What is the value of Energy?
by Bob Duval
If I had the time and energy, I?d write an essay on this question. $100/barrel of oil? $3.20/gallon of gasoline? 8cents/Kilowatt hour electricity? I pay them all for energy, as measures of its cost. The economists tell me that a commodity?s value should be related to its price, and whoever wants to supply it at that price. The fact that I pay all these differing amounts for differing types and quality of energy appears, however, to be only the tip of a set of increasingly disconcerting icebergs. The gallon of gas that gets me to work, and the grocery, and Cooper?s Rock, saves me immense amounts of time. The grocery would take me 40 minutes round trip on foot, and work would be an hour and a half. Cooper?s Rock would see me only a few times in a lifetime on foot, and only every few years on a horse. Buying energy buys me time ? extraordinary quantities of time. And indeed, that is where I find its greatest value. The time I don?t spend walking, riding a horse, chopping firewood, brings me life in abundance.
Time and energy questions run deep in life. As it turns out, an energy calculus lies at the basis of ecosystem balance, with the transfer of calories (read energy) up and down the food chain. The cheetah must make an intuitive cost analysis every time it chases a gazelle. Does the probability of a successful catch balance the expenditure of calories needed to acquire the next meal? Bad accounting leaves a cheetah too weak from chasing the wrong meal and so inevitably becomes the hyena?s next meal. Survival on the top of the heap in the Serengeti requires one to be an accomplished energy accountant. PBS has taught me much about energy.
So we have become fat and happy on our energy savannah. We harvest gazelles by the ton, the barrel, the gallon, the watt. Unlike the cheetah, we have such an abundance of calories that we can do, and build, and visit, – and live – a long time. It is no coincidence that the calories that are our standard metric of watching our overabundant diet is the same as our engineering standard for measuring the heat content of our fuels. Energy permeates our every decision ? because it is now so small a part of any one daily decision, having become the underpinning of them all.
In the end, energy is time, and time is life. We do get about four score years or so, refrigerated food and a warm fireplace having added years upon years to our time. The unencumbered hours that accumulate into weeks and months and ultimately more years give us life and existence well beyond the dreams of prehistoric man. I am wont to relinquish my energy feed for it is measured in the days I have on the planet. And without the constant burden of the fields and the forest, they are nice days, easy days, some would say lazy days because more energy means less effort.
Yet ultimately, the energy savannah is also an ecosystem that operates on fundamental laws of nature that we really don?t fully comprehend, and which our governments regulate with human laws and policy that often put us in conflict with our own values. As we harvest gazelles by the ton and the barrel, we must reflect on what the abundance of gazelles does to the grass upon which they must feed, and the water they must drink. More gazelles must mean less of something, sometime. We do not live above the savannah, but in it. As we work to preserve our supply of gazelles, we will need to account well. For the cheetah, accounting comes down to, ?Is that one worth the chase?? For us, it is now, ?If I must spend more for gas for my car, what do I get less of??
I like gazelles, they are really rather tasty. In fact, I feel I can?t live without them. An occasional antelope would be OK, but I really like gazelles. They are easier to catch. It saves me time?and life. But, my doctor, who is a scientist, has told me, ?It?s about time you went on a diet.? And that is it, isn?t it? It?s all about time?
