The big picture on Energy in 2023

After the American Century

Newspaper stories about energy tend to focus on particular countries, new technologies, or one energy sector at a time.  But what is the big picture?  Here are a few facts of the matter.

Is coal being phased out, since it is the very polluting compared to most other energy sources? In the world as a whole, coal consumption continued to rise until c. 2010. Since then it has been leveling off, but it has begun to rise again after the worst of the pandemic was over. Some countries are moving away from coal, notably the United States, but others are increasing their reliance on it, notably China. A bit more than half of all coal consumption takes place in China. For another generation, coal will still be a dominant fuel.

Is world energy use rising along with the increase in population?

These changes in coal use are not related to population growth in any simple way. US population is growing, but coal use there is not. In China, the population is not growing, due to the long enforced "one child per family" policy. But coal use is rising in China, at least in the short term. In other words, every country has a somewhat different resource base and situation. In general, as the standard of living increases, so does energy consumption. However, the most advanced forms of housing and transport break that rising curve. Well insulated buildings with solar panels make many new buildings self-sufficient.

Is the problem of energy one of supply? or perhaps the technologies we need are not yet commercially developed?

The biggest problem used to be that the technologies of extremely efficient energy production and use were too expensive. But in the last decade that has changed, and the biggest problem is the failure of politicians (and therefore of voters) to adopt the changes that are now possible. More than half of all the new cars sold in Norway are now electric vehicles. In contrast, equally rich and more densely populated Denmark is far behind Norway. If Denmark were an automobile producing nation, this might possibly make some sense, but it has no automobile factories at all. Unhappily, it is ill-informed and second-rate politicians who are holding Denmark back on this matter. One can see the same thing in the United States. where some states, notably California and Massachusetts, have energy policies that are excellent, while other states, notably those in the Old South, have terrible records on making the energy transition. I cannot say this strongly enough: today the problem is more social and political than it is technological. Don't believe it? Then consider that Costa Rica gets more than 95% of its electricity from solar, wind, hydo, and geothermal, while few of the other small central American countries come close to that statistic. 

How much energy is generated by wind power?

In 2021, for the first time solar and wind power supplied more than 10% of the world's power. But this general figure hides large disparities. The 10% figure is accurate for Japan or Argentina, but a few countries are far ahead of that level. Scotland generates more than 90% of its electricity from wind. Denmark also is a leader in windmill technologies, and it routinely supplies more than half its electrical needs using wind. On some windy days, windmills supply all of its electricity. Other emerging leaders in wind power include Portugal and Chile. China, the US, and Germany are investing heavily in this area, and they are the three nations with the biggest production, although these nations are still working to free themselves from fossil fuels.

Where is solar power being used the most?

The largest capacity in solar power can be found in China, whose capacity in 2019 was roughly that of the US, Germany, and Japan, combined.   The cost of solar has now fallen below the cost of burning coal, so it is only a failure of leadership and investment that keeps desert nations from cashing in on this opportunity. But consider that Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries subsidize gasoline prices, making it cheaper to burn petroleum than to invest in solar power. Again, this is, at root, a political problem, not a technological one.

And what about oil?

In 2021 the US consumed more oil than any other country, about 20% of world demand. China was next with roughy 16%, India about 5%. Since the combined population of China and India is well over 2 billion, or roughly six times the population of the US, two things are obvious. One, the US must radically reduce its oil consumption if it is going to help stave off more global warming. Two, even assuming it does this, the enormous populations of China, India, and other Asian nations are going to keep demanding oil. It seems unlikely that the global consumption will fall very much, if at all, in the next ten years. Therefore, improvements in all the other energy sectors are going to be crucial to reducing pollution and cutting back on CO2 from other sources. 

Conclusion

The outlook is rather grim. Oil and coal are almost certain to remain the dominant sources of energy for the next decade. We have the technologies and the knowledge to replace them, but we have not yet shown enough political will to make the change. 

Our energy transition

After the American Century

We are living in the midst of an energy transition, shifting away from fossil fuels to solar, wind, biomass, and other forms of alternative energy. The price of solar power has been dropping rapidly during the last five years, and is now a cheaper source of electricity than windmills and more importantly, cheaper than coal. The price differences will become even larger, as new R&D keeps finding greater efficiencies, and manufacturers achieve economies of scale in production.

Danish windmills

The energy transition is taking place most rapidly not in the nations that were dominant in the old oil-coal-gas energy regime, such as the United States, but rather in nations which do not possess many fossil fuel resources but do have lots of sun, wind, or thermal heat.  Chile, for example, has all three of these, and will soon be supplying most of its energy needs from windmills along its long coastline and solar installations in the large desert region in the north. When I visited Chile last year to attend a conference on energy transitions, I heard many people talk about the vast exports of energy that were possible, too, once high tension lines reached into other South American countries.  Iceland is a leader in thermal heating and thermal electricity, and sunny Portugal is also rapidly becoming a player in alternative energy. 

Old fossil fuel economies are not as quick to change, and they are behaving in quite different ways. Germany has invested heavily in solar and wind power, creating thousands of jobs, and its official policy is to close nuclear plants and get rid of fossil fuels as soon as possible. Britain seems unable to give up nuclear power as a fantasy solution, but meanwhile is muddling through and headed toward more alternative energies, though not with the same pace and determination as Germany. France has long invested heavily in atomic reactors, and of all the nations in the world, has the greatest dependence on them. 

The United States is divided, on this as on everything else these days. Some states, notably California, Massachusetts, and New York, are acting like Europeans, becoming more energy efficient, while investing in alternative power. In contrast, the Deep South until quite recently has invested almost nothing in alternative energies, and uses about twice as much energy per capita as the three states just mentioned. The Federal government is rather schizophrenic, with programs from the Obama years designed to increase energy efficiency and move toward wind and solar power, but run by Trump appointees who are undercutting the programs. Meanwhile, Trump is a strong supporter of the fossil fuel industries, particularly coal. One hopes he will be the last such president, for the long term health of the American economy depends on making the transition quickly, rather than lagging behind. Interestingly, some "red"states in the western US that usually vote Republican are nevertheless rapidly adopting wind mills, because their region happens to have steady, strong wind. This is in contrast to the American South, while has good sun but little wind except for that blasts of hot air coming from its politicians.

China is investing heavily in alternative power systems, and more recently India has begun to cancel plans to build new fossil fuel electrical plants, choosing alternative energies instead. The change is driven by falling costs at least as much as by environmental idealism.

How long will this take? Based on previous energy transitions, which I have studied, the shift in energy regimes takes at least 30 years, normally. But in the past the changes were driven by prices and the comparative versatility and convenience of different sources of power. For example, in factories steam power was not as flexible as electrical power. On the other hand, in 1910 gasoline engines were more convenient on the whole that electric motors to power automobiles, because batteries were not good enough. That problem seems to be all but solved, now, but it took more than a century.  How long will the transition as a whole take? Perhaps only a decade or two more in countries that are really trying to make the change, like Portugal and Chile. Sadly, the US, once a leader in the transition to fossil fuels and again a leader in electrification, is falling behind. The Republican Party is largely responsible, but the Democrats also share some of the blame. US energy policy has been a battlefield for decades. 

The big question is whether in the world as a whole the transition will come quickly enough to overcome the destructive effects of global warming. Since the current US government has adopted the policy of denying the reality of climate change, our hopes will have to rest with the US state governments, thoughtful corporations that shift to energy efficiency and alternative energies (such as Apple), and most importantly, other nations. In this particular area, we do seem to be living "after the American century."  

For anyone interested, I wrote about the earlier energy transition from gas to electricity as the source of lighting in a book that is about to be published, American Illuminations  MIT Press, 2018.

Why the US Should Have Signed the Paris Climate Accords

After the American Century 

I have been studying the history of energy, especially electricity, for three decades.* In fact, I spent much of this spring studying the history of alternative energies and comparing their adoption to the history of previous energy transitions. I can say with certainty that Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Accords will look idiotic to future historians, for at least six reasons.

(1) because global warming is very real and getting worse.

(2) because many places that voted for Trump will suffer terrible flooding as the oceans continue to rise, more hurricanes as the oceans continue to warm up and more tornados, caused by the collision of cold continental air masses with much hotter air coming off the Gulf og Mexico.

(3) because solar and wind energy are now cheaper than coal or oil, as established by the marketplace.

(4) because we are in the later stages of an energy transition that is well underway, especially in countries like Portugal and Chile, where fossil fuel lobbies are weaker than in the US,

(5) because due to this decision the centers of alternative energy research and manufacturing will be less American than they might have been, with China, Germany, and other nations taking the lead;

(6) because this decision drives another wedge between the US and its European allies, weakening American leadership and credibility.

It is as if Woodrow Wilson had tried to stop adoption of the automobile in order to save the harness makers, horse breeders, and stables.

Pulling out of the climate accords cannot be done all at once, however, and this issue should be at the center of the elections in 2018 and again in 2020.

Trump is spitting into the wind of change, and the spit is already smeared all over his face.

* My books on energy history include Electrifying America (1990), Consuming Power (1998), When the Lights Went Out (2010), and American Illuminations (2018, forthcoming) - all published by MIT Press.

Election 2012: Obama's Energy Program

After the American Century

The United States has lacked a coherent energy policy since 1971, when Richard Nixon acknowledged in a special message to Congress that supplies of cheap energy were running out. Nixon, Ford, and Reagan, primarily pursued the supply side, believing that more production was the answer. Carter, who had been trained in engineering as part of his preparation to command a nuclear submarine, knew more about energy than any of those Republicans. He knew that the demand side was just as important, but for the most part failed to convince Americans to become more efficient, or to move the nation toward alternative energies. He put solar panels on the White House, but Reagan took them down.

In 2008, Obama presented himself as an environmentally aware candidate, but energy was a secondary matter in that election. With his focus on health care reform, energy was not the focus of his first two years in office. Nevertheless, in 2009 total US CO2 emissions fell by 7%, and in more recent years the policies of the Obama Administration have sustained this healthy  downward trend. It has subsidized development of solar and wind power, and it has imposed new gas mileage standards, so that by 2016 new American cars should average 35 mpg, or almost 50% more than they averaged in 2008. This change alone will save 2.2 million barrels of oil every day by 2025. This will not mean that US cars are as efficient as those in Europe or Japan in 2025, but at least the nation is moving in the right direction.

President Obama has also invested in energy R & D, particularly in electric cars and new forms of ethanol production that produce fuel from agricultural waste and wood rather than from corn. The Obama Administration has also subsidized energy saving through retrofitting of Federal buildings, training programs for builders, rebates for purchase of more efficient appliances, and subsidies to homeowners to install better insulation. Through such programs the country has toward more efficient energy use and lower carbon intensity. The Obama Administration's goal is “that 80 percent of electricity will come from clean energy sources by 2035.” (Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future, 6) 

Yet at the same time, the Democrats are issuing permits that permit more shale natural gas production and open new oil fields. This includes the controversial use of high pressure water and chemicals underground to force more gas and oil to the surface, which may endanger water purity. But that policy has the short run advantage of lowering US oil and natural gas dependence on unstable governments abroad. The policy is somewhat incoherent, but pragmatic, as Obama pursues the “technological fixes” available that can prolong the old energy regime even as they work to create a greener, more sustainable future. 

On the issue of energy, Obama is not my ideal candidate, but he is far better on this issue than that former oilman George W. Bush, and infinitely better than Romney promises to be. Romney would lower CO2 emission standards, scrap support for green energy, abolish the higher MPG standards, and generally try to pretend that energy is not a problem at all, but an opportunity for the free market to make a killing. Romney's plan would not lower the world's oil prices. It would keep the US dependent on oil and gas, letting other nations get further ahead in the development of wind and solar power. Worst of all, Romney would continue the Bush go-it-alone attitude on global warming. On that topic, like so much else, he is vague, with no clear program.

   

Technology: Energy Rationing or Quotas? America VS. Europe, 2100

After the American Century

In the following, I imagine the world energy situation in 2100, based on cultural differences between Europe and the United States.
 

During the twenty-first century, every nation responded to global warming and the accompanying shift away from fossil fuels to non-polluting, renewable energies. Norway produced virtually all of its electricity from waterpower, and with the addition of windmills and ocean current generation, it became a major electricity exporter after its North Sea oil fields ran out. With the exceptions of Dubai and the Arab Emirates, however, few oil exporting nations made a graceful transition to sustainability, and some ended in bankruptcy. In contrast, solar power gave Greece, Spain, Italy, and North Africa near self-sufficiency. France continued to develop its nuclear system, supplemented by wind energy along the Atlantic coast and solar arrays in the south. Most nations developed a mix of generating sources. This was also the case in the United States, where solar power became the dominant energy form in the Southwest and California, thermal power in selected western locations, windmills in the Great Plains, and wind and current driven turbines off the coast of New England. The United States also continued to burn large amounts of coal, to the distress of environmentalists. The energy footprint of different nations, or regions with nations, varied considerably. At one extreme lay Norway, with virtually no pollution or CO2 emissions. At the other extreme was Russia, which still burned wood, coal, gas, and the remains of its once vast oil reserves. Several of the largest industrial nations of the twentieth century, notably Russia, Britain, and the United States, remained the world's largest polluters. They had attained much greater energy efficiency, but had failed to achieve energy independence, and as a result paid a hefty price for energy imports and CO2 offsets. One economist estimated that on average energy imports to the United States had reduced its growth rate by 1% for every year of the century. 

Yet despite variations in supply and self-sufficiency, there were many similarities between nations. Large private cars and gasoline automobiles could only be seen in museums. They had been replaced by lightweight electric or hybrid electric/ethanol cars.  All nations rewrote their building codes, requiring that new houses be heavily insulated and largely self-sufficient for heating and cooling. To do this, they adopted the heat exchange technologies and housing designs pioneered in Germany before 2010. Heat pumps were widely in use, and many people chose spring-driven models that were wound up manually, usually by riding a stationary bicycle. Thus they could help heat the house and get a workout at the same time. As these heat pumps might suggest, during the early decades of the twenty-first century many hoped that an array of "technological fixes" would permit the high-energy society to keep expanding as before. Entrepreneurs and inventors created longer-lasting batteries, more efficient, cheaper, windmills and durable solar panels that snapped together to cover exterior walls and roofs. New home appliances used energy ever more parsimoniously. Nevertheless, the technological fix was in some ways a mirage.

Despite the many innovations, for decades per capita energy consumption continued to grow, though more slowly than in the twentieth century. If consumers used less energy in any one device, they wanted a never-ending flood of new appliances and gadgets. They bought larger television and computer screens. They wanted more elaborate kitchens. They wanted cars every few years and new mobile phones and laptops even more often. They also wanted a car for every adult. Reductions in energy consumption were the most cost-effective approach to combating global warming, but they proved difficult to achieve in practice. Families found it "natural" to have a home of 140 to 200 square meters, and they resisted attempts to downsize to a more environmentally sustainable 80-100 square meters. The pace of change was slow. It took forty years to eliminate inefficient automobiles and appliances, and even longer to retrofit and rebuild the housing stock. Curbing energy use ultimately proved to be less a technical problem than a human problem. The public had to embrace new energy habits.

Attempts to solve this social problem ranged widely, from the United States, whose strategy relied on the marketplace and individualistic choice, to the other extreme represented by Germany, The Netherlands and Scandinavia, which chose a centralized, top-down approach. While the same technologies were available everywhere, the social organization of energy varied tremendously. Americans felt that every person had the right to use as much energy as he or she was able to produce or to buy from others. Every US resident was allotted an annual energy ration, creating a market where every adult and child was permitted to sell unused personal rations. The federal government guaranteed a minimum price, but it seldom needed to purchase unused rations because demand usually exceeded supply. To make up for the shortfall, Americans purchased Canadian surpluses, or bought the more expensive international energy transfers outside North America. Americans became highly ware of energy tradeoffs, cycling when they could instead of driving, holding house temperatures lower, buying houses with lower ceilings, replacing old appliances with more energy-efficient units. Every year, a few homeless persons with virtually untouched energy rations were paid handsomely to become official members of households in order to gain access to their ration. This was legal, so long as the homeless person moved in for at least half the year. A few people became celebrities by flaunting a retro high-energy lifestyle, notably John "Kilowatt" King, who routinely exhausted his ration in the first two weeks of the year. There were also examples of conspicuous non-consumption, typically environmentalists who bought but did not use extra rations, in this way lowering CO2 emissions and driving up energy prices. A few refused to be part of the rationing system, living completely off-grid. But most managed to live comfortably on their ration. Some cultivated a low-energy lifestyle and made a tidy income selling their unused rations. 

Controls over this system were far from perfect. Rural areas had persistent problems with unlicensed wood burning, which illegally released CO2 and allowed some citizens to appear far more energy-efficient than they were. Occasionally, a family quietly buried a loved one and then delayed reporting the death, in order to retain the deceased's energy ration as long as possible. In public places such as coffee shops, airports, and libraries, some people stole energy. Every electric car, computer, mobile telephone, or other portable electrical device contained a chip that automatically charged a person's account for public electricity use. However, the black market offered pirate adapter plugs that falsified consumer identities and sent the electric bills to innocent third parties. A whole police division focused on stolen rations and energy identity fraud. The American ration system also rewarded anyone who increased the non-polluting energy supply with a correspondingly larger ration, leading many to install vast arrays of solar panels or a windmill park far in excess of their own needs. Thus, despite the quota system, the wealthy often used far more energy than the middle-class or the poor. Yet overall, the American rationing system encouraged energy savings and rewarded homeowners who installed solar and wind power. However, the result was inefficient, insofar as most Americans still wanted single-family housing and preferred to commute to work from the suburbs. The American system also it made various forms of energy fraud attractive, and, for a price, it permitted people to exceed their rations.

In contrast to the individualistic, market-oriented American model, the traditional welfare states of Scandinavia, Germany, and Holland did not permit any citizen to exceed the personal energy quota. In all of these nations, individual energy consumption was strictly monitored, with a energy statement issued at the end of the month, just like a phone bill. An energy bar code was mandatory on credit cards, and exceeding the quota was immediately punished. Attempted purchases in excess of the limit were denied. As a result, when deciding whether to buy an item made of plastic or wood or metal, consumers looked at both the price and the energy quota deduction. At times, it made more sense to purchase a more expensive item because it "cost" less in energy terms. The bar code was also on the personal identity card used in health and human services. While medical tests and hospital care remained cost-free, the energy required to conduct diagnostic tests, such as a CAT-scan or blood test was deducted from the patient's annual quota, though it could not be more than 7% of it. Surgery and medical treatment (as opposed to tests) were exempted from this system. In contrast to the United States, there was no market in unused energy rations. Nevertheless, everyone knew the economic value of energy points, and at times friends and relatives helped one another by putting purchases on their credit cards, particularly near the end of the energy year. At this time any energy unconsumed was credited as an individual tax deduction, retired from the national pool, and sold on the international energy credit market. To help citizens live within their quotas, government dictated that all new housing had to be multiple-unit apartment buildings or row houses, which required fewer resources per inhabitant to construct and inhabit. Their common walls reduced energy losses, and they concentrated the population, making mass transit more efficient. 

The welfare states also reduced their 25% VAT to 10%, and imposed new energy taxes (ET) instead. The ET was based on the amount of electricity and hydrocarbon fuel needed to produce and ship an item. This form of taxation put a premium on buying locally-made products and on transporting goods in new wind-blown ships. The second age of sail featured containerized catamarans, with supplemental solar power. Goods moved more slowly, but the smaller ships could enter more harbors and bring containers closer to their final destinations. As a result of such energy policies, by 2100 the Northern European welfare states collectively had all but eliminated carbon emissions. At the same time, per capita energy consumption had fallen by more than half. There were few class differences in this area. Indeed, the wealthy tended to purchase the most energy efficient cars and appliances, in order to maximize their tax break from unused energy. 

The two systems of distribution (rationing vs. quotas) led to different generating systems. That in Northern Europe was more centralized and more standardized in its components. It was controlled from the top-down. The American system was more decentralized, diverse in its components, and controlled by market forces under federal regulation. Where the American rationing system permitted homeowners to use more energy if they installed extra solar panels or windmills, the Northern European quota system mandated more collective forms of living that by law had to include solar and wind generation, as appropriate to the site. While Europeans did not permit anyone to be off grid, Americans had made it a constitutional right.

Overall, Americans had halved personal consumption, and non-polluting energies supplied 60% of their total supply. Yet, oil and gas imports continued, and the United States remained one of the world's most polluting nations. Its energy consumption was almost double the European average and three times the Chinese average. American energy overconsumption continued because consumers long resisted reforms that came more easily in India, China, and Japan, where the high-energy style of life and wasteful habits had never become as entrenched. Indeed, it had been an "Asian century", as Europe had grown slowly and the United States performed erratically. The sprawling high energy cities of the South and West fared particularly badly. Their boom from 1945 until 2010 had built up a sprawling infrastructure that was uncompetitive when energy became expensive. The economy was so inextricably intertwined with intensive energy use that the rising costs for oil, gas, and coal proved lethal to growth. Politically conservative, the region resisted both urban re-concentration and conversion to zero emissions.

Yet if the twenty-first century belonged to efficient energy regimes, global warming affected almost all nations. A few areas benefited from it, notably mountainous Norway. In the southern Saharan desert, higher temperatures brought monsoon rains that made the region greener than it had been for two thousand years. Simultaneously, an enormous solar-powered Libyan project desalinated sea water and transformed the northern Sahara through irrigation. It was impressive in scale, but it scarcely removed as much water from the sea as it flowed into from the melting glaciers of Greenland and the thawing permafrost of Canada and Siberia. Deserts spread in the United States, Mexico, China, and Australia, and new desert areas appeared in Russia and India. Low-lying regions such as Bangladesh and some island nations had to permanently evacuate millions of people. Northern regions whose growing seasons once had been too short for agriculture, could now be farmed, and these areas attracted millions of drought and flood refugees. Their resettlement demanded more resources than conventional aid organizations could muster and forced governments to find comprehensive solutions, including building entirely new cities.

Climate change fostered the professions of engineering, urban planning, architecture, and design. Some nations built entirely new cities, and all extensively rebuilt existing ones. Where modern cities had been built around transportation systems, the new cities forced transport underground. The twenty-first century replaced sprawl with concentration, investing heavily in mass transit, bicycle lanes, and new people moving technologies. Where Los Angeles, Houston, or Phoenix once devoted more than half their total area to automobiles, the new cities put electric vehicles and mass transit under the narrower streets, and sought to reduce the surface space given to automobiles to less than 10%, while giving at least 20% to parks and other green areas. The few roads that remained were for delivery vans, ambulances, fire trucks, and the police. In colder climates, some towns revived R. Buckminster Fuller's idea of placing a geodesic dome over an entire municipality, reducing wind chill, harvesting passive solar energy, and visually enhancing the sense of community. However, the same technology was used to reify social divisions in domed, air-conditioned neighborhoods for wealthy persons in Indonesia, India, Texas, and Mexico. Nevertheless, overall the twenty-first century witnessed a renaissance in urban design that rediscovered the spatial traditions of the compact cities that predated industrialization.

A typical apartment building in the Dutch new city of Niew Haarlem exemplifies the energy efficient urban ideal. Built in 2085, the 12-story building is energy self-sufficient. It is so well-insulated that the heat from lights and appliances suffice for warmth. Its outer walls and roof are covered with solar panels, and there are two large windmills on the roof. The flats are extremely soundproof, so neighbors do not bother one another. While the apartments are not large, they are well laid out, drawing on traditions of Dutch yacht design. Built-in cabinets and drawers abound. For those who want interior complexity, some flats have multiple levels that provide spatial variety. Few residents need or even want a car, because the city of 300,000 is so compact that all areas can easily be reached by bicycle, walking, or mass transit, usually within twenty minutes. High-speed electric trains connect the city to Amsterdam and other major cities. Shopping for many small items occurs locally, but most goods can also be bought on-line or by cell phone. Orders are delivered to the concierge in the foyer of the building, usually within 24 hours. Every year the residents receive a tax deduction because their building is so energy-efficient. Indeed, the residents have a friendly competition to see how much extra energy they can generate using the workout machines in the basement gym, that looks out on a sunken garden where they grow herbs and vegetables. The energy surplus is sold on the international CO2 offset market and put into the building's maintenance fund.

There turn out to be unexpected benefits to living in such a town. With almost no traffic noise or pollution, it has many outdoor cafes and restaurants, and it has become something of a mecca for musicians and street performers, who provide entertainment of a high standard. The cost of medical care is lower, since there are virtually no traffic accidents or chronic conditions related to pollution, and because its citizens walk more and therefore are a bit healthier. The city is so quiet that stress levels are low and hearing loss is uncommon. Employees miss few work days due to illness. The local population has a life-expectancy above the already high Dutch average. Best of all, because energy efficiency has been woven into all aspects of local life, it has become naturalized. In stark contrast to the United States, in Europe, energy has faded away as a domestic political issue.

 

        In foreign affairs, however, the European Union made global warming and energy efficiency central issues and the focus of its international aid. Indeed, the EU has built new zero-emissions cities in Indonesia, Angola, and Bolivia. The rising seas have cost Europeans dearly in terms of ever-higher dikes and defenses against storms. Indeed, the government has moved much of the population inland, away from the worst dangers of flooding, in the process constructing fourteen new cities resembling Niew Haarlem. Europeans do not understand why a few nations still have not eliminated carbon emissions. They do not understand why all nations have not built energy-efficient cities to counteract the ravages of global warming. They are gratified that New Zealand, China and India are moving in the right direction. But they feel that wealthy, resource-rich nations, such as the United States, Australia, Russia, Brazil, and Argentina, no longer have any excuse for their failure to do likewise. After all, most of the technologies needed to build such cities and to eliminate carbon emissions already existed in 2012.

BRIC Nations Driving Global Warming

After the American Century

I recently spent two days at the University of Michigan, attending a conference dealing with sustainability and the US / China relationship. My brief was to deliver a plenary lecture on the history of US energy use, and what that history suggests about the future.

The background for this discussion is the major shift in the sources of pollution that has taken place during the previous five years. In c. 2006 the United States released more CO2 into the atmosphere than any other country. Since then the US has reduced its carbon footprint, and at the same time its total energy use has stopped growing. In contrast, China's economy has been growing at a rate of 9 or 10% every year, and its energy use has shot well beyond the US level. In fact, China alone released more CO2 last year than the United States, Germany, and the UK combined.

When one adds the CO2 from Brazil, Russia, and India, the other "BRIC" nations, the pollution balance shifts even more dramatically. These four emerging economies taken together are demanding more and more energy and they are satisfying this demand mostly through the older polluting technologies. Alternative energies receive lip service. Indeed, the many Chinese delegates to the meeting in Michigan kept repeating that the pollution was created to manufacture things for the West, and therefore the CO2 releases should not be counted against China. 

This is a curious argument. Chinese factories choose to be highly polluting of their own water and soil in order to keep prices down, a subject that was dealt with at the conference. These factories also choose to pay workers poorly in order to keep prices down, a topic that however was scarcely mentioned. Exploiting their own land, air, people, and energy resources in a short-sighted manner, the Chinese are making  a good deal of money. But the CO2 somehow, they think, is not their responsibility.

In contrast, almost all the large western economies have managed to reduce their CO2 levels in the last decade. One must admit that they start from an entirely different position. Per capita, Americans, Germans, and Brits all use far more energy than the average Chinese and enormously more than the average Indian. Starting from a position of excessive energy use, the West can cut back largely by adopting new technologies that are more efficient and less polluting. 

The overall trend is worrisome. The BRIC national economies are growing rapidly, and their CO2 emissions are keeping pace. This is not a sustainable situation. Nor is it a necessary situation.

I explained why in my lecture. Drawing on my  Consuming Power, I briefly summarized the previous American energy regimes from colonial times to the present: muscle power, water power, steam power, electrical power, gas and oil, and the never entirely realized nuclear regime. 

I then drew several conclusions. 

First, that the US has had little or no historical experience with shortages. Shifts in energy use were driven by consumer demands for more rather than the need to replace disappearing sources. 

Second, that since c. 1820 there have been new energy regimes roughly every 40 years. This strongly suggests that the shift to alternative energies will also take four decades, and that it will not entirely replace but rather supplement previous energy sources. 

Third, statistics show that since c. 1940 the largest growth in energy use in the US has been in the consumer sector. Industry has been much better at curbing its appetites. The good news is, that, based on studies of best practices - i.e. using existing technologies - the US could cut its total energy use by 50%. This would not entail any hardships or major changes in lifestyle. Rather, this would mean that per capita US energy use fell to the level of Germany or Denmark. The existing technologies include improved housing insulation and heat exchangers, already in use in Germany, that come close to eliminating the need for most domestic heating or cooling. Heat pumps, passive solar, solar panels, geothermal, burning waste, and wind power together provide a good mix of alternatives. Utilized together with pumped storage of hydro power, they eliminate the bogus argument raised by the oil, gas, and coal companies, who claim that alternative energies cannot provide energy around the clock, because the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow.

Fourth, half of the reduced US energy demand could be met though a mix of alternative energies, including far more than wind and solar power. Again, new technologies are not necessary. What we already have is sufficient to achieve this result. But note that the cost of solar power has been steadily falling, at a rate that economist Paul Krugman estimates to be 7% every year.

In other words, rather than set a goal of unchanged total use, of which 25% is to be alternative energy, I firmly believe that the US goal should be to reduce its energy consumption by half and satisfy the  remaining energy demand by using alternative energies. Moreover, the BRIC nations could do the same thing. Rather than adopt old-fashioned technologies, such as coal-fired electrical plants, they could move directly toward the sustainable goal. Their models should be Denmark and Germany. They should not measure themselves against the US, whose energy use is indefensible and unsustainable. Indeed, there is some evidence that the Chinese have begun to understand this more quickly than the US itself. Certainly China has moved to be a global leader in solar energy.

The fundamental problem of excessive energy use is not technological, but social and political.

Japan's Nuclear Nightmare Is a Warning

After the American Century

As I write this three nuclear reactors in Japan are in various stages of meltdown. The Japanese electrical industry adopted nuclear power plants for much the same reasons that western European nations did: the desire for a secure domestic energy supply, escaping dependence on fossil fuels. In recent decades the nuclear industry has touted the reactor as a clean and safe alternative to CO2 spouting coal-fired plants. While living in the UK I read innumerable newspaper articles extolling the advantages of atomic power, as the only responsible way to meet the nation's energy needs and curb greenhouse gases at the same time. 

All arguments for nuclear power, however, assume placid normality for very long periods. Even though nuclear plants impose the problem of storing waste for many generations, the assumption always seems to be that there will be no earthquakes, no floods, and no tsunamis. They also assume no successful terrorists, no wars, and no serious incompetence inside the plant. Furthermore, several thousand years of nuclear waste storage are not usually in the economic equation. The nuclear industry wants to profit right now and promise us that nothing untoward is going to happen for several millennia. 

The nuclear industry will now take pains to convince us that the meltdowns in Japan are extraordinary, and that the chance of anything similarly going wrong elsewhere in the future are infinitely small. Meanwhile, their public relations people will continue to attack solar and wind power, saying things that are not true, such as it is impossible to store such power. Nonsense. The Dutch, the Germans, and Texans have all shown precisely how it can be done, for example, through pumped storage and compressed air stored in caverns, to name just two methods.

What is tragically happening in Japan is a suggestive scenario for any place that handles nuclear materials, either in making nuclear fuel rods, transporting them to nuclear plants, using them, and then dealing with the tons of nuclear waste produced. This waste will include the entire nuclear plant itself, which cannot operate forever, but eventually must be decommissioned. At that point, it will be highly radioactive inside, and it will have to be guarded 24/7 for generations. Is that an expense we can send to future geneations?

The terrible events in Japan reveal the dangers posed by nuclear power everywhere, and should serve as a warning. This is not a safe or even an economically wise energy path. Far better to reduce energy consumption by increasing our efficiency, building more energy efficient buildings that reduce by 90% the power needed to heat and cool them (no pipe dream this, for it is already demonstrated in practice for houses and office buildings), and moving toward solar and wind power as much as possible.

Did CEPOS Lie or are they Incompetent?

After the American Century

The Danish "liberal Think Tank" Cepos has been spending time and money in the United States spreading dis-information about the Danish wind industry. They falsely claim that less than 10 percent of Danish electricity comes from wind power. The real figure is about double that. Other statements made by Cepos suggest they do not have a good grasp of the history of energy development and that they may not understand how energy markets work.

Readers should not trust the "facts and figures" that Cepos is distributing. Are they lying, or they are incompetent? Possibly they do not know the answer to this question themselves. Their "expert" on energy did not bother to present his argument to univestiy experts to get feedback. This is what people with respect for the truth usually do. But Cepos rushed their misinformation to the American news media. The goal apparently was to show that President Obama was wrong to praise Danish achievements in wind energy. (If Cepos really believed in the free market, they would not need to use their resources to attack windmills, because if they are right then wind power would lose out in competition with other alternatives.)

Why did Cepos take such an interest in attacking wind energy? What is their purpose? Why did they think they should spread misinformation about Denmark in the United States? Who are they really working for? This campaign of falsehoods would please Saudi Arabia, and it would be music in the ears of Fox News. Who is donating money to support Cepos? Any oil companies on the list?

If I were running Vestas, I would sue Cepos for willfully spreading false information about my business. If I were running the Paul Due Jensen Foundation, I might wonder if it was a good idea to give Cepos 1.875.000 kroner in 2007. I doubt that this foundation had any involvement with the Cepos smear campaign against wind power, but their annual report shows that they are a donor.

Another question is whether the Danish government, which often listens to policy ideas from Cepos, will distance themselves from this organization. The Danish government already has a poor record on global warming. after its poor handling of the Climate Summit in December. It has for years directly sponsored Bjorn Lomborg (not a scientist) and his Copenhagen Consensus, spending millions to undercut the work of scientists. Cepos attacks the wind industry; Lomborg attacks those worried about global warming.Is there a pattern here?

Something is rotten in Denmark, and it is not far from the political parties in power. Either they must publlically disagree with what Cepos  has done or they must appear to agree with them.
[If there was a public comment from the (now former) government, it failed to reach my ears.]

Additional comment January 7, 2012: Vestas has had poor sales in the 18 months after this campaign of disinformation, and its stock has fallen precipitously. Presumably CEPOS is delighted that it has done its part to weaken Danish exports and destroy the reputation of what had been a leading Danish company.