Runnin’ on Empty March

Stuck in the Middle With You

The spring “equinox”* March 20^th seems like a good thing to celebrate because afterward the days become longer than the nights and we’re midway to midsummer. But, being midway isn’t always so positive. “Midlife” and “middle age” do not always conjure up the best images for us. How does “peak” grab you?

Usually what comes after one’s “peak” pales in comparison with what came before, and oil is no exception. Oil has reached its peak, its equinox, its midlife crisis. The loss of oil’s cheap and powerful energy will affect every aspect of our lives, our economy, our culture. It’s already affected our government’s policy on our right to make our own decisions, among them the decision of whether we want to invade and occupy oil producing countries, and whether we want LNG tankers threatening people’s lives and economies in remote areas like ours. “Peak” is not a single point, more like a five-year window which recently opened. Once we’re through this “window,” change will come more rapidly. Goody. Now that I’ve cheered you up, what do we do about it? Where do we turn?

How about hydrogen fuel cells? There definitely will be hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) – again, the government has made that decision for us -- but FCEVs will not replace the two cars per driveway that (too) many of us now enjoy. In fact, FCEVs promise to go the way of the Edsel and the Wankel rotary engine if we cannot vastly improve the technology.

Current hybrid electric vehicles (EVs) consume one-third to one-fourth the energy with twice the range of FCEVs, and “using natural gas to make hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles will consume as much or more natural gas per mile as just burning the natural gas directly in a[n] ICE [internal combustion/electric] hybrid vehicle,” according to industry attorney Alec Brooks. When he interviewed their designers, “Toyota said they’d have to work very hard to get the cost of a fuel cell vehicle down to double or triple that of a conventional car.”² The “fuel cell economy” will increase awareness that we’re running out of gas while creating false hope that we can somehow avoid the consequences.

LNG, anyone? Natural gas is the primary fuel for producing hydrogen fuel cells. It is also the second largest supplier of energy (primarily electricity) in the U.S. Like petroleum, natural gas is a finite resource, with its own curve, peak and sharper decline.³ As we run out of oil and substitute natural gas, we speed its depletion rate. Currently, 99 per cent of the gas used in the U.S. comes from North America. LNG tankers will allow us to import natural gas from the Middle East, which holds 35 per cent of total world reserves; Russia holds the largest portion, 38 per cent.

According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, the “[w]orld's ratio of proven natural gas reserves to production at current levels is between 60 and 70 years. This represents the time that remaining reserves would last if the present levels of production were maintained… Natural gas accounts for almost a quarter of world's energy consumption.“⁴

Worldwide natural gas consumption is conservatively expected to increase by at least 17per cent in the next 5 years.⁵ If we convert require natural gas to make up for even half our current oil consumption and produce fuel cells, we could run out completely in 30 years.⁶ That’s assuming: 1) The world can agree on how to use these resources, conserve as much as possible, waste nothing on “extras” like war, and experience no transport accidents, 2) We can increase discovery, though a 60 per cent drilling increase in 2001 yielded only a 2 percent increase in output^{7 (}indicating that depletion is already begun), and 3) 100 per cent extraction of reserves with no extra energy costs or diminishing returns, which is impossible. LNG? Even if it were safe, actually provided jobs, and did not destroy regional economies, it is at best a short-term, stopgap measure.

Not exactly encouraging. Are you beginning to wish you’d gotten a lump of nice energy-producing coal from Santa in your stocking last month? Coal is also a non-renewable, finite resource, to say nothing of the pollution it produces. (Remember pictures of the smoke-belching factory cities of the 1800s?) Coal accounts for 22 percent of the US energy supply, 24 percent of the world supply, with reserves nearly four times the BTUs of oil reserves and over four times natural gas reserves.⁹ Here we go, back to the smokestack era?

So where’s the good news?? There is good news, definitely. It’s time for another Renaissance, a Rebirth. We have the unique opportunity to make lasting positive change for ourselves and our neighbors and we can do it. Some of us have already started. New groups are continually forming. Join the Renaissance!

The vocabulary of Rebirth is already familiar: Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Restore. Rethink. Relocalize. Renewables. Recreate. Simplify. We’ll be exploring one of these concepts in each issue from now on. We need your input. Send your ideas to Hipfish. See you next month!

Caren Black

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REFERENCES:

^* Latin for “equal night,” meaning 12 hours each of night and daylight

¹ Richard Heinberg, The Party’s Over, New Society, Gabriola Island, BC, 2003, p.146

² Alec Brooks, www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=article&storyid=691

³ Heinberg, ibid, p. 128-9, 140

⁴ United Nations Conference on Trade & Development, www.ro.unctad.org/infocomm/anglais/gas/market.htm

⁵ Energy Information Administration, DOE, www.eia.doe.gov

⁶ Energy Action Statistics, www.nef1.org/ea/eastats.html

⁷ Heinberg, ibid, p. 126

⁸ Conoco-Phillips, www.conocophillips.com/news/energy/future_supply.asp

⁹ EcoWorld, www.ecoworld.org/energy/EcoWorld_Energy_Balance_Sheet.cfm

Additional recommended reading:

Wilson, "(The Truth about Hydrogen, A Response to Amory Lovins' "Twenty Hydrogen Myths") http://www.tmgtech.com/images/Truth_about_Hydrogen_Myths_Response_-_v4.1.doc

Joe Romm, "The Hype about Hydrogen" http://www.cool-companies.org/</

Runnin’ on Empty

Conversations with Caren Black on the View from Oil’s Peak

March