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Peak Oil in the Mainstream Business Press
Posted by Euan Mearns on November 7, 2007 - 11:00pm in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Policy/Politics
Tags: biofuel, food crisis, jeremy cresswell, matthew simmons, peak oil, twilight in the desert [list all tags]
Aberdeen, often promoted as the oil capital of Europe, has a local newspaper called the Press and Journal that serves the city and Northern Scotland. Once a month, they publish a business supplement called “Energy” that is edited by Jeremy Cresswell.
The impression I have had for a number of years (rightly or wrongly) is that “Energy” has favoured a fairly upbeat and optimistic editorial line on our energy future – though the editor assures me they have tried to carry a balanced perspective. In the November issue published yesterday, three prominent stories caught my eye:
All peaked out and no place else to go but do-o-o-wn
Will the wheels drop off the biofuels wagon?
Simmons spells it out – but when will the ostriches get their heads out of the sand?
Regular readers of The Oil Drum will be familiar with these stories. The point here is that these are published in the mainstream business press. There are excerpts below the fold plus links to the original articles on line. This is good Oil Drum fare, and the article on biofuels, in particular is worth reading.
All peaked out and no place else to go but do-o-o-wn
"PEAK oil is now", proclaims a hard-hitting study of global resources by the German-based Energy Watch Group. Its predictions are dire: global oil output peaked in 2006 at 81million barrels per day, will slide to 58million bpd by 2020 and 39million bpd by 2030.
This is in sharp contrast to the International Energy Agency, which predicts 105million bpd by 2020 and 116million by 2030, though offline, there is a growing view at the IEA that its projections are too optimistic.
Will the wheels drop off the biofuels wagon?
“Harnessing biomass more effectively than we currently do is vital for a variety of compelling reasons, notably global climate-change mitigation and concerns over the long-term availability of oil and natural gas in large amounts.”
“But it seems we're getting things horribly wrong. Two hot examples are the dumping of US-produced, double-subsidised biodiesel on in the EU this year and the failure to realise how much agricultural land will be swallowed by energy cropping, whether for transportation fuels or power generation.”
“The nub is that officials are examining how to prevent support for biofuels in cases where their production involves the emission of more greenhouse gases than would eventually be saved by using them instead of pure fossil fuels.”
“The board estimates that more than 800,000 tonnes of American-manufactured type B99 biodiesel have been imported thus far in 2007, compared with 100,000 tonnes for the whole of 2006.”
“Here we have a situation where the raw feedstock for biodiesel exported thousands of miles to the EU from the US may also have traveled thousands more miles from a third nation producer for doctoring Stateside first.”
“So a fuel that has dubious credentials to start with because of the amount of energy required for its production is not only heavily subsidised, it racks up a transatlantic crossing - and more besides.”
"It is high time to realise that the world community is approaching a food crisis in 2008 unless usage of agricultural products for biofuels is curbed or ideal weather conditions and sharply higher crop yields are achieved in 2008," Oil World said recently.
“So can somebody tell me how it will be possible to grow sufficient food in the future, let alone devote land to energy cropping? I struggle with this equation, as does UN expert Jean Ziegler, who wants a five-year biofuels cropping ban.”
Simmons spells it out – but when will the ostriches get their heads out of the sand?
In a private meeting with Matt Simmons, president of the energy bank, Simmons & Co International, Energy has been told that the petroleum game is up. And even if it proves possible to raise global oil output further, it will be for only a short time. Simmons said he regretted not making his predictions for the future of Big Oil much more dire than had been portrayed in his controversial book, Twilight in the Desert, published two years ago.
"If I was redoing Twilight in the Desert today, I'd sharpen the severity of the warning quite significantly.
Jeremy Cresswell is Chairman - Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group
Editor - Energy - The Press and Journal and a member of the Energy Institute
For those experiencing difficulties accessing the P&J articles on line, the whole Energy supplement may be viewed on line here. This is cool and worth a look.
Over the past couple of years I have sent several emails to the P&J and other national newspapers offering to write articles on energy decline and energy security – and never received a reply. It does seem that Cresswell is well able to carry the energy decline flag on behalf of the Aberdeen mainstream press and I look forward to many more hard hitting articles such as these in the months ahead. But I do wonder when the public and politicians will take note?
Other things going on in and around Aberdeen these days include:
A £395 million ring road and development corridor around the city
A Luxury golf complex to be built by Donald Trump
See also Aberdeen Greenbelt Alliance
I wonder where they will get their energy from?
Beautiful countryside to the west of Aberdeen is earmarked for a new highway to be completed by 2012
Global oil production looks set to peak by 2011 - if not much sooner! Chart is based on Skrebowski 2007.
A note to all our local and national politicians. West Texas Intermediate just hit a fresh high of $97 / bbl as I was writing this article. This is a wake up call. It is time to start rebuilding our power generation and transportation infrastructure for the new energy paradigm of the 21st Century. Pursuing the fossil fuel paradigm of the 20th Century will doom our society to extinction.
Other reading:
The latest energy news from ODAC
And an article I posted in July and October on UK Energy Security
Peak Oil on the UK Network News from ITN - watch the video, posted by Chris Vernon
To be fair to Jeremy Cresswell, I spoke recently with him and he said that he had been writing about Peak Oil for some years now.
Hello Joe. Perceptions spread over a period of time are difficult to judge. My view has been that Energy and the P&J has suffered from optimistic bias like most of the MSM when it comes to financial affairs. This is not necessarily a criticism since they need to produce a paper that people will buy. And in particular, in Aberdeen, broadcasting the truth about our oil and gas supplies would likely attract some criticism.
The important thing now is that this month they have published some pretty hard hitting articles about PO and alternatives. I just hope that every City and Shire councillor and MSP has read these articles and fully understands what the consequences might be.
I let Jeremy see a copy of this before it was published and he seemed happy with the content.
I can back this up - I've seen peak oil articles (usually in Jeremy Cresswells editorial section Energy Eye) quite a while back. Certainly well before it was mainstream.
Euan:
Oh they wouldn't dare to calculate the carbon footprint of our exported biofuels, would they? Thems are fightin' words!
I'm pleased to say that over on this side of the pond, my colleague Brian Hicks scored some prime time TV business news coverage this week, giving the straight dope on the oil supply & prices side of things. (<doomeralert>Although I should note that he's a much bigger bull on America and her resiliency than I am!</doomeralert>) Check it:
The entire article is here: Is The Alarm Finally Being Sound?
Also, just noticed over on Robert Rapier's blog that the History Channel is going to show a peak oil documentary next week:
Took 'em long enough, but it looks to me like the MSM have really finally come around on peak oil. In fact I'm arbitrarily saying that the turning point was October 25, 2007, the first day that oil closed over $90/bbl. I think that's what finally broke peak oil into the mainstream.
--C
Energy consultant, writer, blogger www.getreallist.com
Euan, I actually noticed the mainstream press in North America starting to talk openly about Peak Oil back in February this year. Shortly after the EIA & IEA & the GAO all talked seriously about this issue. It was a limited discussion in the media, but nonetheless that ice had finally been broken. It is rather incredible when one realizes that Hubbert had first talked about it in the mid-fifties, so it took fifty years before the media started discussing it openly. The irony of it is that we knew then, many of us knew a decade or more ago and now that it is finally mainstream, what has really changed? Our civilization is probably one of the few that could see our demise coming from a long way off, yet our egos (greed) and disbelief prevented us from doing anything. The other irony is that Climate Change & Peak Oil are happening at the same time. I have no doubt that some will one day call this coincidence some sort of devine intervention.
Thanks for the timely post.
Yes, a peak in the economic availability of fossil fuels looks like it could be less than 2 decades away. I'm rather drawn to Lovelock's GAIA theory in this regard.
I think that raises an interest point. It seems that nearly all ideas relevant to our future have been identified by someone, even if they are little known. Do ideas that are reasonably provable always eventually get to mainstream acceptance?
In past ages, generation of new concepts was limited to a handful of scholars. Education and knowledge of the general populace was minimal. There was no media. Information was almost completely controlled through government and the Church.
Now it seems that any and all ideas are out there, and up for discussion, the information revolution starting with printing. A well educated general public can both hear about and contribute new ideas to the pool.
Certainly, palatable ideas travel faster then controversial ones. 50 years might seem a long time, but in comparison it is not bad. Many ideas are older than you think. The greenhouse effect was first described by Arrhenius in 1896. Black holes must be a product of modern science, surely? Black holes first proposed by LaPlace in 1796. The concept of resource depletion goes back to Jevons and Malthus.
Today we have the best ever pool of ideas, covering virtually every possibility and the best ever mechanisms for moving information around the planet and analysing it. It seems that if even a highly controversial idea has merit, it eventually gets into the mainstream.
The second question is, is a gestation time of 50 years too late for us to react? That will remain to be seen.
In around 350 BC the Mayans predicted global calamity in December 2012 via their "Long Count" calendar.
I note many people on this site predicting along the same lines....
Look for more of this connection.
On this certain day in 2012 the the Milky Way will be
pointed directly at the rising Sun (King).
Temples and Mayan cities were laid out, I believe, to
capture thiss moment.
The "door" being opened for the Sun (King) to walk thru
to Polaris (?).
I believe this will also mark the end of the Age of Pisces(?) and begin Aquarius (?).
The vid Zeitgeist covers this in more detail.
All religions are based on rule by the stars.
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
December 2012 will be the end of a very long cycle; it's not a prediction of disaster. That's New Age blarney useful for selling books, author tours, and for workshops and requisite travel packages to the Yucatan for the "spiritual tourist".
Mesoamerican people have a very complex understanding of recurring cycles because they have been observing them for thousands of years. The Mexhika (Mexica, aka the Aztecs) are still watching, though they keep a very low profile. The cultures of these areas understand that life is about constant change.
Climate Change and Peak Oil happening at the same time isn't a coincidence, they both have the same root cause - overpopulation.
Forgive me for not being so optimistic about mainstream media coverage. I am still seeing plenty of articles blaming the high prices on speculators and stating that peak oil has been predicted five times in the past and is always failing to account for technology advances.
Clint
Hey, at least you can plough a golf resort and reclaim te land for agriculture with not too great difficulty.
Ther may be some difficulty called 'money'. It may be great depending on who owns the golf course.
I was discussing with afriend of mine about Biodiesel, but I didn't know the numbers by heart. He claimed that an area the size of France was enough to provide west europe with Diesel. Seemed a bit optimistic to me.
Does anybody have the numbers:
- How much diesel per Ha
- What is the EROEI (+ error margin)
- How much Diesel does europe use?
and if possible
- How much land is available to do this, i.e. not used for food crops?
Thanks
Hello Richard
On the farm I owned until 1996 I grew rapeseed for oil.
Average approx 1000 l /ha) of rapeseed oil. More details can be read here (in English) http://www.folkecenter.net/default.asp?id=9192
Ignoring the finer print you get.
Rapeseed oil approx = 34 MJ/l ;
Diesel approx 36 MJ/l
1 ha = 1000 l rapeseed oil can supply 15.000-20.000 km driven with European! diesel cars. This is close to 1 cars yearly consumption.
So a very simple assumption is 1 ha = 1 car and In Europe there are 1 passenger car per 2 people so
1 Ha = 2 people;
EU 25 = 400 million people = 200 million Ha = 2 million km2 which is 4 times France ( 540.000 km2)!
Currently agriculture accounts for over 40% of all land use in Europe (around 5 million km2)
http://countdown2010.net/archive/agriculture.html
So Passenger car transport alone would need 2/5 = 40% of all agricultural land in Europe.
EROEI for crops like wheat are 4.5-6 if straw is included and Rapeseed is possibly somewhat poorer, because of the lower total yield. Maybe 3.5-4.5.
Kind regards/ And1
I just consulted Robert Rapier who says:
I suspect the land use / land availabiity issue will be as much a clincher for bio diesel as eroei.
Apart from farming effort biodiesel gets a fossil boost from NG derived methanol. If say it consumes 20% unrecovered methanol worth 20 MJ/L that could be a gimme of 4 MJ/L.
The other thing that could kill canola is increasing pesticide resistance. Some say the acrid oil in mustard will compensate for lower yields. I think biowaste gasification based processes like Choren Sundiesel have to be the way to go if the capital cost and logistics can be simplified.
Here are some notes I took from a conversation I had with Pimentel protege Tad Patzek about the potential of biofuels, last month:
Jatropha:
Soy: yields around 500 kg/ha
Switchgrass: Takes 4 to 5 years to grow a mature crop.
1-2 years to establish, then crop for 3 years (adding progressively greater amounts of fertilizer) and then it peters out.
Any way you slice it, with biofuels you wind up depleting the soil.
The U.S. couldn’t possibly even produce 10% of total fuel mix (~2 mbpd) of biofuels…it would be too much. Plus the environmental risks of even a 10% offset would be too high to even try it.
CNG and EVs first, not biofuels! 10% offset using EVs is easy and available right now
--C
Energy consultant, writer, blogger www.getreallist.com
I pretty much agree with that Chris. CNG = compressed nat gas? We've had vehicles running on that for decades in the UK - but not very many of them - no room for golf clubs in the trunk.
Yes on the CNG. I am a little dubious about them too but T. Boone seems to think they have a bright future. I take it he (and others) believe that there is going to be a revolution in converting stranded NG to CNG/LNG as oil depletion sets in.
--C
Rapier also said that if we planted all four billion arable acres of land in the world with the most popular biodiesel feedstock, rapeseed, we could produce just under 30 million barrels per day of biodiesel, or just over a third of our present usage of petroleum. And when we take into account all the energy inputs to grow, harvest, and process the rapeseed into fuel, the net yield will be very low, or even negative.
--C
Anecdotal evidence from France
My neighbour works for a market gardener, who plnted one hectare of rapeseed this year for biodiesel, and is running it through his tractors. Hasn't yet decided whether to plant more next year, or drop the idea (apparently the newer tractors are fussy about biodiesel).
It's interesting because it's purely an economic decision with no subsidies involved (and I suspect, not captured in any statistics). As it happens, this guy has plenty of spare land, currently in pasture, that he could convert to biodiesel if he wanted.
Which leads me to speculate about a trade-off between transport and meat... beef and dairy are the biggest consumers of agricultural space around here. I have given up beef, which is about the most costly of foods in terms of energy and land use. What is the pasture footprint of your average beef-eater, I wonder?
Richard, the eroei for temperate latitude bio-ethanol is around 1.2 at best. I believe bio-diesel is marginally higher, but this is still a hopeless way to try and power an industrial economy.
The land question boils down to whether or not fuel crops can be grown where food crops won't grow, or whether they can be produced from the waste products from food crops - celulosic ethanol et al. In either case, there are serious issues with the amount of energy that needs to be added to get the crop to grow and nutrient depletion of the solis.
The current trend where good agricultural land is being used for fuel crops is contributing to a global food disaster. In addition to food production lost to biofuels, climate change (man made or not) is pressuring crop production and growing prosperity in Asia is leading to more meat being consumed - which eats into plant availability at a ratio of around 7:1 - I beleive.
The future of transportation has to be electric - IMO. Both electric cars and collective transport. The electricity will have to be provided by a combibation of nuclear and renewables, where wind and direct solar look like having the greatest potential.
Re EROEI , Richard and Euan
I agree fully on Euan's conclusions for farmland. And the electric future.
Bioethanol is a terrible waste of land and the food/energy produced in farming. And Bioethanol EROEI in temperate climate is < 1.7 even when including the use of the remains from the ethanol fermentation for animal feed.
What I was exemplifying was the growing of rapeseed for biodiesel, using the straw and rapeseed cake directly for district heating, and using the rapeseed oil directly as Diesel replacement- no Bioethanol involved. The higher EROEI comes mainly from the direct combustion of the biomass coproduced, which can be made with > 95% thermal efficiency. Now back to data.
http://www.folkecenter.net/default.asp?id=9192
1 Ha : gives (optimistic data)
rape seed oil : 37,53 MJ/l x 1086 l/ha = 40,76 GJ/ha
rape cakes : 19,32 MJ/kg x 2000 kg/ha = 38,64 GJ/ha
rape straw : 14500 MJ/ton x 3,9 ton/ha = 56,55 GJ/ha
Total: 135,95 GJ/ha (100%)
Recent Danish energy numbers for growing Wheat (which needs more fertilizer than Rape) (fertilizer, spraying, Tractor, harvesting etc.) are 14.5 GJ/ha and for Barley 13.7 GJ/ha.
(http://ing.dk/artikel/69914); http://www.agrsci.dk/djfpublikation/djfpdf/gvm260.pdf
So you get approx. 40 GJ fuel by spending ca. 14 GJ. Which should give an EROEI close to 3.
Soil will be depleted, when all the biomass is removed. On top of that, rape has to be sprayed with pesticides insecticides/ fungicides or you could loose your crop completely (EROEI = 0).So monoculture is very difficult/ impossible and crop rotation must be used. Altogether not promising for a sustainable future.
Kind regards/And1
.
This is for bio-ethanol, but most bio-diesels using current production methods fall in between the best and the worst (excluding fossil oil of course).
This is from a recent meta-study last year that calculated averages from various studies.
Unfortunately I don't have enough data for sugar cane and various bio-diesels. Also, it'd be nice to have a box-plot of these, but again - I lack the data.
It is quite obvious that even though the fossil oil net energy ratio may vary quite a lot these days depending on country, field, phase, etc, that it is still superior to all known current bio-fuel production methods.
Theoretical paper only productions and theoretical models excluded.
The ratio of energy output to energy input is not a good parameter for characterizing the economic quality of bio-fuels (or any other form of energy production for that matter). What matters is the net energy produced per unit of some non-energy related production resource expended. For the production of bio-fuels the most obvious resource to be concerned about is acres of cultivated land. If the gross energy output from A acres of and is O and the input energy is I then the efficiency with which land is converted into fuel (i.e. net energy per acre) is given by:
η = (O-I)/A = [(O-I)/O]×(O/A)
The term in square brackets is the fraction of the output energy which is left over after the input energy is subtracted out. I call this factor the energy utilization rate µ. Since EROEI = O/I, µ=(EROEI-1)/EROEI. The second factor (O/A) is the land efficiency of gross energy production. This factor is important in understanding the energy productivity of land and it cannot be calculated from energy inputs and outputs alone. The table below converts the EROEI numbers for corn, wheat etc. into energy utilization rate.
I included conventional diesel fuel rather than oil. The 20 to 1 number often quoted is for oil at the well head. Since we do not burn raw crude oil in our transportation engines the correct comparison is to refined petroleum fuels. Refining crude oil is an energy intensive process. The numbers in the table were derived from a DOE report comparing the life cycle energy balance of bio and petroleum diesel fuels. The ethanol outputs per acre were taken from Lester Brown’s book Plan B 2.0.
I am not in any way suggesting that the energy utilization rate µ can by itself be used to compare the economic quality of bio-fuels and refined petroleum fuels. The economic quality of energy can never be determined from energy outputs and inputs alone. In the case of bio-fuel it is clearly necessary to know the gross output per acre in addition to µ in order estimate the energy productivity of land using a specific crop. From the table below it is clear that sugar beets will far outperform wheat even though its energy utilization rate (or EROEI) is only slightly higher. The land intensity of net energy production is the key to understanding the limitation of bio-fuel use. Of course petroleum diesel does not require farm land for its production. The amount of gross fuel output produced per unit of labor or per unit of capital equipment expenditures would be more relevant to determining its economic quality.
Roger, thanks very much for this contribution. I am not an expert in this particular area but two points you are making here are clearly important.
The first is linking productivity per acre to eroei. From the above table, sugar beets looks like the best bet so far. But of course we also need to link in soil sustainability.
The second is the low eroei figure you quote for petroleum diesel. Nate has banged around some low eroei numbers for petroleum from onshore USA and its quite clear that biofuels need to be compared against contemporary petroleum sources - and here I believe we have a bit of a data vacuum.
SamuM - thanks for your contribution too. Its good to get these figures.
Thanks Roger K.
Do you have a good reference(s) on that?
I'd really appreciate it.
I am not sure exactly what references you are looking for. The idea of resource efficiency as the ratio of the net output of a production process to the net expenditure of a particular kind of production resource is a very general economics idea which I have picked up by osmosis. The application of this concept to energy production and the definitions of the energy utilization rate and the resource efficiency of gross energy production are my own (currently unpublished) ideas. At least I have not stumbled on any other writers who analyze energy production in these terms.
If you are interested in the energy balance of refined petroleum fuels, here is a link to the NREL study I mentioned which compares the energy balance of bio-diesel to conventional petroleum diesel. This report is 314 pages long, so there might be more information there than you really want.
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24089.pdf
Too much is always much better than too little. Much appreciated!
This is an interesting analysis. The idea of net energy (or EROEI) is to attempt to look beyond metrics that just parse things down to dollars, in a world when everything can't easily be parsed to dollars.. But land is just one of the inputs that may be limiting. Your 'energy utlilization rate' shows much higher numbers for diesel from petroleum than for biofuels; if you include water or soil in the analysis, the difference would even be greater. In other words, fossil fuels are SO superior to others in many of these respects that we have taken for granted the land intensity, water intensity, soil intensity, etc. Cutler wrote a good guest post on that here
To just focus on EROEI as a replacement for $ROI, falls fallacy to exactly why we shouldn't be using dollars in the first place - its too narrow a metric. Multicriteria analysis that treats water, soil, etc not only as inputs but as potentially as limiting inputs as energy itself will be important. I have a paper will be online soon in AMBIO on this - i can send to anyone who wants a copy.
In other words, fossil fuels are SO superior to others in many of these respects that we have taken for granted the land intensity, water intensity, soil intensity, etc.
I agree completely. Energy is not the only important production resource. Fresh water and fertile soil are in finite supply. We are never going to have enough energy to grind up bedrock to make our own soil. Using such resources to produce energy carries substantial opportunity costs with respect to lost economic production of other types. Single resource analysis of economic production is inevitably inadequate. I will check out your paper when it becomes available.
The key phrase is "current production methods". It is possible to eliminate fossil fuels from the equation by changing production methods. Modern organic farming methods can remove anhydrous ammonia from the equation. Fermentation and partial distillation (140 to 180 proof) could be done on or near the farm using corn stover for fuel. Wind and solar could also be used as heat sources. Final rectification could be done at a central distillery that uses renewable energy. The ethanol can be used to fuel the tractors and trucks needed for production. The same could be done with biodiesel from the corn oil.
Dear Euan,
You, sir, are a fraud and a liar. That is not a picture of any place in Scotland.
Why, you scoundrel, one sees blue in that sky. There is no blue in an Aberdeen sky. As for the apparent sunlight, there is no sun in Scotland.
Scotland is grey, all the year round. Everyone knows that. Everyone. As for sunshine? You are either a travel agent, property developer, or estate agent in real life.
There are only two colours in the country of Scotland. Dismal grey, and the black of night. Stop perpetrating this misrepresentation upon the naïve and gullible. Cease and desist. The truth demands it.
To paraphrase the quote attributed to Mark Twain, "The coldest winter I ever saw was the summer I spent in Scotland."