Negative on Alternative Energy?

An explanation and a Rebuttal

I want to preface this article with a lament. Being a regular writer on the issue of peak oil and the associated implications, the one constant I must deal with is the lack of feedback, of not knowing how my words, opinions, and assumptions are being received. This article deals with a reader who was sufficiently motivated to e-mail me, an act that led to a brief exchange of e-mails. Many people do not wish to have their comments appear in a public forum as they would in posting a comment to the blog. There are two solutions to that. 1) All comments to the blog are reviewed by me before posting. Anyone who wishes to express a comment to the blog but does not want that comment to be shown on the blog need only request that it not be shown and I would be happy to oblige. 2) Those who wish to make comments off-line are most welcome to do so. I can be reached at any one of three e-mail addresses; richard.embleton@sympatico.ca or poilscribe@yahoo.com or poilscribe@hotmail.com . Any comments or feedback are most sincerely welcome and appreciated. Thank you.

A gentleman (who shall remain nameless) who runs a bio-fuel company (which shall also remain nameless) e-mailed me recently to chastise me for being so negative toward alternative energy options like hydrogen, methanol, ethanol, bio-diesel and so on. On the one hand I am flattered that he thinks my opinion on the matter will have enough impact that he feels the need to try to convince me of the error of my ways. On the other hand I am curious why, out of all the voices criticizing these options, he felt a need to e-mail me. Or perhaps he e-mails everyone who expresses a negative opinion on the subject. That I do not know but a quick google seems to suggest he makes a regular practice of doing so.

Essentially, I believe, this gentleman's point was (and I am sure he will correct me if I am wrong) that if one energy option doesn't pan out (while at the same time not accepting that my criticism of them is valid) there is always another one waiting in the wings. I can only assume that in that he means to suggest that we shouldn't worry, that he sees that as a plus. I see it as the core of the problem.

I politely e-mailed the gentleman back and suggested that our different perspectives on the issue legitimately gave us different and irreconcilable opinions and that if he was looking for support the mainstream media was full of much more visible people than myself lauding all of the energy options I am being negative about. I clarified my position that the only viable, long-term objective is powering down and learning to live within the sustainable energy budget of the planet. I reject the continuous, mindless pursuit of one new energy option after another to keep our unsustainable lifestyle running as long as possible. I also suggested that if he had read enough of what I had written to become sufficiently motivated to send me an e-mail he should also have gleaned from those writings what my basic and consistent point of view was.

My suspicion, rightly or wrongly, is that the gentleman and his company are having difficulty finding a market for their particular energy panacea. Again a quick google seems to also suggest that is the case. Under current conditions setting up as a competitor to corn and cane ethanol, I am sure, doesn't get you many financial backers nor the support of many highly-visible politicians. That lack of support, however, is not, in my opinion, the result of the few voices of opposition like myself. It is, more specifically, the result of the powerful, insidious ethanol lobby that haunts the halls of government. The gentleman should save his energies for the real fight he has to win. Convincing me of the legitimacy of his claims (were that remotely possible) would not help in that battle in any way.

To be brutally honest, I don't give a damn if there are a thousand alternative energy options out there and if they are all economically viable. as we approach and pass peak oil economic viability becomes increasingly irrelevant. Economics is increasingly manipulated in support of that increasingly unsustainable global system. "It's the economy, stupid," is increasingly becoming the way cry of those remaining economists who believe we still live in a world of reality. They have yet to recognize that they are programmed EconoTRONS in a man-made, virtual world that is increasingly divorced from and a poor substitute for reality.

In the end the massive energy resources which support our globalized society are truly unsustainable and in the end we shall have no choice but to learn to live without them. In the interim they subsidize the worsening of the REAL problems such as overpopulation, climate change and global warming, infrastructure collapse and more that we are eventually going to have to deal with. They don't eliminate the problems. They just stave off the day when we have run out of options, but continue to make all of these problems worse in the delay.

I we know that our current global lifestyle is unsustainable and the vast quantities of energy needed to support it are soon going into irreversible decline, where is the logic in carrying on "wasting" those precious resources while ignoring that eventuality? Knowing that the problems will be increasingly serious the longer we wait? Especially when we know that our global lifestyle itself, and our profligate energy use, are prime causes of those problems? Especially knowing that a major, but as yet unknown, amount of those remaining energy reserves are going to be NEEDED to prepare for the real world in which we will be obliged to live sustainably?

Our current global lifestyle is unsustainable. Our current global population is already in overshoot. Our global carrying capacity diminishes each year while the population continues to climb. The life-supporting topsoil of this planet is disappearing before our eyes. What freshwater remains is becoming increasingly and severely contaminated. Human-mitigated species extinction proceeds at a faster clip than any natural extinction in earth's history. Countless finite resources are being pushed rapidly toward depletion through our overabuse. We are a species of consumers. Consumers consume! Consumption is unsustainable. We are, as a species, unsustainable.

It does not have to be that way, of course. the negativism that permeates my writing is not meant to convince people that it is hopeless, that all is lost, that we should simply give up, sit down and wait to die. I am not, by nature, a negative person. But I refuse to view the world through elitist-supplied, rose-colored glasses. Throughout my life I have been a roll-up-my-sleeves-and-do-it kind of person. But I can not personally save the world, even if I would like to.

When I paint things in the negative it is my expression of hope. I have always believed that to solve any problem you must first be prepared to admit there is a problem that needs solving. If the mere mention of the problem of unsustainability of the current global lifestyle is perceived as negative, as doom-n-gloom, how are we ever to solve that problem? If not that, then what is the problem that we are trying to solve? If it is how to keep the current, unsustainable lifestyle humming (derivative of the verb "to hummer") along for as many more decades as possible, that is not a "problem" I am willing to address. Let me put it more assertively. It is a problem I refuse to address. the solution to THAT problem simply perpetuates and exacerbates the real problem. It cures the symptom while strengthening the disease.

The problem before the house is this: How do we move the human species toward a long-term, sustainable footing? No qualifiers! No ifs, ands, buts, what-ifs. How do we do it? Period!

How do we best assure that there is a human species, a human society on this planet at the beginning of the next millennium? And the next after that? Because everything we are currently doing as a society, as a species, strongly suggests we believe that to be irrelevant, that the only real goal worth pursuing is a healthy, corporate, financial balance sheet.

Am I negative? Until we start individually and collectively acting like the survival of the human race has some meaning to us and until we start to demonstrate that we are prepared to commit whatever necessary effort it takes to assure that, whatever the personal and collective economic cost, then perhaps I am. There is a very serious problem. When I see that we are collectively and individually prepared to admit that in order that we begin the effort to solve it then I will be the first to climb on to the roof and wave the banner. Until then I will continue in my negative ways of pointing out that the problem is still there.

The Hydrogen Myth

The first prototype hydrogen fuel cells were built in the 1960s. Over forty years later energy experts and engineers generally believe that practical delivery is still decades in the future. In far less time we went from the Wright brothers' 1903 landmark flight at Kitty Hawk to intercontinental commercial jetliners and our first ventures into space. Any technology like hydrogen fuel cells that is still decades away today and depends in any way on fossil fuels for its development, its eventual delivery or in any way as a source of fuel is not likely to ever see fruition.

Hydrogen has been the fuel of the future for the past fifty years..... and will continue to be so for at least the next fifty years. It's like Al Gore saying he used to be the next president of the United States. Hydrogen's reality is a future that has never come to be. There is also a realistically strong possibility it never will.

The list of technological, economic and political barriers[7] standing in the way of achieving the hydrogen dream is still prohibitively long. Nearly forty years after a 1969 report predicting Americans would be driving fuel cell vehicles in 10 years[1] nearly every report examining the hydrogen potential is replete with words and phrases such as "could", "might", "may", "in theory", "predict", "assuming that", "need to", "must" the ubiquitous "if", and "if all things were perfect". Of course, they have not been and never will be perfect. Those interest which conveniently hide behind such a qualifier know it.

Yes, there are custom built vehicles available on the market today, at a price. "The Shelby Cobras start at $149,000, the pickup is $99,995 and the Hummers run $60,000 for the conversion alone — you supply the Hummer."[1] "A small price to pay for starting a green revolution, says" Tai Robinson, who runs Intergalactic Hydrogen, a company converting Hummers, none of which they have yet managed to sell.

But major carmakers are also heavily invested in research on hydrogen vehicles. Unlike the above options which burn hydrogen in an internal combustion engine like gasoline, the major car makers are all focusing their efforts on hydrogen fuel cells, a technology that has been in testing now for over forty years. Though some of them loudly proclaim that they can roll out hydrogen vehicles within five years those proclamations are filled with qualifiers and ifs that shift the responsibility for achieving that promise to a myriad of others. ".....only if fuel storage limitations can be solved, public fear of hydrogen can be allayed, filling stations set up, and gas prices stay high." says the CBC report Ford: Hydrogen cars could be in production within 5 years.[3] They claim they have the technology but the world is not ready.

Which is the chicken and which is the egg? Should the world build a hydrogen infrastructure for a technology that has always been and remains decades away or wait until somebody delivers on their optimistic promises? Even with that, President Bush has allocated approximately $2 billion in hydrogen highway research and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing to get 200 hydrogen filling stations built by 2010 stretching from Vancouver, British Columbia, all the way down to Baja, California.[2] And one small country, Iceland, has put itself forward as the guinea pig to become the world's first hydrogen economy.[6] "Iceland is full of natural energy and by harnessing these resources, its waterfalls and hot springs, it wants to become the world's first hydrogen economy. ..... Over the next 30 years, it aims to do away with polluting fossil fuels like petrol and diesel altogether....." Several multinational energy and manufacturing companies are partnering with the Icelanders to develop their plans and infrastructure.

But don't expect to see the impact from any of these efforts in your neighbourhood anytime soon. In a rare moment of frankness, a leading Iceland politician stated, "People my age will see the beginning. My children will see the transformation. And this will be the energy system when my grandchildren are grown."[6] Everything about hydrogen is, as it has always been, in the future. And the future for which it would be needed is moving perilously close as we reach the global peak in oil production and begin the inexorable decline in supplies. Considering the naive optimism of past hydrogen predictions his grandchildren, when they are grown, might be making the same statement about the future of their hydrogen economy. And considering the naive optimism of past predictions, it is unlikely that any other nation will commit itself to energetically pursuing a hydrogen economy until the jury is in on the results in Iceland. As the BBC report Hydrogen Economy says ".....the rest of the world is waiting to see if this small country can show the way ahead."[6] In the meantime it is safe to assume they will be carrying on with business as usual.

There are, of course, other contestants in the hydrogen lottery. Ongoing research and development aimed at solving the myriad of technical problems being encountered continues to give rise to new, and often innovative, technologies such as "Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) fuel cells, Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (DMFC), and related technologies such as the electrolyzer (a fuel cell in reverse, liberating hydrogen from electricity and pure water)."[2] It has also led to the development of a new nano-based generation of molecular sieves for deconstructing complex gas and liquid molecules (like air and water) into their constituent parts. Some of these technologies are finding application quite separate from the hydrogen-based use for which they were developed. One of the more interesting (still overly optimistic and very future) developments has been "a method that uses an aluminum alloy to extract hydrogen from water for running fuel cells or internal combustion engines, and the technique could be used to replace gasoline."[5] This came out of quite unrelated research at Purdue University. As yet the developers only foresee that "The technology could be used to drive small internal combustion engines in various applications, including portable emergency generators, lawn mowers and chain saws." Seeming reluctantly they add "The process could, in theory, also be used to replace gasoline for cars and trucks....." One serious limitation of this process, however, is that it relies on pellets made of an alloy "which is made of aluminum and a metal called gallium." Gallium is a metal with a low (30C) liquefaction point. It does not, however, freely occur in nature. "Most gallium is extracted from the crude aluminium hydroxide solution of the Bayer process for producing alumina and aluminum. A mercury cell electrolysis and hydrolysis of the amalgam with sodium hydroxide leads to sodium gallate. Electrolysis then gives gallium metal. ..... As of 2006, the current price for 1 kg gallium of 99.9999% purity seems to be at about US$ 400."[5a] As with all hydrogen options the application of this process is definitely relegated to a not-so-near future.

To date, and it would seem for the foreseeable future, hydrogen is proving difficult to isolate from fossil fuels as both an energy source and as a raw material. "The US Department of Energy estimates that by 2040 cars and light trucks powered by fuel cells will require about 150 megatons per year of hydrogen. The US currently produces about 9 megatons per year, almost all of it by reforming natural gas. ..... It takes energy to split the water molecule and release hydrogen, but that energy is later recovered during oxidation to produce water. To eliminate fossil fuels from this cycle, the energy to split water must come from non−carbon sources...."[8] The problem is, as this report makes clear, ".....producing hydrogen from fossil fuels would rob the hydrogen economy of much of its raison d'être: Steam reforming does not reduce the use of fossil fuels but rather shifts them from end use to an earlier production step....." This report also takes a surprisingly realistic look at the costs of hydrogen as a fuel and some of its other limitations. "Even when using the cheapest production method—steam reforming of methane—hydrogen is still four times the cost of gasoline for the equivalent amount of energy. And production from methane does not reduce fossil fuel use or CO2 emission. Hydrogen can be stored in pressurized gas containers or as a liquid in cryogenic containers, but not in densities that would allow for practical applications—driving a car up to 500 kilometers on a single tank, for example. Hydrogen can be converted to electricity in fuel cells, but the production cost of prototype fuel cells remains high: $3000 per kilowatt of power produced for prototype fuel cells (mass production could reduce this cost by a factor of 10 or more), compared with $30 per kilowatt for gasoline engines."

And it is that cost of producing, distributing, storing and using hydrogen which will ultimately, when reality finally settles in, be its undoing. The problems of cost never have been overcome and never will be, even if fossil fuels are not involved in any stage of the process. Hydrogen can never be more than an energy carrier, not an energy source. It takes energy to produce hydrogen fuel (H2) which does not occur freely in nature but always has to be derived by splitting it away from a complex molecular structure such as water or hydrocarbons (fossil fuels). But hydrogen forms very robust molecular bonds and the amount of energy required to break those bonds, plus the energy required for downstream processing, conversion, transportation, storage and usage will always be greater than the amount of energy hydrogen can deliver as a fuel.

When will we see the hydrogen economy? You decide.

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1) Hydrogen cars ready to roll — for a price: Companies offer internal combustion engine, fuel cell versions
2) Hydrogen Cars
3) Ford: Hydrogen cars could be in production within 5 years
4) Hydrogen fuel-cell cars in dealer showrooms by 2015: industry experts
5) New process generates hydrogen from aluminum alloy to run engines, fuel cells
5a) Gallium
6) Hydrogen Economy
7) How the Hydrogen Economy Works
8) The Hydrogen Economy

Alternative Energy, Add-ons and Replacements

It seems one cannot deal with the subject of peak oil without getting drawn into the peripheral discussion of alternative energy. That whole discussion, however, is full of misunderstanding, misinformation, disinformation and the source of a significantly dangerous false sense of security. One of the most common counters to the characterization of peak oil as a global crisis is a cornucopean belief that as the oil declines we will bring on-stream alternative energy technologies to replace those pushed to the sideline by the oil decline. People point to hydrogen, nuclear, geothermal, wind energy, wave energy, tidal energy, solar energy, bio-fuels, garbage-fuels and more. One or some combination of them will fill the gap, the optimist declares, and business and life will go on as usual.

The average person, when they hear the term "alternative energy" interprets that to mean "replacement energy". The reality, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution has been quite different. The reality has been that every new energy source "discovered" has been treated as an add-on to the existing energy portfolio, not as a replacement of it.

There is, to begin, a common misperception that the fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) were "discovered" in the past couple hundred years. That displays hubris akin to a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible claiming God created the world during some week in 4004 B.C. There is archaeological evidence that coal was used in the Bronze Age over 5000 years ago. There is a debated theory, based on archaeological evidence, that coal was used as a fire fuel as long ago as the Stone Age. Natural gas was the fuel that fired the eternal flames in the Ancient Greek Temple of Rhodes and the Temple of Vesta in ancient Rome. Oil in the form of tar and asphalt was in use as much as 3000 years ago. In 4th century China there were oil wells as deep as 250 metres, that oil transported over considerable distances in bamboo pipelines and used to evaporate sea water to get salt. In ancient Japan oil was called "burning water". Even many of what we call alternative energies have been in use for centuries. Water power was the primary source of energy for much of "industry" during the middle ages.(1) Wind power in windmills and sails goes back thousands of years. Passive solar has been used extensively in many cultures for a variety of purposes. Geothermal energy was employed in Hawaii and by the Maori in New Zealand as long ago as biblical times. Ethanol and bio-diesel predate our modern day usage of both oil and natural gas. Various forms of oils derived from plants have been used for lighting, cooking and heating for thousands of years.(4)

What changed starting at the outset of the Industrial Revolution was the amount of energy being employed by society because of the growth of industrialization. Coal usage in Britain in 1700 before the Industrial Revolution was about 2.5 million tons per year. By 1900 it had grown by a factor of a hundred to over 250 million tons per year.(2) By 2000 global coal usage had risen to 4-billion metric tonnes a year. During the 20th century overall global energy consumption grew from 0.7 terrawatts to over 15 terrawatts in 2004, an increase in energy use of 2142% and an increase of over 640% energy use per capita.(3)

Coal usage in Britain, for example, did not replace the use of wood for fuel before the forests of Britain and Ireland were wiped out, though it could have been used to save what forests remained. In fact, though coal was already significantly in use when the forests were essentially depleted, British demand for wood as a fuel continued with demand being satisfied by expensive imports from the colonies and from continental Europe.

When oil, in the early twentieth century, began its rise to its position of dominance in the global fuel mix, polluting and less efficient coal was not abandoned. The growth in coal demand slowed for a while but over the course of the 20th century, while the population was quadrupling, global coal usage increased six-fold to about 4-billion metric tonnes per pear. And coal usage between 2000 and 2005 grew by over seven percent per year, a faster growth rate than either oil or natural gas. Coal today, despite oil, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, geothermal and other energy sources, still supplies over 25 percent of global energy demand and over 40 percent of global electricity.

Natural gas did not replace coal or oil as an energy source. It was simply added to the list of available energy sources. Nuclear for generating electricity did not replace electricity generated by coal, oil or natural gas. It was simply added to the list. Solar, wind, geothermal, wave, tidal, hydrogen, bio-fuels are not replacing any of the current energy sources. The growth in all of these "alternatives" combined is not sufficient to cover overall increased energy demand or to offset declines in any of the primary energy sources. And because of the high energy demand in building out an infrastructure for any of these alternatives, that build-out itself adds to the energy demand that those primary energy sources must satisfy. Using solar power to run the plant that makes solar panels is not how this technology is being built out.

There is no attempt or intent to correct this common misperception that "alternatives" can and will replace the energy sources on which we currently rely. No one involved in government or the energy sector or in the financial sector has a vested interest in doing so. The makers of electric cars want to make electric cars. The last thing they want to tell the buyer of one of their cars is that the grid will probably fail before their car. With so much global capital invested in the current energy paradigm the last thing anyone in power wants to do is admit that it may soon collapse like a house of cards and that none of the "alternatives" in any combination can "replace" our current energy sources. They see "alternatives" as choices, not replacements, for as long as they can keep the wheels under the "business as usual" train.

Oil, natural gas, and coal are all headed for peaks sometime between now and 2020. Oil will probably be first, sometime within these next 3-5 years. But both natural gas and coal are very minor as commodities traded on a world market and transported around from country to country. Even with coal, ninety percent of all coal is used within the country of origin.

Words often disguise as much or more than they clarify. The term "alternative energy" is totally unsuited for giving the public a true picture of the global energy predicament. It is probably far too late to consider a change but clearly the use of "optional" or "additional" would be more appropriate to describe the way we have treated new energy sources. There really are no new energy sources that can be described as "replacement".
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1. History of Energy - James C. Williams, Ph.D.
2. Coal Mines
3. World energy resources and consumption
4. Population and Energy - Graham Zabel