Issue Briefs
Alternative Energy and Energy Security
Oil is the World's most essential source of energy; economic prosperity depends on it more than any other form of energy. In the US oil provides 40% of total energy consumption and 98% of transportation fuel. When we discuss alternative energy in its broadest sense, we mean alternatives to oil.
The world now uses 6 barrels of oil for every 1 barrel discovered. Oil discovery peaked in the 1960s and "Peak Oil" production may have already occurred. After peaking, oil enters a permanent decline in production leaving oil shortages, economic decline, and social chaos in its wake, unless current energy policies change. The world economy can not provide prosperity without abundant, conventional oil or a replacement for it. Nothing less than long term energy security is at stake.
Civilization as we know it can not continue without the energy we get from oil and it would take 20 years prior to oil's peaking to make a transition to alternative energy sources without massive social and economic disruptions. We must act now to replace oil with alternative energy; but which alternative?
Depletable energy options include replacing oil with natural gas, coal, shale oil, oil sands, heavy oil, radioactive nuclear energy or a combination of these energy resources. Renewable alternative energy includes direct solar, wind, wave, biomass, and falling water; all of which are abundant and somewhat evenly distributed throughout the world. The widespread distribution of renewable energy makes energy security and independence possible for most all regions if they focus on these resources.
Natural gas is no more abundant than conventional oil. If it were to become a primary replacement for oil, it would deplete rapidly and simply repeat the "Peak Oil cycle. Actually, all depletable energy would face the peaking problem rather quickly due to the large volume of oil that must be replaced: 84 million barrels of oil/day (and growing exponentially).
In the US, Natural gas provides roughly 50% of space heating energy and a growing amount of electric utility fuel. Coal provides over half the fuel for all US utilities and even larger percentages in other oil dependent nations. Neither of these energy resources could replace oil and continue serving their current markets for an extended period of time. Little energy security here.
Pollution and greenhouse gas production and the need to clean the air and water to improve public health also work against using large volumes of these depletable fossil fuels as alternatives to oil. The United Nations International Energy Agency estimates that it would cost US $3 trillion to temporarily replace oil using natural gas, coal, radioactive energy and the other depletable fuels. After 2030 we would need another alternative energy supply to sustain energy security.
Heavy oil and oil sands are abundant in the ground but are difficult and expensive to extract and process. Further, the energy required to extract and process them is much higher than the energy needed to extract and process oil. The energy balance in these fuels worsens as they deplete. Most important of all, these oils can not be extracted and made into motor fuels (67% of oil consumption) fast enough to fill even a small portion of demand or its growth.
Shale oil suffers from many of the same extraction problems as oil sands, and more. Shale oil is not oil; its kerogen. Kerogen must be processed into useful oil products at high energy and economic costs. Further, the processing creates vast volumes of waste materials and requires large volumes of water. This fuel is not feasible except for emergency military or other uses where cost and energy balance are not significant considerations!
Radioactive energy is not a practical replacement for oil either. Without massive government subsidies for raw materials, construction, operation, maintenance, energy sales, and waste storage and protection, radioactive nuclear power simply is not feasible.
The radioactive waste problem has not been solved. These dangerous wastes must be stored and protected for 20 to 50 thousand years. Nuclear power plants as well as their wastes create targets for terrorists. If the wastes got into the hands of terrorists, a simple surplus weather balloon, a stick of dynamite, spent fuel rods and a timer could turn any city into a Chernobyl-like ghost town. In the US fuel rods are still missing from two nuclear power plants.
This brings us to renewable energy; the abundant energy in direct sunlight, wind, waves, falling water and biomass. These energy resources are the only oil replacements with enough available volume to replace oil permanently. But even here there are obstacles to clear; but at least the effort will not be wasted or short lived. And the advantages are well worth the effort. The volume of energy here could provide long term energy security.
Each day earth receives more solar energy than all the energy that was ever contained in all the oil that has ever been burned (14.7 x 10 18 BTU) . Nature stores vast amounts of this energy in wind, waves, and biomass and distributes high concentrations of direct solar energy across the sun-scorched deserts of the world. Each of these abundant energy resources presents an opportunity to tap high volumes of clean energy using safe, non-polluting technology. Harvesting less than one fifteenth of one percent of this daily catch of energy and converting it to hydrogen fuel could replace the 30.6 billion barrels (1.3 Trillion gallons or 4.9 Trillion liters) of annual oil consumption.
Hydrogen fuel burns clean and can be made from all renewable energy; therefore it can focus energy from all these resources on replacing oil and other depletable fuels. Hydrogen made from renewable energy resources can also readily access existing gasoline and diesel internal combustion engines, the largest users and wasters of oil.
Burning renewable energy as hydrogen cleans the air and water, reduces global warming gasses, and pollution related diseases. The world needs a policy that allows this to happen. You can make it happen. Please sign the petition in support of the Declaration of World Energy Independence [click here to see petition]. Thanks much, Bill and Roy