US, Our Energy Use, Sources &
Restructuring
| for the Midwest would be at least bermed... |
Since pictures are worth a thousand words, we've compiled all our data and models and drawn pictures. We'll start with the picture of where we are now.
The starting point in the picture is the tall stacked bar of our Total Energy Use on the left side of the image. It's divided into Industrial, Transport, Commercial and Residential uses. Each of those is then analysed -- proceding to the right -- into the picture of its subusers (for Transport) or the picture of its energy sources (Oil, NGas, Electric). Then, because Electric is a key piece of this project, the Electric blocks are pulled together and stacked in an image at the top right and analysed into the sources of Electric (Oil, Nuclear, Renewables, NGas, and Coal). |  |
So that we can work with all these different forms of energy, we convert them all into their heat producing equivalent, namely in US annual terms, we use quadrillion BTUS per year (Quad BTUs/yr). For ease of comparison with their usual units, we also label oil data in billion barrel per year (BB/y) terms, and electric in billion kilowatt-hours per year (BkWh/y).
The total annual energy use in the US is about 98 quad BTUs now. So where is all the oil? Transport is basically all oil and the other major user is industry. We've analysed Transport into Household Vehicles -- personal autos, roughly 2 per household and 100 million households -- plus Diesel users -- basically trucking and buses -- with a residual amount for jets, etc. The industrial oil is for powering construction equipment, for chemical processes such as producing plastics, for mechanical processes such as quenching super heated metals, and lastly for space heating. This latter use also appears in Residential and Commercial, but is small relative to the others. And smallest of all, there's a minor amount, relatively, that's hidden in electric since about 3% of electricity generating equipment runs on oil. Since the electric companies are in the industrial sector, only the net electric is counted to avoid the tangles of double counting.
Electric turns out to be rather amazing for another reason. We don't often think about what's involved in managing the production of electric but the data on Residential and Commercial energy use shows the incredibly profligate design of the dominant facilities that produce our electricity. Nearly double the energy that we use is lost in this grid design. Nearly all these combustion facilities should have been making full use of the energy they're alloted to produce electric instead of siphoning off the electric produced and throwing away the copious heat. The current grid faciities treat heat energy as an enemy to be eliminated instead of a viable product to be directed to some valuable use. Designs that honor both heat and electric in production are classified as 'co-generation' designs.
This misfortune in the original design has not only been allowed to continue because of our dependence on the benefits of electric, but it has been multiplied in sizing and placement. Because the combustion facilities were spewing out wasted by-products their presence was undesirable and the grid developed with few, but oversized facilities feeding electric into a grid that extended beyond the point of sensible energy handling. The price is the definitely non-insignificant amount of energy that's lost in the transmission of electric over long distances. With no thought to storage either, there must be excess generation that must be maintained in our current grid arrangement so that all the possible uses and users will be served without system-faltering events. This excess is juggled precipitously in the interrelationships among grid outposts and we are saved by a sort of law of large numbers.
One could almost ask why battery maintenance isn't standard education, then every home would be designed with its own battery bank (just like it has its own furnace, waterheating and septic system) and the power company would periodically charge the banks, relying on radio signals to monitor status and using their computing power to juggle timing. It would seem less likely that we'd experience outages and we would be saved from paying for generating three times the amount of energy that we actually use. Those home designs would not have electric heating and our water heating systems would be designed to be more efficient to put lower drain on the battery banks. And with co-generation, the power company could be more local and naturally less alien to their members, reducing the size of the front office required for managmement, more like the rural co-ops. But we digress.
While we're on the subject of electric generation, note that only 19% of our electric is from nukes, so 'powering down' has some interesting opportunities for getting these nightmare behemoths out of our lives, once and for all. Natural gas generators, on the other hand, would be unaffected by cutting demand since they are the 'peaking' generators because of their ability to spin up in a hurry when a peak in demand begins to loom up. Renewables is the growing sector but still only 9%.
The problem definition is then simply to find a replacement for 7.5BB/y of oil, whose rate of implementation can be achieved asap. The implementation aspect we'll examine after we identify the replacement.
Our prime candidate for a replacement is TDP -- thermal depolymerization of carbon-based waste. The process has been tested on a wide range of waste streams, most notably agricultural waste like turkey processing offal in Missouri, and municipal liquid waste in Philadelphia. As a society we currently generate vast amounts of waste, so even with proper conservation methods there's no shortage of candidate waste streams, though there may be reasons to choose carefully as we proceed.
For example the commercial site producing oil from turkey offal is only marginally profitable in the current economic games in oil BECAUSE we, in the US, do what is considered reprehensible and hazardous in Europe, and use as animal feed the reprocessed animal waste of the most unimaginable inappropriateness for our non-carnivorous farm animals, with the result that the TDP-oil producers must compete for this waste stream with this questionable current practice. Peak oil and its implications for food prices might provide an opportunity to rescue farm animals from this unhealthy practice, particularly if we -- the consumer who's always right -- made it clear the continuation was unacceptable by informing our food retailers that we would prefer not to buy the food from those animals. Veterinary resources have stated that many animals are going to slaughter with damaged livers from these unnatural feeding practices, but apparently livers are not crucial to profits and damage isn't always obvious to the consumer in the way it is to a veterinarian. Mad cow disease is only one part of the problem in this practice but it was enough to wake up the Europeans, guess they decided they're worth it? Aren't we?
Returning to the broader picture -- waste streams from total agricultural waste alone would replace about 4.5BB/y of the current oil use, namely all the imported oil!
Although we may not want to process ALL the agricultural waste, for other reasons such as soil enhancement required for agricultural future productivity, let's examine the investment needed for this first potentially attractive goal. The factory in Missouri cost $2 million (plus some air scrubbers), producing 150,000 barrels of oil per year. It's sited across the road from the waste source, uses its own waste in powering the process, and requires only limited tweaking of the process to accomodate the relatively normal mix of offal from the dedicated source.
To duplicate this situation in our plan to replace all imported oil, would require 30,000 such facilities and cost $600 billion. Those are big numbers so let's put them in perspective with appropriate sources of site and funding. Assuming we aren't limiting ourselves to agricultural waste, since industrial waste is 5 times as great, this would mean about 300 some in Ohio, with maybe 7 inside the Cincinnati loop.
On the funding side, US corporations have $ 500 billion in retained profits (after paying sharehoders) from last year alone, which they have not committed to investing in their operation's growth or improvement. Almost what's needed in just one year's retained earnings! Nor are other year's profits that much less, with the lowest in the last 5 years being at least 70% of this year's. (The figures are courtesy of MarketWatch). Rationally, the funds invested in dedicated or co-operatively dedicated TDP facilities would save them from spikes in their oil expenses due to foreign meddling (whether embargoes or disruptions in oil field operation or even multiple Class5 hurricanes), would likely marginally increase their earnings (from oil income minus operating costs instead of simply waste removal expense) and generate positive PR. Not to mention that it has to be done eventually, and postponement could make the need come when the margins are fast dwindling along with oil supply.
We have available funding, we have reasonable space, we have waste we are drowning in and we could be free of the briar patch of imported oil. Peak Oil is an opportunity, not a plague. So what's the hold up?
OK, we know where we should go, and by all logic and market dynamics -- given the competitive economics and the fact that the Europeans are lined up on the Carthage doorway already -- we should see a massive movement in that direction. Presumeably the imminence of peak oil would even suggest we 'need' to see movement. Before examining why it's not happening and what can be done, let's look at the timetable, at its most optimistic. And then define 'need'.
Immediate launching of this agenda everywhere, while the funding is maximal, should accelerate the timetable for building these facilities and for developing the tweaking formulas, which took about 4 years for the one commercial scale operation in Missouri. Yes there's a patent on file so anyone with an interest can study the details. Patent economics is hardly an excuse in supposedly highly competitive needs, you don't wait for the patent to expire on the floatation ring so it's more economical, not when drowning is the alternative. You get your floatation ring in place when you know you have to get the boat ready to sail, not waiting til the ship's sailing, and never waiting til the ship's sinking. There is no dispute anywhere that dependence on foreign oil is a major liability. It was even demonstrated in the late 70s, the last time we had a difference of opinion with the ayatollah of Iran. We've been living on borrowed time since.
Clearly the transfer of knowledge is not the problem since the TDP components are all standard refinery elements with no extremes of temperature or pressure involved, simply used in a creative way that makes water a friend to the process instead of an enemy which is the error being made by other researchers. Researcher jealousy is a distinct possibility since this inventive, creative fellow -- Paul Baskis, and his insightful entrepreneurial partner, Brian Appel -- went straight to production instead of playing the publishing and confirming games that rule the academic world. There are a lot of research competitors whose credibility and funding are exposed. Would their greed and competitiveness stifle acceptance and dissemination of the idea to the degree that we are all put in jeopardy? Depends on their hubris in thinking their ideas may yet triumph.
And lastly, allocation of initial construction resources would extend the timetable somewhat but should be doable in a similar amount of time given the smoothness and potential for contracting from a vast pool of labor, as is done in catastrophe scenarios. Think how extensive was the computing revision efforts of Y2K with its potential for disaster, yet once corporate and government management was forced to come to grips with the issue and put a high priority on solution -- to the exclusion of other investment activity, I might add -- the entire world summoned their old cobol programmers from retirement, dug in and completed the project, in just barely enough time, major systems being tested just a month before dropdeadline.
Think 6 years as a target, since each TDP-oil production facility doesn't require extensive integration with existing operations, and there should be learning-economies as we go along. We'll have -- and likely need -- other options to deal with shorter term dislocations in the mean time. So let's look at where these numbers are pointing us. There is no clear deadline like Y2K, instead we have a slippery slope, which current oil producers have every incentive to conceal for greed motives since their stock's prices would likely plummet. So what's the extent of the rush?
The rush is twofold -- global oil politics heating up and the initially steep decline not long after peak.
Since hot politics is seldom productive, let's look at the picture of oil decline. For American oil, the peak was followed by a slowdown then a relatively steep decline of about 24% over the 10 years after the initial 10 years, after which the decline was slowing and stable for about 40 years, but it's approaching some basic final limit in about a couple dozen years, that was the last estimate. No point in quibbling over precision when we're working to determine the size of the ballpark. We can refine and sensitivity test later, after we have the picture with one set of lenses.
Graphically applying that knowledge of the US peak oil pattern to the real life data for world oil with its embargoes and Gulf Wars shows the timetable of the slope. For comparison we have the model of early theory, nice and pristine but recognizable with the total reserves being the area under the curve. The graph's area is fixed by our prehistory as well as the characteristic 40 year lag between discovery of those prehistory sources and their depletion. The confirming news is that discovery has peaked 40 years ago and intensive and extensive efforts have found only fewer and smaller sources. The reaffirming news is that the constancy of the area under the curve implies that the more we taper off early in drawing the reserves down, the less steep the future slope and the longer the supplies last. |  Click image for a larger view |
Let's start figuring our 'need' timetable with a couple factors. We'll approximate the 8% decline over the initial 10 years by taking a 0.8% drop per year and we'll assume peak oil is today, 2006. We'll suppose that in this scenario, the pushing and shoving in the oil market would produce a comparable shortfall for everyone, so our supply from abroad will drop at that rate as well. We'll, for the moment, simulate the decline in US source oil with a 10 year drop matching the rate in the fit to the US data. Further, since the current corporate management isn't feeling gutsy, and/or hungry, enough to invest in new initiatives, we'll assume that our current demand would be flat over that period, specifically that the brunt of the shortfall would hit the brain-numbed public (who, with no TDP, increasingly walk A LOT and huddle around ceramic heaters, understood). Demand-desires per person, that is, remains flat, but we in the US still have 1% per year population growth to further increase the amount of walking and huddling, represented by the shortfall. We'll further assume no embargoes, disruptions or environmental catastrophes. Then the picture looks roughly like this:
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2006 | 2008 | 2010 | //////// | 2018 | 2020 |
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4.5 | 4.4 | 4.3 | //////// | 3.8 | 3.6 |
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3.0 | 2.8 | 2.6 | //////// | 2.1 | 1.9 |
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0.0 | -0.5 | -0.9 | //////// | -2.6 | -3.1 |
Europe is likely ahead so they're not pulling anyone down. Of course the shortfall in some other parts of the world will be much worse per household with all the accompanying pressures because their population growth is higher. But being short a half billion barrels of oil here, in just 2 years from now, if peak is this year, would cause severe dislocations, which in a 2-tier society, would be shouldered by the least able to resist.
We also need to have a look at that one assumption about maintaining our 'share' of the world's oil production. There are so many nasty things imbedded in that assumption. First and foremost is that we in the US are gluttons in resource abuse. But even without examining the size of the waste we engage in, the idea that we would 'maintain' that share has all the markings of wars of the especially ugly. When addiction is added to the enforced shortages, we would be allowing the shifts to even more damaging sources of energy into the picture, namely nukes with their potential China Syndromes and their guaranteed nightmarish toxics. How do we defeat this litany of villains?
Let's look at what the TDP timetable would need to do in order match the missing oil from scenario PeakOil2006:
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2006 | 2008 | 2010 | //////// | 2018 | 2020 |
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--- | 3,196 | 5,834 | //////// | 17,548 | 20,707 |
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--- | $64 | $53 | //////// | $65 | $63 |
Since all that construction would increase the oil required and hence the oil shortfall, we should be creative, like the designers of the TDP facilities themselves, and use the oil generated to power the further creation of the new energy economy -- don't just use it up on past mistakes, weave it into symbiotic relationships with other promising new energy options to multiply its effect -- while conserving in every way at our disposal to reshape our existing economy so it will perform for us with substantive benefits in efficiency and equity. We have some potent opportunities that would allow us to magnify the impact of the new oil. Let's consider these options, beginning with the FFVs, the flexible fuel vehicles.
Flexible fuel vehicles have been on the road for about 10 years in the US, beginning with tens of thousands and accumulating til some sources say there are 4-6 million of them. News to you? Well they were built for commercial and government fleets to enable the fleets to meet efficiency and environment standards. These cars and trucks come in models we're all familiar with, from Dodge Caravans to Ford Taurus to SUVs and small trucks, almost 3 dozen different models from a half dozen makers. The only difference between them and the public's available choices of vehicles is that these engines now have a sensor that determines the fuel characteristics, depending on whether you've put e85 or our current 'gas' which is really e15. In fuel terminology e15, our currrent fuel, is 15% ethanol and 85% gasoline, whereas the e85 is the reverse, 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. So, in essence, these FFV versions, of cars and trucks we are inimately acquainted with, will run quite adequately on a cleaner fuel that reduces our gasoline usage for driving roughly 82%.
Back in the post oil-crises 80s, we got as far as developing plans on how to convert standard engines to run on e85 to get off foreign oil. Those efforts were shoved aside by our oil interests as Saudi Aramco flooded the world market with cheap oil in order to wreck the Russian oil industry and drag the Soviets' economy into bankruptcy. Glasnost followed and our US addiction to oil was re-established. A double Saudi coup. Our progress on wind and on earthsheltered house designs was also shoved into the dust. But we digress. Again.
I've seen curriculum outlines for a vocational school class for mechanics in Illinois that showed that the only changes required to our then existing cars were a thermostat adjustment and new hoses, and drilling a couple jets wider. Apparently now there's a chip that adjusts the jets and the thermostat. The cost estimated back in the 80s for the change-over was a 500-700 dollars, inflated to today, means that we're talking about a modification costing around $1grand. This is known technology, and a relatively minor step in the 80s that's even more minor now.
The car companies were supplying these new FFVs to fleets for the same price as the regular models. That's right, talk about the Judases. For the same dollars, we could have been driving cars and trucks that we could go sweetly on driving through the oil crises. How? The conversion of our gas stations to e85 is simply a matter of cleaning out one of each station's tanks and relabeling the dispensers. The ethanol producers have been eager -- and basically able -- to provide what we need, given normal development. Even now, they could expand their production to double their current levels on a moment's notice -- in fact they had to for the Katrina shortfall--, and this extra capacity is just the amount that forms the basis of the FFV startup agenda.
By scattering the FFVs in isolated numbers in fleets all over the map, no real e85 market was viable so only a weak attempt to develop that market is what happened. Feel the knife in the back turning? Scattering them meant that these fleet FFVs were basically all running on ordinary gasoline, with their supposed efficiency and environmental benefits being wasted. Not only did this tactic by government diffuse any chance of the emergence of a successful competitor to big oil, while simultaneously keeping us dependent on unpredictable foreign sources for a vital commodity, but government actually sold it to environmentalists and the public as a concession to clean air.
Now comes a breech in this stonewalling. Just recently Chrysler announced that they were opening the FFV option up for the public, but my calls to the dealers in our area, a couple weeks after the announcement, showed that this PR was news to them. Most didn't even know what an FFV was, much less be able to show one. Meanwhile the scattering continues as the older FFVs are eventually auctioned off, whereever. If we did the sensible thing and rounded up the used ones into one designated area, say Illinois, since their Governor, and both Senators, seem interested in promoting e85, then a market would automatically blossom for e85 and more FFVs. Illinois has a headstart with their 100-some e85 stations to our 1 in Columbus, otherwise we could have found an enterprising young fem or fellow here, knowing good engines and happy to travel to round up these used-FFVs for us in Cinci. Obviously an FFV sold in a region with an existing market of economical e85 -- yup, e85 generally sold for $.10 - $.15 less per gallon than gasoline back when gas was $2.50/gallon so the savings spread should have widened -- than its purchase value in a region with little or no e85 presence.
So you're naturally asking, how big a dent this could put in our problem, IF Illinois is serious in launching their end OR we find that young (or not-so-young) person AND we do our share? Our role is a feature role. We simply inform Detroit that we intend to buy not one new car unless it's an FFV!
Feast your eyes on what this would do. We know the ethanol industry could supply all 6 million used-FFVs with enough e85 for them to run 25,000 miles each for the start up year (based on their capacity to double now) and, for now we'll assume that ethanol capacity continues to expand in response to, or even in anticipation of the determined emergence of new-FFVs for the public, and that the FFVs are used by commuters to get the most benefit from the lower cost of fuel.
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2006 | 2008 | 2010 | //////// | 2018 | 2020 |
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0.07 | 0.08 | 0.56 | //////// | 2.07 | 2.07 |
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0.00 | 0.24 | 0.24 | //////// | --- | --- |
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--- | 106 | 59 | //////// | 3 | 0 |
Note, in this model of the vehicle role in the FFV agenda, each new-FFV becomes a used-FFV in the subsequent years and also, that 'new' is defined to mean that the FFV is one that replaces one of our existing non-FFVs. And we've assumed that Detroit re-directs whatever fleet production is needed to meet consumer demand for 200,000 new-FFVs the first year. Subsequently we progressively replace our existing cars and trucks over the next 10 years.
Note also that we have not modeled any change in miles driven per year, nor in miles per gallon, which we'll explore when we examine lifestyle issues and options.
The impact of FFVs would complement the TDP agenda in that every significant bit saved by FFVs buys breathing space for the early TDP workers, but both have a very steep start up requirement that we would have to smoothe out with other agendas since FFVs can't make up the early shortfall by themselves. With the TDP agenda, the problem was getting the first cohorts of facilities built in record time compared to the Missouri facility's 4 year odyssey with its 'learning experiences'. With the e85/FFV agenda, the doubling required the first couple years would be steep, the sort of thing that also suggests rough areas, though we've seen dramatic growth in ethanol in the last year that provides an example supporting the growth rates we've used thereafter. Specifically e85 growth was projected to be close to 40% for 2006, befor Chrysler's FFV announcement. Lessening the startup rate however would increase and extend the requirements later so for now -- til we see more of the picture -- let's settle on this planned e85/FFV agenda as our second piece of the plan. We will be using probabilities to evaluate all our targets to arrive at expectations, as is done in project management, since early needs are still the weakpoint.
Longterm together -- 3.1 BB/y from TDP and 2.07 BB/y from e85 and FFVs by 2020 -- we could replace about 2/3rds of the oil we now use, including 85% of the oil we use for our 'residential' transport. But the problem, though lessend, remains that we still have 1/3rd of the way to go as well as the fact of a tenuousness in the start up period. With no definitive dropdeadline knowable, we have only our personal visions and common sense to push the pieces into place. After Peak Oil is recognized, market economics and European advantages will give us more leverage but with much less wiggle room. For a PeakOil2006 Scenario -- or any scenario where no more progress has emerged than we see today -- there's a need for more than these two strategies.
Fortunately we haven't exhausted our options.
