O/T When Will We Ever Learn?
Hi Oil prices exceed US $50 a barrell, however do we need it?
In 50 years, we could cure our oil addiction
The technologies to deliver clean, sustainable energy already exist. So what is stopping us breaking the habit of a century.
It has been a bad year for oil. Consumers rather than suppliers that is, who have been forced to pay ever-higher prices for their black gold. With most of the industrialised world, and particularly the US, dependent on oil for its energy, reliance on this diminishing resource never seemed more precarious.
Yet the perception that the world cannot do without oil is misguided. True, many of the alternatives, such as wind power, biofuels or a hydrogen economy, appear too impractical or distant to allow an immediate divorce from oil. But a raft of studies, researched and funded not just by advocates of alternative energy but also those with vested interests in the status quo, suggest otherwise.
The potential pay-offs are huge. No more massive subsidies for oil exploration and extraction. No more reliance on troubled regions such as the Middle East, which has 65% of the world’s oil reserves. Huge cuts in pollution and a curtailing of climate change. In short, the strategy is a no-brainer. The only losers would be the oil business – one of the world’s richest and most powerful industries.
That industry, of course, nurtured President Bush, whose administration’s policies are widely seen to favour fossil fuels. One key provision of the Bush administration’s Energy Bill, a legislative priority over the past three years, would have allowed drilling in an Alaskan wildlife reserve.
But critics say the potential impact on the region’s fragile ecosystem would be disproportionate to any benefits to the nation’s oil supply, and the provision has so far been blocked by most Democrats and a handful of Republicans in Congress.
Despite this, the widespread fear remains that an ever more power-hungry world will need all the oil it can get. Yet some serious and detailed investigations show that it need not be this way. A study published in August aimed at finding ways to shift away from greenhouse gas emissions showed there are 15 suitable technologies already available, most of which involve drastic reductions in fossil fuel use. All that is required is the right policies.
Simply heating, cooling and lighting buildings in the right way, or widely applying known technologies that can double the average fuel efficiency of cars, could open the way to dramatic cuts in oil use, say the study’s authors Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow of Princeton University (Science, vol 305, p 968).
Increased use of wind generators and photovoltaic arrays, both directly to supply electricity to the grid and indirectly to make hydrogen fuel for cars, would do the same. Adopting just a few of these could stabilise levels of global greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 2050.
The authors do not estimate the costs. Their aim was only to refute the notion that such technologies do not yet exist, and in this they succeeded. They showed that established methods could provide vast energy gains that are not only sustainable and clean but will also provide “a tremendous stimulus to the economy” that Socolow says makes them cost-effective in the long run.
None is a panacea, and each comes with its own problems: adopting hydrogen fuel, for example, will require a massive investment in delivery infrastructure. But moderate successes in just some of these areas would add up to a viable alternative energy strategy.
A study released last month goes further. In a detailed 335-page report it sets out a step-by-step programme for change that it says would allow the US to cease oil imports by 2040 and virtually eliminate all oil use by 2050. The net cost would be zero – a far cry from claims that such a move would cripple big business.
Though the research was carried out by the pro-environment Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado, it was funded in part by the US Department of Defense, a large and inefficient user of energy. That suggests that despite the current administration’s rhetoric that such measures are impractical, some branches of government are taking clean energy more seriously than it sometimes seems.
For example, the USarmy says it could have taken a month less to deploy its troops to Iraq if its tanks had been more fuel efficient. The report has been presented in briefings to legislators, military leaders, think-tanks, and the State Department, among others.
The plan it proposes is simple. Step one is to halve oil use by improving efficiency. Much of this can be achieved without sacrificing safety or comfort, through revenue-neutral incentives such as rebates to buyers of efficient cars paid for by a tax on inefficient ones, and incentives to retire older cars, power plants and aircraft and replace them with newer, more efficient ones. The other half would then be gradually replaced by a combination of biofuels and natural gas. The plan is framed in terms of US policy, but is designed to be applicable worldwide.
There will doubtless be howls of disbelief from those accustomed to hearing that renewable energy and cleaner-burning fuels are a pipe dream. They will, for example, point to studies that have demonstrated that most ethanol production for use in cars and trucks actually consumes more petroleum than it saves.
Any plans for introducing new biofuels will require rigorous cradle-to-grave cost-benefit analysis. According to Pacala and Socolow, one-sixth of the world’s agricultural land would need to be turned over to ethanol-producing crops if biofuels are to play a major part in offsetting growing global emissions produced by fossil fuels. But they also point out that this exorbitant figure could be reduced if techniques could be developed to use plant waste from agriculture and logging.
Others have arrived at similar prescriptions. This year Pulitzer-prizewinning journalist Ross Gelbspan published a critical analysis of the global warming crisis in his book Boiling Point. Gelbspan’s thesis is radical, and he is critical of the fossil fuel industry, the Bush administration and environmentalists alike for being beholden to vested interests and not doing enough to tackle climate change. But he ends with what he believes is a win-win alternative energy strategy, developed in meetings with a small group of energy company executives, economists, policy analysts and other specialists.
Gelbspan advocates proposals such as cutting oil subsidies and creating a fund to help countries develop alternative energies, including helping Gulf oil states convert to harnessing their sunny desert areas for the photovoltaic production of hydrogen. This, he says, will allow the world to increase the stability and affordability of energy, while easing international pressures and curbing pollution. The strategy would save money and create jobs at the same time. The concept has drawn interest from European Union officials and enthusiastic coverage in the business press.
It is the kind of thing you would think a presidential candidate would seize upon, an upbeat message of genuine progress. Both President Bush and John Kerry have indeed made some rather general statements in that direction. Bush’s plans strongly emphasise oil exploration and clean-burning coal technology, with only $1.7 billion earmarked over 10 years for developing hydrogen fuel cells and related technologies.
Kerry also supports investments in clean coal, but emphasises the potential for innovations in efficient energy, not only to reduce petroleum use but also to create jobs and competitive technologies for export.
Both sides have an election to win, where the realpolitik is all. But delivering a strategy that promises a stable, sustainable source of energy for the world is realpolitik too. And the answer lies beyond oil.
