A primary reason why coal consumption is rising is because of increased international trade, starting when the World Trade Organization was formed in 1995, and greatly ramping up when China was added in December 2001. Figure 1 shows world fossil fuel extraction for the three fossil fuels. A person can see a sharp “bend” in the coal line, immediately after China was added to the World Trade Organization. China’s data also shows a sharp increase in coal use at that time.
Figure 1. World fossil fuel supply based on world production data from BP’s 2012 Statistical Review of World Energy.
China and many other Asian countries had not previously industrialized. The advent of international trade gave them opportunities to make and sell goods below the cost of other countries. In order to do this, they needed fuel, however. The fuel the West had used when it industrialized was coal. Coal had many advantages for a newly industrialized countries: it often can be extracted without advanced technology; it is relatively cheap to extract; and it is often available locally. It can be used to make many of the basic items used by industrialized countries, including steel, concrete, and electricity.
The industrialization of Asian countries was pushed along by many forces. Companies in the West were eager to have a way to make goods cheaper. Buyers were happy with lower prices. Even the Kyoto Protocol tended to push international trade along. This document made it clear that countries signing the document wouldn’t be in the market for coal. From the point of the developing countries, this would help hold coal prices down (at least in the export market). It also likely meant a better long-term supply of coal for developing countries. The Kyoto Protocol offered no penalties for exporting products made with coal, so it put countries that used coal to make products for export in a better competitive position. This was especially the case if Kyoto Protocol countries used carbon taxes to make their own products higher priced.
Apart from the international trade /industrialization issue, there is another issue that is helping to keep coal consumption rising. It is the fact that oil supply is in short supply and high priced, and this means that economies of countries that disproportionately use a lot of oil in their economies are at a competitive disadvantage. Countries coming “late to the party” are in a good position to develop their economies using little oil and much coal, and thus keep overall energy costs down. This approach gives the developing countries a competitive advantage over the developed countries.
Let’s look at a few graphs. In terms of oil leverage (total energy consumed /oil energy consumed), China and India come out way ahead of several other selected country groups. They do this with their heavy use of coal.
Figure 2. Ratio of total energy consumed to oil (including biofuels) consumed, based on BP’s 2012 Statistical Review of World Energy.
Based on Figure 3, below, the GDP of countries with a lot of coal in their mix seems to grow more quickly than other countries.
Figure 3. 2009-2011 Average Real GDP % Growth, Based on USDA International Macroeconomic Data Sets. World GDP reflects 2005$ weighting.
In recent years, oil has been the most expensive of fossil fuels. Thus, a country that uses mostly oil will, on average, have higher energy costs than a country that can dilute out its oil use with the use of cheaper fuels.
Figure 4 below shows average oil, natural gas, and coal prices for some representative categories of these fuels.
Figure 4. Price per metric ton of oil equivalent, based on World Bank data for the period Jan.- Nov. 2012. All prices have been converted to a metric ton of oil equivalent basis.
Among the types of fuels shown, oil is the highest-priced. The coal price is much lower, especially if it is locally produced. If it is transported long-distance, the cost of transport will add to its price. Natural gas prices vary around the world, but tend to be between coal and oil prices.1 It is not possible to know exactly what the average fuel price of each country group shown on Figure 2 and 3 is, but we can make a rough approximation using the average prices shown in Figure 4. Such an approximation is shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5. Rough estimate of average cost per metric ton of oil equivalent for the various countries and groups shown, based on distribution of fuels used, from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, and prices from Figure 4.
A person can see from Figure 5 that the average cost of fossil fuel energy is higher for the countries at the top of the chart, and lower for those near the bottom of the chart. There are various adjustments that might be made, such as adding the effect of carbon taxes on fossil fuel to the costs for European countries, and adjusting for the low value of the Euro recently. Both of these would tend to raise the average cost of fossil fuels for European countries.
Also, the world average fuel cost is probably overstated in Figure 5. In my list of country groups analyzed, I purposely excluded major oil exporters, such as Saudi Arabia, since these can be expected to behave differently than other countries. Quite a few of these exporters can afford to subsidize oil costs for their own people and for manufacturing within their countries, because their actual oil extraction costs are lower than the world oil price. If we were to adjust for this, the world average fuel price in Figure 5 would probably be reduced.
The Figure 5 averages include only fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), and exclude other fuels such as nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, and solar PV. Fossil fuels represent 92%-93% of energy supply in China and India, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy data. In Europe, fossil fuels represent 79% of total fuels; in the US and Japan, they represent 86% to 87% of the total.
A Look at How Fuel Consumption Is Actually Changing
Oil consumption is decreasing in the countries with relatively slow GDP growth, and increasing in India and China:
Figure 6. Percentage growth in oil consumption between 2006 and 2011, based on BP’s 2012 Statistical Review of World Energy.
I would interpret this to mean that as the weaker economies (which tend to use a higher proportion of oil in their energy mix) are priced out of the market, more of the oil is going to the countries that can leverage its use better. Unfortunately, a barrel of oil saved by Europe, the US, or Japan, means another barrel that can stay on the world market and be used by China, India, and other developing countries with better leveraging.
A barrel used in the developed world would “only” be leveraged up by other fuels by roughly a factor of 2.0 to 2.75, and some of this leveraging would be hydroelectric or nuclear electric, which is fairly benign from a carbon dioxide point of view. If that same barrel of oil is instead used by China, it can be leveraged up by a factor of 5.7. Thus a barrel of oil saved by the developed world can be transferred to China and used to greater positive effect, from the point of view of producing cheap consumer products and a greater negative impact, from the point of view of CO2 impact.
What did Economists Miss?
Unfortunately, the list is rather long.
1. The most basic issue economist missed is that energy is required to make goods and services. If production of a product is transferred to another country, that country will need energy supplies–probably cheap, easy to extract, energy supplies–to make that product. It doesn’t make much sense to look at fossil fuel consumption, stopping at a country’s own borders. If we want products to be made in an environmentally sound way, and we want our own citizens to be employed, we need to make them at home, and figure out a better way of counting CO2 production.
2. World oil supply is constrained. This means that even with additional demand, oil supply can’t rise very much. Additional demand doesn’t do much more than raise price. A reduction of demand, within a range, simply reduces price, without really reducing production. Beyond a point, a reduction in demand does temporarily reduce both price and production, as it did in 2008. But demand is likely to quickly bounce back, leading to another price spike, and further constrained supply. Standard economic models seem to assume this situation can’t exist.
3. In a situation of constrained oil supply, if a country reduces its oil consumption, it doesn’t mean that more oil will be left in the ground. Instead, the oil saved goes back on the world oil market (perhaps at a slightly lower price) and is bought by someone else who can make better use of it.
4. The mix of types of energy used by a country changes very gradually over time, because it is very difficult to substitute one kind of fuel for another without significant investment (for example, modifying cars to use natural gas and building pipelines for the natural gas). In general, for the short term, the mix is fixed. For example, in Figure 7 below, the world oil leverage remained constant in the period prior to 2000. It then gradually increased, as oil prices rose. There was no big change when the 2008-2009 recession hit. A drop in oil consumption tended to lead to a drop in electricity consumption as well, and a drop in fuel use of all kinds.
Figure 7. World oil price (Brent) in 2011$ from BP’s 2012 Statistical Review of World Energy and Leverage based on ratio of total fuel consumption to oil consumption from the same report.
I have written about this issue in my post, How Is an Oil Shortage Like a Missing Cup of Flour? In that post, I pointed out that to the extent proportions are fixed by built infrastructure, if there is a shortage (or excessively high price) of one necessary input (oil in the case of the economy; flour in the case of a batch of cookies), it is necessary to make a smaller batch. In the case of an economy, a smaller batch looks like a recession, with lower oil use, lower electricity use, and lower employment. This same pattern of all three types of fuel use dropping simultaneously can also be seen when viewing recent changes in world oil, coal, and natural gas supply, in Figure 1 at the top of this post.
5. If an economy such as China is not growing as fast as it might otherwise grow because of constrained oil supply, the availability of additional oil on the market because of the Developed Countries cutting back in their use may help China’s economy grow. In fact, China is likely to be able to use the additional oil (as for truck transport) to make it possible to make more goods using coal. Thus, the savings in oil may theoretically lead to increase in coal consumption, on a world basis.
6. The statement is often made that once oil prices rise high enough, renewables will become competitive. This statement is made with blinders on, in a world market for goods and services. What matters in a world market is the lowest total cost of production. Most renewables aren’t even oil substitutes; they are coal or natural gas substitutes, and these are cheaper. Anything that raises the average energy cost of a country relative to other countries makes it less competitive. When a country less competitive, it tends to use less oil. The extra oil tends to go to a more competitive country, and may help raise coal usage. Obviously wages make a difference, too, but a country that uses cheap fuels can pay their workers less, and still provide an acceptable standard of living.
7. There are two ways of reducing fossil fuel use that might be effective, but probably would not be well received. One is to cut back on international trade, perhaps by reintroducing taxes on trade. This would reduce fossil fuel usage, because many goods cannot be made without imported raw materials from elsewhere. Another method that would work is to tax (or forbid) fossil fuel extraction in your own country. This would make your country poorer, and less able to buy imports (such as oil and gas) on the world market.
8. I talked about what seems to be the effect of China’s competition on US jobs in another post. It would have been good if economists had foreseen this kind of impact before wholeheartedly endorsing the expansion of world trade.
9. It has recently been pointed out to me by a reader that the way China’s economy works, businesses can earn a lower rate of return than Western countries, and still provide an acceptable profit level, given the way Chinese government interacts with businesses. This gives China another competitive advantage, besides low fuel prices and low wages. See Rise of the FerroDollar.
Note:
[1] In the United States, natural gas prices are currently below the cost of production for many producers because of oversupply. This is not a sustainable situation; one possibility is that some natural gas producers will leave the market, US natural gas supply will drop with fewer producers, and US prices will rise.
Coal corporation going bust to bust us plebs, given this any discussion of ‘economics’ should be hedged around with of course we are all thieving monkeys with incomplete access to info.
Corporations can die but only to take down real people, what cockroaches we are.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/13691-in-the-coal-fields-a-novel-way-to-get-rid-of-pensions-is-born
The approach of putting the unwanted liabilities in one company, and the better stuff in another company has been used for years by insurance companies in poor financial condition. I didn’t realize that approach was being used on pensions as well. Or that old pension liabilities could be put in a new company.
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T’was the Nightmare Before Christmas
http://www.doomsteaddiner.org/blog/2012/12/24/twas-the-nightmare-before-christmas-2012/
T’was the night before Christmas, when across all the seas
Not a Doomer was stirring, not even RE.
The False Flags were in the MSM all over the place,
While Politicians mumbled their words of disgrace.
The Diners were nestled all snug in their beds
While visions of Mad Max danced in their heads
WHD in his Red Afro Wig, and I in my hat
Had just settled in to watch Civilization go splat.
When out on the internet there arose such a clatter,
I sprang to the Laptop to see what was the matter.
Over to Google I flew like some birds,
To type in Apocalypse and other Keywords.
The news on the net was like new fallen snow,
Flakes of disaster everywhere I would go.
Off with my wandering keyboard fingers I went to visit
Zero Hedge, Survival.com and 8 blowhard Collapse Pundits
The news was so bad I surfed ever faster,
searching wide to find the cause of disaster.
More rapid than Assault Rifle gunfire the news came on in,
Of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and all Human Sins.
Now Kunstler! Now Orlov! Now, McPherson and even Jim Quinn!
On Ruppert! On Gail! On, on Denninger and Steve from Virgin!
To TEOTWAWKI as we head for a mighty big fall!
Now Dash away, Dash Away! Dash away from it all!
As Mall Signs and Rooftops before the wild hurricane fly
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
Every keyboard was flying, calls of the end came everywhere
The Doomosphere was just chock full of despair.
And then in a twinkling, I read on the net
Illuminati across the Globe were begining to Sweat.
Bond spreads were wide, Futures were down,
Derivatives and CDOs were beginning to drown.
Gold bugs were Frantic, piles of Maple Leafs high to the sky,
While at Safeway and Walmart not a Twinkie to buy!
Preppers were loading their Glocks full of Lead,
Hoping to be the last of the Doomers left dead.
Permaculture raised beds and hydroponics were secured,
as Industrialization’s Ills could not be cured.
Heirloom Seeds in Nitrogen vaccuum packs were stored,
Ground floor windows were covered with 2×4 boards.
In Central Park all the OWSers set tents on the Grass,
the showdown with the NYPD would now come to pass.
The truckers rolled in and the Hell’s Angels too,
then the Longshoremen came in from out of the blue.
In CONgress the budget went over the Cliff,
while Obama said, “Hey, what’s the diff?
My Man Benny has the Inkjets all ready!”
No worries folks, the economy will stay steady.
In Brussels at the IMF the Eurocrats fumbled,
playing violins as the Euro crumbled.
In Japan the Sushi was glowing,
While Abe made sure those Yen kept on flowing.
In MENA the Drone Aircraft were flying,
with Women and Children doing most of the dying.
In the Straights of Hormuz Mines were placed to counter the Drones,
So all the tankers and carriers would be sent to Davey Jones.
In China the economy was rocking,
Ghost Cities and Bridges to Nowhere filled up their stockings.
Foxconn workers off factory rooftops went jumping,
While the Iphones out of the factory kept pumping.
The situation was dire, the whole world was on fire.
Everyone everywhere all caught in the mire.
The whole human race so utterly lost,
Happy Motoring and Industrialization exacting a terrible cost.
RE sprang to his keyboard to give the Diners some HOPE,
even though the world seems at the end of its rope.
They heard him exclaim, ‘ere the Internet went out of sight,
“Happy christmas to all, and to all a Good Night!”
Merry Christmas Finite Worlders!
RE
Bang on midnight GMT.
Well Done!
and a Happy turkey gobbling to all in the UK, where such things are customary.
Not sure about the USA..Cheese eating surrender Champagne? raise a glass and toast the end of the world that never was and the end of the world as will come in a slightly different context.
Thanks for your gift of verse. You have done a good job! It takes some special skill to come up with ideas like these.
F & F, oh wrong site
Merry Christmas
Thanks Leo and Gail. Not sure about CE there though. LOL.
RE
Fanned & Faved
The Spanish translation is already available at http://crashoil.blogspot.com.es/2012/12/por-que-el-consumo-de-carbon-sigue.html. Thanks again for your permission, Gail.
For a professional quality exposition of many of the things I have tried to say (amateurishly) about farming and food and carbon sequestion and animal/vegetable rotations and diversification vs. monocrops, see this interview by Chris Martenson:
http://www.peakprosperity.com/podcast/80255/craig-wichner-new-model-investing-farmland
I think you can get to it, but there may be a paywall. If there is a paywall, I think it will eventually show up for free. The interview is with one of the principals of Farmland LLP. I rather frequently refer to the writings of Jason Bradford, the other principal.
Agriculture doesn’t have to hurt! Fossil fuels become less intensively used. This is in line with the Iowa State study which I have referred to which debunked much of the ‘green revolution’ propaganda.
Don Stewart
Great work!!!!!!
Gail, you say, “There are two ways of reducing fossil fuel use that might be effective, but probably would not be well received.” You mention tax on trade and tax on fossil fuel extraction.
There is a third integrated way using carbon taxes and carbon tariffs. This involves a tax on fossil fuel consumption domestically. The burner pays the CO2e tax. With respect to imports you apply a carbon tariff unless the product has provably already had a carbon tax imposed for overseas manufacture and transport for import. If in any doubt, the government, e.g. US government, should levy the carbon tariff anyway.
This would ensure a carbon price was paid for all goods manufactured or imported. In addition, it would put the US (or other implementing nation) back on a more level playing field and encourage local manufacture.
With a full carbon price implemented in this way, to counteract global warming if possible, and with all fuel subsidies removed, then let nuclear and renewables compete on price provided both of these also pay their own negative externality and insurance risk costs.
Under this price regime, domestic manufacture gets some protection and the most cost effective energy solution will win out. Then we don’t have to have the unproductive nuclear power vs, renewables arguments. Let the physics and the markets decide the issue under the taxes and costs regime outlined above.
I think it has to be a fairly stiff carbon tax to work though, because the cost difference of coal can be quite large.
Also, you really can’t correct for China being willing to pollute its land in a way that we would not.
Considering where china came from – famines, emperors, mao tse tung – I think one can be a little lenient.
People on the post genocidal USA forget how crowded every where else is ?
🙂
According economic theory, even a small carbon tax would have a large effect–because decisions are made at the margin. To get to an optimum is (in the real world) impossible; see “Theory of the Second Best.”
In my opinion, burning ever greater amounts of coal is just as bad for planetary ecosystems as all-out thermonuclear warfare would be–ecocatastrophe in either case.
Actually neither all out thermonuclear war or burning every bit of coal there is would do as much harm as has been done – entirely without any human intervention – to the earth in the past and the not so distant past.
I suggest you look up the scale of the major volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Not to mention asteroid strikes.
Even the Japanese tsunami would have taken a large fraction of the worlds stock of nuclear weapons to duplicate – possible all of them.
The quantities of sulphur dioxide and CO2 and indeed radioactive ash emitted by a large volcanic eruption is several orders of magnitude greater than all the coal burning in the world ever.
> The quantities of sulphur dioxide and CO2 and indeed radioactive ash emitted by a large volcanic eruption is several orders of magnitude greater than all the coal burning in the world ever.
Completely untrue. Where do you get this rubbish ? Do you think people are going to believe it just because Leo Smith says so ?
I do the actual factual research…
Did you research this?
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php
Do the Earth’s volcanoes emit more CO2 than human activities? Research findings indicate that the answer to this frequently asked question is a clear and unequivocal, “No.” Human activities, responsible for a projected 35 billion metric tons (gigatons) of CO2 emissions in 2010 (Friedlingstein et al., 2010), release an amount of CO2 that dwarfs the annual CO2 emissions of all the world’s degassing subaerial and submarine volcanoes (Gerlach, 2011).
Until you get a Tambora or a Krakatoa or a Deccan eruption. Volcanoes are not steady things, Now and again a big one lets go and then, its not average that counts- its peak. It stresses the atmosphere FAR more than steady CO2 emissions.
I notice you still don’t quote any sources for your assertions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa#Global_climate
In the year following the eruption, average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 °C (2.2 °F). Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years, and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888. [volcanoes.usgs.gov]
So the impact (a cooling due to particulates and SO2) lasted only 5 years and therefore cannot be consider a climate impact, only a weather impact. The CO2 impact (a heating) would have been indistinguishable from all the other volcanic emissions in the history of the planet, before and since 1883. All volcanic eruptions are included in the climate models and the IPCC’s opinion is that these impacts are small compared to anthropogenic causes.
All this is dealt with in IPCC’s AR4 Working Group 1 Report, Chapter 2.7.2 and no doubt will be improved on in AR5.
Are there articles written on this subject, comparing quantities?
Brilliant analysis, Gail!
I guess that the abscissa in Figure 5 is price per toe, not per boe.
May I request your permission for republishing your post, translated to Spanish, in my blog?
Warm regards,
Antonio
Sorry about the mix-up with captions. I uploaded a revised Figure 5, so it should be OK now. The names of units seem to be the easiest things to confuse, even when a person knows very well what units are being used. It is almost like confusing the names of a person’s own children accidentally.
It would be fine to republish, translated into Spanish. Just link back to the original.
Of course, I’ll credit your post and link it back. Thanks for your agreement.
Regards.
45 minute lecture by Nate Hagens. The End of Grorth
Thanks! I know Nate well, and know he reads as least some Our Finite World posts. I haven’t yet had a chance to listen to the entire video, but the first several minutes are good.
Because I’ve followed Nate off and on over the past few years and I genuinely admire his thinking, I watched the entire 45 minute lecture by Nate Hagens – “The End of Growth”. My initial thought was: “this will be a great video to share with friends and neighbors”! Half way into the video I realized I would never share this with anyone. First of all, the mechanics of the video are horrible – Nate is frequently referencing a graph/photo that is never shown; the person doing the video spends far more time taping the backs of heads of the audience than on the presentation slides. Secondly, Nate does a terrible job of organizing this presentation – it’s a kind of a stream-of-consciousness affair.
If you already understand Nate’s background and POV, there are little gems and nuggets of information in his presentation that are excellent. However, both Nate and the person operating the video camera really need to get their act together. I, for one, would really like to see Nate make an effective presentation of his research findings, conclusions, and suggestions. But, this video presentation is a flop.
Nate was critical of the video, especially the inadequate time spent on the slides’
Perhaps he’ll be motivated to redo it. I’m sure he could do an excellent half-hour presentation to help explain the multi-faceted aspects of our predicament in simple language. Maybe he needs the help of some media savvy person. I think he has a valuable message.
Nate was in Prophets of Doom on the History Chanel. He did a pretty good job there. He often has good insights.
Hi Gail,
Thanks for the link – I watched the entire show and yes, Nate had a much better presentation.
I have a lot of concerns about this show – especially the ending advice. But, that’s a much longer discussion.
Leo Smith wrote > … 50 tonnes of U238 will run a GW reactor for a year. It doesn’t take much energy to mine 50 tonnes. Or even 500 tonnes. Hell you can do that with a pick and shovel in a year.
Try 300 tonnes of 96.4% U-238 + 3.6% U-235 to start up a 1 GW reactor.
Enriched Uranium doesn’t just lie around in nature, waiting to be shoveled up. Commercial ores are 0.08% Uranium oxide, the remainder being inert rock. The Olympic Dam extension in South Australia (recently suspended) was going to spend 4 years just removing the overburden by bulldozer and truck before it even got to the ore body.
You can’t just say, “Run the bulldozers and trucks on electricity.” because they would have to build entirely new ones, and that would take a lot of energy (and more mining to get the raw materials).
Every step of the Uranium fuel cycle, apart from when it is in the reactor itself, is carbon intensive. I really do recommend you follow the cycle through at http://www.peakoil.org.au/news/index.php?does_nuclear_energy_produce_no_co2.htm to get a grip on what is involved.
you saved me the trouble of pointing all that out
thanks
Thank you for another good article.
Will we see a comeback of coal in western countries, getting some of this advantage back? Everything will depend on CO2 policy, but in competition for global wealth, long term environmental concerns might go away.
If the Chinese want to remain low-oil, they will have to find new ways for domestic consumption, which is crucial to the next steps in their economic development. They can’t rely on their credit / infrastructure growth model forever. Western middle class consumption is very oil intensive, and it seems that’s where they are heading. In 2011 Germany was shipping 2,2 million cars to China, and that’s just for the more “premium” sector. Meanwhile, they are also building up their own car industry fast. And we are talking about gasoline cars, not electric. The world automobile industry couldn’t dream of something better than the new Asian market. I guess at 500 million more cars they will encounter some resource limits…
Yes, agreed that energy (together with social capital) underlies economies. I don’t agree that oil is most expensive though. That distinction belongs to solar. And solar power today is, functionally, stored coal power because it takes 5-7 years to recover the energy from solar that went into making a panel. (If installed and maintained properly. If not, it could be 10-15 years.) Solar is advertised and bought as the ‘feel good’ power source. In reality it’s a rich nation’s toy that is seriously damaging our economic competitiveness.
I think your point-of-view is too parochial on trade There are other reasons for world trade. At its base, nothing does as much for so many. If you really want to help starving kids wherever, let them industrialize. Going the other way is to vote for mass death (whether out of sight and out of mind or live on CNN) like it or not. See Gapminder World for statistics on measures of improvement in the world that escape economic analysis. It is very heartening to go through. http://www.gapminder.org/world/
Nobody wants to deal with the nuclear necessity, nor with the fact that our current global warming problem would not exist if we had gone massively nuclear. For our world, it’s either that or put up solar power satellites if we don’t want global warming. Probably, since humanity as a collective is something of an idiot, we will have both in 50 global warming and nuclear/solar satellites.
We should also not forget that the road to declining living standards in wealthy nations has been the road to war. That is the invisible target the Western world is aiming for now.
With nuclear we wouldn’t have had the CO2 but we would assuredly have had the global warming.
Fascinating stuff as always Gail. Apologies if you’ve dealt with this before, but what do you think of James Hansen’s ‘Fee and Dividend’ idea to suppress fossil fuel use and encourage alternatives? I suppose it would only really work if there are viable alternatives that can hold their own and are capable of powering our civilisation in anything like the way that fossil fuels do now. A lot of people assert that nothing like that exists, or ever will to. Anyway Dr. Hansen has a new essay on his website with some more details of how he envisages the Fee and Dividend scheme would work:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20121213_StormsOfOpa.pdf
Re: #7, another way of reducing fossil fuel use would be through ending the use of money and exchange (but not transfer, which is a more useful term in that context than “trade”). The subsequent elimination of the profit incentive would have a rapid and extensive affect.
Gail,
I’m not sure coal usage can grow as quickly as seems probable from your analysis. Coal production close to the demand for energy seems to have peaked already. In China (which is by far the largest user and miner of coal) most of the reserves are in the sparsely populated northwest part of the country. Transporting this coal to where it is needed near the coast is expensive and requires large infrastructure investment. Using the coal for power generation close to the mines is probably impractical due to water shortage.
While China is now the largest coal importer, the amounts in international trade are very small relative to Chinese consumption, and significant (relative to Chinese consumption) increase of mining outside of China to supply the demand seems unlikely. The total world trade in coal in 2011 was equal to about 30% of Chinese consumption. That is about the same amount as the increase in Chinese consumption over the last six years.
Indonesia, the largest exporter, has limited reserves. Australia, the second largest exporter, has large reserves, but they are in sparsely populated areas well inland, and there is a skilled labor shortage and strong feelings against imported labor that together make it hard to complete even the currently planned infrastructure, let alone the projects which might contribute significantly to Chinese demand.
THanks!
Perhaps I should say, “Why coal consumption has been growing rapidly.” I agree that hitting a wall in the not too distant future is a real possibility, for the reasons you outline. China and India would like living standards equal to those of the developed countries, but it can’t really happen. The US is exporting some, but it can hardly make a little dent in what China would like to have.
Gail,
In my opinion, the inexorable rise in coal production is a classic case of the tragedy of the commons. Hardin identified a unique solution to the tragedy: Mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon. However, it is obvious that sovereign nations are not going to agree to be subject to coercion by other nations. In other words, given the realities of economics and politics and geology, we are going to increase mining of coal so long as that is a profitable activity–with no regard to external costs of mining or burning coal.
Oil is used mainly for transportation, and coal for electricity generation and space heating. So, is it really a simple substitution of one kind of “energy” for another? Are there not more specific differences between e.g. China and India, whose economic growth is strong, and highly industrialized societies with a high use of transportation and thus a high oil per capita use? I am aware that many of the former oil-fired power stations have closed in favour of gas or oil. Nations with plenty of oil of their own, may remain exceptions to this, e.g. Saudi which uses a substantial amount of its oil to produce electricity for home use.
” many of the former oil-fired power stations have closed in favour of gas or oil.”
Care to rephrase that? 🙂
Apart from that, an interesting point occurs to me. Is the energy use dependent on the type of society, or does the type of society depend on the energy available?
As a technologist, I naturally think that humans do little to shape society: technology really shapes it. Living,. like politics, is the art of the possible. We burn fossil fuel because we can, and when its run out we will burn something else, or die.
And when you are dying of cold, cutting down the last tree to keep warm, is a no brainer. Why preserve a posterity you won’t be there to see, if you do?
I suppose ultimately much as I respect the ideas and opinions of Gail and others here, I feel saddened by the fact that ultimately it will make no difference to know what is coming, because it wont be addressed anyway. Not until it is upon us. One of the salient facts I have come to understand about politics and those who espouse its Causes, is how little difference they make.
Whereas just look at the difference a global communications network has made!
We will of course burn the coal till its all gone. We will discover whether AGW is in fact a reasonable representation of reality, or a tissue of lies, or something in between. WE will end up either mostly dead or using nuclear power. A lot of people will end up dead, in the transition from fossil fuel to the next stage, anyway – countries that cannot quite bootstrap their way past fossil will be in serious trouble.
The only decision we as individuals can make is whether we will kick against the pricks, continue to believe that somehow overarching global solutions will be imposed by some sort of pan continental world government or whether in the end the rational approach is to sort your own sphere of influence out and running off whatever energy you can lay your hands on, jealously guard it from those who would steal it. Face up to the need to adapt, and don’t second guess the future more than is necessary to formulate the first plan. Essentially the philosophy of the military commander – which institution is the last bastion of common sense .
We know we are facing the end of civilization as we know it. One way or another. That’s not the point really. That is simply inevitable. The real question is can we imagine and calcluate carefully and build whatever is to come next.
Sadly my impressions is that the vast majority of people cannot, and they do not want to even face up to it. Hence the plethora of crystal gazing aromatherapy inspired hipster cool twaddle peddled on these issues by those who would clutch at any straw.
Its a stark choice between Gigawatts or Gigadeaths. The population densities are utterly beyond the ability of any renewable or sustainable solution. So called.
Japan has voted in a regime that will reintroduce nuclear power, not because anyone especially wants it, but because they have very little alternative. Japan needs electricity and it cant afford imported fossil fuel.
And even then, and all nuclear electric society requires massive transformations in how things – especially transport – are achieved.
Smart societies will survive. Stupid ones will collapse. As much of the middle east is collapsing, into a welter of political strife, high expectations, high population levels and low deliverables. Unemployed? No hope of a job? Here’s a Kalashnikov, go out and kill the haves and take their booty.
Many cities will largely die. They no longer have economic reasons to exist. Many people will die. They also have no economic reason to still exist.
Above all globalisation will also largely collapse because it too will no longer have an economic reason to exist. So will consumerism and the cult of the shopping mall. With goods and materials and energy in short supply the winners are those who can correctly asses coist-benifit and lifetime costs of products, and new products that are not 3 years and throw away will emerge.
Personal transport will largely vanish except very short haul electric cars of even then high total cost of ownership. Everything will be delivered – one trick doing a fixed route can deliver the same amount of online ordered shopping that 100 cars going into the mall could do. At a lower overall price. As people stay at home more, crime reduces and sense of community increases.
People will work where they live and shop where they live.
These things must happen, or people will just die where they live.
Apart from that, an interesting point occurs to me. Is the energy use dependent on the type of society, or does the type of society depend on the energy available?………
in response to that, the status of any society is entirely dependent on the amount of energy it can harvest from its immediate environment
man ‘harvested’ other animals. including his own kind just like any other predator,
then farmed them
we also began to ‘harvest’ the environment itself, cutting down trees for warmth and shelter
then we ‘harvested’ more and more till we’d pretty much used up all we had left, which is roughly where we’re at now
For sure we haven’t used up a lot of things. Fissile material for a start.
There are less reserves of farmland, than that.
Yes. There is on the order of 250,000 years of fissile materials at current energy use rates – if we don’t go off this planet.
The trouble with Uranium is that mining and processing requires lots of fossil fuels.
http://www.peakoil.org.au/news/index.php?does_nuclear_energy_produce_no_co2.htm
The trouble with Thorium is that it is not fissile, and can only be transmuted to a fissile material by properly designed reactors, which we don’t have.
We are in an energy bind – we don’t have enough spare energy to engineer our way out of our energy shortage, despite having lots of ideas on technologies. And the longer we keep on with BAU, the worse it gets.
Look at the actual energy density of uranium. one kg of uranium 253, in 50 tonnes of U238 will run a GW reactor for a year. It doesn’t take much energy to mine 50 tonnes. Or even 500 tonnes. Hell you can do that with a pick and shovel in a year.
So the ‘you must have fossil fuel to extract uranium’, is fundamentally wrong. You can also use electric mining equipment – and indeed its done, though usually powered by onsite electrical generators running on kerosene or diesel.
AS far as thorium goes its several decades up the line. There’s enough uranium for a couple of hundred years at least – more with proper breeding and recycling …
Britain is sitting on at least ten years supply of plutonium that could be burned in a reactor – currently its classed as a high level waste.
None of these options have been explored because processing raw uranium ore is simply cheaper. There’s a glut of uranium at silly prices. And the price of uranium reflects how little energy it takes to extract.
I am afraid you are right about “Its a stark choice between Gigawatts or Gigadeaths.”
It is hard to see exactly how it will work out. I will have to admit that the “order it from Amazon and have it delivered shortly” model seems to work well now. It was also the Sears Roebuck model in this country, years ago. I know living in a small town, my mother often ordered things from them. I have a cousin living on one of the smaller islands in Hawaii, and she says she finds that she often needs to order things she cannot find in the (few) stores nearby.
T|her Sears catalogue:! Heck that was so famous it even reached the UK – I mean we knew what it was, we didn’t have them. Ours was summat else. I forget what.
Mail order is a natural response to high personal transport prices.
Whoops!ell spotted Leo – and the phrase should read: “” many of the former oil-fired power stations have closed in favour of gas or coal.” Gail has understood my meaning anyway, and I find her answer informative about the differences in the use of these various energy sources in India and China compared to the West, say.
Your concluding remarks resonate strongly with the aims of the Transition Town Movement, which is growing across the world (http://transitionculture.org/): “Personal transport will largely vanish except very short haul electric cars of even then high total cost of ownership. Everything will be delivered – one trick doing a fixed route can deliver the same amount of online ordered shopping that 100 cars going into the mall could do. At a lower overall price. As people stay at home more, crime reduces and sense of community increases.
People will work where they live and shop where they live.”
Indeed, “Transition” seeks to build resilient, local communities, that can weather the storms expected to follow resource depletion, particularly peak oil.
I agree that there are differences in what one kind of energy can be used for. There are a couple of issues that help both the Indians and the Chinese:
1. Only a relatively small percentage of the common people have cars. Motorcycles or bicycles are more common. So what oil is used, tends to be used for business purposes, not for personal use.
2. Because of the availability of coal for electricity, China seems to use more electric trains, subway trains, electric buses (with overhead trolley wires), and even electric bicycles than we are used to.
My impression, too, is that sometimes coal is used directly for heating in these countries. For example, I saw a bakery in India whose ovens used coal. Coal was also use to heat the water used heating water in a commercial laundry. I believe it was also used to create the heat for recycling aluminum. Coal is used directly in the production of cement. The range of uses seems to different from what we are used to.
Electricity generation with coal brings a huge cost advantage. Eastern European countries with lower environment standards are a good example. Poland had (and still has) terrible coal towns, it’s a nightmare. A lot of manufacturing went there when Western Europe started to punish coal use.
Also, Asia has a very high level of public transport, which doesn’t need much oil. So their economy can function well with a high oil price, and unlike the West without too many additional investment. At the same time it allows them more time to delevop alternatives like solar and water. Their economic planning seems pretty smooth.
Gail said it better…
For the Kyoto Protocol Mark 2 to be fair, exporters should be paid in currency AND carbon permits for the goods they manufacture (using carbon) and then export. Australia is getting a free ride when it sells its coal to China, to power the manufacturing of stuff, including solar panels, which China then sells to Australia. The embodied energy of those goods gets counted against China’s carbon budget, not Australia’s.
If there was a world-wide carbon permit trading system, the permits would have a recognised world-wide value, and then the cost of the permits could simply be added to the price.
The effect of this would be to make carbon-intensive products more expensive, which is only right and proper.
Brilliant analysis, Gail!
I’ve always thought that once oil starts to go away, we (the global human civilization) will attempt to take up the slack with more coal, which will then itself peak much sooner than the “linear growth” model would predict.
It looks like we’re at a cross-over point, where we will be using more coal energy than oil energy.
Certainly, those of us on the Left Coast are seeing massive increases in coal exports, via train to ports, then via ship to China.
Do you have a feel for when the increased pressure on coal will cause big price increases? This has already happened for anthracite, which has long ago peaked. Can lignite be that far behind?
Regarding upcoming price increases for coal, it is hard for exports to compete with the huge amount of coal we have been using internally, just because of limits on number of ships and train cars. Also, I was under the impression that theoretically there is more coal available, especially if the price is little higher. (Western coal is so cheap that a small rise in price doesn’t matter too much, when a person consider the price of transport as well.) I understand there is some coal in Montana we haven’t tried to extract (roads may be needed) and also in Alaska.
I was involved with a Chinese analysis that suggested that China’s production would peak no later than 2025 to 2030. There are a lot of issues (lack of fresh water is one) that could mean its peak could be a lot before this.