Sunday, May 5, 2013

The Energy Crisis


We are in the midst of a global energy crisis, and you may not have even heard about it. Then again, that's perfectly reasonable- the average American has so far been affected in generally subtle ways, which are easy to overlook or miss outright. But I'm sure everyone who owns a car remember when gas prices did this:


U.S. Average price of gas per gallon- hover over the chart to see price detail

Up until the early 2000s, we all enjoyed pretty stable gas prices at just over one dollar a gallon. Somewhere around 2004 the average price per gallon of gasoline went pinwheeling crazily up and down, eventually up to over four dollars a gallon. Consumers groaned, and hybrid vehicle sales shot up. But why did this happen?

It turns out there's a lot of reasons. Gas prices are influenced, as every other resource, by supply and demand. And, as it turns out, there's quite a lot of both. The Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimated world petroleum consuption at an average of 87,549 thousand barrels a day in 2012. That's over 1.2 cubic miles of oil in the course of the year (see the calculations below).


According to Wolfram Alpha, that volume of oil would fill the Sydney Harbor ten times over.

That's a lot of oil. But usually, global supply can keep up with demand. However, global demand has been increasing ever since a global demand for oil existed- and it's been increasing exponentially due to the fast advancing population of the world coupled with an advancing energy use per person. Exponential increase in demand for a finite resource can't possibly be sustainable- and the recent geopolitical issues that supply has started to run into may be the first indications of larger problems. Thus, a shortage of oil supply and an increase in demand drove prices up until 2008, when the only thing powerful enough to drive demand down- the recession- struck.

And this is a problem reflected in global energy as a whole. Population and energy use have grown exponentially for a long time. In 2011, the estimated global population hit 7 billion, as this interactive article from the BBC shows. And population is still estimated to grow, as the United Nations approximates:


UN approximations for global population- three possible scenarios

And this growing population means growing energy use. But population isn't the only factor- as a country develops, it's citizens have access to more and more energy-using technologies, and grow to rely on them (seriosly- try going a day not using something made by Apple). According to the International Energy Agency, in 2009 the United States consumed 12.9 megawatt hours of energy for every citizen. Life in the United States would be completely unrecognizable without the use of this energy, too- every piece of critical infrastructure and industry relies on it. It's long been known that energy consumption and the Gross Domestic Product are intrinsically linked- and in fact, energy consuption over the base GDP of a country is a measured unit, called "energy intensity", which gives an indication of the widespread energy efficiency of a country's economy.

But this means that as countries undergo industrialization and the quality of life for the people who live there improves, their demand for energy will increase. There's been a lot of that recently in the world, and I'll give you three guesses as to where we've seen both unprescidented population growth coupled with a massive increase in GDP.

If you didn't say China, then you need to read the news more. China's energy consumption quadrupled from 1990 to 2010, placing them suddenly in the odd position of the world's largest energy consumer. During that time its population only increased by 17%- but its GDP saw an amazing increase to ten times what it had been in 1990. Currently, the growth of China's GDP is fueling it's burning new need for energy.


The blue bars are GDP per capita, the red line is energy consumption. Hover over the chart to see detailed data

So demand in the world for energy is definitely increasing- but why is that a problem if we can handle it? We've been building new power plants and increasing our ability to generate electricity with new technologies, right?

The answer to that is yes and no. Humanity finds itself in a bit of an awkward place right now, where we know we need large sources of new energy- and our old sources of energy are looking less and less pretty. Our worldwide primary energy supply relies on huge amounts of Coal, Oil, and Natural Gas- and these are all fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are pretty much what they sound like- fuel that is derived from the decomposition of organic matter trapped under the Earth years ago- essentially, fossils. However, each of these have finite reserves remaining in the Earth.

Back in 1956, the geologist Marion King Hubbert published his theory on Peak Oil: that production of oil would follow a bell curve pattern, peaking in 1971. This was based on the theory that production would more or less mirror the discovery of reserves at a time delay- which makes logistical sense, as it takes time to research and extract the found oil. And in fact, his projections were more or less correct in the US, as production peaked in 1970, albeit at a much higher rate than Hubbert predicted. According to many, US oil production will never return to 1970s levels. Natural gas and coal production is expected to peak similarily, as they as well have finite reserves. And this isn't good- we can't keep producing more and more energy with fuels that are just going to run out in a few decades. This chart from the Economist shows how production was close to Hubbert's peak:


The Hubbert Peak- which was close, up until now

However, more and more people are starting to disagree with the concept of peak oil- or at least with the single peak. Since 2010, US oil production has staged a turnaround, increasing substantially for the first time in 40 years- violating Hubbert's preditctions. This new resurgence lies in the exploitation of shale oil- and predictions say that with shale oil, the US has a chance of becoming the largest oil producer in the world by 2020. And reports like this one seem to show that large shale reserves exist, but are generally difficult to extract in an economically favorable and environmentally friendly way. But the great thing about “economically unfavorable” is that all it takes is a shift in existing supply and demand to make new supply methods suddenly favorable- and remember that chart of gas prices earlier?

Shale oil is oil extracted from oil shale- which is essentially sediment rock containing high levels of organic matter in a solid mixture called kerogen. Kerogen has remarkably high molecular weights- meaning, essentially, that the organic matter contained within is too large to dissolve in water or be easily separated from the rock. However, when oil shale is heated, say, with the burning of more oil- the kerogen undergoes pyrolysis and breaks down into smaller components which are collected and made into shale oil. This burning oil for oil process isn't quite as weird as it sounds- usually, you can extract more than twice the amount of shale oil than the oil you burned to get it. However, this means that it's much more expensive to produce than normal oil.

In addition to being more expensive to extract and refine, shale oil contains higher levels of pollutive impurities than regular oil- making it overall dirtier than regular oil, generating more sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide than normal oil. So it's extraction is a double edged-sword- it expands the world's ability to meet the still growing energy needs and delays peak oil, but it also has the capability to increase oil's already tarnished record as being pollutive and dangerous to the environment. 

And that brings us to the biggest issue of all: pollution is one of the largest factors preventing new capacity breaking out onto the grid. All fossil fuel combustion produces carbon dioxide- a greenhouse gas which is the major contributor to climate change. Unless you've been living under a rock for the last few years, you've heard of climate change- and the United Nations says it's getting bad. Carbon dioxide emissions are causing the global temperature to rise, and nearly all of the new carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere is from energy generation through the combustion of fossil fuels. Whether it's coal fired power plants, petroleum as fuel for cars, or natural gas home heating, most of our energy produces carbon dioxide.

I'll hopefully get more technical on climate change in a later post, but for now this graphic by Information is Beautiful sums it up nicely. Unrestricted CO2 emissions promises sea level rise, increased desertification, and crop failure. The need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is critical- but its incredibly difficult and expensive to get CO2 free, reliable electricity generation on a large scale. The only option remaining is a large shift in the way we generate energy, or at least, what we do with the CO2 we get as a byproduct. Renewable energy beats out fossil fuels with it's two main drawbacks- harmfull emissions and a finite supply- but for all the work that's been done to add renewable energy capacity to the grid, it still has yet to make a splash. Major hurdles need to be overcome before they can become the major players on the electrical grid- one of the largest of which is the use of battery storage to combat their largest problem- intermittent generation. Renewables are also generally more expensive for the energy they generate- and despite a large push in the development of renewables in the last few years, in the U.S. renewable generation only accounted for 3.2% of all primary energy, and most of that is from our older hydroelectric projects. Note that that's not including biofuels, because their use in the world today is not done in a sustainable sustainable manner (I'm also not including nuclear, as it isn't strictly renewable- but more on that later).


U.S. 2010 Primary Energy Supply. Data from the EIA

And that really means that the world is stuck between a rock and a hard place- major work is needed in energy before we can guarantee stable generation and environmental security. We clearly can't simply continue generating energy as we always have, but we also need more research and political backing behind newer technologies. It's unclear what the future will bring, but I think we can at the very least hope it involves cleaner energy- and maybe a way out of our energy crisis.





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