Learning the hard way
July 28th, 2009 by Jim JustDespite its devastating climate and pollution impacts, coal is at the center of many of the world’s nations energy planning, and especially that of the rapidly developing Asian economies including China and India. Yet there isn’t nearly as much coal left as most people think.
“Clean coal” – if it ever proves technically and financially feasible – would deplete limited reserves even faster, as the lower electricity generation efficiencies due to the use of CCS would require more coal to produce an equivalent amount of electricity.
Richard Heinberg, in his new book Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis looks at several recent studies on coal reserves and concludes that, best case, global coal production will peak and begin declining about 20 years from now. Not much to build a future on.
Why is the common belief that coal is plentiful so wrong? It’s all about EROIE (energy returned on energy invested). The easiest reserves are found first. Over time, as more accessible seams are mined out, what remains is increasingly difficult to obtain and expensive to transport. Post-peak, it takes increasingly more energy to mine, transport and process coal. Eventually, we will cross into negative EROEI – it will take more energy to mine, transport and process coal than the coal returns in energy.
This chart is from a report by the Energy Watch Group titled “Coal: Resources and Future Production“:
The same harsh reality holds for oil and natural gas, as well. A review published at The Oil Drum: Net Energy of the study A Preliminary Investigation of Energy Return on Energy Investment for Global Oil and Gas Production reports the authors calculate EROEI at the wellhead was roughly 26:1 in 1992, increased to 35:1 in 1999, and then decreased to 18:1 in 2006. What does this mean?
These trends imply that global supplies of petroleum available to do economic work are considerably less than estimates of gross reserves and that EROI is declining over time and with increased annual drilling levels.
Heinberg calls for a massive, controlled, humane reduction in human population along with a transition to a much lower-energy, localized form of life. I think that’s the scenario that’s most likely to unfold, whether we like it or not or whether we choose that path as a matter of deliberate policy or not. What will be, will be.
The crucial choice we face is whether we’ll invest our remaining fossil fuel energy resources in renewables and efficiency, so as to make the transition as painless and pleasant as possible – or whether we’ll squander those resources on a futile effort to maintain business as usual, ruining the planet while we’re at it.
I wouldn’t bet on wisdom winning out. We’ll have to learn the hard way.