What is the value of Energy?
by Timothy R. Carr
Editor?s Note: Timothy R. Carr, the first Marshall S. Miller Energy Professor, gave the following presentation at the November 28th, 2007 ceremony recognizing WVU Geology and Geography Alumnus Marshall Miller for his contribution to WVU. Professor Carr credits Energy at the Crossroads by Vaclav Smil of MIT for many of the insights Prof. Carr makes in the presentation. Prof. Carr graciously allowed me to include his presentation as a response to our question, ?What?s the value of energy??
First I want to thank Marshall Miller for his hard effort in creating this position. I want to thank the University for providing these excellent facilities that we as the Department of Geology and Geography occupy. Thank you to Eberly School and Dean Ellen Mazey for being tenacious, patient and flexible. It has been a long process. I want to thank the members of the department and our Chair Trevor Harris for taking the leap and offering the position. I want to thank my son Joe, who is putting up with a part-time dad during his senior year at high school. (I hope he will visit Morgantown someday, he doesn?t know what he is missing.) And finally my wife Margaret whose only comment to suggestion that we move to West Virginia was ? ?Let?s do it.?
In terms of energy, we are at crossroads and I would broaden that to a crossroads in terms of all our natural resources. Resources include not just the materials and energy we use, but the water we drink and the air we breathe. Providing for our world’s future energy and resource needs is one of the great challenges in the earth sciences. Increasing world populations (6 billion topping out at 9 billion in 2075) have justified demands for higher standards of living that require more access to energy. In addition there is a need for less pollution, a need to address greenhouse gas emissions, all coupled with a shortage of scientific and technical personnel to address our energy needs (More than half of the personnel in the energy and mining industries are within a decade of retirement). Without energy, our entire industrial, cultural, and health infrastructure would collapse; this infrastructure includes agriculture, transportation, information technology, communications, and much of the prerequisites of our community and university that we all take for granted. Art and science do not exist without energy.
The tough issue that we face is that energy production must increase, and conservation will only slow that increase but can’t stop it. Energy is a global commodity and global issue, the price of oil and coal is determined by global markets. In a world where populations are increasing and economies are industrializing, the idea that global energy usage will remain flat through conservation is not realistic. The problem with believing that worldwide energy production does not have to significantly increase in the remaining decades of the 21st Century is to ignore, no to dismiss, the rest of the world that desires access to energy resources.
In the United States, each person consumes about 327 million BTUs per year, which is the energy equivalent of 56 barrels of oil or 15.6 tons of coal. That is about 6.5 gallons of oil or 86.5 pounds of coal for every person every day. As of 2000, there were 28 countries in the world with per capita incomes over $15,000 per year. These are the developed nations or let?s say the rich and blessed countries. We numbered 787 million people and each year each individual consumes on average 216 million BTU?s (37 BO/P/Y). We represent only 15% of the world’s population, but we consumed 68% of the world’s energy.
Countries with huge populations such as China and India, along with most of Latin America and the rest of Asia, are industrializing with astonishing speed, yet their total energy consumption is only beginning to rapidly increase. The per-capita annual energy consumption of the 85% of humanity with average incomes under $15,000 was 23 million BTUs per person, barely 10% of the average for the rich world. That is about 3.5 pints of oil or 6 pounds of coal per person per day (New meaning to the Dickins? ?another lump o?coal? or ?more porridge, please?). However, it has been shown in numerous studies that per capita consumption of about 100 million BTUs per year (95 GJ) is required – no it is necessary – to provide just barely minimal living standards where infant mortality rates just begin to decrease and approach 20 per thousand and female life expectancies at birth begin to exceed 70 years.
So if the per capita energy consumption in the developing world were increased to only 50% of that consumed by the citizens of industrialized nations, and if everyone in the prosperous industrialized nations were to conserve themselves down to that same level. That is, if everyone on earth got by on only 100 million BTU?s of energy per year (17 BOE) energy production worldwide would have to increase. It would require an almost 50% increase of energy production to 600+ quadrillion BTU?s of energy, compared to today?s worldwide production of approximately 400 quadrillion BTU?s. There is no way that energy production can NOT increase. While we can feel good turning off the lights or installing compact fluorescent light bulbs this will not solve the challenge of this century.
While the challenge is daunting, I for one believe that we will rise to it and offer the following ideas.
First, avoid wishful thinking, and uncritical advocacy of publicly preferred solutions. The solution will be a long hard slog and will require deliberate action, extremely high technology, and high capital investment to get where we need to go. Historical perspective indicates that energy projects and transitions are long-term, deliberate affairs.
Second, I want to stress the extraordinary scale of the effort. Installing compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) in every light fixture in the U.S. would only meet 4% of the forecasted future energy needs of the U.S. As Stephen Pacala a few weeks ago stated in his lecture on this campus, it will take 1 million wind generators to address only 1/7 of our future needs. He did not mention that such an effort would require completely covering an area the size all of West Virginia, plus Pennsylvania and Ohio in cheek-to-jowl wind generators. Any shift to non-fossil energies is an order of magnitude larger task than was the transition we made from phytomass to fossil fuel during the 19th and 20th centuries. The pace of the transition will be much slower than is commonly assumed by the public and by the political elite.
Third, every – and I stress every – forecast from every energy agency ? U.S., European, or otherwise – predicts that the vast majority of our energy will be provided by fossil energy through 2050. It took 30 years to bring coal-bed methane and shale gas to the point of providing 15% of U.S. production, and similar lengths of time and many billions of dollars to just begin to develop the huge fields in 10,000 feet of water off the Gulf of Mexico (that is two miles of water), and the 1.7 trillion barrels in the tar sands of Canada. (Note the entire world has consumed 1 trillion barrels since the late 19th century, so these are not insignificant resources.) There is a need (no there is an obligation) to begin work to develop these future fossil and non-fossil energy resources and the infrastructure to process and to distribute the energy to light our homes, power the computers in our offices, and provide the transportation for our children and grandchildren.
The palette of available energy choices is broad and must include significant research investment in all energy resources. (I would add that as of this year the U.S. federal government is one of the very few in the rich world that does not directly support oil and gas research – the MOST critical component of our energy system.)
The solution is not one-dimensional. It does not consist of simple low-tech and low-cost devices as envisioned by the true believers, biased proponents and instant energy experts. (I have received more than my share of calls from inventors of perpetual motion.) It will require hard dedicated work over many decades from large numbers of bright young people with strong technical backgrounds in the geoscience and engineering disciplines. People focused on providing large-scale solutions to the extremely large quantities of resources required by our civilization in an economically viable and environmentally sound manner. I would add that we WILL have to mitigate the inevitable mistakes, accidents and harm to the environment that we WILL make as part of our human activities. To provide these bright well-trained young people with geoscience expertise to society is the role of higher education and West Virginia University.
I will attempt as the Marshall Miller Professor of Energy to contribute energetically to this effort.
Thank You
