Blood of the Earth:The Battle for the World’s Vanishing Oil Resources
Oil Alternatives
It is most unlikely that oil prices will fall below $40 a barrel in the short to medium term. Indeed they might rise above the recent high of $78 a barrel. Such prices have made secondary and tertiary methods of oil recovery economical (22), and so helped marginally to raise supplies.
As for lowering consumption, hybrids provide the best short-term alternative. Experts in the US agree that corn ethanol can play only a minor part in fuel replacement.
The longer-term alternatives to oil remain cellulosic ethanol as well as clean coal and nuclear power, since natural gas can only be a bridging fuel: the peak of gas production will be reached only a generation later than that for oil.
Given the disasters caused by the nuclear power plant accidents in America and Ukraine, the issue of reviving this industry has proved deeply contentious in the West. In the US, lawmakers had a chance to debate the issue during the passage of the Energy Policy Bill of 2005. The provision providing $4.3 billion of public money to build new nuclear power stations received bipartisan support in Congress. A poll conducted in the spring of 2006 by Bisconti Research revealed that seven out of eight Americans viewed nuclear energy as an important element in meeting future electricity needs and three out of four agreed that utilities should prepare now to build new nuclear power plants in the next decade. (23)
For their part, American utility companies remained hooked on coal-fired power plants because they were the most economical and because the US has abundant coal supplies. As many as 140 such projects were on the drawing boards in 2006. Only 12 of these will use the Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) process - which converts coal or heavy crude oil into a synthetic gas, and converts carbon into liquid CO2 suitable for long term sequestration - simply because they will cost 15 to 20 per cent more to construct. (24) So much for the Bush administration’s claims that American industry was acting voluntarily to reduce environmental pollution.
In a world acutely aware of the perilous consequences of a polluted atmosphere, the fact that nuclear power releases miniscule pollution in the air has become one of its leading merits. But then again uranium supplies are finite. At the present rate of consumption, low cost uranium will be exhausted by 2055.
Beyond our present technology, there is the prospect of controlled nuclear fusion - which powers the sun as well as the awesome explosion of a hydrogen bomb - used for peaceful purposes. In nuclear fusion, energy is obtained from fusing light nuclei into heavier ones. Initially, the fuel would be deuterium (a form of hydrogen present in sea water), and tritium, a super-heavy hydrogen, which can be manufactured from lithium. But the tasks of capturing nuclear fusion and putting it to practical, peaceful ends have proved fiendishly daunting.
A European project to build an experimental fusion reactor, called the Joint European Torus, was started in 1983 at Culham near Oxford, Britain. It took eight years before the reactor was ready to use fusion fuel. This was a preamble to building a demonstration fusion power plant. It was not until 2005 that the EU and six countries - America, Russia, China, Japan, India and South Korea - agreed to let France host the site near its southern town of Cadarache. Finally, in May 2006 the parties signed a treaty to build �4.6 ($5.8) billion International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). Once it is ready in 2017, it will take 20 years of experiments at the cost of $10 to $15 billion to have a fusion power plant working. It is estimated that between 10 to 20 percent of global energy could come from fusion by 2100. (25)
This is truly a long term project. Meanwhile, to cover the rising energy deficit, and to counter the disaster that awaits humanity due to the rising temperatures, it is urgent that governments and companies tap renewable sources of energy.
Green Renewables
The major sources of renewable energy are wind, sun, and tide.
Despite improvements in wind turbine technology, wind-generated electricity costs twice as much as that produced by natural gas, nuclear power or coal. Yet the demand for electricity is rising so rapidly that this more expensive technology must be harnessed along with the conventional methods.
Europeans are forging ahead. By 2004 the EU had reached seven-eighths of its 2010 wind energy target of 40 gigawatts of electricity generating capacity. (26) And Japan is foremost in the solar power sphere.
In this sphere, Germany stood out primarily because the Green Party, a substantial political entity, exercised power in coalition with Social Democrats for seven years. As a result the total green energy proportion in Germany was set to rise to 15 percent by 2010.
In March 2006 the Energy Savings Trust in Britain estimated that home generation of power through wind turbines on the roof and solar hot water panels on the roof, as well as fitting photovoltaic tiles on the roof and ground source heat pump in the garden, could potentially provide 30 percent of all electricity by 2050,and that scores of small companies were offering solar panels, rooftop wind turbines, heat pumps, solar thermal panels, photovoltaics, hydropower turbines, wood fuel boilers and fuel cells. (27)
The United States, the highest consumer of fossil fuels and the largest pollutant in the world, presented a lamentable contrast. Unlike in China or India, the United States lacks a coherent energy policy or long-term strategy. The periodic Energy Laws that got passed ended up as a hodgepodge of rewards and penalties for several special interest groups or states (Texas and Alaska) or regions (coal bearing states) or senior legislators. Of the $12.3 billion provided in the 2005 US Energy Policy Act, less than a third was allocated for energy conservation measures and incentives to renewable energy. (28)
The interests of oil and auto industries remained deeply entrenched. “The US derives much of its wealth from a global economy that is dependent on fossil fuels,” notes Paul Roberts. ” So…any effort to move away from a hydrocarbon system - or worse to use less energy - poses alarming economic and political risks to the US - a reality that tends to reinforce the status quo.” (29)
Also the mainstream media in the United States remained scandalously neutral on the subject of global warming and its relationship with human activity, despite the more alarming recent reports from researchers. According to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, greenhouse gases not only lead to higher temperatures but are themselves increased by higher temperatures, and that global warming may be up to 78 percent worse than previously predicted. (30)
In short, the situation is so grim that we have no choice but to adopt and implement the slogan “All At Once.” That is, we must pursue all the avenues of alternatives to petroleum for our energy needs at the same time. It is no longer a question of implementing this option or that. The only sensible and responsible course to follow is to pursue this option and that.
The future of the human race is at stake. The task is urgent. It brooks no delay.
(22) Chevron claimed that by using steam flooding to extract heavy oil, it had recovered 1.3 billion barrels of oil from one field alone. A Chevron advertisement on January 16, 2006
(23) Boston Globe, May 14, 2006.
(24) New York Times Magazine, May 29, 2006. Worldwide more than 1,000 coal-fired power stations were being planned in 2006.
(25) The EU will pay 40 per cent of the cost and the remaining six signatories 10 per cent each. Bloomberg, May 22, 2006; Associated Press, May 29, 2006.
(26) Associated Press, May 22, 2006.
(27) Guardian, March 21, 2006. A WhisperGen boiler costing 3,000 also generates electricity. And a quiet, low visibility rooftop wind turbine costs 1,500. Both devices sell any surplus electricity to the grid.
(28) Of the $12.3 billion provided in the 2005 US Energy Policy Act, $4.3 billion were allocated to nuclear power, $3.6 billion to energy conservation measures and incentives to renewable energy, $2.9billion to the coal industry, and $1.5 billion to oil and gas companies.
(29) The End of Oil, pp. 288-89.
(30) Researchers have also found that warmer the planet gets the more CO2 gets released naturally by soil and oceans. Guardian, May 23, 2006; Metro, May 23, 2006.