Energy at the Crossroads

Energy at the Crossroads: Global Perspectives and Uncertainties

by Vaclav Smil

Main Points:

"It is the mark of an instructed mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject permits and not to seek an exactness where only an approximation of the truth is possible."- Aristotle

• Basic unit of energy is a joule. Best processed coal is something called anthracite. 1 kilogram of anthracite is 30 Megajoules. 1 kilogram of oil is 42 Megajoule. 1 kilogram of wood is 15 Megajoules. Whole world needs 400 Exojoules. So this is a conversation on scale. 

Understanding Energy Trends:

Fossil Fuels

• The twentieth century was marked by consumption of coal due to production of metallurgical coke and generation of electricity. 
• Fossil fuel consumption grew and matched biomass fuel consumption in 1900 
• Global population quadrupled from 1900 to 2000 (1.6 to 6.1 billion) while average annual per capita energy more than quadrupled from 14 GJ to 60GJ 
• Coal’s share of the global supply of primary energy declined from about 95% in 1900 to 75% before WWII (hydro/nuclear) to less than 50% by 1962 and finally 23% in 2000.
• Coal now occupies 3 markets

o   Generating electricity- coal is now losing foothold to natural gas

o   Producing metallurgical coke for iron smelting and making steel – coal inputs are decreasing with innovations like direct iron reduction

o   Producing cement – increasingly natural gas and oil is used to make 1.5 Gt/yr of cement

·     Oil production increased due to several factors:

o   Rotary drilling in 1900

o   Rolling cutter rock bit in 1910

o   Refining of crude via high pressure cracking in 1913

o   Refining of crude via catalytic cracking in 1936

o   Horizontal/directional drilling in 1980

o   Offshore drilling in 1947

·     Coal was overtaken in use by hydrocarbons in the mid-1960’s

Technical innovations:

·     Pre-1900 (1880-1895)

o   Internal Combustion Engine (ICE)- Daimler engine, Benz’s electrical ignition, and Mybach’s float-feed carburetor + Otto-cycle engine, average mileage was 16mpg in 1930 and fell to 13.4 mpg by 1970. The OPEC oil price increase introduced CAFÉ standards of 27.5 mpg

o   Electric Motor

o   Steam turbogenerator

·     Inventions of extraction/conversion/ transportation (result of WWII)

o   Gas Turbines

o   Rocket Engines

o   Nuclear fission-  declining demand in electricity, escalating costs in era of high inflation, slipping construction schedules, and changing safety regulations made powerplants 2x expensive and 2x long to build. Golden period was 1965-1975, but the movement was too rushed.

·     Inventions that weren’t necessarily for energy

o   Computerized controls

o   Remote sensing- geophysical prospecting of hydrocarbon formations and GPS 

 Electrification:

·     Electrification’s three revolutionary shifts

o   Affordable Lighting

§ Edison’s incandescent carbon filament lamp in 1879, but major breakthrough came in 1930’s vai the low-pressure sodium lamps (LPS). A lumen of electricity in early 2000 cost 1/1000^th of what it did in 1900.

o   Industrial power from steam to electricity

§ At the beginning of the century electric motors bad up less than 5% of mechanical power, and by 1929 it was about 80%.

§ Source of waste is using more powerful motors to perform tasks that operate at a fraction of the max load.

o   Household Energy Converters

§ Fans in 1902

§ Washing machines in 1907

§ Vacuum cleaners in 1908, 

§ Refrigerators in 1912. Consumed.

·     Main flaw: thermal generation of electricity loses 2/3’s of the energy

·     Benefit: Hydropower > 1 GW, Costs: Three Gorges Dam >17.68 GW = environment harm

o   Hoover dam in 1936

o   Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia in 1941

Trading Energy:

·     Six largest exporters: Saudi, Iran, Russia, Norway, Kuwait, and UAE sell 50% of oil

·     Six largest importers: USA, Japan, Germany, South Korea, Italy, and France buy 70%

·     One of the longest pipelines is 120cm in diameter and is called the ‘Ust-Balik-Kurgan-Almetievsk’ Line which si 2,120 kilometers long and carries 90 Mt of crude oil from Samotlor oilfield in Russia to Western European markets

·     Natural gas is 3x more energy intensive to pump than crude oil. 

Consumption Trends:

·     Most affluent countries (1/5^th of population) consume about 70% of energy, with the US consuming 27% of the world’s total primary energy supply while only have 5% of the population. Described in the Lorenz curve of global commercial energy consumption.

 Energy in Transitions:

Infographic by David McCandless

• Natural gas furnace is 97% efficient. An automobile (Honda Civic) is 48mpg, while an SUV is 15 mpg, while the safety rating is equivalent to the Mercedes. Turbo generator/hydrogenerator are about 98% efficient. Boiler -> steam turbo generator -> transmission, and by the time you get to the end user you have lost 30%. 
• Sustainability center contains concrete, glass, steel, and aluminum. Which element is civilization most dependent on? Iron is good in compression, but not good in tension, so the answer is Steel. Need to take iron alloy, limestone, coke, and carbon to heat up the elements. How do you make iron from solar, wind, and hydroelectric power (at a scale of 1 billion tons)?
• Gas turbine for air transportation need fossil fuel (kerosene or "jet fuel"), not necessarily electricity. We need to replace 10^20 joules. UBC has 2x6 wood to build their buildings, insulation that is two times as effective. Heat recovery ventilator is used to exchange oxygen within the house so that CO2 concentrations do not exceed 1200 ppm. 
• How do we get food/commodities/etc.? All of these items are delivered on ships or devices using diesel engines. Just in-time delivery (JID) and "globalization" has made it so that all of our goods must travel great distances. The large ships that ship crates require MegaWatts of power. The fully loaded Boeing 747 weighs 410 tons of which 200 tons is jet fuel (42 Gigajoules/ton). How can you run this on electricity? 
• Batteries: Most inventive mind in the past 200 years is Thomas Alva Edison. The Edison electric system has not changed since the 1880's. He invented 2,047 patents. He had two bad ideas: prefabricated concrete houses and batteries. He spent 10 years of his life on a better battery and bankrupted himself on it (1901-1909). Richard Feynman once said, "There is tremendous amount of room down there." We are now depositing layers on chips about 2 atoms thick, but going up is very difficult, we are stuck with machines we made 100 years ago. For example, the steam turbo generator made by Charles Algernon Parsons in 1884 is the most powerful mover in society. How many batteries are in a Tesla? Thousands of cells that are interconnected. Why is the internal combustion engine good? We have mastered it after 120 years, not subject to tight tolerances.
• Internet use is consuming about 11% of North American electricity (in the span of 20 years). In another 20 years, this could be 25% of our baseload. 
• In Asia the frequency of window air conditioners is increasing in the 50 story apartments (Hong Kong and Beijing). These are very poor in terms of efficiency, versus central air conditioners. Most of the air conditioning is used during the course of the night. Changing of load is difficult to increase for solar/wind power, but this isn't an issue for coal. 
• Issue with wind: The windiest place in Canada is from Manitoba down to Texas (Great Plains). The ice coming from this part of the country will damage the blades of the wind turbines, which are made from distilled crude oil and natural gas. The towers are steel. 
• Issue with solar: photovoltaic cells are made using smelting (energy intensive). Exponential decline of install cost (or cost of cell) over time is misleading, as the full install cost requires a lot of steel. The installation cost can never go to zero.
• Carbon Capture and Sequestration: one step short of madness. We put 30 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere (40% is mobile, and 60% is coming from stationary places). A serious scale challenge: even if you capture 1/8th of the amount emitted, you would need to create an industry the size of the crude oil industry. Crude oil industry takes 5 billion tons and burns it, while selling it for $100/bbl. The sequestration act is one of compression and you need to find someone to pay for it. The only impact would be 15% reduction, which is not a great reduction.
• In the mid 1960's our energy consumption was half of what it is today. The life wasn't so bad, but we need to return to those low energy consumption days. The North American fleet averages about 22 mpg which is no better than European cars in the 1930's. The moment oil prices increase then we will no longer be wasting energy.
• China: China wants to consume more than Americans. China is already importing 60% of their oil. The role of China in comparison to European countries is interesting. Imagine England, France, Germany, these great powers and it takes 100 years to build up 60 Gigawatts. Each year China builds up the coal capacity that is equivalent to all these three combined. China is not greening, they are build 3 times as many wind turbines and 60 GigaWatts of energy. Vaclav was one of the few people to oppose the Three Gorges Dam, which currently sits at the intersection of three faults. 
• The major inventions: automobile-Benz/Daimler (1884), diesel engine- Rudolph Diesel (1897), steam turbo generator- Charles Argenon Parsons (1884).

Listen to Prof. Vaclav Smil's 2011 Lecture at UBC on "Drivers of Environmental Change"!