means growth in energy use no matter how that growth occurs. Yes, we've become more efficient. But, nature doesn't care that we are using finite fossil fuels more parsimoniously; it only cares about the absolute drawdown which is getting bigger by the day.

Crook also claims that oil reserve estimates show that we have nothing to worry about for several decades. Here he once again displays his ignorance. He says nothing about the controversy surrounding reserve gains in the late 1980s in nearly all OPEC countries. OPEC was contemplating adjusting production quotas to be commensurate with reserves. Suddenly, OPEC members within the space of a couple years were reporting gains of 50% to 100% in their reserves with no discernible exploration to account for it. The Middle East, where most of OPEC's oil is located, contains 60 percent of the world's remaining reserves. Not mentioning the sudden appearance of these phantom reserves and the recent sudden vanishing of some of the same reserves is no small oversight.

The second error he makes is confining his discussion to reserves. It doesn't matter how big your reserves are if the rate at which you can get oil out of the ground is small. The reserves in the Alberta tar sands are quoted at 180 billion barrels, bigger than that of every OPEC country except Saudi Arabia. But, the tar sands are unlikely to give us much more than 3 million barrels a day by 2025. This sounds like a lot, but it is a mere trickle compared to projected world demand of about 120 million barrels a day.

Another problem with the tar sands and other nonconventional oil sources is that their energy return is poor. Right now, we are running the world economy on oil that gives us about 20 units of energy to use in the non-energy economy for each unit we spend in the energy industry to get it. For tar sands, the ratio is only 1.5 to 1. Efficiencies will surely accrue over time, but it seems quite doubtful that tar sands will approach anything like the 20 to 1 ratio for conventional oil. And, we need to keep in mind that the easiest-to-recover oil from the tar sands is being taken first. The harder-to-get oil, and thus more energy-intensive, will come later. It will be a race between technology and declining grades; but will it be a race up to 20 to 1 returns? I doubt it.

Crook mentions oil shale and indicates that there is ready technology to make it a useful energy source. To date no company has been able to get oil out of oil shale at a profit. Even more important, oil shale remains net energy negative. That means we are getting less than one unit of energy for each unit we put in. In short, it's not an energy source using existing technology, and unless somebody figures out a technique for extracting and processing it which doesn't involve using lots of water, it probably never will be a source of energy. That's because most of the world's oil shale is located on the Colorado plateau where water is already in short supply.

The final canard is a staple among oil optimists: They say the-sky-is-falling pessimists claim that we're running out of oil. This, of course, is an utter straw man. Even the pessimists say that we won't run out of oil anytime soon. What they claim is that we are approaching a peak in the rate of production worldwide. Oil production in every field and in every oil country now in decline has followed the same pattern: a sharp rise in the rate of production, followed by a peak, followed by a decline. No one has convincingly shown why this should not be true for the world. And, in a global economy that is utterly dependent for its growth on ever-expanding supplies of cheap oil, a decline in the rate of production would have profound consequences. If that decline is nearby, we will find that we are simply not ready for it. If it is delayed for many years, we have chance to get ready. But, we will not be ready in time if we stick with the current the-market-will-save-us policies which are in force now.

To his credit Crook notes that global warming also needs to be addressed simultaneously with energy issues. But, he again seems to betray his ignorance by saying that the Kyoto Protocol will "impose immediate, drastic changes at ruinous cost." What he doesn't know or doesn't tell you is that leading climate scientists believe we will have to cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 70 percent over the next 40 years to save us from disastrous warming. Kyoto only requires reductions of about 5.2 percent below 1990 emissions for industrialized countries only (though these reductions would have meant up to 23 percent for the United States if had it signed the protocol). Unfortunately, total emissions may actually rise because of plans for many new coal-fired power plants in countries not covered by or not ratifying the protocol such as China, India and the United States. If the limits Kyoto calls for are "drastic," then they are clearly not drastic enough.

Crook proposes energy diversification, a carbon tax and subsidies for "oil-saving technologies," all sensible steps. But when it comes to understanding the true nature of our energy predicament, he needs to go back and ask more questions--a lot more questions.

Triage for the Post-Peak Oil Age

When casualties overwhelm battlefield doctors, they are often forced to sort the wounded into three groups: those who will survive without treatment, those who will likely die even with treatment, and those who will probably live but only with treatment. In the post-peak oil age we will likely be faced with a similar situation in deciding which activities a lower-energy society can support.

Tentatively, I propose the following triage for various broad areas:

1) activities that are "Expected to Make a Full Recovery," ones that I think will spread and intensify out of necessity,

2) activities labeled "Code Blue"--the medical term for emergency treatment of heart attack patients--activities which I think may only survive with our active intervention or which may only be available at the level we want them to be through special efforts, and

3) activities labeled "Do Not Resuscitate" which are unlikely to survive post-peak no matter how much effort we put into them.

Only "Code Blue" items are meant to indicate my preferences for a post-peak oil world.

The other categories are predictions (a dangerous practice) about what I think will and won't thrive in a low-energy society. I will certainly miss some activities such as cheap air travel. Others such as motorized sports, I won't. But, my preferences don't matter since the availability and price of liquid fuels will, in my view, determine the fate of both activities.

The table below is not meant to be a complete list by any means. No doubt readers will disagree--perhaps vehemently in some cases--with my predictions and preferences. My aim is neither to irritate nor to prescribe, but rather to help begin a process that I believe will become absolutely necessary. I say absolutely necessary because our failure to recognize those activities which won't survive under any circumstances may cause us to waste valuable (and diminishing) energy resources on hopeless cases. That lost energy will be energy that we cannot spend on things that we will desperately need such as wind and solar power.

No one likes to choose, but choose we must if we are going to have the future that we want (given our constraints) rather than the one that is simply forced upon us.

Category	Expected to Make A Full Recovery	Code Blue	Do Not Resuscitate
Agriculture	Organic farming	Scientific research on organic practices; non-GMO seed preservation	Industrial/Chemical Farming
Transportation	Walking; bicycling; sail power	Passenger and freight train service; water transportation	Private automobiles; transcontinental trucking; commercial air travel; vacation cruise lines
Telecommunications	Face-to-face conversation	The Internet	Cable/Satellite Television
Culture	Oral history and storytelling	Libraries; certain museums; unique nationally recognized performing groups (opera, theater, ballet, symphony)	Theme parks; any sport involving motorized vehicles; large-scale professional sports teams
Education	Neighborhood and home schooling	Smaller, decentralized secondary and higher education	Large, energy-intensive colleges and universities
Science	Widespread curiosity about and close observation of the natural world	Scientific research and education on truly sustainable practices	Megaprojects such as particle accelerators and space exploration
Religion/Spirituality	Spiritual teachings that view the natural world as sacred	Ecumenism and tolerance	Megachurches; television ministries
Government	Local governance	Local democratic participation	Large, centralized administration
Business	Local, small-scale craft and manufacturing; locally owned retail; personal service	Local economic networks	Big box chain stores; just-in-time delivery; worldwide logistics
City/Land Use Planning	Planning which focuses on local resources	Vibrant urban centers; preservation of arable land	Suburban and exurban sprawl; megacities
Energy	Physical labor; animal power	Renewable energy especially wind and solar	Corn ethanol; any net energy negative biofuel

The Next Casualty of the Oil Depletion Age: State Universities

It is an unfortunate fact for canaries, at least, that these birds are particularly susceptible to methane and carbon dioxide. For that reason coal miners used to bring them down into the mines as an early warming system for monitoring the air. When exposed to even small amounts of these noxious gases, the canaries would show signs of distress and wobble on their perches; if the gases were concentrated enough, the birds would fall over and expire. Either way, it was a sign to get out.

In the business world there are some "canaries" that are already wobbling on their perches as the age of oil depletion unfolds. The airlines are the most visible and obvious casualties since their fortunes are so closely tied to the price of jet fuel. The American automobile industry is another prominent casualty. This is in large part because the industry failed to anticipate the emerging energy crisis and continued to concentrate on manufacturing gas-guzzling SUVs. In addition, the automakers' high pension and health care costs have made them especially vulnerable to financial shocks.

Now, a third important casualty is coming into view: state universities. As with each of the other "canaries" already mentioned, state universities have particular vulnerabilities that make them more susceptible to rising oil and natural gas prices than their private counterparts. First, the "Demographics Project" of the College Board (the organization famous for SAT tests) reports the following:

For almost 20 years, enrollment managers have had the luxury of being able to recruit, select, and help finance their incoming freshmen from ever larger high school graduating classes. Those good times are about to end. Future applicant pools will be smaller and will vary across demographic lines.

Second, state funding as a portion of higher education budgets for state universities and colleges has been trending down from 44.8% in 1979-1980 to just 32.3% in 1999-2000. This trend is leading to a third vulnerability: sharply rising tuition and fees as shown on the right side of the graph below:

Trends in Rate of Increase in Total Four-Year College Costs 1978-79 to 2003-04

                                          U. S. Department of Education

The rate of tuition and fee increases for private and public colleges had been more or less in sync from 1980 until 2001. Then, tuition at public colleges began to rise dramatically. Increasing health care costs were partly to blame and served to make state colleges and universities all the more vulnerable to energy shocks. Higher tuition has also begun to threaten enrollment (and thus revenues) as students find that their education is less and less affordable. Of course, the students and their families are facing higher energy costs as well which means the income that is available to devote to education is dwindling.

State colleges and universities are vulnerable in yet a fourth way; their endowments are often small or nonexistent. While many private institutions can draw on substantial endowments to fund unexpected costs, most public institutions of higher education have little to fall back on.

All of these vulnerabilities leave state colleges and universities especially exposed to rising heating and electricity costs. And, while oil isn't the main fuel for college and university campuses, natural gas is. With natural gas supplies peaking in North America, heating costs for institutions located there are likely to remain high for a long time. One natural gas expert believes that natural gas production could even begin to drop precipitously by 2007 or 2008 sending prices higher still. Unfortunately, many state university and college campuses are sprawling energy sinks with vast energy-hogging laboratories, dormitories, arenas and classrooms. In addition, rising oil prices have begun to feed into higher prices for just about everything colleges and universities and their employees need.

The bad news is everywhere. Both New Mexico State University and the University of New Mexico were heading for huge deficits when a special session of the legislature was called to pass $3.5 million in additional aid to help the state's public institutions of higher education to pay their utility bills. Texas Tech tacked on a special $60 fee per student per semester to defray rising energy costs. Back in September, the state university located where I live, Western Michigan University, decided at the last minute to adjust its academic schedule to add an extra week of Christmas vacation and then tack that lost week onto the end of the school year. The reason given: to save energy.

Most colleges and universities are treating the situation as a short-term problem, one that should go away within a year or two as energy prices decline to more "normal" levels. What few are anticipating is a permanent or at least long-term change in the level of oil and natural gas prices. Under this scenario even elite institutions with large endowments and the ability to raise tuition almost with impunity will ultimately have to make considerable adjustments.

While many colleges and universities are striving to be "green" and "sustainable," the activities they have engaged in to date have seemed more optional than obligatory; these institutions have been trying to do the right thing because they want to, not because they have to. What most of them do not recognize is how thoroughgoing their own transformations will have to be to meet the challenges they will face as energy supplies become increasingly doubtful and expensive.

What those who run institutions of higher education need to understand starting right now is that in the future--perhaps as little as a decade from now--green colleges and universities may very well be the only colleges and universities. There isn't much time to prepare.

Principles for the Post-Peak Oil Job Market

Many types of jobs will cease to exist: public relations executive, marketing directors, et cetera. I think work will be very hands-on, and a lot of it will revolve around food production.
                  -- James Howard Kunstler, 2003

When I speak before college audiences about peak oil, I often ask if there are any engineers present. I suggest that they concentrate on jobs that will produce rather than consume energy, particularly energy that is renewable and doesn't create greenhouse gas emissions. While it is difficult to tell exactly what kinds of jobs will be available in the post-peak oil age, inklings of some broad principles are coming into view.

To discern those principles I propose to contrast what is valued in today's job market with what will likely be valued in a post-peak oil job market. First, let's look at what has traditionally been valued in pre-peak industrial society. William Catton, Jr. explains in his book, Overshoot, that humans engage in two strategies to enlarge the carrying capacity of their habitat: takeover and drawdown. Takeover is essentially taking over habitat from another species. That takeover might take the form of farming which essentially appropriates habitat from other animals and plants and dedicates it to crops for feeding humans or their domestic livestock.

Drawdown is the second major strategy. Drawdown is the drawing down of finite resources to provide increased carrying capacity temporarily. In this case, "temporarily" can mean more than a century. The prime example is the extraction of coal, oil and natural gas to produce the energy, fertilizers and myriad other products that allow more than 6 billion people to live on our planet.

It is easy to see that drawdown is, by far, the more highly rewarded activity in pre-peak society. (After all, how many billionaire farmers have been celebrated in the business pages?) Huge fortunes have been made in the fossil fuel and mining industries. Today, those industries are thought to be the industries of the past, the old economy. But, in truth, they continue to provide the basis for the so-called new economy. Without our colossal extractive industries to produce the essentials of modern civilization such as oil, copper, zinc, platinum, and iron, the new economy wouldn't even exist. In fact, much of the new economy consists of manipulating information to increase our drawdown and takeover activities. (Admittedly, some of that technology creates more efficient use of resources; but to date it has failed to reduce overall demand for resources. For why this is so, see Jevons Paradox.) The new 3D seismic surveys of the deep ocean done in search of oil and the elaborate computer-controlled processes which extract oil from the Canadian oil sands are two excellent examples of how technology is used to abet drawdown. Countless other industrial processes are also aided by new economy technologies. Those technologies both increase demand for the products of drawdown and help accelerate that drawdown to meet that demand.

The post-peak oil age will in all likelihood lack the essential ingredient for ever-accelerating drawdown, i.e. cheap energy. (While it is true that knowledge can also help humans increase drawdown, it is doubtful that knowledge can grow quickly enough to offset the somewhat imminent decline in the production of oil and other fossil fuels. Even if this were not the case, we would face another crisis later as other resource limits were reached.) Drawdown of oil and natural gas has enabled the creation of an industrial agriculture that erodes the soil and destroys its fertility. That agriculture then attempts to make up for the lost fertility with natural gas-derived nitrogen fertilizers and oil-based pesticides. So, the loss of cheap hydrocarbon fuels and feedstocks has large implications for agricultural productivity and for the type of agriculture we will be able to practice. The end of cheap fossil fuel also has implications for the availability of water, both for irrigation and drinking. Cheap energy has led to the drawdown of many sources of water much faster than they replenish. And, the pollution that industrial societies create has made water purification one of the largest uses of energy worldwide.

These illustrations suggest that in a post-peak oil world a premium will be placed on decreasing drawdown through increased efficiency and through the outright curtailment of certain activities such as industrial farming with its heavy reliance on petrochemicals and irrigation. Takeover may also have to be curtailed in order to preserve species, land and waters which perform essential eco-services for human populations such as pollination and water retention and purification.

Perhaps now we can say with a little more confidence what principles should animate those entering the post-peak oil job market in comparison to the pre-peak one:

Pre-Peak	Post-Peak
General Principles	General Principles
Increase drawdown	Decrease or eliminate drawdown
Increase takeover	Decrease takeover
Detailed Principles	Detailed Principles
Emphasize quantity	Emphasize quality
Emphasize competition	Emphasize cooperation
Emphasize power	Emphasize efficiency
Mine soil nutrients	Increase soil fertility
Deplete finite resources	Build capacity of renewable resources
Shift environmental costs to public	Bear all environmental costs you can't eliminate
Design linear product cycle	Design closed product cycle (Recycling)
Build in planned obsolescence	Build in long life for products
Ignore necessary eco-services such as water purification and pollination	Safeguard and enhance needed eco-services
Focus on financial profitability	Focus on ecological sustainability

I don't claim this list to be exhaustive. But I believe it offers a beginning for thinking about what mindsets and attitudes we need to inculcate in those who will be faced with working in a post-peak oil world. Right now most of what people learn in preparing themselves for work has little or no relationship to our ecological destiny. That needs to change and soon.

The Illusion of Autonomy in the Fossil Fuel Age

The slaveholder in the antebellum American South knew only too well how much his livelihood depended on his slaves. Slaves were the visible and essential workforce of the southern plantation system. They worked and lived side-by-side with the master and his family. It was the energy of slaves which tended the fields, shod the horses, cooked the meals and delivered the produce to nearby wharves. It was an uneasy symbiosis punctuated by occasional revolts and flights to freedom.

We have long since abolished slavery as an absolute moral evil. And, we have long since replaced the energy it supplied with a dependency on concentrated forms of energy mined from the ground, namely coal, oil, and natural gas. Those fuels, supplemented with some nuclear, hydroelectric and renewable energy, provide Americans with the equivalent of 147 "energy slaves." That means it would take the equivalent of 147 people working continuously 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to supply the energy currently used by each American. (Some people estimate the number is closer to 100 energy slaves; still, the point remains the same.)

But all those energy slaves are largely invisible. We flip a switch and the light goes on. We twist a key and the car starts. We turn on the stove and the flame lights. We adjust the thermostat and the heat comes on. We get what we want from our energy slaves, it seems, without having to deal with real people in any way remotely approaching the intimate way those living with or without slavery in the pre-fossil fuel age had to. Our main task is to pay the bill.

It is an illusion of autonomy. It is a libertarian fantasy seemingly come true. Cooperation and community appear optional; we can get everything we need so long as we have a little money.

Of course, in reality, the modern, energy-intensive world is a marvel of human cooperation mediated by financial and information flows of gargantuan proportion. But, that's not how it feels. The deserted, anonymous suburban streets; the impersonal big box stores; the self-service gas stations; the lonely commute; the untold hours in front of a computer--all can give us a false sense of being isolated and autonomous. At the same time these things give us unrivaled luxury in our living quarters, unparalleled selection in our consumer goods, unprecedented mobility, and unhindered access to information about nearly everything we might want to buy or wish to learn. We feel omnipotent and self-contained.

How then will we come together for the great task ahead, a transformation that must move us away from this powerful, seemingly autonomous, but ultimately unsustainable existence? Will we accept the true context in which we live, that is, a world with limits? Will we rediscover our neighbors? Will we realize our dependence on one another? Will we find the will to cooperate rather than fight?

Will we be able to give up the illusion of autonomy which the fossil fuel age has engendered in nearly every one of us? And, most important of all, will we be able to do it in time?

The Shape of Things To Come

If you knew you were going to lose your job within the next five years, you might just go looking for another one today, not waiting to see exactly when you would be let go. But, if your job were very lucrative, and all you knew was that after five years your pay could be reduced each year, you might want to weigh that against the uncertain prospects of getting a new job that may or may not match your old one.

The second situation is roughly analogous to what we face with the coming peak in world oil production. We know the peak will occur--some say it already has--but we don't know exactly when. We know that supplies will plateau or decline, but we can't know how long the plateau will last (if there is one), nor how steep any decline might be. Alternative fuels are now being developed and competing for a future share of the energy market, but no particular fuel has emerged as the answer to oil decline and, perhaps just as important, to global warming concerns.

With respect to oil peak, each combination of dates and decline curves suggests a different response. An imminent peak followed by a sharp decline--the worst possible combination--would demand immediate emergency conservation measures and massive investment in renewable energy research and deployment. A late peak followed by a long plateau suggests that we have more time to think through our response and gradually work toward solutions. Something in-between may call for a rapid implementation of conservation programs and a quick decision to back certain oil replacements based on the best available knowledge, but without the benefit of a long trial period in the marketplace.

All three scenarios are on offer in the peak oil literature. Energy consultant Robert Hirsch's study of decline curves from oil-producing countries around the world suggests sharply declining oil supplies after the peak. Combine that with predictions of an imminent peak, and you get the first scenario above. Daniel Yergin, the ever-optimistic president of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, predicts not a peak but an "undulating plateau" for several decades beginning sometime after 2030 or 2040.

Douglas Reynolds, a resource economist at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, believes a peak will occur sometime before 2015, but that it will take the form of a long, gradual curve--more like the bottom of a saucer than the peak of a mountain. Reynolds believes political factors as much as geological limits will cause this type of peak.

The permutations of these scenarios are many, and the available evidence doesn't tell us definitively which one to expect. Henry Groppe, an oil forecaster with a remarkable record, believes we are at peak, but will face at least a decade-long plateau in the production of liquid hydrocarbons as growing volumes of natural gas liquids and condensates make up for declining oil production. This scenario offers some hope that an immediate peak does not spell the end of civilization as we know it, though it certainly portends much hardship, especially for the poor. On the other hand, a peak which comes 25 years hence may not seem that threatening today. But, if it is followed by a steep decline in oil supplies, it means we had better start making and implementing plans now to get ready. For why this is so, read Robert Hirsch's report on mitigating the effects of peak oil prepared for the U. S. Department of Energy. Hirsch says that in order to avoid huge economic dislocations, the world would need to begin a crash problem to identify and deploy alternative liquid fuels at least 20 years in advance of any peak.

As for Groppe, he has 90 percent of his equity assets in energy; he puts his money where his mouth is. But, such investment stances can also create reinforcing loops in the minds of those who are committed to a particular view. Naturally, investment managers invest based on their research findings. But afterwards they may look for evidence to reinforce those decisions and downplay evidence that contradicts their initial research.

Groppe may be immune to this. But, we should be careful to parse the thinking behind various ideas about the date of the peak and the shape of the decline curve. Do the predictions we cling to come from our deepest fears, our greatest hopes, our ideological predilections or possibly even our investment portfolios? Or, are we trying to see the world as it is, adjusting our thinking and actions to unfolding events rather than preconceived notions?

All of us like to see our predictions vindicated. But we should let neither a hatred of the current globalized, corporate-dominated economic system nor an unthinking devotion to the free-market creed that is its handmaiden guide us in evaluating remaining oil and other finite energy supplies. When the stakes are this high--namely, the future of human civilization--we ought to focus on careful observations, flexible thinking and, most of all, humility.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't prepare for the future based on what we know and believe. When facing great uncertainty and large possible consequences, thorough preparation is the wise course. In fact, being ready early ought to be considered a virtue rather than a failure to predict the future correctly. Under the circumstances the last thing we need is a swaggering certainty in our pronouncements. That's the one thing of which I would have thought the world had enough.

(For my recent discussions of uncertainty, risk and probability, see Can a Wall Street Maverick Tell Us Something About Our Ecological Future? and What if Daniel Yergin is Wrong?)

Should we use net energy to measure global energy reserves?

Net energy is a simple concept really. Once you understand that it takes energy to get energy, the basic math is clear. To calculate the net energy available from an energy resource, you add up the energy used to find, extract, process and deliver that resource and then subtract that amount from the amount of energy the resource contains. But global reserves for finite energy resources such as coal, oil, natural gas and uranium are estimated using measures such as tons, barrels, cubic feet and pounds. These measures tell us little about the ultimate usable energy content of each type of resource.

Nor is it of much use to compare the relative gross energy values of these resources, though such comparisons are readily available. To see some examples, check out this one showing the oil equivalence of nuclear fuel, this one for oil and natural gas, and this table containing a variety of equivalences including two comparing coal and oil. Even conversions into British Thermal Units, or BTUs, don't really help us.

As the world moves ever closer to the time when vital, finite energy resources begin to decline, we need to know not how much oil, natural gas, coal or uranium is left; rather, we need to know how much usable energy is left in these resources. A recent illustration of the problem we face in understanding usable energy supplies came in the form of a 60 Minutes story on the Canadian oil sands. The program reported that "the reserves are so vast in the province of Alberta that they will help solve America’s energy needs for the next century."

Nowhere does the reporter explain how much energy it takes to mine and refine the bitumen--it's not actually oil. In fact, it takes two barrels of oil equivalent to obtain three barrels of usable oil from the oil sands. (This is a far lower return than we get from conventional oil which can provide 20 times the energy consumed for older oil discoveries and eight times the energy consumed for newer oil discoveries.) By this standard we should reduce the generally accepted 180 billion barrels of reserves in the Canadian oil sands by 40 percent. Now, not all of the energy used to mine and process the oil sands comes from petroleum. Of course, the huge mining trucks and other equipment run on diesel fuel. But, the processing plants are heavy users of natural gas, both to heat water for the separation process and to provide a source of hydrogen to transform the bitumen into a flowing, light oil.

But, this shows why we need to know about the total universe of finite fuels since each one increasingly interacts with the others during processing, and one fuel may be called upon to substitute for the another as each resource peaks and then declines in availability. Some say that peak oil production is already upon us. The rate of production for conventional natural gas, which many experts tout as a substitute for declining oil supplies, may peak by mid-century. And, while there are claims that the world has enough coal for 300 years, it is important to note that such figures are always followed by the phrase "at current rates of consumption." Naturally, if we had to rely more and more on coal, not only for electricity, but also for heat and liquid fuels, its rate of consumption would rise dramatically. Even more worrisome, the net energy of coal is declining. Richard Heinberg reports in his book The Party's Over that on the current trajectory the net energy from coal could go negative by mid-century as coal grades continue to decline. As for uranium, information on its future supply is sketchy at best.

Oil is facing its own foreshortened depletion trajectory with peak production predictions ranging from last year all the way to 2037 (a date which seems far too optimistic). Increasingly large amounts of energy are needed to find new oil. This is only logical since 1) the easiest oil to find, extract and process has been used first, 2) the new finds tend to be in more remote places such as the Arctic and 3) the new finds tend to be in smaller reservoirs. In addition, new oil is also often more energy intensive to refine because it tends to be of a lower quality. The oil sands are a prime example.

To get the total picture of our finite energy reserves, we need to know at least four important things beyond the raw amounts left: 1) the net energy available from each resource given today's technology and given projected improvements in that technology over time, 2) the rate at which each resource is likely to be extracted over time, again adjusting for improvements in technology--even a very dense energy resource is of little use if it can only be extracted at a trickle--3) the current and projected interchangibility of finite fuels and their renewable replacements and 4) the time it would take to move toward a new energy infrastructure to accommodate such substitutions. For instance, if coal liquids are going to be substituted for declining supplies of refined oil products, the equation for our energy resources will change dramatically. And, the time it would take to ramp up such production will be an important consideration in its feasibility. (This example does not attempt to address the implications for global warming which need somehow to be considered.)

Modeling these four new pieces of information together with estimates of raw reserves may seem daunting. But, it is actually considerably less daunting than the problems already tackled by those who sought to model future economic constraints in Limits to Growth, the excellent study of resource and pollution constraints on industrial expansion.

Given the gravity of the energy challenges we face, can we afford not to try?

James Woolsey, Hemp Advocate

Industrial hemp has an unlikely new champion: former CIA director James Woolsey. Woolsey sees a link between the need to end America's oil addiction and hemp's potential as a source of renewable energy. He said so when he visited my hometown of Kalamazoo, Michigan last weekend as part the 2006 Powershift National Tour. According to its website the tour is "a public education effort designed to engage decision-makers, youth, farmers, media and the general public on energy security."

During a question and answer session one audience member broached the subject of hemp. Embarrassed conference organizers tried to move on to another question, but Woolsey insisted on responding. To their surprise he offered a lengthy disquisition on the merits of cellulosic ethanol as an alternative fuel, the myths about industrial hemp and the potential advantages to American farmers. And, he announced that he is a board member of the North American Industrial Hemp Council.

"If you wanted to hide marijuana in a field of industrial hemp, you'd have to be very high," Woolsey said. He explained that industrial hemp has a very low THC level compared to marijuana for recreational and medical use. (THC is the psychoactive component of marijuana.) So low is that level that placing the two plants together causes the recreational marijuana to lose its potency because of cross-pollination with the industrial version.

"There is no bigger enemy of marijuana than industrial hemp," he added. "But, the United States in its wisdom has banned all hemp--I suppose to enhance the production of marijuana," he joked.

(For some basic information on the uses of industrial hemp, try this article which states that "trying to get high from industrial grade hemp would be like trying to get drunk off vinegar.")

Woolsey's credentials on energy issues stem from his work on the National Commission on Energy Policy, an independent commission formed by several foundations and designed to break the policy logjam on energy issues. Woolsey has become an advocate for quick changes that involve "inexpensive processes and relatively little change to the infrastructure."

Hence, he is a fervent advocate of biofuels of all kinds which can be dispensed at existing filling stations. He's also an advocate for hybrid-electric vehicles and is particularly keen on the development of plug-in hybrids since they can "fill up" on cheap electricity at night.

Because of his focus, he sees hydrogen as impractical. "Under current technology you'd have to completely replace the energy infrastructure of the country," Woolsey said during his keynote luncheon speech. "Well, who goes first? The energy infrastructure or Detroit." The country could end up with cars without fuel or fuel without cars, he explained. Neither the oil industry nor the car industry wants to risk such a situation.

His main focus these days is supply disruption, the consequences of which he helped demonstrate during a slickly produced simulation called "Oil Shockwave." The simulation shows how severe even a modest disruption could be and how little the United States could do to mitigate the effects of such a disruption. (The results of a simulation done last year with a group of high-ranking former government officials in Washington, D. C. are available here in PDF form.)

"A cutoff of oil, even a relatively brief one, sends huge shocks through our economy," he said during his speech. "Very substantial changes in price occur with small changes in supply."

At the root of the problem is dependence on oil from the Middle East. Referring to the Bush administration's so-called "War on Terror," Woolsey said, "This is the first war in which we are paying for both sides." He explained that a portion of the money paid to Middle Eastern countries for America's imported oil ends up in the hands of terrorists and others who preach hatred of the United States. "This is not a good plan," he said.

Concerning the idea that oil supplies worldwide may soon peak and then decline, Woolsey said, "I think there are good arguments for peak oil." In the question and answer session, he said he had no clear understanding of the possible timing for such an event, but added that he is currently reading energy investment banker Matthew Simmons' book Twilight in the Desert which makes a case for a near-term peak for Saudi Arabia and by implication for the world.

Can Peak Oil Make You Rich? Does it Matter?

There is no shortage of financial newsletters, blogs, and websites that will tell you quite confidently that we are closing in on world peak oil production and that you can make a lot of money with the right investments. (For a sampling, try this promo for a newsletter called Outstanding Investments, blogs such as The Real Deal and New Era Investor, and websites such as Resource Investor and 321energy.) What this tells me is that these investment-oriented commentators don't quite grasp the issue. The question isn't whether you can make money on peak oil. Somebody will. The question is whether doing so will matter.

No doubt a few market participants will make great fortunes in the ongoing energy bull market. That this particular bull market may or may not be the result of an imminent peak in world oil production doesn't really matter to an investor. Other factors may be sufficient to spawn new speculative fortunes in energy including previous low investment resulting in infrastructure and personnel limitations; war and the threat of war in the Middle East; skyrocketing demand, especially in Asia; and regional natural gas shortages.

Investment advice on peak oil, however, is lost on most of the people in the world because they simply do not have the savings to invest or lack the skills to do so even if they do have the money. For the remaining few, the answer to whether such investing actually matters depends on the time frame. In the short term the answer is probably yes. In the long term, the answer is more than likely to be, "Not as much as many people think."

In the short term climbing energy prices will undermine the standard of living for all the world's energy consumers. A small group who work for energy producing companies and countries will prosper, and shareholders in energy companies are likely to prosper as well. So, from this perspective it may make sense to hedge one's bets by investing some money in the energy markets.

But, peak oil is probably not going to be a one-way street to financial heaven. One of the effects of high energy prices is to depress economic activity. If high prices bring on a recession or even worse, an economic depression, energy prices will fall along with all other prices--maybe not as far, but far enough to put a big dent in any investing profits. The other thing to remember is that investing is a social phenomenon. If everybody who invests "knows" that energy is the place to be, the market is probably topping. The point is that by definition not everyone will reap big profits in the emerging energy bull market. It takes latecomers to make such investing pan out for those who got in early.

Oddly, sites promoting peak oil money-making ideas seem to be assuming that we will somehow return to a business-as-usual world in which lucky investors can spend their new fortunes. But, in the long term, peak oil means we will never go back to business as usual.

Perhaps the world will move on to a miraculous new energy source making any investments in the fossil fuel industry ultimately a big loser. Perhaps the world will be faced with ever decreasing supplies of energy which will result in a chaotic and highly destructive descent into a low-energy society that gives new meaning to the word "post-industrial." Perhaps money and credit as we know it will cease to exist, and life will become intensely local. In such a world the financial riches of a networked, global economy won't have any meaning. Beyond this is the question of timing. Either the optimistic or the pessimistic scenario might unfold quickly or take decades to reach a conclusion.

Given the uncertainties, perhaps the most important investments that any of us can make are in helping to prepare our families, friends and communities for the energy challenges ahead. This might mean spending some of our own treasure for the public good. In this way, at least in the short-term, peak oil investing can provide a benefit, not just to the individuals who do it, but also to the communities in which they live.

If those who profit from rising energy prices come truly to understand our energy predicament, they can help communicate it to others and assist in preparing our communities. But the peak oil investor who succeeds at making money, while failing to grasp the gravity of our situation, may find that his or her new fortune means nothing to a community that has been forced by circumstances to move quickly beyond a world governed by Wall Street wizards and international finance. In such a world, even if you manage to hold on to your investment winnings, from that point onward what you can do will be far more important than what you are worth.