from the field of economic geography 3

Alternative Energy Pipedreams and End-of-Pipe Realities


1. "The days of cheap energy are over." Critically evaluate the nature of fossil fuel supplies and the role of alternative energy sources.

Robert A. Heinlein dealt with this troublesome issue by dreaming up a device that tapped energy from a parallel universe. That solution created problems of its own, but that flaw, and even its far-fetched nature is not unlike the energy solutions being considered by real-life policymakers. When it comes to energy, as with environmental degradation, people have a tendency to bury their heads in the sand. It is a difficult truth to face: our way of life is coming to an end.
Industrialized and post-industrialized societies depend on cheap, abundant energy. It drives the economy in a metaphoric sense the way it drives machines in the literal one. We use energy to get to and from places, to do work, to light the areas in which we work, to play, to procreate, even to exercise. What once was done by human or animal power is now done by electrical power, or is powered directly from petroleum. “Labor-saving” devices clean dishes and clothing, reap weekly harvests of useless lawn clippings, blow leaves back onto the grass from whence the wind blew them, clean our teeth, and so on. Many of these things we can live without.
But energy also heats and cools our homes, provides our food and clean drinking water, medicines, medical diagnostics, and non-surgical treatments for myriad ailments, including cancer; we use energy to build our environment physically, economically, and socially. The radical change in education alone is mind-boggling to me—in my college career we went from typewriters to computers, and now whole lecture courses are presented online instead of in class. Enormous power is generated and consumed in the first world, it is endemic, it is systemic, it’s becoming pandemic, and we can’t live without it. Well, not the way we’ve been living. That is because, like Heinlein imagined, we’re getting it from the wrong source.
The industrial revolution was fueled by oil, and after 150 years of thriftless use, its reserves are now running out. So are the other so-called fossil fuels, coal and gas. The hope of the 1950s, nuclear energy, has the same problem of limited supply. Unlike Doritos, which we can crunch all we want because they’ll make more, fossil fuels are exhaustible—no one can make any more.
SUPPLY
Petroleum has been one of the most useful things humankind ever encountered. It has provided power to generate electricity, heat homes, fuel machines, to lubricate and cool those machines, even to grow crops (it’s used to make fertilizers), and, literally, put roofs over our heads. Its handiness has allowed it to pervade most every niche of the world economy. But it comes at a high price, and not just one that’s figured per barrel. In fact, that is one of the problems with oil: it has many hidden costs. Subsidies from government defray the costs of almost everything from extraction to insurance, and whole armies secure its pumps and pipelines. One thing, however, is clear—there’s only just so much of it.
Petroleum geologists estimate the quantity of oil in two ways: what’s in the ground, and what we can get out of the ground. Because the oil business is profit-oriented, production goes on at only the largest fields, most companies investing only in operations that can recover one billion barrels over the life of the oil field. There are many smaller reserves, and as supplies dwindle it is conceivable that tapping into them will become profitable. Let’s assume then, that eventually all of the oil will be recovered, the most optimistic stance. How much is there?
Estimates vary. And, of course, the people most in the know are tight-lipped about things like quantity and location, because they don’t want competitors to use their hard-won and costly information. But scientists have ways of getting around such matters—they use government estimates.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) figures released in 2004, and used by Paul Weisz to estimate total world supply in the journal Physics Today, yielded an “optimistic estimate” of 2200-3900 billion barrels—twice the “proven reserve,” which seems to mean that there is really only half that much. Weisz continued to estimate, figuring in rates of population growth and concluded that the oil will run out “well within a human lifespan,” thirty years or so. Others give it 45. Not long, in any case—between, say, the term of a new home mortgage and the expected life of a commercial retail building. This may be an inappropriate remark for Economic Geography, but forget the price of oil—there just isn’t enough of it for that to matter anymore. Weisz did not stop his estimating at petroleum, he estimated the potential supplies of several other energy sources, so let’s look at those, too.
World reserves of natural gas might last 45-60 years, but Weisz notes that 58% of those reserves are in Russia, Iran, and Qatar. Obviously, there would be difficulties in utilizing those reserves, not the least of which is old-fashioned geography—how do we get the gas to the places we want to use the gas? Energy, it must always be remembered, is lost during transmission, and moving gas from one continent to another means a lot of transmission.
Coal is relatively abundant—there’s 90 to 120 years worth of it. But that is assuming that current rates of its consumption do not change, and that all grades of it are used, two unlikely assumptions. Not all grades of coal are useful with current technology, although new processing techniques are being developed that remove pollutants and make the coal cleaner and more efficient. So that makes the first assumption less likely—consumption is likely to increase.
Unlike with Congress, there is a real nuclear option in energy production. Weisz is unenthusiastic about its use, though, noting that it currently supplies only 8% of total U.S. energy production. Weisz estimates that U.S. reserves of uranium will last 35-58 years—were it to replace coal use. That seems unlikely in the foreseeable future, and besides, “technology can save us.”
In a paper by Leon Walters and Dave Wade, both of the Argonne Institute, it is speculated that the combination of nuclear power and hydrogen fuel cells can extend energy production indefinitely. The authors propose that the new generation of nuclear reactors, sodium-cooled fast reactors, can be used to create hydrogen while they also generate electricity. The hydrogen would be used to manufacture fuel cells for transportation fuel, used instead of gasoline or diesel.
Presently, most nuclear reactors do not possess coolant waters hot enough to produce hydrogen as a by-product, and furthermore, they completely expend their fuel, uranium with an atomic weight of 238. However, the sodium-cooled fast reactor would breed net fissile fuel from U238, extending the reserves anywhere from “decades to thousands of years.” But more importantly to their proposal (and the DOE’s Generation IV Plan), the coolant system would heat water to 900°C (that’s 1652°F for the Americans), hot enough to produce hydrogen by thermochemical water splitting, whereas lower temperature coolant water requires additional processing like electrolysis to make hydrogen, robbing it of any utility because of the extra energy used.
Walters and Wade credit nuclear power with 17% of energy production, more than twice Weisz’s estimate, but it’s apples to oranges: world production versus U.S. production. The scale is further confused for Walters and Wade suggest that because there are already 435 nuclear reactors in the world (103 in the U.S.) an additional 241 to supply the needs of U.S. transportation “is certainly achievable.” They do not even hint at how many China will need.
Although these new reactors might provide energy for a long, long time, they are not indefinite. Only natural geoprocesses can make that claim, so Walters and Wade calculate that the equivalent to their 241 nuclear reactors is 640,000 windmills. Though utilizing that number of windmills could present spatial problems, the windmills do have a certain advantage over nuclear reactors: they do not require burying anything in concrete bunkers for 500,000 years. It leaves one to wonder what the people of Nevada would choose, a Don Quixote obstacle course across Yucca Mountain, or a national cache of the most toxic material on the planet—too bad they don’t get to make that choice themselves; over the state’s protests, the Yucca Mountain plan was approved by President Bush in 2002, and the application is being processed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Mr. Bush is right about one thing on the matter, one location is better than the 126 in use now.
Probably, no one source of energy will meet all the need, and combinations of energy sources will be utilized as is the situation today. If we add up all of the current energy sources in use—the higher range of estimates—the energy won’t run out for 283 years. Sounds like a long time, but compare it to the reserve of wind and sea-waves (there’s a new kind of windmill for that, a kind of wavemill). It will be another billion years or so before the Earth’s orbit around the Sun decays to the point where the seas boil off and there is no more wind: 283 years of dirty energy versus 1,000,000,000 of clean energy—what kind of idiot would opt for the former?

CONSERVATION AND THE PROBLEM OF TIM ALLEN
Another 300 years or so is a long time, and with energy conservation efforts, the number could be greater. Usually, I’m for conservation, but if it means 500 years of dirty air instead of 300, I say to hell with it. Conservation won’t happen anyway, because of people like Tim Allen.
As a parody of a home improvement guru, comedian Tim Allen developed a certain catchphrase that epitomizes the American mentality: “More power!” Invariably, Tim would soup up anything with a motor, with accidents and comedy to ensue. What’s disturbing about it is that the joke is an American mantra—consumer products become more powerful, often unnecessarily so, and they use more energy. The fuel efficient foreign cars that rocked Detroit City in the 1970s and ’80s have been supplanted by monstrous and gas-thirsty SUVs, for example. Gillette now markets a battery-powered razor that stimulates the skin, making hair stand upright, but not running the razor.
The process has been ubiquitous and pervasive: wind-up phonographs became laser-using CD players, pointing sticks became laser pointers, peddle toy cars became motorized toy cars, iron steam irons became plastic electric steam irons, brooms became vacuums. Almost everything has been electrified: sewing machines, baby swings, toothbrushes, fans, screwdrivers, can openers, carving knives; Ben-Wa balls became “electric massagers,” so that now even masturbation requires electricity. Timothy Wirth et al. said in Foreign Affairs that over “the past decade, total world electricity demand grew by 29 percent, and it is likely to continue growing.”
Conservation is good for many things, like animals, trees, and water. And it is for energy, as well, but only when it conserves clean energy. If it conserves fossil fuel energy, then conservation only draws out the problems. At best, conservation efforts might keep things running while the energy economy transitions from fossil fuels to alternative, renewable energy sources. At worst, conservation efforts can delay that transition past the point where the planet can absorb the pollution from fossil fuels.

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES
American culture is wasteful and stupid, and nature eventually eliminates such things. One way or another, energy usage and sources will change. But things are not entirely without hope, for there are alternative energy sources already available. The aforementioned wind power is the cleanest of all sources, closely followed by solar power, but not to be outdone by geothermal, biogas, and the claims of hydroelectric. The last is the most problematic ecologically, not because of production waste but because of its land surface disruption. This is cause for concern from the standpoints of both ecology and social justice, as it displaces many farming communities and inundates agricultural land.
Hydroelectric power generation requires massive dams to be built (think of Hoover Dam) and back up the world’s largest rivers to form their reservoirs (think of Lake Mead—or France, for that matter, as one estimate found the size of that country comparable to the amount of land covered by dam reservoirs, about 545,630 square km). This creates problems for riparian vegetation and wildlife as it disrupts nature’s cycle of ebb and flow. Since that was learned, many dam operators have taken steps to simulate their rivers’ flood cycle, but this causes other problems, like erosion, as massive amounts of water are jetted out of a valve. But worse, most of the outlets drain from the bottom of the reservoir where water temperatures can approach freezing. From the piscine point of view, it’s like someone flushing the toilet during your shower, only in reverse. The fish get too cold to live near the dam, and so does vegetation, so the artificial flooding is no better in some ways than no flooding.
Mechanical problems like those are relatively easy to fix, but dams have hidden environmental costs that rival or exceed the problems associated with fossil fuel sources. As vegetation washes into the reservoir from upstream, the dams accidentally generate methane gas, which has a greenhouse effect twenty times that of CO2. So, while it is a renewable source of energy, hydroelectric power is not as “green” as had been believed, even for the “micro” facilities, which supply about 30 megawatts of electricity or less.
A new way to take advantage of water power is through wave capture. Jeff Nesmith reports on the Cox News Service that a “prototype has been installed at Orkney, Scotland . . . a single “wave farm” occupying a square kilometer—about one-fourth of a square mile—of ocean surface [which has] a capacity of 30 megawatts . . . enough electricity to supply around 20,000 homes.” But these are, of course, geographically limited—in the U.S., only the northeastern seacoast has powerful enough waves to generate electricity with current technology. But the price is right: comparable to wind power, according to Nesmith’s sources, at around 4 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh). Coal-fired plants operate at about 3½ cents per kWh.
Geothermal sources hold promise, but have a similar problem of geographic limitation. It’s a great resource in Iceland, as the volcanism of that area releases great amounts of steam. Not so expedient in say, Arizona. Being a sci-fi buff, though, I have the cinematic fear of a Crack in the World. Imagine poking food with a fork to get it to cool, then imagine poking the Earth on an industrial scale. And geothermal power is not reliable anyway—even Old Faithful, the famous geyser in Yellowstone National Park, is running out of steam, the average interval between eruptions having gone from 76 to 80 minutes.
The misnomer on the alternative energy scene is solar power. Indeed, all other energy sources are alternatives to it. The power of the Sun was utilized by Roman site planners to help heat the baths, but the first mechanical devices to capture the Sun’s energy were steam-driven motors developed around 1860. Solar power is a proven source of energy, and the costs of its production have dropped dramatically since the days of the first photovoltaic cells, which were used to power satellites. Currently, “solar farms” are in place and producing power all over the world, with large operations in the American southwest.
Arizona is the first state to mandate that a portion of its power portfolio come from renewable sources, but the largest facility produces only one megawatt (MW) of power. By 2007, they’ll need to produce ten megawatts to meet state requirements. Unfortunately, solar cells lose efficiency in the heat, so capitalizing on the Sonoran sun is difficult. Across the California border, however, cooler climes reign, and provide a home for the world’s largest solar power generation facility, in Kramer Junction. The facility has a maximum output of 354 MW. That’s better than ten times the power of one of the state’s micro hydroelectric dams.
But biogas is the really clever shit—literally. This should not be confused with the phonetically similar biomass type of electricity production, which is inherently wasteful because it burns specially grown organic material to drive turbines. Biogas is more of a reclamation process, harvesting methane from human and animal feces. It is energy production cum sanitation: toilets feed into a “digester,” which is part septic tank and part Petri dish. In it, bacteria digest the waste and produce methane which is used to fuel cook stoves and AC power generators. The by-product of the process is a nitrogen-rich sludge that can be used as fertilizer.
Biogas is a wonderful alternative for many reasons: it is not geographically limited, it requires no regional or local infrastructure—no power grid, that is, so it can be introduced piecemeal. And that also makes it less of a security risk because no single event, like a bombing, can disrupt power to all—as such an event was feared to have caused the recent blackout in the northeastern U.S. and the border provinces of Canada. But also, biogas is a renewable, clean energy source. It removes sanitation waste from the potable water system and eliminates the need for wastewater treatment plants (saving that energy). And it can operate at different scales.
Two test facilities have been in use in South Africa since 2001, a household of eight family members (and two cows), and a school of 1000 students (with access to other local cows). It also is being adapted to dairy and beef cattle operations (no human input needed), and can be adapted to housing developments. The process has been experimented with since the 1950s, and in a wide range of rural settings in Africa, India, Nepal, and China, so the technology is mature—and cheaper than solar power electrification.
Shakespeare wished for a muse of fire, but I’ll take wind. Harnessing the power of the wind is one of those quintessential human glories, like mastery over fire or weaving textiles. Humans are great mimics, we learn from other animals and we invent substitutes for their natural abilities. We must have studied birds for millennia, and eventually we learned to fly. But before that, we captured wind in sails to push ourselves across the great oceans, heated it in sacks to rise above the Andes, used it to pump water for our fields. Now that technology—a windmill—can make electricity.
There have been problems with them and birds and some unfortunate sluicing effects, but new designs and better site planning have eliminated them. They do take up quite a bit of room, but nothing like a solar farm or a nuclear plant. They haven’t been exactly cheap to run, but now are running close to fossil fuels in cost per kWh. Most importantly, windmills have been criticized for not producing much electricity, but that’s changed, too. Currently, “the workhorse” of windmills is GE’s 1.5 MW turbine, but the company is testing a downwind model (its blades face away from the wind instead of into it) that can produce 3.6 MW. The windmills generally are grouped together on farms that now reap the wind as well as crops. The “largest wind farm east of the Mississippi” has twenty turbines and a capacity of 30 MW. Just as good as one of the micro hydroelectric dams, but without all the ecological problems or expense.
A combination of locationally appropriate energy sources can be developed to wean society off of fossil fuels. But this must also be coordinated with efforts in sustainable development. Planning communities that reduce energy costs by scaling to human walking distances, that use biogas as part of their waste treatment and energy production systems, and take advantage of geothermal qualities in building, such as underground housing or heat pumps, all must take place if we want to continue having things like televisions and refrigerators and ice cream. Otherwise, it’s back to the plow and the cow, and the sweat of the brow.
I often wonder what the future will bring for humanity. Like most Trekkies, I envision a united Earth, peaceful and prosperous and pretty. But in Star Trek’s future history, that came after the third world war. It is difficult to imagine a future without such an event. Often in science fiction those last battles are called the Resource Wars.
In the wee hours as I watch the overnight news, filled with stories of the Iraq War, terrorist bombings, and American imperialism, I think the Resource Wars have already started. How far will it go before the switch is made, before we stop squabbling over some goo that we know can’t last and isn’t good for any of us? How many people will die because power-mad fatcats want to make as much money as they can before the oil runs out? Will it be all of us?
I apologize for straying so far from the academic voice, but for what it’s worth, here’s my critical evaluation: Before the days of fossil fuel energy are over we will fight a nasty and devastating world war, masked by religious fervor to conceal the greed of world leaders in government and business, because their type has always held human life to be the cheapest resource of all.
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