During the recent hot summer election season, there were two publications from prestigious academic institutions that promised that gold would flow from heaven if we just stay invested in oil to fuel our transportation system and economy. Harvard published a monograph from former oil executive turned geological economist, Leonardo Maugeri, that promised a glut of oil was on the way to save our economy even if it risks the livability of the planet. Not to be outdone by an Ivy League rival, Princeton researchers came out with a paper that said we can replace imported oil with homegrown synthetic fuel substitutes for petroleum-based fuels. This one promised cheap oil and a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
It is always useful to dissect offerings from advocates of an oily future.
Any sustainability advocate will happily tell you that continuing to use petroleum products to power our transportation systems is stupid. The reasons are not exactly rocket science.
It's peak (cheap) oil, stupid. The dwindling supply of cheap conventional oil is forcing a transition to more expensive alternatives like oil shale, tar sands, and coal liquefaction. This means transportation fuel costs go up, which drives up the cost of goods and services and drives our economy into the ditch. Oil is crack rock cocaine for our standard of living. The longer we use oil crack, the sooner we wind up living in a shack.
It's climate change, stupid. Climate change is fueled in part by emissions from burning all that oil. Those dirty alternatives to conventional oil also have a larger carbon footprint. As we have seen with recent droughts, wildfires, crazy storms, and floods, climate change is not a paper tiger. The longer we use oil crack, the sooner our shack is whacked.
Let's look at how the Ivy tower offerings stack up.
The Maugeri report has been shredded by critics. Faulty assumptions and elementary math errors pumped up projections for the coming oil glut. Those problems did not stop the media from latching on to the narrative that the outlook for oil supplies in the future was rosy. We should stop worrying our pretty little heads over peak oil and its effect on the economy. As for climate change, we are told to get serious about reducing environmental impacts. Wink, wink.
Enforcement of environmental regulation and major investment in emission-reducing technologies must accompany the development of unconventional oil. Without this balance between industry and environmental interests, new oil production projects will be stymied or delayed.
The Princeton chemical engineering publications have received less attention. The spin is
seductive.
The core of the plan is a technique that uses heat and chemistry to create gasoline and other liquid fuels from high-carbon feedstock ranging from coal to switchgrass, a native North American grass common to the Great Plains. The method, called the Fischer-Tropsch process, was developed in Germany in the 1920s as a way to convert coal to liquid fuels.
As you can see, we are talking about really innovative, cutting-edge technology to accomplish this miracle of homegrown transportation fuel. It is economically feasible to replace expensive foreign crude with domestic synthetics when oil prices are well above $80 a barrel.
The big question is whether we can have our oil and a livable climate. According to the Princeton study, we can continue to use synthetic oil to transport everything AND achieve a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Our carbon pollution savings will depend on whether coal or biomass is the dominant feedstock and if greenhouse emissions from production are captured and recycled. Achieving that will also require a massive influx of infrastructure investment. Without the spending spree, the production of synthetic fuels will be a greenhouse gas nightmare.
I want to focus on the fine print - the price tag.
Accomplishing this would not be easy or quick, Floudas said. A realistic approach would call for a gradual implementation of synthetic fuel technology, and Floudas estimated it would take 30 to 40 years for the United States to fully adopt synthetic fuel. It also would not be cheap. He estimates the price tag at roughly $1.1 trillion for the entire system.
The Princeton team argues the country should invest over a trillion dollars to tweak ancient technology and kick the oil can down the road at least another 50 years. Over a 30-40 year deployment period, that amounts to an annual investment of $25 billion to $33 billion. Subsidies for big oil are likely to increase rather than decrease to make this ugly dream come true. In the age of austerity, that spending spree will come at the expense of research and development for a clean energy transportation sector.
The bottom line
These publications are part of a larger narrative -- the United States will be soon be energy independent. There are many different pathways to nirvana, but all involve a large price tag and large carbon footprint.
The dirty energy crowd have latched on to the idea that America is the new Saudi Arabia if we go on a massive carbon fuel extraction binge. The Maugeri report dovetails nicely with the World Energy Outlook from the International Energy Agency (IAE). Here is the IAE money shot:
The United States is projected to become the largest global oil producer before 2020, exceeding Saudi Arabia until the mid-2020s. At the same time, new fuel-efficiency measures in transport begin to curb US oil demand. The result is a continued fall in US oil imports, to the extent that North America becomes a net oil exporter around 2030.
All of that growth in dirty oil comes from unconventional sources like shale oil, tar sands, heavily fracked tight oil, coal liquefaction, and liquified natural gas. Maugeri is pushing all of the above while the Princeton woo tang clan is pushing liquids from biomass, gas, and coal.
The oil as crack cocaine analogy still holds.
Hubbert's prediction of peak (cheap) conventional oil is still true. We have always known there was plenty of carbon in the ground to burn, but the price point made development of unconventional sources impractical until oil prices reached the $100 a barrel range. Arthur Berman and other analysts are not even buying the feasibility argument at those prices. If we drink the kool-aid and smoke the crack, the oil companies will get rich and the economic future will belong to countries that can best absorb the high cost of oil.
And our crack shack is going to get whacked.
Given the large carbon reserves, the IAE warns that we are well on our way over the climate cliff if we do not take immediate action. Business as usual is likely to mean at least a 4 degree Celsius (7.2 degree Fahrenheit) increase in global temperatures over pre-industrial averages. And we going to waste dwindling water supplies to achieve that dirty energy future.
Water needs for energy production are set to grow at twice the rate of energy demand. Water is essential to energy production: in power generation; in the extraction, transport and processing of oil, gas and coal; and, increasingly, in irrigation for crops used to produce biofuels. We estimate that water withdrawals for energy production in 2010 were 583 billion cubic metres (bcm). Of that, water consumption – the volume withdrawn but not returned to its source – was 66 bcm. The projected rise in water consumption of 85% over the period to 2035 reflects a move towards more water-intensive power generation and expanding output of biofuels.
The COP-18 climate summit in Doha just concluded and
produced nothing of value. The Kyoto Protocol was extended, which called for modest cuts in emissions and no enforcement teeth. Canada has already backed out of the Kyoto Protocol to strip boreal forests for tar sands. The United States never signed on.
We dodged one bullet with the defeat of Mitt Romney. His energy plan was to open up all federal lands to energy extraction. After the election, the Obama administration scaled Bush era back plans for tar sands and oil shale development on federal lands. This means that the tar sands cancer in Utah will not grow as fast and deplete the Colorado River basin.
Before we cheer too loudly, the Obama administration has not been a world leader in addressing climate change. There is too much forked tongue. During the Doha climate summit, the administration touted its "progress" towards a promised 17% reduction in emissions by 2020. The problem is the Department of Energy's long-term forecast is much less optimistic (and much more realistic).
With improved efficiency of energy use and a shift away from the most carbon-intensive fuels, U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions remain more than 5 percent below their 2005 level through 2040.
As oil prices stabilize above $100 per barrel, there are many enormously profitable avenues for the fossil fuels industry to maintain our supply of combustibles. All of these options will cost us our environmental quality, water supply, economic vitality, and opportunity to transition to clean, renewable energy. In short, our future.
These recent publications from Harvard and Princeton are part of a coming onslaught to shape public opinion and policy. Since climate change denial is becoming more difficult to sell, the pitches from the oil patch are beginning to pay lip service to the need to limit carbon pollution. However, the barons want those limits to come from carbon capture rather than clean energy. If nothing else, these academic concoctions highlight the wisdom of Bill McKibben's push for university trust funds to divest from fossil fuels. Think of it as the first step in a twelve step program to save us from ourselves.