This is a guest post by John Michael Greer, who blogs at The Archdruid Report. John is the Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA) and has been active in the alternative spirituality movement for more than 25 years, and is the author of a dozen books, including “The Druidry Handbook” (Weiser, 2006). He lives in Ashland, Oregon.

Archdruids take breaks from time to time, but the peak oil debate does not, and during my recent vacation a lively discussion sprang up on The Oil Drum about the future of agriculture in a postpetroleum world. The point at issue was whether today’s mechanized agriculture will remain in place, or be replaced by a new rural economy of small farms using human and animal labor, as the world skids down the far side of Hubbert’s peak.

Summarizing a vigorous discussion of a complex topic in a few paragraphs is a risky proposition, so I’ll focus here on the two essays that defined the debate, Stuart Staniford’s The Fallacy of Reversibility and Sharon Astyk’s Is Localization Doomed? Staniford argued that those who expected a nonmechanized, small-farm economy in the wake of peak oil were claiming that the history of agriculture over the last century would simply run in reverse, tracking the decline in fossil fuel availability in the same way it tracked the growth in fossil fuel production.
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If this view was correct, he claimed, rising fuel prices would have already begun to push American agriculture in the direction of smaller, less energy-intensive farms, and this would show in currently available statistics about profitability, labor costs, farm size and the like. He then demonstrated that no such changes could be found in the statistics, and on this basis claimed that what he called the “reversalist” position had no merit.

Astyk, responding to Staniford, made two major points. First, she noted that nobody claimed that the transition from today’s agribusiness to tomorrow’s rural landscape of small farms would simply run history in reverse, and Staniford was therefore kicking a straw man. Second, she suggested that the emergence of a nonmechanized, small-farm economy in the postpetroleum future was not an inevitability, but a policy choice that Staniford’s so-called “reversalists” considered the best option in the face of peak oil.

Like many readers of the debate, I found neither of these positions really satisfactory. By the time I finished reading the comments, though, it was getting late, and I decided to round out the evening by pouring myself a glass of scotch and reading a few pages of a Gary Larson Far Side anthology. Somewhere toward the bottom of the glass I dozed off; I must have been reading one of Larson’s dinosaur cartoons in my last waking moments, because I slipped into a dream in which a conference of dinosaurs pondered the approaching end of the Mesozoic era.

Quite a few dinosaurs had already given speeches about the threat of global cooling. Several of them had mentioned that mammals, with their warm blood and furry coats, might be better off in a post-Mesozoic world. At this point in the debate, however, another dinosaur lumbered up to the podium to speak.

“This talk of mammals taking over the world is nonsense,” it said. “It’s true, of course, that the ancestors of mammals – the therapsids – ruled the earth back before dinosaurs came along, in the Permian period, before the earth’s climate shifted to its long Mesozoic warm spell.” This sparked a good deal of discussion among the audience, and the Tyrannosaurus rex who presided over the meeting had to display its foot-long teeth and growl to quiet things down.

“Nonetheless,” the speaker went on, “this claim that evolution will run in reverse can readily be refuted. If that were true, the global cooling we’ve seen already would have made dinosaurs become smaller and furrier, and that hasn’t happened. In fact” – at this point it nodded toward the Tyrannosaurus rex – “it’s clear that we’re getting larger and scalier all the time. There’s every reason to think that as the climate cools, and selection pressures become more extreme, big scaly dinosaurs will have even greater competitive advantages than they do now.”

At this point the buzz of conversation in the audience could not be restrained, even when the Tyrannosaurus rex killed and ate one of the loudest talkers. A few moments later, though, a bright light flashed through the sky. “Did you see that?” said the Triceratops sitting next to me, pointing toward the sky with the horn on his nose. “I’ve never seen a shooting star that big.” A moment later I was jolted awake by what felt like the shockwave from an asteroid impact, but was actually the Gary Larson anthology sliding from my lap and hitting the floor.

The parallels between Staniford’s argument and that of his saurian equivalent, as it happens, go well beyond the obvious. Both, strictly speaking, are quite correct in their core assertions. As the Mesozoic era drew toward its close, dinosaurs did not retrace the process that led up to the monster reptiles of the Cretaceous. In fact, important branches of the dinosaur clan – the carnosaurs that led to Tyrannosaurus rex, the ceratopsians that ended with Triceratops, and others – got progressively larger as the Cretaceous drew on.

These successful evolutionary lineages continued to follow their established trajectory as long as it remained viable. When it stopped being viable, they didn’t shift into reverse and shrink back down to the size of their Permian ancestors; they died out, and other organisms better suited to the new conditions took over. In the same way, Staniford’s assertion that today’s industrial agriculture will not throw the gearshifts of its combines into reverse, and gradually retrace its tracks into the 19th century, is almost certainly correct.

Staniford is also correct to point out that in a world intent on pouring its food supply into its fuel tanks, rising energy prices mean that industrial farming is becoming more profitable, not less. As a member of the Grange, I’ve had the chance to watch this from an angle that may be rare in the peak oil scene. Where the rest of the media bemoans rising grain prices, the Grange News is full of satisfied comments by family farmers who can finally make ends meet, now that their grain sells for more than it cost to grow.

Yet Staniford’s overall argument fails, for the same reason that his imaginary Mesozoic equivalent missed seeing the future in plain sight — both rely on linear models to predict a nonlinear situation. In his essay, Staniford used the distinction between reversible and irreversible processes as a model for historical change in agriculture. The difference between linear and nonlinear change, however, is at least as relevant.

Watch a frozen lake melt and you have a seasonally timely example of nonlinear change. The transition from ice to liquid water doesn’t happen gradually as temperature rises; it happens at a specific point in the temperature spectrum, 32°F, and only then once the ice has absorbed enough energy to overcome its thermal inertia and provide the heat of fusion. A five-degree warming can be irrelevant to the process, if it’s from 15°F to 20°F, or for that matter from 40°F to 45°F. The same rise between 30°F and 35°F, on the other hand, can cause drastic change.

Nonlinear change happens most often in systems that have negative feedback loops which balance out pressures for change. In the case of the frozen lake, the main sources of negative feedback are the stability of water’s solid state and its capacity as a heat sink. Only when enough heat has entered the situation to overcome these factors does change happen, and when it does, the lake shifts from one relatively stable state to another.

The modern agricultural economy is a classic candidate for nonlinear change. The feedback loops resisting agricultural change in the modern world are at least as potent as the ones that keep a lake from melting at 20°F. The food production and distribution system is oriented toward business as usual, and the psychology of previous investment and the very real costs of retooling to fit a different model both raise obstacles to change. Monopolistic practices and the government subsidies and price supports that make most of today’s “capitalist” agriculture a case study in corporate socialism also give the status quo impressive inertia.

At the same time, if something is unsustainable, it’s a given that sooner or later it won’t be sustained. Today’s industrial agriculture, with its far-flung supply and distribution chains, its dependence on huge inputs of nonrenewable resources, and its severe impact on topsoil, water quality, and environmental health, is a case in point. As transport costs rise, fossil fuel and mineral reserves deplete, and the burden of coping with ecological damage climbs, industrial agriculture will sooner or later reach the point of negative returns – and as Joseph Tainter pointed out in a different context, that’s the point at which collapse becomes the most likely outcome.

Staniford has argued elsewhere that the energy crisis caused by the end of cheap oil will be temporary. He proposes that nuclear power and other technologies will sooner or later make energy cheap and abundant again. If he’s right, it’s possible that new energy sources will come on line soon enough to keep industrial agriculture from hitting the wall. None of the theorists he critiques in his essay agree that the approaching crisis will be temporary, though, and this latter assessment gives their argument compelling force: as energy supplies dwindle and a social fabric predicated on cheap energy comes apart, the pressures on the agricultural status quo will eventually reach a level high enough to force nonlinear change.

This is where the second half of Sharon Astyk’s argument comes in. She points out that many of the writers critiqued in Staniford’s essay see a nonmechanized small-farm agricultural economy not as the inevitable result of economic forces, but as a deliberate policy choice. If our existing agriculture could fold out from under us, they suggest, getting plan B in place is a good idea.

Now this may well be true, but history teaches that when ideology collides with economics, it’s inevitably ideology that comes off worst. The same trap that has blocked most proposals for lifeboat communities so far – how do you make them economically viable in the world we inhabit today? – lies in wait for schemes to relocalize agriculture that don’t take the actual economics of farming in today’s world into account.

Fortunately, there’s reason to think that economic factors will favor the rise of a nonmechanized small-farm economy in the industrial world in the decades to come. The best evidence for this suggestion comes, ironically enough, from Stuart Staniford. In posts about the agricultural side of peak oil – notably Fermenting the Food Supply – Staniford pointed out that the use of grain as a feedstock for ethanol is likely to drive up the price of basic foodstuffs so far that many people will no longer be able to afford to eat.

This is potentially a serious crisis, but it also represents an opportunity. Sharp increases in the price of food mean that food production methods that may not be economical under current conditions could well pass the breakeven point and begin turning a profit. To thrive in the economic climate of the near future, of course, such methods would have to meet certain requirements, but most of these can be anticipated easily enough.

These alternative farming projects would have to use minimal fossil fuel inputs, since fuel costs will likely be very high by past standards for much of the foreseeable future. They would need to focus on local distribution, since those same fuel costs will put long-distance transport out of reach. They would have to focus on intensive production from very small plots, since acreage large enough for industrial farming will likely increase in price. They would also benefit greatly by relying on human labor with hand tools, since the economic consequences of peak oil will likely send unemployment rates soaring while making capital hard to come by.

All of these criteria are met, as it happens, by the small organic farms and truck gardens that many relocalization theorists hold up as models for future agriculture. Already an economic success, especially around West Coast cities, these agricultural alternatives have evolved their own distribution system, relying on farmers markets, co-op groceries, local restauranteurs and community-supported agriculture schemes to carry out an end run around food distribution systems geared toward corporate monopolies.

As more grains and other fermentable bulk commodities get turned into ethanol, and food prices rise in response, such arrangements may well become a significant source of food for a sizeable fraction of Americans – and in the process, of course, the economics of small-scale alternative farms are likely to improve a great deal. The result may well resemble nothing so much as the agricultural system of the former Soviet Union in its last years, featuring vast farms that had become almost irrelevant to the national food supply, while little market gardens in backyards produced most of the food people actually ate.

If Staniford is correct and the postpeak energy crisis turns out to be a passing phase, that bimodal system might endure for quite some time, as it did in the Soviet Union. If more pessimistic assessments of our energy future are closer to the mark, as I suspect they are, the industrial half of the system can be counted on to collapse at some point down the road once energy and resource availability drop to levels insufficient to sustain a continental economy. If this turns out to be the case, the small intensive farms around the urban fringes – mammals amid agribusiness dinosaurs – may well become the nucleus of the next agriculture.

Oil Rises Above $104 to Record on OPEC Output, Venezuela Tanks.

This is the comment thread for the poll, which is in the next post below. Sorry, there’s some glitch that I can’t figure out to put them in the same thread.

This is a guest post by Yair Wallach. Originally from Jerusalem, he is completing his PhD in Cultural History in Birkbeck College, the University of London (writing about Palestine/Israel between 1858 and 1948). During his five years of study in London he has lived in precarious conditions, spending many months without electricity or hot water. These experiences have made him aware of issues of environmental sustainability, especially relating to energy, water, waste and the global food market. He currently makes his living by writing articles of economic analysis on the Middle East.

Abstract

The use of food crops for biofuels is one of the key factors driving a dramatic increase in the global price of cereals. As Stuart Staniford demonstrated here in the past few weeks, this trend is set to intensify. This article will look at the potential implications of rising wheat prices for countries in the Middle East, taking Egypt and Morocco as examples. Government food subsidies in both countries have so far protected the poor urban population from much of the global hike in cereal prices. However, as food prices continue to spiral, subsidies will demand a growing share of national budgets. Subsidies cuts seem inevitable, leading to riots and political instability.

The further development of biofuels could make food too costly for millions of poor in the Middle East, and destabilise the region which supplies most of the world’s oil exports.

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Introduction

Stuart Staniford’s article Fermenting the Food Supply exposed the dangerously rapid manner in which food crops have been diverted to biofuels in the USA, and the likelihood that this pattern will be copied elsewhere. Staniford attempted to gauge the impact of price rises on the global poor. Looking at the elasticity of food expenditure, he suggested a grim possibility of 60% of the globe’s population priced out of the food market within the next five years. In a later article, Death Rates and Food Prices he considered the mitigating effect of subsistence farming, which could support a considerable part of the global poor.

Staniford established convincingly that the impact of biofuels on food crops will be almost immediate – that is, within the next decade or even five years. However, within such a short time span, assessment based on universal parameters will give a very limited picture. I believe that a more detailed attention needs to be given to specific regions and countries. Which ones are most at risk?

The Middle East is my home region, with which I am familiar personally and professionally. It is natural for me to be interested in the dangers for the region’s population. But furthermore, a food crisis in the Middle East may have far reaching consequences, due to the importance of the region for oil and natural gas exports.

My starting assumption is that countries that import a large percentage of their cereal utilisation will be more exposed to the rising prices. Where hard currency has to be paid for cereal, the increase in price will be most visible. By this criterion, the Middle East is especially vulnerable. As the chart below shows, out of 20 countries that import 10% or more of their cereals, 7 countries are found in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Sudan.

Imported Cereals as share of utilized cereals in selected countries. Source: FAO, Food outlook. Data for 2006-2007 is estimated; data for 2007-2008 is projected. The data is selective and probably includes only countries with substantial population.

The vulnerability of the region also lies in the fact that wheat-based bread is the main staple. Without bread there is no life – indeed, in Egypt the same word is used for both (‘aish). The global commodity price of wheat has gone up most drastically, tripling between 2000 and 2007. Maize and rice prices have doubled during this time. Countries in which wheat is the main cereal are likely to be more severely affected.

Outside the rich pockets of wealth in the Gulf, poverty is widespread in the Middle East. In Egypt, 45% of the population are estimated to live on US$2 per day or less (2007). The population in the region spends on average a third to half of its income on food. Poor urban households are in a precarious position to begin with, and they will be affected badly by any prices increases. However, the price of bread is not dictated directly by global cereals prices, because of generous government subsidies. Before examining the possible implications of the crisis by looking at the specific cases of Egypt and Morocco, a few words on the economics and politics behind food subsidies in the Middle East.

Oil and Food subsidies

Government intervention in the food market is a crucial mitigating factor that has to be taken into account when trying to assess the impact of the current price hike. In virtually all countries in the Middle East and North Africa, governments offer generous subsidies for food and, in most cases, for fuel. There is an unwritten pact between governments and peoples in the region that guaranties that the price of bread and fuel remains affordable, and any cut in subsidies is seen as a direct attack on people’s most basic rights.

The IMF and various other global consulting bodies have persistently preached against subsidies, arguing that they are not an effective means to alleviate poverty. The argument has merit: the subsidies benefit poor and rich alike; they encourage corruption and waste. This is especially true with fuel subsidies, of which the middle classes take full advantage. The IMF has consistently called for replacing the subsidies with other mechanisms that would support directly the population in need, such as cash transfers. However, the population in the region has real concerns about such suggestions: Will cash-grants be sufficient? Will they rise with inflation? Will they reach everyone in need? Will governments be competent enough to administer the scheme? The general sentiment is that the answer to all of these is ‘no’; a recent survey showed that 88% of Egyptians are opposed to any subsidy reform, fearing that ‘reform’ would mean in effect elimination.

The subsidies form a considerable part of all national budgets in the region, but for some countries they are a bigger strain than others, especially as the bill is getting higher. The rich oil and gas producing countries – Saudi Arabia, UAE, Algeria and others – are able to pay the rising price with high revenues from hydrocarbon exports. Other countries are in a far more precarious situation: these include not only resource-poor countries like Jordan, Tunisia and Morocco, but also oil producers such as Egypt, Iraq and Iran, which, for various reasons (resource depletion, internal strife or failing infrastructure) are fiscally vulnerable. Egypt, which has a substantial fiscal deficit, is expected to spend 30% of its budget for 2007/08 on subsidies.

Middle Eastern governments have been wary of eliminating food subsidies or replacing them, as it is clear that the issue is politically explosive. Subsidy cuts lead to riots. This has been the case in Egypt (1977), Sudan (1979), Morocco (1981, 1984, 2007) Jordan (1989, 1996), and Tunisia (1984). The riots are perceived as serious challenge for the regimes. In some cases (Morocco 1981) hundreds of demonstrators were killed. After clampdown of arrests and emergency measures, governments usually back down from the subsidy cuts. We have seen this happen in the last bread riots in Morocco (September 2007). This scenario will become increasingly unlikely as the subsidy bill becomes much more costly. As prices of oil and food go up, removing subsidies will become politically impossible, but sustaining them could become economically unviable.
Whatever happens, subsidies are unlikely to be eliminated completely, and global price rises will be mitigated and not hit the population in their full toll. Famines are therefore not to be expected in the immediate future. Yet political unrest is unavoidable. Even if governments succeed in repressing food riots, popular disapproval will remain and the political situation will be much more volatile.

Egypt

Egypt has the biggest population in the region – 77 million people, and a high growth rate. The country is also one of the biggest wheat importers in the world, importing about 38% of its cereals in 2006-7. The price of bread is very low – less than one cent in 2007, and subsidised bread is available mainly for the urban population, which made 42% of the total population in 2007.
In 2007 rising wheat prices cost the Egyptian government an additional US$ 2.5 billion in subsidies. The government could afford this because of windfall oil and gas revenues, and strong economic growth since 2004 in non-oil sectors. In 2007 Egypt had a US$ 5 billion trade surplus. In the recent Davos conference, Egypt was hailed as a success story for liberalisation reforms, and as one of the next emerging economies.

But in 2008 things are set to change. Egyptian oil production peaked in the mid 1990s. Oil consumption is growing strongly, due to economic growth. In 2008, Egypt is set to become a net importer of oil for the first time. From a dwindling source of income, oil will become a substantial fiscal burden. The government would have to import oil and sell it at a subsidised price – which would be a heavy burden, since fuel subsidies already made 20% of the government budget in 2005/6 (source: IMF).

Will the Egyptian government sustain bread prices at their current levels? After announcements of possible changes to the subsidy system, the Government recently announced that no major reform will take place. The current system will continue and will be extended. But can the government afford it to sustain bread prices at their current levels? Natural gas exports will continue to bring hard currency, but subsidies cuts seem inevitable. In 2007 the price of fuel went up by 30%. Further rises are no doubt on the way.

Egypt’s production and consumption of crude oil, in million tons, between 1973-2006. Source: BP

Morocco

Morocco has a large agricultural sector and therefore is in a better position to fall back onto subsistence farming. However, in recent decades Morocco has been plagued by recurrent droughts, in what is widely seen as the effect of climate change. The frequency of droughts has increased from once every five years to every other year; the length of the growing season has shortened considerably. (Source: Karrou). Yields vary considerably between years, and in 2007 they were especially low. As a result, Morocco is forced to import a growing share of its cereals: about a third of its cereals in 2006/7, and in 2007/8 it is expected to import about 56%.

Both fuel and food subsidies in Morocco are much lower than in Egypt. To give some indication, in 2004 the retail price of a litre of gasoline was US$ 1.10, compared with 28 cent in Egypt. Diesel was 70 cent compared with 10 cent. (source). Bread is sold at 1.20 Dirham or US 15 cents. Yet oil and food subsidies still made up about 10% of the government budget in 2007; if they were to double, this would create a considerable fiscal strain.

There are some early signs of crisis. In September 2007, just before the month of Ramadan (in which bread consumption rises) the government raised the price of bread by 30%. Bread riots followed, and after clashes between police and demonstrators, the government backed down and restored the lower price. The decisions on subsidies cuts, interestingly, was taken by the Ministry of Interior, in charge of internal security. (source: ecomaroc.blogspot.com, French).

Also there are indications of falling demand for oil. The volume of crude oil imports in 2007 was about 2% lower than in 2006. However, when November 2007 is compared to November 2006, we find an alarming drop of 43% in the volume of oil imports. (source: Moroccan Statistics). With no substantial hydrocarbon industry, a more urbanised society (60% urban compared with 42% in Egypt), and greater dependency on wheat imports, Morocco seems more vulnerable to the impending crisis than Egypt.

Conclusion

Cereal prices in the Middle East are mediated through state subsidies. So far, the urban poor have not been exposed directly to the rise in prices. It seems inevitable, however, that at some point the price rises will be passed on to the public through subsidy cuts, either in 2008 or in 2009, in countries such as Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Iraq, and Jordan.
Subsidy cuts will, without doubt, result in immediate riots. The urban poor will not wait until they reach a starving point: they will act immediately, as they have done before, against what they will see as the government betraying its fundamental duty to provide affordable food prices.

Egypt and Morocco are among the US’s closest allies in the region. Belonging to the so-called “moderate Arab/Muslim countries”, they have been the most accommodating in terms of supplying the US with intelligence and military cooperation against Islamist groups. In return the US has supported these regimes militarily and economically, through direct support (Egypt) or Free Trade Agreements. Political instability in these countries will put in serious risk the position of the US in the Middle East. The notion that food prices have gone up because of American (and other developed countries’) use of biofuels will not make the US more popular among people in the region.

The American policy on biofuels is repeatedly presented as a means to improve US national security, by reducing dependency on imported oil from the Middle East. Articles on Ethanol production here in the Oil Drum (by Robert Rapier and others) have shown this to be a fiction at best, because of ethanol’s poor EROI. Now it becomes clear that the subsidising of biofuels will make the world less safe for the US, by destabilising “friendly regimes” in the Middle East and beyond.

A few more words. Egypt, Morocco and other Middle East countries are regularly covered by Western Media, because of their economic and geo-political importance, as well as their proximity to Europe. Other countries – for example in sub-Saharan Africa – may be even more vulnerable, as many of them depend on cereal imports (although perhaps not to the same extent). It would seem likely that governments in sub-Saharan Africa have less power to mitigate price rises through generous subsidies. However, many such countries are off the radar for Western media, and the developed world will learn about the problems only through news of famines or refugee crises.

To forecast the impact of cereal price rises, one should take into account food subsidies (where they exist) and the ability of governments to sustain them. In the Middle East, it seems, the political consequences will be almost immediate, and will come before actual food shortages. In other regions it may take a different course. In Mexico, for example, subsidies have been eliminated long ago. But as I am no expert on Mexico, I will leave this for others.

If this short article dealt with the problem in strategic terms, in grand summaries of numbers (population, oil, food), it is important to remember that behind all these are people, real people, and many of them. Poor families in Egypt and Morocco, for whom life is already very difficult, and who survive on the bare minimum, are going to be badly hit in the next two years, when even a pita bread will become too expensive. The important issue here is not the survival of certain political regimes, but rather the survival of these families.

Sources:

• IMF latest report on Egypt
• IMF latest report on Morocco
• Akhter U.Ahmed, Howarth E. Bouis, Tamar Gutner, and Hans Lofgren (2001). The Egyptian Food Subsidy System: Structure, Performance, and Options for Reforms. International Food Policy Research Institute.
• Bread, the (subsidized) stuff of life in Egypt, International Herald Tribune.

Andris Piebalgs is the European Energy Commissioner with responsibility for shaping European Union (EU) energy policy. These policies may then be adopted by the European Parliament and will effectively shape Europe’s energy future.

Mr Piebalgs has an informative web site where he has newly installed a blog inviting comments on EU energy policy.

I would like to invite all my fellow bloggers and all citizens to contribute your ideas.

Andris, I would like to thank you for providing us bloggers with this wonderful opportunity to relay our ideas and opinions directly into the heart of the European Parliament. But beware, not all ideas and opinions are born equal.

There’s more under the fold…..

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I have left a lengthy comment trying to emphasise the importance of energy efficiency:

Andris Piebalgs said:

“I would like 2008 to be the European year of Energy Efficiency. I’m proposing to table measures to increase energy efficiency in our buildings, in our energy devices, in the way we consume energy. What are your ideas?”

To which I replied:

I agree whole heartedly with this but need to draw attention to one glaring omission. The most important energy efficiency measure to consider is the efficiency of energy gathering / energy production systems. This must lie at the very heart of EU energy policy IMHO. And once this idea is taken on board then we will be on the road to our salvation.

The policy page says this:

Our sustainable future largely depends on increased use of renewable energies. The European Commission has proposed and the European Council has endorsed an overall binding 20% renewable energy target and a binding minimum target of 10% for transport biofuels for the EU by 2020. That means that in 2020 one fifth of the energy and one tenth of all transport fuels consumed in the EU will have to come from renewable energy sources.

My immediate reaction to this is one of unreserved endorsement combined with disbelief with respect to the biofuels targets. Until a way is found to grow temperate latitude biofuels with eroei over 7 that do not threaten our food supplies then my opinion is that further development of biofuels should be abandoned until such time. Internal combustion engines are at best 40% efficient. Thus taking bio ethanol with eroei of 1.5 and burning it in this way is tantamount to simply burning food piles for no beneficial reason.

This also caught my eye:

Technology will play a central role in achieving the targets of the new Energy Policy for Europe. For this reason the Commission will annually invest approximately €1 billion between 2007 and 2013 in energy technology research and innovation. Technology must help to lower the costs of renewable energy, increase the efficient use of energy and ensure that European industry is at the global forefront. The Commission will therefore prepare the first European Strategic Energy Technology Plan in 2007.

That is some €7 billion. Let us hope the money is spent wisely. I would feel inclined to replace “lower the cost of renewable energy” with “improve and prioritise the efficiency of renewable energies” – and then we will be on the right track.

And so if you were given an opportunity to give advice to the EU Energy Commissioner, what would you say? Post comments for discussion here or visit Andris Piebalgs’ blog to tell him directly what you think. Remember this will be a rolling debate that will take place over many months that may hopefully culminate in the building of a trans European HVDC grid and electrification of all our transportation.

When I was in graduate school at Texas A&M in the early 90′s, I selected chemical engineering Professor Mark Holtzapple as my research advisor. His work was exactly in my area of interest: Biofuels from cellulose. Even then, I was very concerned about the unsustainable lifestyle we were living, and I was hoping to save the world. For a very good overview on what we were doing, see this PowerPoint presentation (note the Hubbert slide) or this article. In brief, what we were doing was searching for naturally occurring biological systems that convert cellulose to organic chemicals.

The primary system we studied was the bovine digestive system. Cattle are very efficient digesters of cellulose. They eat grass, and break it down via microorganisms that live in their digestive systems. So what we did was extract those microorganisms and attempt to convert cellulose in reactors that emulated the chemistry of the cow’s stomach. And while we did have success, the conversion was never as efficient as it was inside the cow.
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So, I spent time brainstorming other efficient cellulose digesters. It occurred to me that probably the most efficient digester of cellulose in the world is the termite. After all, even cattle can’t break down wood. So I discussed it with Professor Holtzapple, and he thought it was a great idea. I searched the literature, and as far as I could determine, nobody had ever done it before. Therefore, I had no guidance at all with what I was attempting.

I arranged a meeting with a termite expert in Texas A&M’s Entomology Department. He was very keen on the idea, so he supplied the termites. The next bit was tricky. The cellulose digesters that we were looking at were anaerobic microorganisms. Oxygen would kill them. Therefore we always had to take great care to get them into the reaction system without killing them. For the cows, it was easy. We filled up a bottle with nitrogen, stuck our arm inside a portal into the stomach of a fistulated steer (somewhere there is a picture of me with my arm in a cow’s stomach up to my shoulder), extracted about a liter of stomach contents, and poured it into the nitrogen-filled bottle. We then transferred the contents to reactors that were being purged with nitrogen.

But with termites, it wasn’t going to be quite so easy. The volume of material I would be extracting would be very small, and therefore it would be tough to extract it without exposing it to air (with the equipment I had to work with). The other problem I had was that there was virtually no information available on the chemistry of the termite gut. How was I going to know what kind of vitamins, salts, etc. to put in the reactor? What should the pH be? The final concern I had was that I didn’t know exactly what the product of the reaction would be. I wanted a reaction system that would convert the cellulose to acetic acid or ethanol, and not all the way to carbon dioxide. But I really had no idea what I would get.

So, what I did was use the same reactor conditions I used for the bovine microorganisms, and I threw in a combination of live termites, termites with their hindguts opened up, and just some extracts from the hindgut. I figured that I had a pretty good chance, given this approach, to have some of those desirable microbes survive the transfer. I then let that combination ferment in the reactor for about a week.

When I tested the contents of the reactor, I was disappointed. I was after acetic acid to turn into ethanol, but what I got was butyric acid (which can be turned into butanol). But I wasn’t interested in butanol, and the amounts I got were very small. Since I was nearly at the end of my research, and I didn’t really have the facilities nor the time to figure out the termite hindgut chemistry (the real critical piece, in my mind), I abandoned my termite investigation. I still thought it was an excellent idea, and if someone had 3 or 4 years it would have made a great Ph.D. research project. But I had to move on and graduate.

Since that time, I have seen the idea come up on a few occasions. Because of my previous attempt, news of these attempts always catches my attention. I recently saw a new story on this:

Fuel’s gold: Termites point way to new dawn of bio-energy

Here is an excerpt, describing this latest line of investigation:

PARIS (AFP) – A team of US scientists poring over the intestines of a tropical termite have a gut feeling that a breakthrough in the quest for cleaner, renewable petrol is in store.

Tucked in the termite’s nether regions, they say, is a treasure trove of enzymes that could make next-generation biofuels, replacing fossil fuels that are dirty, pricey or laden with geopolitical risk.

Next-generation biofuels would use non-food cellulose materials, such as wood chips and straw. But these novel processes, hampered by costs and complications, are struggling to reach a commercial scale.

The termite’s tummy, though, could make all the difference. Like cows, termites have a series of intestinal compartments that each nurture a distinct community of microbes.

Each compartment does a different job in the process to convert woody polymers into the kind of sugars that can then be fermented into biofuel. The US team has now sequenced and analyzed the genetic code of some of these microbes in a key step towards — hopefully — reproducing the termite’s miniature bioreactor on an industrial scale.

“In theory, they could transform an A4-sized sheet of paper into two liters (1.8 pints) of hydrogen,” he said.

To be sure, they are well beyond what I was attempting to do. They are sequencing genes, using an entirely different species of termite, and they are attempting to produce hydrogen. But the core concept is the same: Scale up the internal bioreactor of the termite to produce a desirable end-product.

I guess I was just ahead of my time.

As an addendum to the Olduvai 2008 post there’s a movie available that digests the main ideas presented there.

This was an original idea of Nate Hagens and Chris Vernon to somehow broaden the TOD readership spectrum to people with busy schedules and/or short attention spans. This new Olduvai assessment seemed a good place to start, although in the future the objective is to have more concise and direct movies, targeted for people who are not so savvy on fossil fuel depletion.

The budget was €0, so this piece of media is far from perfect, to which we ask for your understanding.

You can watch the movie using these links:

Google Video

YouTube (part 1)

YouTube (part 2)

Forecast for Conventional Fossil Fuels per Capita.
Sources:
UN for Population model,
Jean Laherrère [pdf!] for Natural Gas,
Energy Watch Group for Coal and
The Oil Drum – Khebab for Oil. Click for large
version.
[break]

Introduction

The Olduvai Gorge Theory was first laid out by
Richard Duncan in 1989, when he observed
that world energy per capita had been declining for a decade. He developed the
concept of Electrical Civilization, the way of life made possible by widespread
and abundant electricity and set it to the period in which world energy per
capita is above 30% of its all-time peak. The Theory was postulated it in the
following way:

• Industrial Civilization can be described by a single pulse waveform of duration
  X, as measured by average energy-use per person per year.
• The life-expectancy of Industrial Civilization is less than one-hundred (100)
  years: i.e., X < 100 years.

Figure 1 – The three phases of the Olduvai Decline. Source:
WolfAtTheDoor.

The post-peak period develops in three phases:

• 
  The Olduvai Slope – a period of slow
  decline;
• 
  The Olduvai Slide – a period triggered
  by Peak Oil when decline would accelerate;
• 
  The Olduvai Cliff – the collapse of
  Electrical Civilization with overwhelming decline of energy per capita.

This seminal work would result in Duncan’s
collaboration with geologist Walter
Youngquist. Together they would forecast future
Oil production for more than 40 countries,
confirming Duncan’s initial forecast of a decline in energy consumption in the
not to distant future.

Figure 2 – World Primary Energy Per Capita. Population from
UN, Energy from
BP BOE – barrels oil equivalent.

The Future of Conventional Fossil Fuels

In the context of this work, Conventional Fossil Fuels represents the kinds of
these resources in production today. These may include fuels usually called
Unconventional like the Tar Sands or Coal Bed Methane. It is assumed that none
of the Unconventional Fuels Fossil will have a visible impact on the overall
world energy production for two main reasons: the volumes produced are unlikely
to be significant (e.g. Tar Sands) and the net energy balance of some is
doubtfully positive (e.g. Ultra-deep Offshore). The one exception is Coal where
in-situ gasification might turn important Resources into Reserves (this issue
will be dealt with later).

Oil

For
Oil, the forecast made by Khebab using a
Loglets Transform, was chosen. This scenario
is in line with those of several other researchers: Jean Lahèrrere, Colin
Campbell, Chris Skebrowski and Kenneth Deffeyes. Laid down this way, Oil
Production peaks by 2012.

Figure 3 – Conventional Oil Forecast (including NGL) according to the
Loglets Transform.

Natural Gas

The scenario chosen for Natural Gas is that produced by
Jean Laherrère portraying a peak by 2030.
This scenario can be considered optimistic to some extent, but takes into
account the high degree of uncertainty on Natural Gas forecasting, among other
reasons, due to poor data on past discovery and production. This forecast also
includes Coal Bed Methane and other Unconventional gas sources.

Figure 4 – Natural Gas Forecast (including Unconventional). Source:
Jean Laherrère [pdf!].

Coal

Coal
has been regarded as an infinite resource on a generation time scale, but
recent assessments imply otherwise. The following graph shows three independent
forecasts, by
Jean Laherrère, the
Energy Watch Group and
David Rutledge, all peaking before
mid-century. Of these the one made by the Energy Watch Group was chosen, for
being at the midst of the three and for the thoroughness involved in its
production. This scenario presents a plateau roughly from 2020 to 2040.

Figure 5 – Conventional Coal Forecasts. Sources:
Jean Laherrère [pdf!],
Energy Watch Group and
David Rutledge. Click for large version.

Fossil Fuel Olduvai

When added together these three forecasts present an overall Conventional Fossil
Fuels peak by 2018, forming a single cycle which by itself is a notable result.
If for instance a higher Coal estimate is used, the peak hardly moves and the
only visible effect is a slowdown of the decline.

Figure 6 – Together the Conventional Fossil Fuels are set to peak before 2020 describing a
single cycle.
Sources:
Jean Laherrère [pdf!] for Natural Gas,
Energy Watch Group for Coal and
The Oil Drum for Oil. Click for large
version.

A population model was developed using United Nations data, to which a single
logistic cycle was adjusted. World Population tops 7 billion just after 2010,
reaches 8 billion before 2030, 9 billion by 2050 and stabilizes after that to
end up in 9.8 billion by the end of the century.

Figure 7 – Population growth model using a single logistic cycle.
Base data source:
UN. Click for large version.

The outcome of these models is a Fossil Fuel per capita peak by 2012 in tandem
with Peak Oil, although it is maintained above 10 barrels of oil equivalent
from now up to 2020. By 2050 that number is below 6 barrels of oil equivalent
per capita declining to just above 1 by the end of the century. Led by the
Conventional Fossil Fuels, the Olduvai Pulse is interpreted to be much longer
than anticipated by Duncan, extending its life for 160 years, from 1910 to
2070.

Figure 8 – Forecast for Conventional Fossil Fuels per Capita.
Sources:
UN for Population model,
Jean Laherrère [pdf!] for Natural Gas,
Energy Watch Group for Coal and
The Oil Drum for Oil. Click for large
version.

The total useful energy drawn from Conventional Fossil Fuels equates today to
more than 300 Twh every day, or the equivalent to 4250 Nuclear power plants
working non-stop.

The Scenarios

Henceforth this article tries to assess what actions are required for the
current standards of living to be sustained throughout the XXI century. Using
again the United Nations population forecast the build up of alternative energy
infrastructure is determined in order to compensate for the decline of
Conventional Fossil Fuels.

• 
  Nuclear – assuming that no shortages of
  nuclear fuel may unfold or that new technologies like breeder reactors or
  accelerator driven systems are timely developed. Nuclear went from friend to
  foe during the XX century to emerge again as an alternative with the end of
  cheap Oil. Concerns with the fuel supply have been present since the 1970s, to
  which Thorium and breeder systems promise to put an end, perhaps one or two
  decades from now. Problems could remain with waste disposal, due to negative
  public opinion, and weapons production. Accelerator driven systems and fusion
  rectors could in their turn solve these last problems, but if successful are
  several decades away.

  The basic infrastructure unit used corresponds to a 1 Gw plant operating at
  full capacity.

• 
  Unconventional Coal – assuming the
  development of technologies needed to access deeper seams, offshore or other
  constrained resources. Great uncertainty surrounds the future of Coal Resources
  not extractable today. Technologies like in-situ gasification can potentially
  access seams presently inaccessible while at the same time addressing concerns
  with CO2 emissions; but a proof of concept is yet to be achieved.
  Unconventional Coal is also a non-renewable resource that may not look like the
  best alternative to build a sustainable future upon, although it can eventually
  provide an important launch pad for it.

  The basic infrastructure unit used corresponds to a 600 Mw plant operating at
  full capacity.

• 
  Wind energy – both on its onshore and
  offshore forms. A renewable energy source with a proven track record, is now
  technologically where Nuclear was in the 1960s. In Europe the offshore
  infrastructure is still young and could revolutionize the electricity
  generation sector. Presently, the main challenge to this alternative is energy
  storage, although in this case technology (or the lack of thereof) should not
  be a problem.

  The infrastructure units correspond to 3 Mw turbines operating at 30% load for
  Onshore Wind and to 5 Mw turbines at 40% load for Offshore.

• 
  Solar – the dormant giant? At an
  earlier stage of market penetration compared to Wind, it will certainly undergo
  the same kind of growth. Due to the simplicity of passive systems and the
  falling costs of photovoltaics, a Solar revolution could be on the making.
  Especially in the warmer countries of the Temperate Regions this will likely be
  a major energy source in the XXI century.

  The basic infrastructure unit reflects the average insulation at 40º latitude
  per Km2 captured with an efficiency of 15%.

Figure 9 – Simple schematics of a Carnot heat engine.
Primary Energy refers to Qin, Useful Energy to work done (W). The engine’s efficiency is given by W/Qin.
Click to know more.

Given that for most of the alternatives the nameplate generation capacity
refers to electricity output, the numbers shown henceforth refer to this stage
of energy generation. For the primary energy to heat transformation an
efficiency of one third was used. This is a postulated round number that seems
representative enough; a combined cycle Natural Gas power plant probably
achieves a higher efficiency, while for a Daimler internal combustion engine it
will likely be lower. As an example, using this efficiency number, a 1 Gw
Nuclear power plant operating during an hour replaces 3 Gwh of primary energy
from the Fossil Fuels (approximately 1800 boe).

• 
  Net Energy – it is assumed that the
  overall Energy Return on Investment of these alternatives is exactly the same
  of the overall Conventional Fossil Fuels. That is hardly the case, but the
  difficulty in assessing Net Energy accurately impedes a sound analysis on this
  ground. Especially in the case of Coal, that likely has a return on investment
  much higher that the other sources, this issue could be determinant. Future
  work will have to address this problem.
• 
  Energy Vectors – it is assumed that all
  energy vectors are substituted by electricity (the only exception being passive
  solar use: cooking, water heating, etc). The reasons why will be explained in
  future work, but it implies the build up of additional infrastructure that is
  not present in the numbers shown below.

Scenario I
– A single energy source.

In this first scenario it is shown how each of these energy sources can tackle
the energy gap left by declining FF on its own. In this case, new
infrastructure must be deployed starting in 2018 rising fast to a peak
deployment rate before 2040 and then slowly easing down. At peak, more than 4
500 Thw must be generated from new infrastructure. By the end of the century
this sums up to a 140 000 Twh of energy generated per year from alternative
energy sources.

Nuclear | Coal | Offshore Wind | Onshore Wind | Solar | Energy

Figure 10 – Infrastructure build up for Scenario I. Blue curve – infrastructure units per year. Red curve – cumulative infrastructure. Click links for other energy sources.

Table 1 – Scenario I in numbers.

Scenario II
– Three simultaneous energy sources.

The second scenario considers the case where three of these alternative energy
sources are deployed simultaneously to fill the energy gap. This results in the
previous numbers being divided by three, with the following curves assuming
that two other alternative energy sources are being stepped up simultaneously.
Peak is now at 1 500 Twh generated per year from each additional source,
reaching more than 45 000 Twh generated per source per year by the end of the
century.

Nuclear | Coal | Offshore Wind | Onshore Wind | Solar | Energy

Figure 11 – Infrastructure build up curves for Scenario II. Blue curve – infrastructure units per year. Red curve – cumulative infrastructure. Click links for other energy sources.

Table 2 – Scenario II in numbers.

The Efficiency Wedge

For the remaining scenarios a world wide improvement in energy efficiency is factored in. Presently the world’s consumption of fossil fuels is close to 70 Gboe (just over 10 boe/cap/a), while the global GDP is just under 70 T$. This results in less than 1 000 dollars generated for each barrel of oil equivalent consumed. The following graph shows the relation between fossil fuel use and GDP per capita in several countries, both developed and developing nations, excluding the Middle East oil producers.

Figure 12 – GDP generated per barrel of oil equivalent consumed of Fossil Fuels. GDP from
Wikipedia, Energy from
BP.

World average GDP per capita was calculated with data from more than 180 countries resulting in 10 000 dollars per year. Using the trend in Figure 12 it becomes apparent that such average wealth standards should be sustained with just 5 barrels of oil equivalent per capita per year. This results in an efficiency of 2 000 dollars produced per barrel of oil equivalent, a number that is used as the target for global energy use efficiency.

Table 3 – GDP generated per boe of Fossil Fuel consumed in several countries.

Figure 13 – The Efficiency Wedge model: primary energy needs per capita fall to 5 boe/a (8.5
Mwh/a) thought the XXI century.

Figure 14 – With the Efficiency Wedge the build up curves start latter and exhibit two
distinct phases of growth.

Scenario III
– A single energy source with efficiency wedge.

Scenario III illustrates the amount of new infrastructure required for each of
the alternatives assuming that the energy efficiency wedge reduces our
consumption by half towards the end of the XXI century . Infrastructure build
up now peaks just under 1 500 Twh additionally generated per year, summing 60
000 Twh of energy generated per year by 2100.

Nuclear | Coal | Offshore Wind | Onshore Wind | Solar | Energy

Figure 15 – Infrastructure build up curves for Scenario III. Blue curve – infrastructure units per year. Red curve – cumulative infrastructure. Click links for other energy sources.

Table 4 – Scenario III in numbers.

Scenario IV
– Three simultaneous energy sources with efficiency wedge.

The last scenario looks at three alternatives simultaneously tackling the
energy gap with the efficiency wedge reducing consumption. Infrastructure build
up now peaks with 500 Twh additionally generated per year, summing 20 000 Twh
generated per year by century’s end.

Nuclear | Coal | Offshore Wind | Onshore Wind | Solar | Energy

Figure 16 – Infrastructure build up curves for Scenario IV. Blue curve – infrastructure units per year. Red curve – cumulative infrastructure. Click links for other energy sources.

Table 5 – Scenario IV in numbers.

Conclusion

According to our analysis, conventional fossil fuels are set to peak in a
decade or so and following that, decline will open an ever widening gap from
today’s per capita energy use. Based on finite FF resources, energy per capita
is indeed headed towards a cliff, and this may lead Mankind back to the Olduvai
Gorge if action is not taken to address this problem. Many of those who have
studied this problem in the past have concluded that the journey back to
Olduvai is unavoidable.

Figure 17 – Useful Energy from the Fossil Fuels.
The solid areas reflect the useful energy got from the Fossil Fuels according to the data and models used. The dashed lines reflect the total energy needed to maintain current standards of energy use per capita, with the orange line also factoring in the efficiency wedge model.
Click for large version.

Annex

Following
is a spreadsheet with the data and calculations involved in the making of this
article:

Open Document version:

http://www.theoildrum.com/files/Olduvai2008.ods [240Kb]

Microsoft version:

http://www.theoildrum.com/files/Olduvai2008.xls [660Kb]

The Fading Twilight of Oil

Houston investment banker Matthew Simmons is somewhat surprised and obviously pleased that his 2005 ‘Twilight in the Desert’ has now surpassed 100,00 copies in print — making it a best seller of sorts — and that it is now available in German, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

But what really pleases him is that despite early and inaccurate accusations that his book criticizes Saudi Aramco for mismanaging Saudi Arabia’s giant oil fields, his research efforts have won the praise of the very people who assumed they were the target of his pen.

That praise, however, hasn’t tempered his conviction that the world as we know it is about to change irrevocably as the demand for petroleum outpaces supply.

[break]

Oil prices approach $100 a barrel

Oil prices pushed toward $100 a barrel Monday as the Turkish incursion into northern Iraq and warnings by Iran against further sanctions heightened concerns over potential crude supply disruptions.

Turkish troops fired more than 40 salvos of artillery shells Monday across the Iraqi border against Kurdish rebels, a day after the military confirmed a Turkish helicopter crashed in Iraq and eight soldiers were killed.

UAE company to build new refinery in Abu Dhabi

The Abu Dhabi Oil Refining Company (TAKREER) of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced on Monday that it will build a new refinery in Abu Dhabi Emirate to boost its refinery capacity, Emirates News Agency reported. When completed by 2013, the new refinery will have a capacity of 417,000 barrels per day (bpd), representing 86 percent of TAKREER’s current installed refining capacity, according to the report.

Dimensions of oil addiction

In a column in the Trib on President Bush’s recent visit to the Middle East in search of more and cheaper oil, Jonathan Gurwitz asks us to imagine the United States as dependent on hostile, unstable nations for our food supply as we currently are for oil.

No need to imagine.

The alarming truth is that today’s food production does depend on petroleum.

High food prices may force aid rationing

The United Nation’s agency responsible for relieving hunger is drawing up plans to ration food aid in response to the spiralling cost of agricultural commodities.

Can Turkish economy survive high energy prices?

One of the test beds of peak oil, or supply constraints, is Turkey. The country is not gifted with many hydrocarbon reserves and faces a decline in its oil production. The rising thirst of energy for this developing country relies on exports from close countries. Natural gas, which is not peaking soon, is also a twin brother of oil in terms of pricing of the contracts, yet Turkey has no chance on this front either.

Why NASCAR?

Historically, says Kunstler, NASCAR is a regional derivative: “The NASCAR subculture arose in the South, the old Dixie states, where the automobile had had tremendous social transformative power … where it liberated the red-necked peasantry from the oppression of geographic isolation.”

NASCAR is a balm, a salvation, says Kunstler, for “a nation of outsourced blue-collar jobs, shrinking incomes, vanishing medical insurance, rising fuel and heating costs and net-zero personal savings”

Legislative environment grows heated

Washington State University economist Melissa Ahern is an expert on peak oil, the theory that the planet already has reached its maximum oil production level and faces steeply rising oil prices and a deepening global recession — not in centuries but in a decade or two. She delivered her own urgent message to a Senate committee Thursday evening.

Asked how the nation can reduce its dependence on liquid petroleum, she came down on the side of both conservation and technological innovation.

David Pimentel – Corn can’t save us: Debunking the biofuel myth

Dwindling foreign oil, rising prices at the gas pump, and hype from politically well-connected U.S. agribusiness have combined to create a frenzied rush to convert food grains into ethanol fuel. The move is badly conceived and ill advised. Corporate spin and pork barrel legislation aside, here, by the numbers, are the scientific reasons why corn won’t provide our energy needs…

Accountability in energy

Was the sale of these assets in the best financial and strategic interests of the people of this country in these days of Peak Oil, where the world demand for petroleum is outstripping the supply, and our resources are being depleted?

Why I didn’t buy a new family car

Gas mileage issues have moved to the top of my list of reasons for not purchasing a new family car. According to the Jan. 3 NCT article, “Record gas prices signify a crude reality,” other consumers apparently agree. Sadly, too many of the 2008 family vehicles are gas-guzzlers at a time when peak oil prices are skyrocketing and more increases are on the horizon.

Many consumers, myself included, can no longer afford to drive from one end of Escondido and back again in a car that gets 12 miles to the gallon. Commuting to and from San Diego in the same car is akin to flushing dollar bills down the toilet just to watch them swirl away into the abyss.

60 insurers attending Marsh NOC confab

Not less than 60 Nigerian insurers are among over 400 people attending this weeks National Oil Companies’ conference in Dubai. The energy conference is the second of the annual seminar convoked by Marsh, world’s leading insurance broker.

Coffee, confection and the trillion dollar climate connection!

A just completed UN study calls for a $20 trillion global investment in climate change abatement over the next 20 years. This higher-than-usual price tag is no doubt a gross cost figure. Doubtless, too, the $20 trillion figure responds to the demands of a more alarmed scientific community. In any event, $20 trillion is equivalent to1.5 per cent of global GDP for the coming two decades. That’s about three times the rate estimated by Nicholas Stern for the first 20 years of climate change mitigation.

Last year I came across the story of Dutch company Kema and their energy island idea – basically a variant on the usual pumped hydro energy storage concept where water is pumped out of a space below sea level then allowed to flow back in, generating power as it does. The “island” uses wind power to pump water out of the enclosed area. An obvious extension to this idea would be to harness ocean energy as well – letting wave and/or tidal power supplement the output of the wind turbines. An attraction of this concept is that it potentially allows a large amount of new energy storage to be brought online – and this storage would be along the world’s coastlines, where most of the population lives.

Another form of energy island has been in the news recently, this one a substantially more ambitious proposal which envisions artificial islands to collect wind, wave, ocean current and solar power in the tropics, along with a more unusual energy source – harnessing the difference in water temperatures between the warm surface and the cold depths using a technique called OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion).

[break]

These islands are being proposed by architects Dominic Michaelis and his son Alex Michaelin as a response to Richard Branson’s Virgin Earth Challenge, which offers $25 million in prizes for innovative solutions for combating global warming.

While the practicality of these particular proposals has yet to be put to the test, the various forms of ocean power are probably the most overlooked of the big 6 renewable energy sources (along with solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and hydro).

Other forms of renewable energy are sometimes criticised for being more intermittent and less predictable than traditional power generation, however ocean energy is much more reliable – steady ocean currents could provide good baseload power, as could OTEC, tidal power is diurnal and highly predictable and waves are predictable days in advance.

In this post I’ll have a look at the amount of energy that could potentially be harvested from these sources and the various projects underway to try and make this a reality.

Tidal and Ocean Current Power

Tidal power stations usually take the form of a dam (or barrage) built across a narrow bay or river mouth. As the tide flows in or out, it creates uneven water levels on either side of the barrier. The water flows through the barrier, turning turbines to generate electricity.

Benefits of tidal barrage power generation include :

* Predictable source of clean energy
* No dependence on foreign fuel sources
* Flood protection
* Transport links for road and/or rail
* Better shipping and boating conditions behind the barrier

Disadvantages include :

* The timing of the tides doesn’t often correlate with peak demand times (less of a problem if there are good energy storage options available)
* Existing ecosystems behind the barrage tend to be heavily altered
* Likely to stimulate silting in some areas and coastal erosion in others
* Enhance flood risk on the seaward side
* Shipping would have to navigate locks
* Industrial discharges behind the barrage are less likely to be dispersed out to sea

Variations on this theme include offshore tidal lagoons, which use a water impoundment structure and low-head hydroelectric generating equipment on shallow tidal flats, and tidal fences, which are composed of a number of individual vertical axis turbines mounted within the fence structure, known as a caisson.

Underwater turbines can also be used to harness both tidal power and ocean current power. The turbines (sometimes called aquanators) are similar to wind turbines. In water moving between 6 and 9 km per hour, a 15 m diameter water turbine could generate as much energy as a 60 m diameter wind turbine. Given the smaller amount of infrastructure required and the larger range of possible sites that this technology could be deployed to, it seems likely that underwater turbines will become much more widespread than tidal barrage style generation.

World tidal energy resources have been estimated at around 3000 GW, however less than 3% of this is located in areas considered suitable for power generation (these figures probably don’t include ocean current power, which doesn’t seem to be well studied).

A 240 MW tidal-barrage power plant has been operating at La Rance in Brittany since 1966. Other operational barrage sites are at Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia (18 MW), the Bay of Kislaya near Murmansk and at Jangxia Creek in the East China Sea.

The largest tides in the world are found in Canada’s Bay of Fundy, which has been earmarked to become a 4-berth test site for tidal power generation next year.

On the west coast of Canada, Marine Current Turbine and BC Tidal Energy Corporation plan to install at least three 1.2 MW tidal energy turbines in Vancouver Island’s Campbell River by 2009. This the first step in a plan to develop larger tidal farms off British Columbia’s coast, which the company says have a tidal energy potential of up to 4,000 MW.

In the United States, at the southern end of the Bay of Fundy, lies Passamaquoddy Bay, which has long been a target for a tidal power development – first initiated in 1935 by the Public Works Administration under the Roosevelt administration, then halted by Congress a year later. John F Kennedy revived the 550 MW project in 1963, however the plan died with him (spawning one of the stranger JFK assassination conspiracy theories I have come across).

Further south, in the Martha’s Vineyard area, two underwater turbine projects are trying to get started – one a 300 MW proposal from Oceana Energy Company and the other from Natural Currents Energy Services. Other projects are being considered in the Cape Cod and New Bedford areas – part of a “gold rush” for good tidal power sites (the most desirable ones usually have hourglass figures, to get maximum force in the incoming tide) which has seen the FERC issue 47 preliminary permits for ocean energy projects (and generated mainstream news coverage on the NBC network).

New York’s East River is the location of one of the more high profile tidal power experiments currently underway, with Verdant Power experimenting with underwater turbines there. The first attempt eventually ended in failure, with the strong tides breaking the devices.

The Gulf Stream has also caught the eye of hopeful ocean energy companies, particularly in Florida, with the 30 mile wide current pushing 8.5 billion gallons of water along per second and prompting some observers to consider the prospect of “Infinite Underwater Energy“.

Californian utility PG&E is also investigating tapping tidal power in San Francsico Bay, with some observers talking about a plant of up to 400 MW in size.

Another bay famous for its tides is the Severn river estuary in Britain, with a tidal range of 14 metres. Plans for damming the Severn estuary or Bristol channel have existed since the 19th century (with tidal power generation being just one proposed application). The UK government recently proposed a new barrage design, which could produce 5% of the UK’s electricity requirements, with a peak rate of 8.6 GW. A feasibility study is expected to be complete by 2010. An alternative proposal, by Tidal Electric, involves a series of lagoons, the first of which would be built in Swansea Bay. Some observers have noted underwater turbines may be more appropriate than a barrage.

Pentland Firth in Scotland is another UK location that is considered to have a large amount of tidal power potential – a DTI study in 1993 indicated that if all potential sites were developed, the total UK tidal stream resource could be about 60 TWh. Of this, almost half (28 TWh) could come from the Pentland Firth. The water depth is 60m or more, making potential energy capture huge but technically difficult – 63% of the tidal stream resource is estimated to be in waters deeper than 40m.

Marine Current Turbines launched the world’s first underwater turbine project off north Devon in 2003. MCT also began installing a 1.2 MW “SeaGen” tidal current turbine in Northern Ireland’s Strangford Lough in 2007, with the company planning to scale up to build a 10MW tidal power farm off Anglesey in North Wales, and to have 500MW of tidal capacity by 2015. Also in Wales, Lunar Energy and Eon are hoping to build an underwater tidal project off Pembrokeshire.

Another UK tidal power proposal is part of a plan by Metrotidal to build a tunnel under the Thames, currently under fire from environmental groups. There is also talk about regions like the Isle Of Wight and the Humber estuary harnessing tidal power as part of initiatives to become energy self-sufficient (like other “Transition Towns”).

Norway has also begun investigating the use of tidal power, with an experimental facility opening in Hammerfest in 2003. The company that developed that technology, Hammerfest Strøm, is working with Scottish Power to develop a project near the Orkney Islands (the islands have also been a test site for another venture by Lunar Energy and Rotech).

There has been no tidal power development in Australia thus far, though the Kimberly region has long been a target for would be developers of tidal power projects, due to its enormous potential (a tidal range of 11 metres). Thus far all of the proposed projects have been stymied by the remoteness of the location from the Western Australian and national electricity grids and by environmental concerns. A number of possible sites have been identified, including Secure Bay, Walcott Inlet, George Water and St. George’s Basin.

Liberal backbencher Wilson “Ironbar” Tuckey has been the most vocal supporter of a Kimberly tidal project, pointing out if a link was built to the eastern states grid it would obviate the need for any consideration of nuclear power. Some Kimberly tidal power advocates have also tried to base the idea of a “hydrogen economy” on the resource, though this seems a lot more far-fetched than a grid link (the grid link could also potentially include large scale CSP solar in the western australian deserts, which are one of the best solar resources in the world) .

The Bass Strait area is also considered to have significant potential for tidal / ocean current power generation (one estimate claiming there is potential for 3000 MW of generation in the channel between King Island and Cape Otway).

New Zealand is another country with large tidal resources but without any existing tidal energy generation. According to TVNZ, there are at least 24 wave and tidal power projects currently under development. Trying to get a handle on who might be behind these projects isn’t easy – there is an NZ wave and tidal power association, but it doesn’t list members or projects – according to their latest newsletter they have 59 members. Crest Energy seems to be the most prominent local company, with a plan for a 200 MW plant in Kaipara Harbour using underwater turbines. Other potential locations include Manukau and Hokianga Harbours, and Tory Strait and French Pass in the Marlborough Sounds. The harbours produce 5 to 6-knot currents and tidal flows of 100,000 cu m a second from the flood and ebb tides, with tidal volumes 12 times greater than the flow in the largest local rivers.

The Phillipines is another potential location for tidal power, with a 2.2GW tidal fence proposed for the Dalupiri Passage using the Davis turbine, from the Blue Energy company and an estimated cost of $US 2.8 Billion is unfortunately on hold due to political instability.

South Korea also has ambitions to generate power from ocean currents, with pilot underwater turbines being installed at Uldolmok, in the country’s south-west. Researchers at the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute (KORDI) chose the site because it has flows up to 12 knots, believed to be among the fastest in Asia. The strong currents have resulted in a number of accidents, hampering progress. KORDI is also trying to improve the efficiency of more conventional barrage-type tidal power plants. The primary project involves building a power plant with a capacity of 250 MW at Lake Sihwa, with another plant up to 520 MW being considered for Garolim Bay.

Taiwan is another Asian nation considering the the possibility of large-scale ocean current power generation. There have been discussions about using the strong Kuroshio current off the east coast of Taiwan to generate up to 1.68 trillion kilowatt-hours per year (compared to Taiwan’s current annual demand of electricity of around 98 billion kilowatt-hours).

Wave Power

Surface waves and pressure variations below the ocean’s surface can be used by floating buoys or submerged platforms to generate intermittent power. Wave energy sources are widely available, are relatively consistent and predictable and (According to analysts Frost and Sullivan) have the highest energy density among all renewable energy sources. The best resource is found between 40-60 degrees of latitude where the available resource is 30 to 70 kW/m, with peaks of 100 kW/m. The potential global wave power potential has been estimated to be around 8,000-80,000TWh/y (1-10TW), which is the same order of magnitude as world electrical energy consumption.

The UK, for example, is estimated to possess the capacity to generate approximately 87 TWh of wave power per year – equivalent to almost 25 per cent of current UK demand. There are two main research centres in Europe focusing on the development and commercialisation of ocean energy technologies. The first is the European Marine Energy Centre located in Orkney, Scotland, which provides developers with sites to test their prototypes. The other is the Wave Energy Centre in Portugal.

Wave energy ideas are plentiful but real world examples are still rare – there are around 1000 patents for wave energy converters currently on the market and no consensus has emerged yet on which technologies will succeed.

Australian company Oceanlinx (previously known as Energetech) has had a 450 kilowatt wave power unit running at Port Kembla in NSW for a number of years, and plans to connect to the commercial power grid in early 2008. Oceanlinx is also at the advanced permitting stage for a project in Portland, Victoria which would deploy eighteen 1.5MW units for a total capacity of 27MW, which the company claims will be the largest wave energy project in the world.

The company has other projects planned in Rhode Island, Hawaii and Namibia, and intends to participate in the South West of England Regional Development Agency’s “Cornwall Wave Hub” in the UK.

The Cornwall Wave Hub aims to create the world’s first large scale wave energy farm by constructing a wave hub, or “socket”, on the seabed. Oceanlinx is participating along with Ocean Power Technologies, Fred Olsen Renewables and WestWave. Ireland is looking to build a similar grid connected test facility on the Mullet Peninsula in Ireland’s County Mayo. While the marine renewables industry in the UK seems to be quite vibrant, government programs to fund the sector have been criticised for not spending the money they have been allocated.

Another Australian company, Carnegie Corp has installed a small array of its CETO II units off Fremantle in WA, and is looking to set up a 50 MW facility in South Australia to desalinate seawater for the Adelaide market and the mining industry. The CETO technology was devised in the 1970s by Carnegie’s chairman Alan Burns, a well-known Perth oil man who also founded Hardman Resources. It operates mostly underwater rather than on the surface like many buoy based alternatives, which the company believes will result in a much lower likelihood of damage from storms and rough conditions.

Another Australian company exploring wave (and tidal) power is Sydney based BioPowerSystems, which is trying to is commercialise “biomimetic ocean energy conversion technologies” (an example of “biomimicry”, which I’ll be doing a post on at a later date). BioPower has been awarded a $5 million grant under the Australian Government’s AusIndustry Renewable Energy Development Initiative to test prototypes of the wave energy device (most likely at King Island) and the tidal energy device (at Flinders Island), with each generating around 250 kW.

Pelamis Wave power is a Scottish company that is constructing a 3 MW wave farm off the coast of the Orkney Islands. The company is also involved in the construction of a 2.25 MW plant in Portugal at Aguçadoura, which will soon be expanded to 20 MW, and is providing the technology for the WestWave project in Cornwall. The Pelamis design is a distinctive device resembling a 150m long red snake.

The Scottish government is considering building a connection linking the north and west coasts of Scotland with England, Norway, Germany and the Netherlands by 2020 which could be connected to the proposed European Supergrid, with the aim of harvesting up to 10 GW of wind and wave power.

Spain is also dipping a toe into the waters of wave generation, with a 300 kW “breakwater wave energy plant” being constructed on the north coast, using Wavegen (now owned by Siemens) equipment.

In the US, the wave energy company getting the most attention has been Finavera, which has received preliminary approval to build a 100 MW facility off northern California (and has signed a power purchase agreement with PG&E for part of this). At hasn’t all been plain sailing for Finavera however, with a test AquaBuoy device sinking off Oregon late last year.

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) estimated that waves off the Washington, Oregon and California coasts could produce from 250 to 500 terawatt-hours per year – around 12% of US energy demand. Finavera also has approval for a project in Washington state, along with others in South Africa and Canada.

Another US based company is Ocean Power Technologies, which is looking at developing projects in Hawaii, New Jersey and Spain.

OTEC

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion is not a new idea, it has been around for more than a century. OTEC uses the temperature difference between warm surface water and cold deep water to drive a power-producing cycle. For this to be practical, the temperature difference needs to be at least 20 degrees C, which tends to limit potential application to the tropics. The potential of this energy source has been estimated to be about 10 TW, according to some experts.

The economics of energy production today have delayed the financing of a permanent, continuously operating OTEC plant. However, OTEC is promising as an alternative energy resource for tropical island communities that rely heavily on imported fuel. OTEC plants in these markets could provide islands with power and desalinated water. Other applications that have been considered are aquaculture and mineral extraction.

OTEC plants have been trialled in Nauru and India (along with extensive research in Hawaii). There are also plans to build plants for the US military base on Diego Garcia, and in the Marianas Islands.

One unusual apparent application of this energy source that I came across recently is a robotic “thermal glider” which, at the least, seems like a very interesting tool for environmental monitoring.

Regular news updates on OTEC can be found at OTEC News.

Energy Island Ideas

The thinking behind harnessing ocean power has traditionally focussed on systems built on or near the shoreline. The amount of power available is large, however we are still at the very early stages of learning to harness it, and it is unlikely that ocean power will provide a significant proportion of our energy needs in the next decade or two.

The Energy Island concepts that I began the post with show that people are now beginning to consider harnessing ocean power out at sea as well, which vastly increases the amount of energy that could be tapped.

(The term “energy island” is an overloaded one unfortunately – the Danish island of Samso, for example, calls itself Energy Island as it is completely self-sufficient. There is also a “solar island” being developed off Dubai known as Ras Al Khaima.)

Dominic Michaelis’ energy islands are by far the most ambitious plan I’ve seen for harnessing ocean power in the open seas. These hexagonal islands, are designed to generate electricity using wave, ocean current, OTEC, wind and solar sources. The group estimates that each island complex could produce around 250 MW of power. 50,000 energy islands could meet the world’s energy requirements – ands provide two tons of fresh water per person per day for the entire world population as a byproduct of the OTEC process.

The island design also supports farming seafood in small pens below deck and growing vegetables in shaded areas on the platform. The group is planning to conduct a pilot in the waters off the British Virgin Islands or in the Indian Ocean over the coming year.

Most observers consider the likelihood of energy islands appearing in the near term as remote, however the ideas are thought provoking and put into context just how much energy could be obtained out at sea.

One of the main issues with generating power offshore is how to store or transfer the energy (assuming that the islands don’t simply become mobile aquatic arcologies of the sort science fiction writers used to dream about). One possible way of storing the energy would be to produce hydrogen, and to use the islands as refuelling stations for ships that use hydrogen fuel cells. Alternatively, the energy could be used to process raw materials, or to produce materials like ammonia.

Crossposted from Peak Energy.

Some people think I am anti-ethanol. That is an oversimplification, and a misrepresentation of my position. I have nothing against ethanol as a fuel. It isn’t as good a fuel as butanol, but then again we can’t make butanol as efficiently as we make ethanol.

My objection is that I think the way we make ethanol in the U.S. is a big mistake, and we will recognize this eventually. It may happen following a drought in the Midwest that causes corn crops to fail. That may be what it takes before we recognize that recycling natural gas into ethanol via food was a terribly bad and short-sighted idea. [break]

I also dislike the incredible hype associated with cellulosic ethanol. Promising too much lulls the public into thinking we have a solution ready to go in case of an energy crisis. Not so. But underneath that hype is a lot of potential. I don’t think cellulosic success will come from an expensive hydrolysis/biological process. This is simply too inefficient, and requires very high fossil fuel inputs. Rather, I think success will come from a thermochemical process.

Lately, I have spent a great deal of time studying this:

On paper it is deceptively simply to turn that cellulose biopolymer chain into hydrocarbons or alcohols. In practice it is a different matter. If you know your organic chemistry, you can see sites that should be amenable to chemical attack. I have sketched out pathways that seem like they should work, but you never know until you take them into the lab and try them.

One of the things we do in oil refineries is to crack very complex molecules like this. So, for a long time I have wondered about the implications of using various refining processes on cellulose. For instance, can it be cracked in a hydrocracker? How about a catalytic cracker? How would cellulose behave it co-fed into a coker? (There are obvious mass transfer constraints that would have to be addressed).

Imagine my surprise recently when I was trying to determine if anyone has ever done this, and I ran across this:

Khosla Ventures and BIOeCON form KiOR to commercialize cellulosic ethanol

A technology called the “Biomass Catalytic Cracking Process” could be the key to breaking material like wood, grass and corn husks down for ethanol production.

Catalytic cracking is a process already used in today’s petroleum refineries. Simply put, chemicals are used to break down complex organic molecules. The trick is making the reactions between specific chemicals and molecules efficient and controllable, in order to come up with a desirable product like cellulosic ethanol.

The biofuels industry is highly interested in that type of ethanol, but the process of “cracking” the molecular structures of woody plants, whether with chemicals, heat or other methods, has not yet become cost-effective. KiOR is Khosla Ventures’ and BIOeCON’s bet on commercializing a process.

Doh! Looks like I am not the only one who has been thinking hard about this. Clearly I need to stop letting these ideas percolate indefinitely in my head, and write up a business plan and get to work testing them.

I will be the first to admit that Khosla and I haven’t always seen eye to eye. But I think his most recent ventures – from Range Fuels to his investments into LS9 to this latest venture – have a much greater chance of success than some of his earlier ethanol investments. Note that none of these processes require an energy intensive, wet-distillation, which has been one of my biggest complaints about ethanol production. I still say that he is overpromising on the potential, but I think he is now heading into more promising waters.