peak oil and the fate of humanity chapter 3a – other non-renewable sources of energy

PEAK OIL AND THE PEAK OIL AND THE FATE OF HUMANITYFATE OF HUMANITY

Chapter 3A – Other Non-Renewable Chapter 3A – Other Non-Renewable Sources of EnergySources of Energy

By Robert Bériault

But there’s lots of oil in Canada isn’t

there? For example, you have

the Queen Charlotte oil fields. I’m sure the moratorium will

be lifted.

You are likely correct about the moratorium.

When the oil becomes rare, environmental laws will go by the wayside.

There’s about 10 billion barrels of oil and about 25 trillion cu. ft. of natural gas in the Queen Charlottes on the coast of BC…

PacificOcean

http://www.oceanindustriesbc.ca/resources

A huge find …

… enough gas and oil to supply the world for 4

months*.

It’ll make some folks very rich…

…but it won’t delay the oil peak

by more than a few

weeks* http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/infosheets/natgasconsumption.htm

The Germans made gasoline

from coal during WW2.

What’s wrong with that?

Liquid fuels from coal The Germans were desperate

for liquid fuel to run their war machine.

When the oil decline starts we will be desperate for liquid fuel to run our economic machine

There’s little doubt that we will have to increase our reliance on coal

There’s an interesting

analogy here:

Advantages of coal:

Cheap Easy to transport

Found in most parts of the world

Can be mined with primitive methods

Abundant

Advantages of coal:

It is the main source of energy used to generate electricity in many parts of the world

Liquid fuels from coal

Making liquid fuels from coal requires energy

It would take less energy to replace some of our oil-fired power plants with coal than to make gasoline from coal

Problems with coal - 1Extremely polluting

Produces much more greenhouse gas than oil or natural gas

Acid rain Mercury pollution Smog Particulate build-up Much of the coal resource will never be mined

because it contains too much sulphur Produces much solid waste (5 – 20% of its

original volume)

Problems with coal - 1A great source of greenhouse gasses

For a given amount of energy, burning of carbon-rich coal produces much more CO2 than burning oil.

The hydrogen atoms in a hydrocarbon molecule

contribute energy but not greenhouse gasses. Coal is

mostly carbon.

After peak oil we will burn a lot more coal, thereby increasing our greenhouse gas

emissions.

Problems with coal - 2Causes thousands of deaths every year

Mining accidents Diseasedlungs

But in a world of diminishing energy sources people will be ready to pay the price.

Problems with coal - 3Not efficient:Oil is needed to mine coal, to transport it and to build the mining equipment

When coal is used in a power plant, only 35% of its energy is converted to electrical power

Electricalenergy35%

Waste heat65%

Obtained from “The Party’s Over”

Some analysts conclude

that:

COAL will continue to play a major role in electricity generation in spite of its environmental drawbacks – and in spite of the Ontario Government’s pious pledge to decommission all its coal plants.

But it is unlikely to contribute to fuelling transportation.

Yeah, but they say that the

Athabaska Tar Sands have

enough oil for the whole

world

It’s a huge operation, no doubt…

Advantages of the Tar Sands

Abundant

Canadian

Problems with the Tar Sands - 1

Slow recovery:

The world needs 85 million barrels a day

(Jan. 2007)

Will increase production to 2 million barrels a day by 2010

Presently (2005) producing 1 million barrels a day


Tar doesn’t spurt out of the ground the way

oil does It has to be

dug out with a shovel.

It consists of very thick goo mixed with sand.


The process uses

natural gas TO EXTRACT ONE BARREL OF OIL, YOU NEED:To heat up 2 tons of sand1000 cubic feet of natural gasAll told it takes ¼ barrel of oil-equivalent in energy


Therefore gasoline from tar sands is responsible

for more greenhouse gasses than gasoline

from oil wells


sulphur dioxide (SO2)• nitrogen oxides (NOX)• hydrogen sulphide (H2S)• carbon monoxide (CO)• volatile organic compounds (VOCs)• ozone (O3)• polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH)• particulate matter (PM)• others

Other pollutants resulting from Tar Sands processing:

Canada’s Oil Sands: Opportunities and Challenges to 2015, NEB report


The process usesvast quantities of fresh water

Competes with other water users such as farmers, natives, tourism, industry and municipalities.

4.1

28.7

59.4

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

WASTE WATER GENERATED BY TAR SANDS OPERATIONS

Problems with the Tar Sands - 5The process uses more fresh water every year

Adapted from data from the Suncor website

20021998 2001

Cubickilometresof water

Year

http://www.peakoilandhumanity.com/chapter_choice.htm

Problems with the Tar Sands - 6The process produces a lot of waste water

Adapted from [ http://dieoff.com/page143.htm ]

The Syncrude pond measures 22 kilometres in circumference

It has six meters of murky water on top of a 40-meter-thick mixture of sand, silt, clay and unrecovered oil.

For every barrel of oil recovered:2 1/2 barrels of liquid waste are

pumpedinto huge ponds.

http://dieoff.com/page143.htm




Some analysts conclude that:

Some analysts conclude

that:

TAR SANDS will play an essential but minor role in the world energy balance.

However, it has the potential of producing all the oil Canada needs for a long time.

There’s lots of Natural Gas in

the world. Won’t that

save the day?

Advantages of Natural GasClean burningProduces less greenhouse gas than oilEasy to transport through pipelinesConvenient for central heating, hot

water heatingHas many petrochemical usesUsed for making nitrogenous

agricultural fertilizersCould be used in transport if only

there were enough of it

Problems with Natural Gas - 1

Natural gas will peak too… maybe a decade later than oil

Problems with Natural Gas - 2

http://www.greenhorsesociety.com/

It has already peaked in North America.

The Sable offshore gas deposits have turned out to be a big disappointment

Photograph by Zoe Lucas

Problems with Natural Gas - 3Whereas an oil well can go on producing for decades, a gas well drains very rapidly after it’s reached peak.It’s a little like letting the air out of a balloon.

United States Geological Survey

As a temporary measure for Canada and the US:

The US is planning to build LNG (liquid natural gas) terminals along the coasts to unload LNG from Russia.This is a temporary measure to tide us over until Russia peaks too.

And LNG might present added problems:Because the gas is so flammable, the ships and the terminals would be tempting targets for terrorist.Would you like to live next to an LNG terminal?

Some analysts conclude that:

NATURAL GAS will play less and less of a

role in the North American energy

balance.

What about this gas-ice I’ve heard

about?

We’re talking about

methane hydrates,

or clathrates

What methane hydrates are:A solid consisting of gas molecules, each surrounded by a cage of water molecules Looks very much like water ice

Holds loose sediments together in a surface layer several hundred meters thick

There are very large stores of it

Where are they?

Very deep ocean

Arctic permafrost

Problems with Gas Hydrates - 1

Processing hydrates would release methane into the atmosphere

Impacts on the environment are very poorly understood

Methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas

Furthermore…There's 400 gigatons of methane locked in the frozen arctic tundra

A temperature increase of merely a few degrees would cause these gases to volatilize and "burp" into the atmosphere

This would further raise temperatures.

Yet more methane would be released.

This would result in heating the Earth further, and so on, resulting in mass extinctions. When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time”, Michael J. Benton


Very difficult to reach

Located in water 2 to 3 kilometres deep

Beyond any known technology


Controversy as to how much there is –

estimates vary vastly from one research group to another

Could nuclear power reduce

your dependence

on oil?

Making electricity from nuclear frees up oil used in oil-fired generating plants for other uses.

DEFINITELY!

Advantages of nuclear:Nuclear fuel is cheap

Power plants can be placed close to consumers

Produce no smog

Problems with nuclear - 1Nuclear plants very expensive to:

build maintain and decommission

Problems with nuclear - 2Nuclear wastes last hundreds of thousands of years.

We still haven’t devised a safe way of disposing of them

For the past 50 years we’ve been stockpiling them in pools of water

We’re still conducting research in permanent safe disposal methods

Problems with nuclear - 3

There is a serious negative perception on the part of the public


Nuclear fuels will also peak this century


Electricity produced from nuclear energy has a low Energy Return On Energy Invested:

“The Party’s Over”, Richard Heinberg

Canada is self-sufficient in oil

and you’re even exporting a lot of

it. Why should you

worry about peak oil?

1) Even in Canada the amount of oil is finite

2) We’re not alone in the world.

Think of our big neighbour to the south

We are obligated under the NAFTA agreement to sell our oil to the US at the same price as Canadians pay

Okay, so what?

You’ve got lots.

Suppose the US…

Suppose the US wanted to

replace its 3% annual oil deficit

with nuclear energy…

– What would it cost?

Remember that no nuclear plants have been orderedsince 1978 in the US and that they take 10 years to build.

Now get your calculator out.Now get your

calculator out

The US consumes 833,000 barrels of oil per hour


3% of 833,000 means that every year the US will run short 25,000 barrels per hour (next year it would be 50,000, etc.)



There are 1.59 megawatthours (MWH) of energy equivalent per barrel

The US uses 833,000 barrels of oil per hour


There are 1.59 megawatthours (MWH) of energy equivalent per barrel

This comes to 40,000 MWH

One respectable nuclear plant runs 1000 MegaWatts (or 1 billion watts)

This comes to 40,000 MWH

Now to calculate the number of power plants required, simply divide 40,000 by 1000

And you get 40

So our friends would be building 40 nuclear plants

…every year,

Year after year

…just to keep up with declining oil

And the cost?

$200billion per year , year after year,

assuming oil prices don’t

go up.

$5 per watt x 1,000,000,000 watts x 40 plants=$200 billion

The moral of the story:

Building nuclear plants requires not only lots of money but

large amounts of oil

…and the US would pressure Canada for more oil

The sun uses nuclear fusion. Why not mimic

the sun on Earth?

Nuclear fusion hasn’t been perfected yet.

Tokamak

And it won’t be before 50 years according to the experts (ITER)

It requires having plasma et millions of degrees Celcius play around with magnets at –273°C

The intense neutron flux generated by the plasma (from which comes the energy) rapidly destroys the confinement container.

Just as regular fission, fusion won’t contribute to transportationSource http://www.sortirdunucleaire.org/

Confinement container

Nuclear fusion hasn’t been perfected yet.

Fusion has been known as the energy of the future for the past 40 years.

It’ll probably still be the energy of the future 40 years from now.

Source http://www.sortirdunucleaire.org/

Hybrid cars use half as much gas as regular cars.

What if we replaced all cars

with hybrids? Wouldn’t that

help?

Probably not…Here’s why:

People would respond by increasing the number of kilometres they drive per year

They would have extra money to spend and they would spend it on things that are energy dependent (There are very few ways of spending money without resulting in energy being used)

Increasing efficiencyincreases consumption.

(Google Jevon’s Paradox)

Building a car takes energy. -

Lots!

35 to 45 barrelsof oil equivalent

per car

…and there are800 million cars

in the worldData obtained from the film: “The End of Suburbia”

Supposing we replace the world fleet over 5 years, Okay?

Then we would have to build 160 million cars per year instead of the 40* million at present

i.e.: we would have to find oil to build 120 million more cars than at present

Present world consumption of oil is 29 billion barrels per year

Oil needed 40(barrels) X 120,000,000 (cars) = 4.8 billion additional barrels per year Equivalent to 16% of actual world oil

consumption

*Worldwatch Institute

There just isn’t

enough sparecapacity tosupply that

much oil

Wouldn’t that kill the economy?

It would hurt it for sure.

The 1973 oil crisis took place following a 6% oil drop.

It wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that this situation could repeat itself.

In this chapter we dealt with non-renewables. Chapter 3B will deal with “free energy” from wind and sun.

Click icon for Chapter choice

http://www.peakoilandhumanity.com/chapter_choice.htm

peak oil and the fate of humanity chapter 3a – other non-renewable sources of energy

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