This article deals with the issue of whether nations need a National Infrastructure Database to prepare for the possibly severe infrastructure management challenges that will manifest themselves as we move past peak oil and head down the post-peak downslope. It was suggested by Geoff Holman of Australia, for which I thank him. Ah, the wonders of the worldwide web. May it last long and prosper. It has made this peak oil dialogue truly global, which it needs to be but which would have been very difficult to accomplish without the internet.
Also see my other articles in this blog on infrastructure;
Peak Oil and the Three Sisters of Social Collapse
Peak oil and overpasses
The myth of permanence: post-peak infrastructure maintenance
Post Peak Dam Maintenance, or Lack Thereof
Our Dangerous Infrastructure
Cascade Failure in River Systems with Multiple Dams
Our Dangerous Infrastructure II
Infrastructure is generally seen as - and loudly proclaimed by politicians and the captains of industry as being - a societal facilitator. In thefreedictionary.com it is described thus; "The term infrastructure has been used since 1927 to refer collectively to the roads, bridges, rail lines, and similar public works that are required for an industrial economy, or a portion of it, to function."[6] And investorwords.com defines it as "The basic physical systems of a country's or community's population, including roads, utilities, water, sewage, etc. These systems are considered essential for enabling productivity in the economy."[7]
But what happens when the ability to maintain that infrastructure disappears and the infrastructure becomes a hindrance rather than a facilitator, such as it will do during the probable long, grinding economic decline accompanying peak oil? When the current infrastructure maintenance professionals begin retiring or dying and aren't being replaced because of ever-tighter budget constraints, who will even know in a broad context what all is included in "infrastructure", where it is, what condition it is in, when it was built, how old it is, how long it should last, what maintenance it needs and when?
Will the same politicians who built their election campaigns around throwing up new feel-good infrastructure be as quick to accept the responsibility for ensuring it's maintenance as the global economy falls into serious, terminal decline? The paper, Deconstructing the Manifest has this take, "of course, maintenance of these "public" projects is left to the public. .....no politician could ever successfully run on a platform of "maintenance" or status quo. The public will is not swayed by the mundane. And so we see our roads and bridges decay, slowly, inexorably,..... Truly comprehensive maintenance is simply too expensive....."[12]
The reality is, as well as facilitating an economy, infrastructure is also a limiting factor for that economy, a constraint. The infrastructure defines the limits within which an economy can effectively function and, more importantly, evolve, adapt and change. For the economy to shift direction, as it must surely do on the peak oil downslope, it suddenly finds that its infrastructure is an impediment. The walls that enclosed and secured the fortified cities of medieval Europe, for example, were a serious constraint as those cities sought to expand and open up as the Industrial Revolution swept across the continent. The established infrastructure of any city suddenly becomes an impediment when that city wants to install rail lines or highways or subways linking the city center with the suburbs and areas beyond. The destruction of the infrastructure of so many European and Asian cities during two world wars, in reality, facilitated the rebirth of those cities around new infrastructure, saved those cities the agonizing decisions and complications of replacing and upgrading their infrastructure to satisfy and facilitate the drastically changed needs of a technology-oriented, growth-driven, post-war society.
The strong probability is that the infrastructure needed and maintainable by a post-fossil-fuel or seriously fossil-fuel-deficient society will be as different from today as today's infrastructure is different from that which existed in pre-industrial Europe. In the past, however, the impediment imposed by seriously outdated and unmaintainable infrastructure was handled by demolishing and replacing that old infrastructure with new. But will this be an option still open to us if we wait until we are on the peak-oil downslope before we start to address the infrastructure needs of the future? We will no longer have the exploitable energy, technology, finances and vast quantities of raw materials needed for wholesale replacement of that infrastructure. The only options left open to us if we sleepwalk into peak oil may narrow down to trying to somehow maintain that crumbling infrastructure in perpetuity or simply doing without as it falls apart. But infrastructure doesn't just shrivel up benignly in the sun like a tomato dropped from the vine. As infrastructure crumbles through age and lack of maintenance it can impose very serious risks on society that could, collectively, jeopardize millions of lives over the balance of this century and beyond.
Geoff Holman, a reader of this blog from Australia, as noted above, graciously suggested an article on the question of building a national infrastructure database to serve as the basis for dealing with the massive infrastructure inventory during the declining economy that will likely occur beginning with peak oil and the downslope beyond. Not surprisingly, various attempts at building national infrastructure databases have been made in the past.
One of the first projects, for example, of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, formed following the terrorist attack on the U.S. on September 11, 2001, was the establishment of a Critical Infrastructure Database. This database was intended as a reference source of all U.S. infrastructure considered critical and susceptible to terrorist attack, infrastructure like nuclear power plants, major dams, water systems of large urban centers like New York, airports, and so on.
Like so many projects begun in the bowels of bureaucracy, the design of this database and the data collected for it was, at best, fuzzy and incomplete. An assessment report issued by the U.S. Inspector General's office in July, 2006 turned out to be a blistering critique. The Inspector General's report cited several deep flaws in the database that underlies the plan, including: "The database’s failure to distinguish the criticality of the approximately 77,000 assets it includes; The database's failure to provide a comprehensive picture of national assets; The need to develop more sophisticated tools to assess risks associated with various assets; The need for substantial additional work to complete the database. ..... The IG report specified multiple flaws that arose in the process of building the database, such as missing ZIP codes, missing facility names and language translation problems. At one point, “officials estimated that on average each [critical infrastructure/key asset] record they researched was missing information for about seven fields,” according to the report. Department officials progressively improved the methods of gathering and processing the data over the past three years, the report added. The IG analysts predicted that the database could eventually grow to hundreds of thousands of records."[11] Another report notes, "Among the critical assets in the database are Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, a Kangaroo Conservation Center, Jay’s Sporting Goods, several Wal-Mart stores, Amish Country Popcorn, and the Sweetwater Flea Market."[9] Partly as a result of the criticisms the database has been morphed into a National Asset Database but the fuzzy design, structure and data-gathering procedures still persist[8].
Whether or not the failings and criticism of the Critical Infrastructure Database/National Asset Database are responsible, the U.S. congress has recently introduced legislation taking another shot at a National Infrastructure Database. "The Dodd-Hagel National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2007 is a bipartisan measure that addresses the critical needs of our nation’s major infrastructure systems. The legislation establishes a new method through which the Federal government can finance infrastructure projects of substantial regional or national significance more effectively with public and private capital. ..... Infrastructure projects that come under the Bank’s consideration are publicly-owned mass transit systems, housing properties, roads, bridges, drinking water systems, and wastewater systems." The focus here, however, is still largely that of future infrastructure projects rather than maintenance of that already in place. Analysts and critics of this new bill, such as the American Society of Civil Engineers, note that "the current condition of our nation’s major infrastructure systems earns a grade point average of D and jeopardizes the prosperity and quality of life of all Americans." According to the Environmental Protection Agency, "$151 billion and $390 billion is needed respectively every year over the next 20 years to repair obsolete drinking water and wastewater systems. Drinking water and wastewater systems range in age from 50 to 100 years in age."[1] One wonders whether any database resulting from this effort will prove any more successful than that of the Department of Homeland Security.
A long, thirty-year career of designing and building information systems, almost always incorporating a database, has taught me that any database is as good as the ingenuity built into the design. Going back after the fact and trying to resurrect a poorly-designed, disfunctional database through retrofitting patches simply further exacerbates the problems and leads to the almost certain demise of the database, like retrofitting new extraction technology to a played-out oil well. Databases, unlike living organisms, do not evolve well. Any database, especially one as potentially complex as a national infrastructure database, needs to have considered in it's design; the motivation behind the database's existence, the breadth of data to be included, the depth of data the database can support, the data relationships to be incorporated which seriously impacts the flexibility, the controls on the purity and veracity of the data gathered, the uses the database is intended to satisfy, the ownership of and responsibility for the data contained, and much, much more. The fuzzy thinking and lack of clarity of potential use of the database that has characterized various government efforts at national infrastructure databases (not just that elaborated above) is and will, in my view, continue to be a drawback of institutional and bureaucratic control over the design and operational management of such databases. And yet I am not, for a moment, suggesting that any such national infrastructure database be privatized and handed over to business and industry. That, in my opinion, would burden such an effort with a purely business-centric, economic motivation rather than gearing it to the societal need it should serve.
For any nation to set out on a course of developing a national infrastructure database designed to help manage the infrastructure inventory on the peak oil downslope and transition into a post-peak, post-fossil-fuel age they must surely first recognize peak oil and the impact it will have on infrastructure maintenance. And considering the amount of feeding from the public trough that will be involved in the design and construction of such a database and the massive drain on public finances that will be involved in mitigating the impact of that decaying infrastructure while the national and global economy implodes, that is going to be an extremely difficult sell. It is an impossible sell when that government will not even utter the words peak oil but insists on perpetuating the myth of the steady growth economy.
There is no question, in my mind at least, that the massive, technology-dependent infrastructure on which our modern society is built is going to be a tremendous and dangerous liability on the peak oil downslope. I simply do not believe, however, and I hope that I am wrong, that any workable database could be developed at this late stage in the game, even if the political will were there to develop it, that could help mitigate the problem. Any such database is itself going to be dependent on a technology and infrastructure that may not survive long enough for the database to be a viable tool during the developing criticality of infrastructure decline. I for one, therefore, will not be joining and grassroots movement to demand that government build such a database. Sorry.
==========================================================================
1) NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE BANK ACT OF 2007
Senator Christopher J. Dodd and Senator Chuck Hagel
2) User Friendly Electronic Database Management System for Infrastructure Maintenance in Small Cities
3) British Virgin Islands Infrastructure and Utilities Broad Policy
4) The Age of Infrastructure
5) Definitions of Infrastructure on the Web:
6) Infrastructure
7) infrastructure
8) Critical Infrastructure: The National Asset Database
9) Critical infrastructure database full of useless junk
10) National Infrastructure Coordinating Center INSight Application
11) DHS asset database can't support vaunted infrastructure protection plan
12) Deconstructing the Manifest
Showing posts with label post-peak infrastructure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label post-peak infrastructure. Show all posts
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Our Dangerous Infrastructure II
The real purpose of war - perhaps unintended benefit would be better phrasing - is to destroy aging infrastructure and produce a justification for spending the massive amounts of money required to rebuild or replace it. This is the intent behind war reparation payments, the victor paying for the reconstruction for the vanquished.
Under peacetime conditions governments and industry seem reluctant to commit the necessary funds and resources needed to properly maintain or replace aging infrastructure. In Europe and Asia the emphasis has been on maintaining old, well-built infrastructure. In America and the neo-west the emphasis has been on controlled demolition and replacement. Europe and Asia build infrastructure to last in perpetuity. In the neo-west we build with a designed life-span, usually not more than fifty years, then try to see how far beyond that lifespan we can go.
Most of the modern world as we know it, visible and invisible, has been built since the conclusion of WWII. Europe, like a phoenix, rose from the ashes of that war and integrated the massive amount of new replacement infrastructure with those bits of the old that had evaded the bombs. Japan and much of southeast Asia had to do the same. But North America - and Australia for that matter - has not had a war to purge it of its aging infrastructure in well over a century. Like Europe, new has been integrated with the old, though that old is much less old than European old.
The core of the unseen and taken-for-granted infrastructure underlying all North American cities large and small, however, is well over a century old and has long exceeded its designed lifespan. Even the shiny new suburbs with their modern infrastructure are tied to and equally dependent on the century-plus old infrastructure at the core of the cities they surround and to which their infrastructure is integrated, e.g. integrated water systems, electrical systems, telephone systems, transportation systems, and more.
Despite the fact infrastructure maintenance is consistently underfunded and maintenance is woefully inadequate - the prefered strategy is most often being to wait until it breaks down because the emergency created makes it easier to justify the extraordinary funds needed to fix or replace it - prodigious amounts are, nonetheless, spent on that maintenance. And that cost rises with each passing year, as does the gap between maintenance required and maintenance performed.
Underappreciated in all of this is that maintenance and upkeep of the massive infrastructure on which our society is built requires equally massive amounts of highly specialized technology and equipment for its maintenance. And therein lies my primary concern and the reason I keep returning to the issue of infrastructure in this blog. As we approach, arrive at and pass peak oil this issue will become increasingly important. Our undermaintained infrastructure, the vast bulk of which has been built in the sixty years since the end of World War II with a designed lifespan generally of fifty years, will be entering a period of terminal decay at the same time as the energy resources of the world, on which their maintenance depends, enter a period of terminal decline. The technology required to maintain that infrastructure will be increasingly unusable as it too decays and as replacement parts or replacement technology are increasingly unavailable. Much of this equipment is specifically designed, engineered and built as a one-off to satisfy the needs of a particular piece of infrastructure. The infrastructure which underpins our society which has always been a societal asset will increasingly become a massive and dangerous social liability.
Our communities, most particularly our cities, are seriously unnatural environments. In order for such large numbers of people, or any species, to live packed together at such close quarters in one place requires all manner of judiciously maintained infrastructure to prevent those places becoming health and environmental death traps. There are very few species that naturally live together in one place in large numbers, and even fewer in the numbers that human communities reach. Ants, bees, termites, corral and bats are a few that come to mind. Ants, bees and termites have worker classes whose job it is to keep the community - the bee hive or the ant hill or termite mound - clean and maintained. Bats live at the top of caves while their waste is dropped to the bottom of the caves where it is used by countless insects and micro-organisms. And corral rely on various species of fish and other marine organisms and the movement of ocean currents to clean away their refuse. Most animals living together in large numbers live in herds that are constantly on the move from one place to another, never staying in one place long enough for their waste to become a problem for the herd. But the safe maintenance of the living environment for community-based species is an ongoing battle for all of them and requires that their communities be frequently abandoned and new communities started. I would very much doubt that we could find an anthill or termite mound or beehive that has been a continuous site of occupation for thousands or even hundreds of years.
The greater the amount of infrastructure there is on which a community relies the greater is the reluctance to abandon it. The more you have, the more you have invested, the more there is to lose in doing so. And for we humans, the longer a community exists the greater the intangibles, such as history and the arts, that are also lost in abandoning the community. The longer we stay in one place the more reluctant we are to move on. Nowhere, it seems, is that moreso than with our cities. Our attachment and commitment to our cities, in fact, is far stronger it seems than our sense of nationalism and patriotism, both of which must be artificially reinforced. Our sense of kinship and belonging with our community seems far more natural, almost tribal by comparison.
This is going to be a serious social conundrum as we slide down the back side of Hubbert's Peak. Those cities, at least the large ones of over a half million population, are simply not going to be sustainable or supportable in a post-peak world. They exist in a virtual vacuum critically dependent on the outlying areas that surround them for their very survival. They will ultimately have to be abandoned but there will exist a passionate reluctance to do so. Serious time and critical resources will be wasted trying to make them survivable and sustainable. There will be powerful voices that remind us of the strong and long-surviving city states of the past like Athens, Rome, Chichen Itza and Machu Pichu. But there is no comparison between them and our fragile, technology-dependent cities of today. As their massive infrastructure decays and becomes increasingly dangerous, that hanging-on will become increasingly dangerous as well.
Even those great city states of the past were abandoned, some many times over the course of history. They also generally relied, it must be remembered, on a significant slave population who, like the workers in the ant colony and bee hive, were responsble for maintaining with brute force the infrastructure of those city states. To expect to take a modern day New York or London or Los Angeles or Tokyo back to the type of city state that existed in the past is folly in the extreme. It simply is not possible, even with slave labour. Our modern cities require armies of highly trained, technically proficient workers to keep them maintained. It can't be done with shovels and hammers. Just as the equipment and technology required to do the maintenance will become unusable because it can't be maintained or replaced, so too will the knowledge base for doing the maintenance begin to disappear as the institutions for training that army of maintenance specialists disappear. One way or another all of that infrastructure will ultimately simply be left to decay.
But what happens as it does? Dams burst. Bridges collapse. Glass fronted steel towers rain down showers of glass shards. Elevators plummet to the sub-basement. Tunnels flood or collapse. Sewers break and release toxins into surrounding soil. Water systems break and cause serious flooding before they eventually stop working all together. Concrete reinforced shorelines break down and weakened soil begins to wash away. Elevated highways collapse. And on and on. When our infrastructure begins to break down for the last time it will not be an "oh well" event. Each of those individual breakdowns will potentially be catastrophic events. The breach of a single dam on any of our rivers is very likely to cause cascade failures of every other weakened, under-maintained dam downstream from the original collapse. Any community in the way will be defenseless.
We do not know exactly when peak oil will be, or if it has already happened. We do not know how rapid the decline in global energy supplies will be on the other side of that peak. But we do know we have a global society based on expansion of the money supply through credit as the underpinning to an economic paradigm of perpetual growth. And we can reasonably surmise that when the global energy supplies go into decline so too will that global economy for industrial growth will stop. When it does it is very likely that the current luke-warm commitment to infrastructure maintenance will all but totally disappear as cost-cutting becomes the primary tool for attempted survival. The rate of decay of that already over-aged infrastructure will accelerate dramatically and there will no longer be the funds, the resources, the commitment, the energy nor the technology to upgrade it or replace it.
And yet our politicians continue to base our short-term and long-term plans on more growth, more new infrastructure, always more. They continue to operate as though our society as it exists can and will go on forever, or at least until they are out of office and it becomes someone else's problem. We cannot and must not allow them to keep leading us further down that path.
We cannot enter this future in such a way that that infrastructure will simply be left to decay. Any infrastructure than can not be maintained in a post-oil, post-technological age must be decommissioned before that age is thrust upon us. We don't need more dams. We need to be decommissioning those that already exist. We don't need more highways, more skyscrapers, more bridges, more of everything. We need to seriously evaluate the maintainability of every piece of infrastructure once we pass peak oil and if it is deemed unmaintainable once we enter that age it must be disposed of now, while we still have the funds, the energy, and the technology to do so.
Infrastructure and infrastructure maintenance are invisible issues to most of society. They are not at all sexy, certainly not the type of stuff that election platforms are built on. We must, however, somehow force them to become just that. We must demand of our politicians a vision and a platform that deals with the reality of peak oil and global energy decline. And that vision and platform must incorporate a strong component of how our aging infrastructure will be dealth with once they are elected. If we do not demand this of our politicians then we are condoning their taking us on a sleepwalk into a very dangerous future of terminal infrastructure decay. I don't want to see that for our children. They deserve better from us.
Under peacetime conditions governments and industry seem reluctant to commit the necessary funds and resources needed to properly maintain or replace aging infrastructure. In Europe and Asia the emphasis has been on maintaining old, well-built infrastructure. In America and the neo-west the emphasis has been on controlled demolition and replacement. Europe and Asia build infrastructure to last in perpetuity. In the neo-west we build with a designed life-span, usually not more than fifty years, then try to see how far beyond that lifespan we can go.
Most of the modern world as we know it, visible and invisible, has been built since the conclusion of WWII. Europe, like a phoenix, rose from the ashes of that war and integrated the massive amount of new replacement infrastructure with those bits of the old that had evaded the bombs. Japan and much of southeast Asia had to do the same. But North America - and Australia for that matter - has not had a war to purge it of its aging infrastructure in well over a century. Like Europe, new has been integrated with the old, though that old is much less old than European old.
The core of the unseen and taken-for-granted infrastructure underlying all North American cities large and small, however, is well over a century old and has long exceeded its designed lifespan. Even the shiny new suburbs with their modern infrastructure are tied to and equally dependent on the century-plus old infrastructure at the core of the cities they surround and to which their infrastructure is integrated, e.g. integrated water systems, electrical systems, telephone systems, transportation systems, and more.
Despite the fact infrastructure maintenance is consistently underfunded and maintenance is woefully inadequate - the prefered strategy is most often being to wait until it breaks down because the emergency created makes it easier to justify the extraordinary funds needed to fix or replace it - prodigious amounts are, nonetheless, spent on that maintenance. And that cost rises with each passing year, as does the gap between maintenance required and maintenance performed.
Underappreciated in all of this is that maintenance and upkeep of the massive infrastructure on which our society is built requires equally massive amounts of highly specialized technology and equipment for its maintenance. And therein lies my primary concern and the reason I keep returning to the issue of infrastructure in this blog. As we approach, arrive at and pass peak oil this issue will become increasingly important. Our undermaintained infrastructure, the vast bulk of which has been built in the sixty years since the end of World War II with a designed lifespan generally of fifty years, will be entering a period of terminal decay at the same time as the energy resources of the world, on which their maintenance depends, enter a period of terminal decline. The technology required to maintain that infrastructure will be increasingly unusable as it too decays and as replacement parts or replacement technology are increasingly unavailable. Much of this equipment is specifically designed, engineered and built as a one-off to satisfy the needs of a particular piece of infrastructure. The infrastructure which underpins our society which has always been a societal asset will increasingly become a massive and dangerous social liability.
Our communities, most particularly our cities, are seriously unnatural environments. In order for such large numbers of people, or any species, to live packed together at such close quarters in one place requires all manner of judiciously maintained infrastructure to prevent those places becoming health and environmental death traps. There are very few species that naturally live together in one place in large numbers, and even fewer in the numbers that human communities reach. Ants, bees, termites, corral and bats are a few that come to mind. Ants, bees and termites have worker classes whose job it is to keep the community - the bee hive or the ant hill or termite mound - clean and maintained. Bats live at the top of caves while their waste is dropped to the bottom of the caves where it is used by countless insects and micro-organisms. And corral rely on various species of fish and other marine organisms and the movement of ocean currents to clean away their refuse. Most animals living together in large numbers live in herds that are constantly on the move from one place to another, never staying in one place long enough for their waste to become a problem for the herd. But the safe maintenance of the living environment for community-based species is an ongoing battle for all of them and requires that their communities be frequently abandoned and new communities started. I would very much doubt that we could find an anthill or termite mound or beehive that has been a continuous site of occupation for thousands or even hundreds of years.
The greater the amount of infrastructure there is on which a community relies the greater is the reluctance to abandon it. The more you have, the more you have invested, the more there is to lose in doing so. And for we humans, the longer a community exists the greater the intangibles, such as history and the arts, that are also lost in abandoning the community. The longer we stay in one place the more reluctant we are to move on. Nowhere, it seems, is that moreso than with our cities. Our attachment and commitment to our cities, in fact, is far stronger it seems than our sense of nationalism and patriotism, both of which must be artificially reinforced. Our sense of kinship and belonging with our community seems far more natural, almost tribal by comparison.
This is going to be a serious social conundrum as we slide down the back side of Hubbert's Peak. Those cities, at least the large ones of over a half million population, are simply not going to be sustainable or supportable in a post-peak world. They exist in a virtual vacuum critically dependent on the outlying areas that surround them for their very survival. They will ultimately have to be abandoned but there will exist a passionate reluctance to do so. Serious time and critical resources will be wasted trying to make them survivable and sustainable. There will be powerful voices that remind us of the strong and long-surviving city states of the past like Athens, Rome, Chichen Itza and Machu Pichu. But there is no comparison between them and our fragile, technology-dependent cities of today. As their massive infrastructure decays and becomes increasingly dangerous, that hanging-on will become increasingly dangerous as well.
Even those great city states of the past were abandoned, some many times over the course of history. They also generally relied, it must be remembered, on a significant slave population who, like the workers in the ant colony and bee hive, were responsble for maintaining with brute force the infrastructure of those city states. To expect to take a modern day New York or London or Los Angeles or Tokyo back to the type of city state that existed in the past is folly in the extreme. It simply is not possible, even with slave labour. Our modern cities require armies of highly trained, technically proficient workers to keep them maintained. It can't be done with shovels and hammers. Just as the equipment and technology required to do the maintenance will become unusable because it can't be maintained or replaced, so too will the knowledge base for doing the maintenance begin to disappear as the institutions for training that army of maintenance specialists disappear. One way or another all of that infrastructure will ultimately simply be left to decay.
But what happens as it does? Dams burst. Bridges collapse. Glass fronted steel towers rain down showers of glass shards. Elevators plummet to the sub-basement. Tunnels flood or collapse. Sewers break and release toxins into surrounding soil. Water systems break and cause serious flooding before they eventually stop working all together. Concrete reinforced shorelines break down and weakened soil begins to wash away. Elevated highways collapse. And on and on. When our infrastructure begins to break down for the last time it will not be an "oh well" event. Each of those individual breakdowns will potentially be catastrophic events. The breach of a single dam on any of our rivers is very likely to cause cascade failures of every other weakened, under-maintained dam downstream from the original collapse. Any community in the way will be defenseless.
We do not know exactly when peak oil will be, or if it has already happened. We do not know how rapid the decline in global energy supplies will be on the other side of that peak. But we do know we have a global society based on expansion of the money supply through credit as the underpinning to an economic paradigm of perpetual growth. And we can reasonably surmise that when the global energy supplies go into decline so too will that global economy for industrial growth will stop. When it does it is very likely that the current luke-warm commitment to infrastructure maintenance will all but totally disappear as cost-cutting becomes the primary tool for attempted survival. The rate of decay of that already over-aged infrastructure will accelerate dramatically and there will no longer be the funds, the resources, the commitment, the energy nor the technology to upgrade it or replace it.
And yet our politicians continue to base our short-term and long-term plans on more growth, more new infrastructure, always more. They continue to operate as though our society as it exists can and will go on forever, or at least until they are out of office and it becomes someone else's problem. We cannot and must not allow them to keep leading us further down that path.
We cannot enter this future in such a way that that infrastructure will simply be left to decay. Any infrastructure than can not be maintained in a post-oil, post-technological age must be decommissioned before that age is thrust upon us. We don't need more dams. We need to be decommissioning those that already exist. We don't need more highways, more skyscrapers, more bridges, more of everything. We need to seriously evaluate the maintainability of every piece of infrastructure once we pass peak oil and if it is deemed unmaintainable once we enter that age it must be disposed of now, while we still have the funds, the energy, and the technology to do so.
Infrastructure and infrastructure maintenance are invisible issues to most of society. They are not at all sexy, certainly not the type of stuff that election platforms are built on. We must, however, somehow force them to become just that. We must demand of our politicians a vision and a platform that deals with the reality of peak oil and global energy decline. And that vision and platform must incorporate a strong component of how our aging infrastructure will be dealth with once they are elected. If we do not demand this of our politicians then we are condoning their taking us on a sleepwalk into a very dangerous future of terminal infrastructure decay. I don't want to see that for our children. They deserve better from us.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Cascade Failure in River Systems with Multiple Dams
It is time once again to speak of dams and things. It is not that I'm becoming paranoid about dams. At least I don't think I am. It is simply that the more I see and read and hear the more I believe dams, and their other attendant water control/management infrastructure, to be perhaps the greatest infrastructure risk for society during the long, painful implosion of the global economy, and our individual national economies, that will follow peak oil. It is not the greatest overall risk, of course.
The greatest risk to our bloated human population will be the collapse of our industrialized agriculture system and our inability to produce and distribute sufficient food for our global numbers, especially with the collapse of the global distribution system with the steady decline of oil and natural gas availability, on which modern agriculture and food processing are critically dependant. Death by starvation is a slow, tortuous process, taking the young, the old and the ill first. But the collapse of a large dam, or a series of dams of various sizes in a common watershed in a cascade failure, represents a sudden and inescapable catastrophe for all of those in harm's way downstream from the collapse.
There are over 45,000 large dams (defined as having a height of more than 15 metres (48.75 feet), or above 5 metres holding a reservoir volume of more than 3 million cubic metres (87.75 million cubic feet)) around the world[6]. The majority of these are, you may be surprised to learn, in developing or underdeveloped nations. Although new dam starts have slowed in the past decade, according to the report 17 Large Dams Under Construction by Basin - Watersheds of the World, "As of 1998, there were 349 dams over 60 meters high under construction (IJHD 1998). The countries with the largest number of dams under construction were Turkey, China, Japan, Iraq, Iran, Greece, Romania, and Spain, as well as the Paraná basin in South America. The river basins with the most, large dams under construction were the Yangtze in China, with 38 dams under construction, the Tigris and Euphrates with 19, and the Danube with 11."[7]
Virtually every large river system in the world has numerous dams on both the main course and the various tributaries flowing into it. Even the mighty Amazon, viewed by most as one of the world's last, great unspoiled rivers, will soon have dozens of dams throughout it's watershed. The Brazilian government plans to build 31 new dams in the Amazon region by 2010. The largest of Brazil's planned hydro projects will "convert the Tocantins River into a series of lakes and hydro-electric dams, stretching for 1,200 miles and consisting of eight large dams and 19 smaller ones."[8]
The greatest risk is not simply that these large rivers have dams. It is the fact that they have multiple dams, most numbering in the dozens. There is great risk of a catastrophic cascade failure initiated by the collapse of a single upstream dam. Like a chain, a multi-dam water management system is as strong as its weakest link. And when that weakest dam is far upstream - which it usually is, generally in a remote and sparsely populated area, far from critical eyes - the downstream risk is magnified.
This is not an unprecedented risk, or even an unusual risk. Cascade failures have happened on numerous occasions over the last couple of centuries. The greatest was perhaps the collapse of the Henan Province dams in China in 1975. "As many as 230,000 people died in this domino-effect collapse of dams on the Huai River, some 85,000 in the flood waves and the rest from resulting epidemics and famine. The disaster began with the failure of the large Banqiao Dam in a typhoon, which resulted in the collapse of as many as 62 dams downstream."[6] The flood that was released in the collapse "created a wall of water 6 meters high and 12 kilometers wide ..... moving wall of water was 600 million cubic meters of more water." "The flood spread over more than a million hectares of farm land throughout 29 counties and municipalities."[9]
Consider the numbers. If a river system, like that above, has fifty, sixty or more dams on it, and each of those is, on average, holding back just the minimum large dam reservoir volume of three million cubic meters of water (the Banqiao Dam alone was designed to hold 492 million cubic meters), that entire system is holding back an amount of water equivalent to 3-million cubic meters times the number of dams. Fifty dams, one-hundred-fifty million cubic meters. In a cascade failure such as this, a person or community downstream is not at risk of inundation by the 3 million cubic meters in the dam nearest upriver from them. They are at risk from a cascade failure starting far upstream releasing a massive torrent of one-hundred-fifty million cubic meters of water. If that person/community is downstream from the dam lowest on the river - large population centres are more common at a river's mouth than along its course - that whole mass of water will come at them all at the same time in a wave that could be hundreds of feet high. Every dam downstream from the initial collapse, remember, has a design capacity of only 3-million cubic meters. It has a wave of water coming at it of 3-million cubic meters times the number of upstream dams already collapsed.
Of course, it is not just the massive volume of water behind a dam that rushes downstream as a dam collapses. The catchment area behind every dam gradually has an accumulated build-up of silt and debris. Over time any dam will completely silt-up. Some accumulate silt faster than others, largely a factor of geology and human activity upstream such as farming, lumbering and mining. When a dam collapses all of this silt and debris is also released. In addition the massive rush of water and debris scours the river banks and downstream river bottom and picks up even more debris as it progresses downstream. In floods it is usually the debris, not the water, that does the most damage. Flood water can carry boulders weighing many tons along as though they were pebbles.
Dams are not designed to withstand the pressures or the speed from the sudden influx of millions of cubic meters of water and debris such as this. They are designed to handle the build-up of water following heavy rainfall, or with the spring snowmelt, or the occasional collapse of a small bit of upstream river bank, or other normal events. As the report And The Walls Came Tumbling Down: Dam Safety Concerns Grow in Wake of Failures, Changing Climate says, "Building a totally safe dam is simply not possible. US dam-safety expert Robert Jansen says that dams “require defensive engineering, which means listing every imaginable force that might be imposed, examination of every possible set of circumstances, and incorporation of protective elements to cope with each and every condition.” This is clearly an unattainable target. In the real world, the degree of “defensive engineering” applied to the design of a dam will be decided by economics. ..... There will always therefore be pressure for dam builders to cut corners on safety."[6]
When a dam is designed to handle flood control (either alone or in conjunction with irrigation and/or hydro-electric generation) it must be designed with appropriate excess capacity (the Banqiao Dam was designed to accommodate 375 million cubic meters of flood storage)[8] and flood gates to handle the containment and controlled release of flood waters. "Flood gates are an expensive component of a dam's construction so engineers must consider a trade-off between the cost of the dam and the security it will provide. ..... The dam authorities must decide the proper excess capacity to maintain based on the trade-off they see between the value of stored water versus the value of flood control."[8]
There is another important component, as well, that has not been factored into the design of dams, most of which have been constructed in this past half century. Even dams currently being designed and built, however, share this shortcoming. That factor is global warming. As the above report notes, "Engineers design dams and their spillways to cope with the extreme floods that they predict using past records of streamflow and precipitation. It is vital that spillways are adequately sized – if a spillway is overwhelmed there is a high risk of a dam break. ..... But the assumption that we live in a stable climate no longer holds. Streamflow patterns are changing and are almost certain to continue to change, and at an accelerating rate, over the lifetime of the world’s dams. As noted in a World Commission on Dams’ background paper: “The major implications of climate change for dams and reservoirs are firstly that the future can no longer be assumed to be like the past, and secondly that the future is uncertain.”."[6]
As it looks at the moment, allowance for climate change is not likely to be built into the design of new dams anytime soon, let alone upgrading the existing dam inventory. There seems to be a large dose of denial amongst those involved in the dam designing/building industry. "While the climatic future is indeed filled with uncertainties, one trend upon which climatologists almost universally agree is that we will see (and indeed are already seeing) more extreme storms and increasingly severe floods. And yet, alarmingly, the vast majority of dam proponents and operators deny that climate change is even relevant for dam safety. The president of a major dam engineering firm told this author last year that climate change is "a problem for dams in 20 or 30 years, but not now."."[6] Even were that the case, that 20 to 30 years is exactly the time when the combined impact of global warming and oil depletion will severely hamper our ability and desire to upgrade dams to a safe level. Even to bring the world's dams up to levels currently considered safe that investment would be sizable. "But if securing US dams would cost $30 billion [some estimates, in fact, exceed $100 billion for U.S. dams] and the US has an estimated 10% of the world’s dams, a ballpark figure for the global under-investment in dam safety would be $300 billion."[6]
That state of denial also manifests itself at government levels, sometimes in the extreme. The most common and obvious form of this government denial, of course, is in insufficient budget allocations to maintain the dam inventory at safe levels. Following the catastrophic Henan Province cascade dam failure that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 1975, however, "The Chinese government kept the incident secret for about 20 years, but information on the disaster was eventually leaked to the outside world."[6] If this was possible, even in a closed totalitarian state, in an age of instant global communication, what might happen with those catastrophes in 20 to 30 years time in a very changed, power-reduced world?
Few countries have, or can even afford, comprehensive dam inspection/maintenance safety programs. Most, especially in underdeveloped countries, were built with inordinately expensive borrowed funds, monies which are not sufficient to cover future maintenance which may not be needed for 20-30 years after the dam's completion. "Despite the massive risk to human life and property posed by large dams, few countries have comprehensive dam safety legislation. Such laws should cover the engineering criteria that new dams must meet; the regular inspection and repair of old dams; and the preparation of emergency evacuation plans for people living downstream. ..... Studies in the US have shown that where early warning systems and evacuation plans are in place, the fatalities caused by dam bursts are on average reduced by a factor of more than 100. However, such plans have been made for only a handful of the world's dams, mostly in the US, Canada and Australia...."[6]
Even where safety legislation and programs exist, however, it generally treats dams on a one by one basis. Each dam is designed, built, inspected, maintained as though it were a structure in isolation. But most large river systems have, as noted earlier, multiple dams along their course. The excess capacity of any dam is designed to accommodate a particular volume of water from floods or other designed-for events. But they are designed assuming that all other conditions are normal and that the combined infrastructure of dams on the river will remain intact through the event (If I did not already know it instinctively, thirty years of system design experience would have taught me that you never design a system with the assumption it will work perfectly). In other words, a dam designed with a flood containment capacity of 300 million cubic meters assumes that that volume will be delivered by nature. The fact that there is a dam upstream with a capacity of 500 million cubic meters, or a series of dams with a total capacity of a billion cubic meters, is irrelevant in the design.
As we pass peak oil and the budgets and abilities to properly maintain our massive dam inventory diminish over time (time in which those dams continue to age and require increased, not decreased, maintenance) this design shortcoming will become critical for those water courses with multiple dams, which includes most of our large river systems. The risk to any dam on such systems is not the once-in-a-hundred-years or once-in-a-thousand-years flood that the dam is designed to accommodate but rather the combined capacity of all of the dams upstream from that dam plus the hundred-year or thousand-year flood. No one, especially those living along the banks of such river systems, should take any solace from the fact that such events may be twenty or thirty years in the future. That should, in fact, be more a cause for serious concern than solace. That future in which those failures increase in probability is a future of declining energy and infrastructure maintenance budgets and increased climatic extremes, a potentially deadly combination.
====================
Additional reading:
1) Fragmentation Of Riparian Floras In Rivers With Multiple Dams
2) Simulation of Dam Failures in Multidike Reservoirs Arranged in Cascade
3) NOTE: The following emails are reproduced in chronological order ...
4) Federal Guidelines for Dam Safety
5) Revised Criteria for Assigning Hazard Potential Ratings to BLM Dams
6) And The Walls Came Tumbling Down: Dam Safety Concerns Grow in Wake of Failures, Changing Climate
7) 17 Large Dams Under Construction by Basin - Watersheds of the World
8) The Amazon Rainforest
9) The Catastrophic Dam Failures in China in August 1975
The greatest risk to our bloated human population will be the collapse of our industrialized agriculture system and our inability to produce and distribute sufficient food for our global numbers, especially with the collapse of the global distribution system with the steady decline of oil and natural gas availability, on which modern agriculture and food processing are critically dependant. Death by starvation is a slow, tortuous process, taking the young, the old and the ill first. But the collapse of a large dam, or a series of dams of various sizes in a common watershed in a cascade failure, represents a sudden and inescapable catastrophe for all of those in harm's way downstream from the collapse.
There are over 45,000 large dams (defined as having a height of more than 15 metres (48.75 feet), or above 5 metres holding a reservoir volume of more than 3 million cubic metres (87.75 million cubic feet)) around the world[6]. The majority of these are, you may be surprised to learn, in developing or underdeveloped nations. Although new dam starts have slowed in the past decade, according to the report 17 Large Dams Under Construction by Basin - Watersheds of the World, "As of 1998, there were 349 dams over 60 meters high under construction (IJHD 1998). The countries with the largest number of dams under construction were Turkey, China, Japan, Iraq, Iran, Greece, Romania, and Spain, as well as the Paraná basin in South America. The river basins with the most, large dams under construction were the Yangtze in China, with 38 dams under construction, the Tigris and Euphrates with 19, and the Danube with 11."[7]
Virtually every large river system in the world has numerous dams on both the main course and the various tributaries flowing into it. Even the mighty Amazon, viewed by most as one of the world's last, great unspoiled rivers, will soon have dozens of dams throughout it's watershed. The Brazilian government plans to build 31 new dams in the Amazon region by 2010. The largest of Brazil's planned hydro projects will "convert the Tocantins River into a series of lakes and hydro-electric dams, stretching for 1,200 miles and consisting of eight large dams and 19 smaller ones."[8]
The greatest risk is not simply that these large rivers have dams. It is the fact that they have multiple dams, most numbering in the dozens. There is great risk of a catastrophic cascade failure initiated by the collapse of a single upstream dam. Like a chain, a multi-dam water management system is as strong as its weakest link. And when that weakest dam is far upstream - which it usually is, generally in a remote and sparsely populated area, far from critical eyes - the downstream risk is magnified.
This is not an unprecedented risk, or even an unusual risk. Cascade failures have happened on numerous occasions over the last couple of centuries. The greatest was perhaps the collapse of the Henan Province dams in China in 1975. "As many as 230,000 people died in this domino-effect collapse of dams on the Huai River, some 85,000 in the flood waves and the rest from resulting epidemics and famine. The disaster began with the failure of the large Banqiao Dam in a typhoon, which resulted in the collapse of as many as 62 dams downstream."[6] The flood that was released in the collapse "created a wall of water 6 meters high and 12 kilometers wide ..... moving wall of water was 600 million cubic meters of more water." "The flood spread over more than a million hectares of farm land throughout 29 counties and municipalities."[9]
Consider the numbers. If a river system, like that above, has fifty, sixty or more dams on it, and each of those is, on average, holding back just the minimum large dam reservoir volume of three million cubic meters of water (the Banqiao Dam alone was designed to hold 492 million cubic meters), that entire system is holding back an amount of water equivalent to 3-million cubic meters times the number of dams. Fifty dams, one-hundred-fifty million cubic meters. In a cascade failure such as this, a person or community downstream is not at risk of inundation by the 3 million cubic meters in the dam nearest upriver from them. They are at risk from a cascade failure starting far upstream releasing a massive torrent of one-hundred-fifty million cubic meters of water. If that person/community is downstream from the dam lowest on the river - large population centres are more common at a river's mouth than along its course - that whole mass of water will come at them all at the same time in a wave that could be hundreds of feet high. Every dam downstream from the initial collapse, remember, has a design capacity of only 3-million cubic meters. It has a wave of water coming at it of 3-million cubic meters times the number of upstream dams already collapsed.
Of course, it is not just the massive volume of water behind a dam that rushes downstream as a dam collapses. The catchment area behind every dam gradually has an accumulated build-up of silt and debris. Over time any dam will completely silt-up. Some accumulate silt faster than others, largely a factor of geology and human activity upstream such as farming, lumbering and mining. When a dam collapses all of this silt and debris is also released. In addition the massive rush of water and debris scours the river banks and downstream river bottom and picks up even more debris as it progresses downstream. In floods it is usually the debris, not the water, that does the most damage. Flood water can carry boulders weighing many tons along as though they were pebbles.
Dams are not designed to withstand the pressures or the speed from the sudden influx of millions of cubic meters of water and debris such as this. They are designed to handle the build-up of water following heavy rainfall, or with the spring snowmelt, or the occasional collapse of a small bit of upstream river bank, or other normal events. As the report And The Walls Came Tumbling Down: Dam Safety Concerns Grow in Wake of Failures, Changing Climate says, "Building a totally safe dam is simply not possible. US dam-safety expert Robert Jansen says that dams “require defensive engineering, which means listing every imaginable force that might be imposed, examination of every possible set of circumstances, and incorporation of protective elements to cope with each and every condition.” This is clearly an unattainable target. In the real world, the degree of “defensive engineering” applied to the design of a dam will be decided by economics. ..... There will always therefore be pressure for dam builders to cut corners on safety."[6]
When a dam is designed to handle flood control (either alone or in conjunction with irrigation and/or hydro-electric generation) it must be designed with appropriate excess capacity (the Banqiao Dam was designed to accommodate 375 million cubic meters of flood storage)[8] and flood gates to handle the containment and controlled release of flood waters. "Flood gates are an expensive component of a dam's construction so engineers must consider a trade-off between the cost of the dam and the security it will provide. ..... The dam authorities must decide the proper excess capacity to maintain based on the trade-off they see between the value of stored water versus the value of flood control."[8]
There is another important component, as well, that has not been factored into the design of dams, most of which have been constructed in this past half century. Even dams currently being designed and built, however, share this shortcoming. That factor is global warming. As the above report notes, "Engineers design dams and their spillways to cope with the extreme floods that they predict using past records of streamflow and precipitation. It is vital that spillways are adequately sized – if a spillway is overwhelmed there is a high risk of a dam break. ..... But the assumption that we live in a stable climate no longer holds. Streamflow patterns are changing and are almost certain to continue to change, and at an accelerating rate, over the lifetime of the world’s dams. As noted in a World Commission on Dams’ background paper: “The major implications of climate change for dams and reservoirs are firstly that the future can no longer be assumed to be like the past, and secondly that the future is uncertain.”."[6]
As it looks at the moment, allowance for climate change is not likely to be built into the design of new dams anytime soon, let alone upgrading the existing dam inventory. There seems to be a large dose of denial amongst those involved in the dam designing/building industry. "While the climatic future is indeed filled with uncertainties, one trend upon which climatologists almost universally agree is that we will see (and indeed are already seeing) more extreme storms and increasingly severe floods. And yet, alarmingly, the vast majority of dam proponents and operators deny that climate change is even relevant for dam safety. The president of a major dam engineering firm told this author last year that climate change is "a problem for dams in 20 or 30 years, but not now."."[6] Even were that the case, that 20 to 30 years is exactly the time when the combined impact of global warming and oil depletion will severely hamper our ability and desire to upgrade dams to a safe level. Even to bring the world's dams up to levels currently considered safe that investment would be sizable. "But if securing US dams would cost $30 billion [some estimates, in fact, exceed $100 billion for U.S. dams] and the US has an estimated 10% of the world’s dams, a ballpark figure for the global under-investment in dam safety would be $300 billion."[6]
That state of denial also manifests itself at government levels, sometimes in the extreme. The most common and obvious form of this government denial, of course, is in insufficient budget allocations to maintain the dam inventory at safe levels. Following the catastrophic Henan Province cascade dam failure that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 1975, however, "The Chinese government kept the incident secret for about 20 years, but information on the disaster was eventually leaked to the outside world."[6] If this was possible, even in a closed totalitarian state, in an age of instant global communication, what might happen with those catastrophes in 20 to 30 years time in a very changed, power-reduced world?
Few countries have, or can even afford, comprehensive dam inspection/maintenance safety programs. Most, especially in underdeveloped countries, were built with inordinately expensive borrowed funds, monies which are not sufficient to cover future maintenance which may not be needed for 20-30 years after the dam's completion. "Despite the massive risk to human life and property posed by large dams, few countries have comprehensive dam safety legislation. Such laws should cover the engineering criteria that new dams must meet; the regular inspection and repair of old dams; and the preparation of emergency evacuation plans for people living downstream. ..... Studies in the US have shown that where early warning systems and evacuation plans are in place, the fatalities caused by dam bursts are on average reduced by a factor of more than 100. However, such plans have been made for only a handful of the world's dams, mostly in the US, Canada and Australia...."[6]
Even where safety legislation and programs exist, however, it generally treats dams on a one by one basis. Each dam is designed, built, inspected, maintained as though it were a structure in isolation. But most large river systems have, as noted earlier, multiple dams along their course. The excess capacity of any dam is designed to accommodate a particular volume of water from floods or other designed-for events. But they are designed assuming that all other conditions are normal and that the combined infrastructure of dams on the river will remain intact through the event (If I did not already know it instinctively, thirty years of system design experience would have taught me that you never design a system with the assumption it will work perfectly). In other words, a dam designed with a flood containment capacity of 300 million cubic meters assumes that that volume will be delivered by nature. The fact that there is a dam upstream with a capacity of 500 million cubic meters, or a series of dams with a total capacity of a billion cubic meters, is irrelevant in the design.
As we pass peak oil and the budgets and abilities to properly maintain our massive dam inventory diminish over time (time in which those dams continue to age and require increased, not decreased, maintenance) this design shortcoming will become critical for those water courses with multiple dams, which includes most of our large river systems. The risk to any dam on such systems is not the once-in-a-hundred-years or once-in-a-thousand-years flood that the dam is designed to accommodate but rather the combined capacity of all of the dams upstream from that dam plus the hundred-year or thousand-year flood. No one, especially those living along the banks of such river systems, should take any solace from the fact that such events may be twenty or thirty years in the future. That should, in fact, be more a cause for serious concern than solace. That future in which those failures increase in probability is a future of declining energy and infrastructure maintenance budgets and increased climatic extremes, a potentially deadly combination.
====================
Additional reading:
1) Fragmentation Of Riparian Floras In Rivers With Multiple Dams
2) Simulation of Dam Failures in Multidike Reservoirs Arranged in Cascade
3) NOTE: The following emails are reproduced in chronological order ...
4) Federal Guidelines for Dam Safety
5) Revised Criteria for Assigning Hazard Potential Ratings to BLM Dams
6) And The Walls Came Tumbling Down: Dam Safety Concerns Grow in Wake of Failures, Changing Climate
7) 17 Large Dams Under Construction by Basin - Watersheds of the World
8) The Amazon Rainforest
9) The Catastrophic Dam Failures in China in August 1975
Monday, August 27, 2007
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.
-------------------
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
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.
-------------------
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
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Our Dangerous Infrastructure
See these other articles in the blog related to infrastructure maintenance;
The myth of permanence: post-peak infrastructure maintenance
The Emerging Global Freshwater Crisis
Lake Ontario & St. Lawrence River after Peak Oil
Post Peak Dam Maintenance, or Lack Thereof
This article concerns the post peak oil dangers represented by the decay of our modern infrastructure. Of all the implications of peak oil and the energy downslope on the other side this is the one least present in the public consciousness or, for that matter, even in the minds of most of those who are peak oil aware. I understand that. Infrastructure is not something we think about. It doesn't grab our attention. It is just there. The only time we are really conscious of it is when it fails, when the levees break in New Orleans or an overpass collapses in Montreal or a bridge falls into the Mississippi in Minneapolis or the grid dies in the entire northeast or an ice storm collapses hydro transmission towers in Quebec.
Very few of us have any connection with the infrastructure that underlies the smooth working of our society. It is invariably designed, built and maintained by an army of people with very specialized knowledge and skills that are outside the purview of the average citizen. That is part of what keeps it invisible to us. Even the infrastructure in our homes is invisible to most of us, the foundation, the framework inside the walls, the plumbing and electrical wiring running through the walls, floors and ceilings, the structure that supports the roof, the little details that let our house breathe. These are all someone else's concern, the hired plumber or electrician or handyman or builder or whoever. We pick up the phone, unconscious of the massive infrastructure that allows that system to work, and call somebody to come fix whatever it is that is broken. We don't care how they do it, just that they do.
But how much of society's resources are tied up in that dependable, invisible infrastructure? What does it cost us all every year?
Take a single piece of infrastructure, a bridge for example. It is designed and built with a planned serviceable lifespan of fifty years. The annual cost of that structure amortized over the planned lifespan is manageable. For the sake of argument, let us say the bridge cost $50-million to build. The annual cost spread over that planned fifty year lifespan is only $1-million per year. During the first half of that lifespan the annual inspection and maintenance costs are minimal. They may be, let's say, between $200,000 and $300,000 each year, averaging $250,000 annually (about one quarter of the annual amortized construction cost) over the first 25 years. From the midway point of the designed lifespan, however, inspection and maintenance costs normally begin to rise steadily. Anyone who has ever tried to keep an aging car on the road understands this. Let us assume that costs rise 4% per year. By the fiftieth year, at a steady rate of increase in maintenance cost, the annual cost will have risen to $666,000, two thirds of the amortized construction cost. If at that stage it is decided to continue to maintain the bridge rather than decommission it or replace it, the annual maintenance costs will rise over the next 25 years to $1,778,000 per year, nearly double the annual amortization cost during the designed lifespan of the bridge.
In a constantly growing economy the amount of newer infrastructure is always greater than the amount of aging infrastructure, the average age generally half or less than the overall average designed lifespan. Under such circumstances prioritizing and paying for the cost of maintenance for the relatively small amount of aging infrastructure is not a big issue, particularly where there is some form of centralized or collective budgeting (government?) for that cost to be spread over the whole infrastructure budget. The percentage of the overall infrastructure budget committed for maintenance is relatively low. In a declining economy, however, where the infrastructure is always pushed just a little bit further, expected to last just a little bit longer, where the average age of the infrastructure inventory steadily increases toward and then beyond the designed service life, not only does the ratio of maintenance cost to development cost increase but, as the overall infrastructure inventory exceeds its design lifespan the cost of proper maintenance will actually reach the point where it exceeds what would have been the amortized construction cost of new infrastructure. The decision to push the infrastructure to stay in service longer, because of the declining economy, is not made with a clear and honest understanding and admission that the maintenance costs will continue to grow. In fact, more often than not such decisions are probably made concurrent with a decision to decrease or, at best, hold the line on the maintenance budget. This should not be surprising to anyone. Even in this age of a constantly growing economy maintenance budgets are invariably underfunded and maintenance short cuts are the norm rather than the exception.
The reason that the amount of new infrastructure developed in a shrinking economy decreases is not because the infrastructure is any less needed than it was when the economy was growing. It is because the cost of new infrastructure is higher than can be justified in a shrinking economy. The cost exceeds the need. In a declining economy the overall infrastructure budget shrinks. Why, then, would one expect those budgets to suddenly and miraculously increase to meet the escalating needs of infrastructure maintenance when those maintenance costs rise above the level it would take to develop new infrastructure? The budget for infrastructure maintenance in that declining economy will have shrunk proportional to the budget for new infrastructure because "everybody knows" maintenance is always a proportion of the cost of new infrastructure. If the amount of new infrastructure is declining, obviously, so too should the amount set aside for maintenance. This is a mindset that is not likely to be easily changed just because the economy is shrinking.
The current U.S. infrastructure maintenance/renewal backlog is estimated at $1.6-trillion, Canada's between $60-125-billion. The dollar value of the infrastructure in need of that maintenance is probably inestimable at this stage, with over 600,000 bridges and 75,000 dams in the U.S. alone. They were essentially all designed and built with a planned service life of fifty years. The average age of all of that infrastructure, as a result, most of it built between 1950 and the late 1970s, has now exceeded half the serviceable lifespan with as much as one quarter of that infrastructure having already exceeded its full designed service lifespan. And the maintenance backlog continues to grow and the infrastructure inventory continues to age. Canada's maintenance backlog is estimated to be growing by $2-billion annually, the U.S. backlog between $25-50-billion, almost equal the total of the $30-billion annual infrastructure maintenance budget.
As the age of any unit of infrastructure increases and the maintenance costs begin to climb there will most often be a period of time when those rising costs are absorbed through a process of "creative accounting". This is generally done on an assumption that the higher costs are a temporary aberration. As the cost increases develop into a trend, however, it becomes increasingly difficult to "hide" and absorb the rising costs. Those increases must be dealt with, and are usually dealt with by recommending that the unit be upgraded or replaced and/or imposing limits on the maintenance that will be done in order to keep the maintenance costs within budget. It's not unlike what you do when the maintenance costs on your aging car suddenly shoot up. At first you just absorb it, figuring it is a temporary situation. As it becomes a regular event, though, you suddenly have some decisions to make. Do you continue to absorb the cost? Increase you vehicle maintenance budget? Decide to avoid certain types of maintenance that you decide is non-critical? Or decide to start looking for another car? Or do you consider leasing rather than buying? If you are confident your job will continue and your salary will continue to increase you probably decide to replace. But if your job is threatened or the company is imposing salary limitations or salary cuts or your confidence in your future earnings potential is otherwise shaken, you may be forced to consider other options.
That is the situation our society, national and global, will be facing as we pass peak oil and it begins to have a destructive impact on the national and global economy. The first victim of budget cuts is almost invariably maintenance. Investigations following most major infrastructure failures, even in a vibrant economy, highlight insufficient or ineffective maintenance as the key factor in the failure. That is followed by design flaws, either from an engineering perspective or from an insufficient understanding of the failure criteria.
Let us be clear. Neither design flaws nor shortcomings in infrastructure maintenance are a guarantee that the infrastructure will suffer a catastrophic failure. Considering the nearly 700,000 bridges and dams in operation in the U.S. the number of catastrophic failures are surprisingly low. They stick in the public consciousness because they are catastrophic, like a plane crash that kills three hundred people compared to the same number dying in two hundred different car accidents. The plane crash is global news. The two hundred car accidents are buried on the inside pages of two hundred local newspapers.
But this is the nature of air travel and of major infrastructure. When it fails it is serious business. People die, often in large numbers. When the levees failed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina thousands of people perished. The 1963 failure of the Vajont dam in Italy claimed 2,500 lives. In the catastrophic dam failure in China in 1975 over 85,000 people died. The Val di Stava dam collapse in Italy in 1985 took another 268 lives. Railway crashes, often due to infrastructure failure, regularly take hundreds of lives. Even as you read this the so-called Saddam dam that holds back the waters of the Tigris River in northern Iraq is in imminent danger of collapse and under constant surveillance. It is no longer a question of if the dam will fail, just a question of when. When it does fail, a wall of water will sweep into Mosul, Iraq's third largest city with a population of 1.7 million, 20 miles to the south. Once the dam fails evacuation will no longer be an option. That wall of water will reach Mosul in minutes.
Our major infrastructure, especially that like dams, levees and bridges that deal with water, are very dangerous when they fail. Unfortunately, without proper maintenance and timely replacement or decommissioning failure is an eventual certainty. The only uncertainty is when that failure will occur. In that regard it is important to note that all of our infrastructure, especially that designed and built since WWII, has a designed life-span. That life-span is generally planned to be fifty years. In fairness, generally infrastructure can be retained in service safely for an extra half of it's designed life-span. In general, therefore, with proper maintenance that infrastructure designed to last fifty years can be safely operated for seventy-five years. Some can and does function much longer than that. The Brooklyn Bridge, for example, was opened in 1883 and is still in service today 124 years later, despite both design and construction flaws. The bridge has, however, failed its latest safety inspection and its days may be numbered. It is important to note that the Manhattan tower of the bridge has always rested on sand, thirty feet short of the underlying bedrock. With hundreds of thousands of vehicles crossing the bridge daily and hundreds or even thousands on the bridge at any given time, the risk of any failure being catastrophic is simply too great to continue to push the limits.
If peak oil results in the economic failure that most analysts expect and if it occurs within the next ten to fifteen years, which is almost guaranteed, it could not come at a worse time when looking at the aging infrastructure around us. Over 80% of our current, major, functioning infrastructure was built in the quarter century beginning in 1950 or earlier. Over 50% of that infrastructure will have exceeded its designed service life by 2025. By the middle of this century almost all of that infrastructure currently in service will have reached or exceeded its designed lifespan. In this same timeframe, unfortunately, the national and global economy will probably be in a period of severe contraction due to the impact of global peak oil. It is unlikely in a contracting economy that infrastructure, regardless of it's age, will be replaced or, perhaps, even properly decommissioned. Efforts will be made to keep that infrastructure in service as long as possible, or longer. But peak oil will hit, the global economy will go into terminal decline at the very time when most of our infrastructure seriously needs replacement or decommissioning.
Major infrastructure is increasingly dangerous as it ages beyond its designed service life, even with proper maintenance. Every dam represents a serious danger to those living or working downstream from it. Every major aging bridge crossing any waterway is an increasing risk to those who continue to use it when it has surpassed its reasonable age of serviceability. But by the middle of this century virtually all of our major infrastructure will reach that age, and will probably do so without proper maintenance performed on it possibly for decades.
If a bridge gets too old and too unsafe to use ultimately it can simply be closed off and left to fail. Unless something happens to be under it at the time of collapse it probably won't be a catastrophe. Dams and levees, however, are another matter. They don't pass over water. They hold back water, tremendous volumes of water. If those structures failure the sudden unleashing of all that water will be catastrophic, regardless of where that structure is. Over ten percent of our dams and levees hold back water from major population centers, many from cities of millions of people, like the risk posed to Mosul by the Saddam dam. When they fail, which they will if not eventually decommissioned or replaced, the results will be unquestionably catastrophic. Unlike bridges, dams and levees represent an ongoing and increasing risk regardless of whether we are "using" them or not. They can't simply be blocked off and left to fail with no resulting loss of life or property. A bridged blocked off no longer has traffic crossing it to be at risk. A dam blocked off still holds back billions of gallons of water capable of inundating the land downstream and potentially destroying anything or anyone in its path.
If we enter the anticipated era of declining global economy with a general and, more importantly, leadership mindset that still believes the invisible hand of the markets will right all problems, our infrastructure woes and the risks involved will continue to worsen. That belief in the ability of the markets to correct themselves is based on an assumption that the state of normalcy to which the markets will eventually return is one of growth. That assumption is, however, based on endless consumption of resources supported by an endless and reliable supply of energy. Once we pass peak oil neither will possible. The state of decline, for all practical purposes, will be permanent.
The first victim in any budget cuts is almost always the maintenance budget. The first priority for business, and probably government as well, in a declining economy will be to do whatever is necessary to keep profits up while sales are declining, again based on an assumption that overtime sales will return to a pattern of growth. This invariably means cutting costs. Profits invariably mean growth, the willingness of a society to pay more for goods than their real value (the profits) in a belief that that value will increase with time. In an environment of perpetual economic decline this will not be possible. The longer any business or nation tries to hold on in a belief that things will get back to normal the more assured is their eventual collapse.
The cutting of maintenance budgets in a downturn is, like all other cost-cutting measures, assumed to be a necessary and temporary adjustment. It is assumed that when things turn around that deferred maintenance will be caught up. But when there is no turn around, no correction, no return to normal growth on the horizon, the maintenance deficit and the risks implicit in that deficit continue to worsen. When the infrastructure with which those risks are being taken, for which maintenance is being "temporarily" deferred, is already near, at or beyond its designed service life those decisions put society in general at serious risk. This is critically so with dams, levees, bridges and other water management infrastructure.
Facing the reality of peak oil and the implications for our economy and society is no longer an option, no longer something that can be denied or avoided. There is far too much risk to society in a do-nothing, laissez-faire approach. Doing nothing simply increases the risk and threat. We need to face that reality, face the implications, make the decisions and begin the corrective action necessary before peak oil is upon us and before the global economy slides into a state of perpetual decline. The resources, particularly financial, will simply not be available to take the appropriate action if we wait for that event to push us into action.
I am not optimistic that we will do what needs to be done. All of the historical evidence suggests that we will not. One can only hope and add one's voice to the demands for appropriate and timely action.
The myth of permanence: post-peak infrastructure maintenance
The Emerging Global Freshwater Crisis
Lake Ontario & St. Lawrence River after Peak Oil
Post Peak Dam Maintenance, or Lack Thereof
This article concerns the post peak oil dangers represented by the decay of our modern infrastructure. Of all the implications of peak oil and the energy downslope on the other side this is the one least present in the public consciousness or, for that matter, even in the minds of most of those who are peak oil aware. I understand that. Infrastructure is not something we think about. It doesn't grab our attention. It is just there. The only time we are really conscious of it is when it fails, when the levees break in New Orleans or an overpass collapses in Montreal or a bridge falls into the Mississippi in Minneapolis or the grid dies in the entire northeast or an ice storm collapses hydro transmission towers in Quebec.
Very few of us have any connection with the infrastructure that underlies the smooth working of our society. It is invariably designed, built and maintained by an army of people with very specialized knowledge and skills that are outside the purview of the average citizen. That is part of what keeps it invisible to us. Even the infrastructure in our homes is invisible to most of us, the foundation, the framework inside the walls, the plumbing and electrical wiring running through the walls, floors and ceilings, the structure that supports the roof, the little details that let our house breathe. These are all someone else's concern, the hired plumber or electrician or handyman or builder or whoever. We pick up the phone, unconscious of the massive infrastructure that allows that system to work, and call somebody to come fix whatever it is that is broken. We don't care how they do it, just that they do.
But how much of society's resources are tied up in that dependable, invisible infrastructure? What does it cost us all every year?
Take a single piece of infrastructure, a bridge for example. It is designed and built with a planned serviceable lifespan of fifty years. The annual cost of that structure amortized over the planned lifespan is manageable. For the sake of argument, let us say the bridge cost $50-million to build. The annual cost spread over that planned fifty year lifespan is only $1-million per year. During the first half of that lifespan the annual inspection and maintenance costs are minimal. They may be, let's say, between $200,000 and $300,000 each year, averaging $250,000 annually (about one quarter of the annual amortized construction cost) over the first 25 years. From the midway point of the designed lifespan, however, inspection and maintenance costs normally begin to rise steadily. Anyone who has ever tried to keep an aging car on the road understands this. Let us assume that costs rise 4% per year. By the fiftieth year, at a steady rate of increase in maintenance cost, the annual cost will have risen to $666,000, two thirds of the amortized construction cost. If at that stage it is decided to continue to maintain the bridge rather than decommission it or replace it, the annual maintenance costs will rise over the next 25 years to $1,778,000 per year, nearly double the annual amortization cost during the designed lifespan of the bridge.
In a constantly growing economy the amount of newer infrastructure is always greater than the amount of aging infrastructure, the average age generally half or less than the overall average designed lifespan. Under such circumstances prioritizing and paying for the cost of maintenance for the relatively small amount of aging infrastructure is not a big issue, particularly where there is some form of centralized or collective budgeting (government?) for that cost to be spread over the whole infrastructure budget. The percentage of the overall infrastructure budget committed for maintenance is relatively low. In a declining economy, however, where the infrastructure is always pushed just a little bit further, expected to last just a little bit longer, where the average age of the infrastructure inventory steadily increases toward and then beyond the designed service life, not only does the ratio of maintenance cost to development cost increase but, as the overall infrastructure inventory exceeds its design lifespan the cost of proper maintenance will actually reach the point where it exceeds what would have been the amortized construction cost of new infrastructure. The decision to push the infrastructure to stay in service longer, because of the declining economy, is not made with a clear and honest understanding and admission that the maintenance costs will continue to grow. In fact, more often than not such decisions are probably made concurrent with a decision to decrease or, at best, hold the line on the maintenance budget. This should not be surprising to anyone. Even in this age of a constantly growing economy maintenance budgets are invariably underfunded and maintenance short cuts are the norm rather than the exception.
The reason that the amount of new infrastructure developed in a shrinking economy decreases is not because the infrastructure is any less needed than it was when the economy was growing. It is because the cost of new infrastructure is higher than can be justified in a shrinking economy. The cost exceeds the need. In a declining economy the overall infrastructure budget shrinks. Why, then, would one expect those budgets to suddenly and miraculously increase to meet the escalating needs of infrastructure maintenance when those maintenance costs rise above the level it would take to develop new infrastructure? The budget for infrastructure maintenance in that declining economy will have shrunk proportional to the budget for new infrastructure because "everybody knows" maintenance is always a proportion of the cost of new infrastructure. If the amount of new infrastructure is declining, obviously, so too should the amount set aside for maintenance. This is a mindset that is not likely to be easily changed just because the economy is shrinking.
The current U.S. infrastructure maintenance/renewal backlog is estimated at $1.6-trillion, Canada's between $60-125-billion. The dollar value of the infrastructure in need of that maintenance is probably inestimable at this stage, with over 600,000 bridges and 75,000 dams in the U.S. alone. They were essentially all designed and built with a planned service life of fifty years. The average age of all of that infrastructure, as a result, most of it built between 1950 and the late 1970s, has now exceeded half the serviceable lifespan with as much as one quarter of that infrastructure having already exceeded its full designed service lifespan. And the maintenance backlog continues to grow and the infrastructure inventory continues to age. Canada's maintenance backlog is estimated to be growing by $2-billion annually, the U.S. backlog between $25-50-billion, almost equal the total of the $30-billion annual infrastructure maintenance budget.
As the age of any unit of infrastructure increases and the maintenance costs begin to climb there will most often be a period of time when those rising costs are absorbed through a process of "creative accounting". This is generally done on an assumption that the higher costs are a temporary aberration. As the cost increases develop into a trend, however, it becomes increasingly difficult to "hide" and absorb the rising costs. Those increases must be dealt with, and are usually dealt with by recommending that the unit be upgraded or replaced and/or imposing limits on the maintenance that will be done in order to keep the maintenance costs within budget. It's not unlike what you do when the maintenance costs on your aging car suddenly shoot up. At first you just absorb it, figuring it is a temporary situation. As it becomes a regular event, though, you suddenly have some decisions to make. Do you continue to absorb the cost? Increase you vehicle maintenance budget? Decide to avoid certain types of maintenance that you decide is non-critical? Or decide to start looking for another car? Or do you consider leasing rather than buying? If you are confident your job will continue and your salary will continue to increase you probably decide to replace. But if your job is threatened or the company is imposing salary limitations or salary cuts or your confidence in your future earnings potential is otherwise shaken, you may be forced to consider other options.
That is the situation our society, national and global, will be facing as we pass peak oil and it begins to have a destructive impact on the national and global economy. The first victim of budget cuts is almost invariably maintenance. Investigations following most major infrastructure failures, even in a vibrant economy, highlight insufficient or ineffective maintenance as the key factor in the failure. That is followed by design flaws, either from an engineering perspective or from an insufficient understanding of the failure criteria.
Let us be clear. Neither design flaws nor shortcomings in infrastructure maintenance are a guarantee that the infrastructure will suffer a catastrophic failure. Considering the nearly 700,000 bridges and dams in operation in the U.S. the number of catastrophic failures are surprisingly low. They stick in the public consciousness because they are catastrophic, like a plane crash that kills three hundred people compared to the same number dying in two hundred different car accidents. The plane crash is global news. The two hundred car accidents are buried on the inside pages of two hundred local newspapers.
But this is the nature of air travel and of major infrastructure. When it fails it is serious business. People die, often in large numbers. When the levees failed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina thousands of people perished. The 1963 failure of the Vajont dam in Italy claimed 2,500 lives. In the catastrophic dam failure in China in 1975 over 85,000 people died. The Val di Stava dam collapse in Italy in 1985 took another 268 lives. Railway crashes, often due to infrastructure failure, regularly take hundreds of lives. Even as you read this the so-called Saddam dam that holds back the waters of the Tigris River in northern Iraq is in imminent danger of collapse and under constant surveillance. It is no longer a question of if the dam will fail, just a question of when. When it does fail, a wall of water will sweep into Mosul, Iraq's third largest city with a population of 1.7 million, 20 miles to the south. Once the dam fails evacuation will no longer be an option. That wall of water will reach Mosul in minutes.
Our major infrastructure, especially that like dams, levees and bridges that deal with water, are very dangerous when they fail. Unfortunately, without proper maintenance and timely replacement or decommissioning failure is an eventual certainty. The only uncertainty is when that failure will occur. In that regard it is important to note that all of our infrastructure, especially that designed and built since WWII, has a designed life-span. That life-span is generally planned to be fifty years. In fairness, generally infrastructure can be retained in service safely for an extra half of it's designed life-span. In general, therefore, with proper maintenance that infrastructure designed to last fifty years can be safely operated for seventy-five years. Some can and does function much longer than that. The Brooklyn Bridge, for example, was opened in 1883 and is still in service today 124 years later, despite both design and construction flaws. The bridge has, however, failed its latest safety inspection and its days may be numbered. It is important to note that the Manhattan tower of the bridge has always rested on sand, thirty feet short of the underlying bedrock. With hundreds of thousands of vehicles crossing the bridge daily and hundreds or even thousands on the bridge at any given time, the risk of any failure being catastrophic is simply too great to continue to push the limits.
If peak oil results in the economic failure that most analysts expect and if it occurs within the next ten to fifteen years, which is almost guaranteed, it could not come at a worse time when looking at the aging infrastructure around us. Over 80% of our current, major, functioning infrastructure was built in the quarter century beginning in 1950 or earlier. Over 50% of that infrastructure will have exceeded its designed service life by 2025. By the middle of this century almost all of that infrastructure currently in service will have reached or exceeded its designed lifespan. In this same timeframe, unfortunately, the national and global economy will probably be in a period of severe contraction due to the impact of global peak oil. It is unlikely in a contracting economy that infrastructure, regardless of it's age, will be replaced or, perhaps, even properly decommissioned. Efforts will be made to keep that infrastructure in service as long as possible, or longer. But peak oil will hit, the global economy will go into terminal decline at the very time when most of our infrastructure seriously needs replacement or decommissioning.
Major infrastructure is increasingly dangerous as it ages beyond its designed service life, even with proper maintenance. Every dam represents a serious danger to those living or working downstream from it. Every major aging bridge crossing any waterway is an increasing risk to those who continue to use it when it has surpassed its reasonable age of serviceability. But by the middle of this century virtually all of our major infrastructure will reach that age, and will probably do so without proper maintenance performed on it possibly for decades.
If a bridge gets too old and too unsafe to use ultimately it can simply be closed off and left to fail. Unless something happens to be under it at the time of collapse it probably won't be a catastrophe. Dams and levees, however, are another matter. They don't pass over water. They hold back water, tremendous volumes of water. If those structures failure the sudden unleashing of all that water will be catastrophic, regardless of where that structure is. Over ten percent of our dams and levees hold back water from major population centers, many from cities of millions of people, like the risk posed to Mosul by the Saddam dam. When they fail, which they will if not eventually decommissioned or replaced, the results will be unquestionably catastrophic. Unlike bridges, dams and levees represent an ongoing and increasing risk regardless of whether we are "using" them or not. They can't simply be blocked off and left to fail with no resulting loss of life or property. A bridged blocked off no longer has traffic crossing it to be at risk. A dam blocked off still holds back billions of gallons of water capable of inundating the land downstream and potentially destroying anything or anyone in its path.
If we enter the anticipated era of declining global economy with a general and, more importantly, leadership mindset that still believes the invisible hand of the markets will right all problems, our infrastructure woes and the risks involved will continue to worsen. That belief in the ability of the markets to correct themselves is based on an assumption that the state of normalcy to which the markets will eventually return is one of growth. That assumption is, however, based on endless consumption of resources supported by an endless and reliable supply of energy. Once we pass peak oil neither will possible. The state of decline, for all practical purposes, will be permanent.
The first victim in any budget cuts is almost always the maintenance budget. The first priority for business, and probably government as well, in a declining economy will be to do whatever is necessary to keep profits up while sales are declining, again based on an assumption that overtime sales will return to a pattern of growth. This invariably means cutting costs. Profits invariably mean growth, the willingness of a society to pay more for goods than their real value (the profits) in a belief that that value will increase with time. In an environment of perpetual economic decline this will not be possible. The longer any business or nation tries to hold on in a belief that things will get back to normal the more assured is their eventual collapse.
The cutting of maintenance budgets in a downturn is, like all other cost-cutting measures, assumed to be a necessary and temporary adjustment. It is assumed that when things turn around that deferred maintenance will be caught up. But when there is no turn around, no correction, no return to normal growth on the horizon, the maintenance deficit and the risks implicit in that deficit continue to worsen. When the infrastructure with which those risks are being taken, for which maintenance is being "temporarily" deferred, is already near, at or beyond its designed service life those decisions put society in general at serious risk. This is critically so with dams, levees, bridges and other water management infrastructure.
Facing the reality of peak oil and the implications for our economy and society is no longer an option, no longer something that can be denied or avoided. There is far too much risk to society in a do-nothing, laissez-faire approach. Doing nothing simply increases the risk and threat. We need to face that reality, face the implications, make the decisions and begin the corrective action necessary before peak oil is upon us and before the global economy slides into a state of perpetual decline. The resources, particularly financial, will simply not be available to take the appropriate action if we wait for that event to push us into action.
I am not optimistic that we will do what needs to be done. All of the historical evidence suggests that we will not. One can only hope and add one's voice to the demands for appropriate and timely action.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Post Peak Dam Maintenance, or Lack Thereof
"Dam failures are of particular concern because the failure of a large dam has the potential to cause more death and destruction than the failure of any other man-made structure. This is because of the destructive power of the flood wave that would be released by the sudden collapse of a large dam."[2] What will be the fate of the world's large dams after peak oil as energy declines, technology falters and budgets for inspection and maintenance of these critical and dangerous facilities begin to be pared back in deference to perceived more immediate societal priorities?
(See also; The myth of permanence: post-peak infrastructure maintenance, The Emerging Global Freshwater Crisis, and Lake Ontario & St. Lawrence River after Peak Oil in my blog.)
Most major cities, both globally and here in Canada, were born, developed and have evolved on the low-lying land adjacent to major bodies of water, either saltwater oceans, seas, bays and inlets or freshwater lakes and rivers. The cities sitting on saltwater shores seem to have been built with the dangerously misguided assumption that sea level is and will continue to be constant. The cities on freshwater shores are largely protected by a cornucopia of technology and infrastructure that has essentially stabilized water levels in the bodies of water on which they are situated.
In recent years, with the growth of scientific research and knowledge of global warming, there has been considerable attention paid to the risk faced by major cities over this next century from the potential sea-level rise that could result from the meltdown of glaciers and, most importantly, polar ice caps (79% of the world's fresh water is locked up in ice and snow). Very little attention has been paid, however, to the risk faced by major cities situated on freshwater shores that could result from the potential post peak-oil disintegration and collapse of the technology and infrastructure containing and controlling billions of tons of water upstream from these major cities. There are numerous internet sites that show the inundation risk of coastal areas from sea level rise. Very little has been done on inundation mapping downstream from major dams. That is not to suggest that smaller communities are not subject to the same risks, as most communities have evolved in the same way, on low-lying land adjacent to lakes, rivers and seas.
There are about 80,000 dams in the U.S., for example, the majority even today over fifty years old. According to FEMA, "Approximately one third of these pose a "high" or "significant" hazard to life and property if failure occurs."[1] It is important to note, here, that "high" and "significant" are from a national perspective in terms of potential dollar damage and potential deaths. As the report Flood Disasters in Canada[6] suggests, risk analysis statistics are "biased towards the more densely populated areas ..... where floods are more likely to impact humans." A dam failure upstream of any populated area would, however, be considered "significant" for those living downstream. According to the National Performance of Dams Program (NPDP), "at least 85% of the more than 75,000 dams in the the US will be in excess of 50 years old by 2020." The report goes on to stress, "Perhaps more significantly, most of the large dams throughout the US are also approaching old age."[5] There is, of course, a reason for this impending flush of aging dams. According to the report Dam Construction[7], "Within the U.S., the most active period of dam building occurred between 1950 and 1970, and has been called “the golden age of dam building” (Doyle et al., 2003). The same comment is frequently made about the situation in Canada." In Ontario today, "In the case of Ontario Power Generation’s almost 200 dams, nearly two thirds are in excess of 50 years old."[5]
Generally there is now a trend in Canada to move away from the large hydro megaprojects. "Because of the size, cost and negative environmental impacts of large dam projects, hydro development has been increasingly focused on small-scale projects, i.e., those with less than 10 MW of generating capacity. Many of these are run-of-the-river projects. There are currently more than 300 plants in Canada with a capacity of 15 MW or less (Industry Canada, 2003) and numerous others under consideration, particularly for remote communities that rely on high-cost diesel generation. Approximately 5500 sites in Canada are technically feasible for small-scale hydroelectric production (Natural Resources Canada, 2000)."[7] Though this means a reducing risk of failure of large dams, it increases the number of dams being built in proximity to and designed to service population centers, many remote where emergency response to a disaster would be delayed because of that remoteness.
Fifty years used to be considered the average life expectancy for dams. Not to suggest that the statistics or studies are being slanted but, with the rapidly ageing inventory of North American dams, a report entitled Dam Construction suggests, "Based on extensive U.S. experience, the life span of typically unmaintained dams is conservatively estimated at 75 years, refuting the common misconception that the average life of a dam is 50 years (Donnelly et al., 2002)."[7] Gee, ain't that lucky. I guess that takes the pressure off. The public relations importance of this statement is twofold, first the supposed refutation of the 50 year lifespan but, also, the inclusion of the phrase "typically unmaintained dams". Numerous studies by the International Joint Commission (IJC), FEMA, the National Performance of Dams Program (NPDP), and others, have suggested that even where dam safety programs exist and inspections occur, the vast majority of North American dams are not being maintained effectively today, many not even regularly inspected. The IJC, for example, considers the three dams involved in the international Moses/Saunders hydro dam facility at Cornwall Ontario and Messina New York (these dams hold back the waters of Lake Ontario from the St. Lawrence: the Great Lakes containing 22,573km3 of water, 22.573billion m3, enough water to cover 18.3 million acres of downstream land to a depth of 1 foot), to be potentially unsafe due to lack of inspections and maintenance. Even if the average life expectancy of a dam is 75 years rather than fifty as the above report suggests, that still means that the huge glut of dams built between 1950 and 1970 will all pass that average life expectancy by the middle of this century, at a time when the energy, technology and economy for their increasingly necessary maintenance or their decommissioning will be in serious decline. With the average life expectancy of a dam, whether that be fifty years or seventy-five, the cost and complexity of decommissioning is most often as high as it was for the original construction. There is a significant risk beyond peak oil that dams may simply be de-operated (stopping the usage and maintenance) rather than decommissioned (properly torn down and replaced or returning the river to its natural flow). The track record of site decommissioning, whether dams, nuclear sites, toxic chemical sites, or others, has not been good. There is no reason to expect that it will improve under the difficult circumstances we will face on the other side of peak oil.
Whether or not the focus on "typically unmaintained dams" in the above report is based on a knowledge of peak oil and its implications, it does suggest an awareness of widespread concerns about the future maintenance and maintainability of dams and related infrastructure. A report entitled Risky Business for Dams[5] makes the following statement, "Dam owners are facing increasingly difficult decisions about the ways in which finite financial and human resources should be allocated to ensure the continuing safe operation of ageing dams. Without such investment, dam failure is not only a possibility but can be an expected consequence of lack of proper maintenance and diligence by a dam owner." Washington State alone lists more than a dozen dam failures in the last two decades, despite the level of current technologies, full energy availability and a vibrant economy.[4]
Canada is a large, cold nation. We have significant energy needs for transportation, for infrastructure and industry, and for home heating, cooling and cooking. As the global and national reserves of fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and coal) diminish over the course of this century Canada's needs for energy will still remain high. More and more people will, as fossil fuels decline, revert, out of necessity, to the use of wood for heating their homes and cooking their food. Canada is still blessed with an abundance of temperate forests. These forests, however, are generally not in the same locations as the population concentration. The amount of forest cover in populated areas has already diminished to minuscule levels. The pressures put on that remaining accessible forest cover in the search of fuel for home heating and cooking will become increasingly severe over the balance of this century.
This large-scale reversion to the use of wood for heating and cooking will have a major and increasing impact on the viability of the nation's dams. As forest cover is removed from the hills and fields of a river's watershed (especially in the case of clear-cutting), and with the increasing pressure on those lands for food and feed crop production, the amount of soil and plant material carried by that river will increase, particularly after major weather events. There have been countless examples - globally moreso than locally - of the devastating impact of flooding when a watercourse in flash flood fills with silt and debris from upstream. Often whole communities are buried in mud or wiped out by being carried away by torrents of water. With the anticipated increase in the removal of forest cover for fuel, with the loss of it's impact on the ability of the soil to absorb and retain moisture, and with the anticipated increase in severe weather events due to global warming, the volume of silt and debris in future flood events expose Canadian rivers to the type of catastrophic flooding we have seen elsewhere in the world. The risk of dam overtopping on managed watercourses (which includes most rivers flowing through populated areas) increases dramatically under such circumstances as the volume of flood flow includes as much or more silt and debris as water. That increase in silt carried down from upstream will also dramatically increase the silting up of the reservoir behind the dam. This means the reservoir will have less water for power generation or downstream usage. It also increases the risk of overtopping during extreme weather events as dams will more commonly be run at their maximum reservoir level leaving less margin in the silt-shallowed reservoir for absorbing the sudden run-off.
There is little reason to believe that once we have passed peak oil and the global economy implodes that future maintenance and commitment to safe decommissioning will increase as the tens of thousands of North American dams age. Historically, societies have simply abandoned infrastructure as the society disintegrates. A society in decline simply no longer has the resources to live up to those well-intentioned commitments made when that society was at its peak. The dam-building golden age of the 1950s to 1970s was an age without the foresight of peak oil and its implications for technology and the global economy. That glut of dam building happened without an awareness of the probability that all of those dams would reach old age at a time when society will have gone into terminal decline. It's like a commitment made to maintain a nuclear waste dump in perpetuity as long as the radiation levels in the stored material remain dangerous. It is easy to make such commitments when you see things continuing as they are indefinitely into the future. "All things being equal....." will simply not apply on the other side of peak oil. The rules will have changed. The people who made those commitments in the past will no longer be around to shoulder the responsibility to deliver on those commitments. That will fall to people struggling with simply trying to figure out how to survive the collapse.
--------------------------------------
The following were key documents in the research for this article;
1) FEMA: Dam Failure
2) Dam Failures
3) Notable Dam Failures: Recent Dam Failures and Lessons Learned
4) Reasons for Dam Failures
5) Risky business for dams
6) Flood Disasters in Canada
7) Dam Construction
8) Hydroelectric power generation
(See also; The myth of permanence: post-peak infrastructure maintenance, The Emerging Global Freshwater Crisis, and Lake Ontario & St. Lawrence River after Peak Oil in my blog.)
Most major cities, both globally and here in Canada, were born, developed and have evolved on the low-lying land adjacent to major bodies of water, either saltwater oceans, seas, bays and inlets or freshwater lakes and rivers. The cities sitting on saltwater shores seem to have been built with the dangerously misguided assumption that sea level is and will continue to be constant. The cities on freshwater shores are largely protected by a cornucopia of technology and infrastructure that has essentially stabilized water levels in the bodies of water on which they are situated.
In recent years, with the growth of scientific research and knowledge of global warming, there has been considerable attention paid to the risk faced by major cities over this next century from the potential sea-level rise that could result from the meltdown of glaciers and, most importantly, polar ice caps (79% of the world's fresh water is locked up in ice and snow). Very little attention has been paid, however, to the risk faced by major cities situated on freshwater shores that could result from the potential post peak-oil disintegration and collapse of the technology and infrastructure containing and controlling billions of tons of water upstream from these major cities. There are numerous internet sites that show the inundation risk of coastal areas from sea level rise. Very little has been done on inundation mapping downstream from major dams. That is not to suggest that smaller communities are not subject to the same risks, as most communities have evolved in the same way, on low-lying land adjacent to lakes, rivers and seas.
There are about 80,000 dams in the U.S., for example, the majority even today over fifty years old. According to FEMA, "Approximately one third of these pose a "high" or "significant" hazard to life and property if failure occurs."[1] It is important to note, here, that "high" and "significant" are from a national perspective in terms of potential dollar damage and potential deaths. As the report Flood Disasters in Canada[6] suggests, risk analysis statistics are "biased towards the more densely populated areas ..... where floods are more likely to impact humans." A dam failure upstream of any populated area would, however, be considered "significant" for those living downstream. According to the National Performance of Dams Program (NPDP), "at least 85% of the more than 75,000 dams in the the US will be in excess of 50 years old by 2020." The report goes on to stress, "Perhaps more significantly, most of the large dams throughout the US are also approaching old age."[5] There is, of course, a reason for this impending flush of aging dams. According to the report Dam Construction[7], "Within the U.S., the most active period of dam building occurred between 1950 and 1970, and has been called “the golden age of dam building” (Doyle et al., 2003). The same comment is frequently made about the situation in Canada." In Ontario today, "In the case of Ontario Power Generation’s almost 200 dams, nearly two thirds are in excess of 50 years old."[5]
Generally there is now a trend in Canada to move away from the large hydro megaprojects. "Because of the size, cost and negative environmental impacts of large dam projects, hydro development has been increasingly focused on small-scale projects, i.e., those with less than 10 MW of generating capacity. Many of these are run-of-the-river projects. There are currently more than 300 plants in Canada with a capacity of 15 MW or less (Industry Canada, 2003) and numerous others under consideration, particularly for remote communities that rely on high-cost diesel generation. Approximately 5500 sites in Canada are technically feasible for small-scale hydroelectric production (Natural Resources Canada, 2000)."[7] Though this means a reducing risk of failure of large dams, it increases the number of dams being built in proximity to and designed to service population centers, many remote where emergency response to a disaster would be delayed because of that remoteness.
Fifty years used to be considered the average life expectancy for dams. Not to suggest that the statistics or studies are being slanted but, with the rapidly ageing inventory of North American dams, a report entitled Dam Construction suggests, "Based on extensive U.S. experience, the life span of typically unmaintained dams is conservatively estimated at 75 years, refuting the common misconception that the average life of a dam is 50 years (Donnelly et al., 2002)."[7] Gee, ain't that lucky. I guess that takes the pressure off. The public relations importance of this statement is twofold, first the supposed refutation of the 50 year lifespan but, also, the inclusion of the phrase "typically unmaintained dams". Numerous studies by the International Joint Commission (IJC), FEMA, the National Performance of Dams Program (NPDP), and others, have suggested that even where dam safety programs exist and inspections occur, the vast majority of North American dams are not being maintained effectively today, many not even regularly inspected. The IJC, for example, considers the three dams involved in the international Moses/Saunders hydro dam facility at Cornwall Ontario and Messina New York (these dams hold back the waters of Lake Ontario from the St. Lawrence: the Great Lakes containing 22,573km3 of water, 22.573billion m3, enough water to cover 18.3 million acres of downstream land to a depth of 1 foot), to be potentially unsafe due to lack of inspections and maintenance. Even if the average life expectancy of a dam is 75 years rather than fifty as the above report suggests, that still means that the huge glut of dams built between 1950 and 1970 will all pass that average life expectancy by the middle of this century, at a time when the energy, technology and economy for their increasingly necessary maintenance or their decommissioning will be in serious decline. With the average life expectancy of a dam, whether that be fifty years or seventy-five, the cost and complexity of decommissioning is most often as high as it was for the original construction. There is a significant risk beyond peak oil that dams may simply be de-operated (stopping the usage and maintenance) rather than decommissioned (properly torn down and replaced or returning the river to its natural flow). The track record of site decommissioning, whether dams, nuclear sites, toxic chemical sites, or others, has not been good. There is no reason to expect that it will improve under the difficult circumstances we will face on the other side of peak oil.
Whether or not the focus on "typically unmaintained dams" in the above report is based on a knowledge of peak oil and its implications, it does suggest an awareness of widespread concerns about the future maintenance and maintainability of dams and related infrastructure. A report entitled Risky Business for Dams[5] makes the following statement, "Dam owners are facing increasingly difficult decisions about the ways in which finite financial and human resources should be allocated to ensure the continuing safe operation of ageing dams. Without such investment, dam failure is not only a possibility but can be an expected consequence of lack of proper maintenance and diligence by a dam owner." Washington State alone lists more than a dozen dam failures in the last two decades, despite the level of current technologies, full energy availability and a vibrant economy.[4]
Canada is a large, cold nation. We have significant energy needs for transportation, for infrastructure and industry, and for home heating, cooling and cooking. As the global and national reserves of fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and coal) diminish over the course of this century Canada's needs for energy will still remain high. More and more people will, as fossil fuels decline, revert, out of necessity, to the use of wood for heating their homes and cooking their food. Canada is still blessed with an abundance of temperate forests. These forests, however, are generally not in the same locations as the population concentration. The amount of forest cover in populated areas has already diminished to minuscule levels. The pressures put on that remaining accessible forest cover in the search of fuel for home heating and cooking will become increasingly severe over the balance of this century.
This large-scale reversion to the use of wood for heating and cooking will have a major and increasing impact on the viability of the nation's dams. As forest cover is removed from the hills and fields of a river's watershed (especially in the case of clear-cutting), and with the increasing pressure on those lands for food and feed crop production, the amount of soil and plant material carried by that river will increase, particularly after major weather events. There have been countless examples - globally moreso than locally - of the devastating impact of flooding when a watercourse in flash flood fills with silt and debris from upstream. Often whole communities are buried in mud or wiped out by being carried away by torrents of water. With the anticipated increase in the removal of forest cover for fuel, with the loss of it's impact on the ability of the soil to absorb and retain moisture, and with the anticipated increase in severe weather events due to global warming, the volume of silt and debris in future flood events expose Canadian rivers to the type of catastrophic flooding we have seen elsewhere in the world. The risk of dam overtopping on managed watercourses (which includes most rivers flowing through populated areas) increases dramatically under such circumstances as the volume of flood flow includes as much or more silt and debris as water. That increase in silt carried down from upstream will also dramatically increase the silting up of the reservoir behind the dam. This means the reservoir will have less water for power generation or downstream usage. It also increases the risk of overtopping during extreme weather events as dams will more commonly be run at their maximum reservoir level leaving less margin in the silt-shallowed reservoir for absorbing the sudden run-off.
There is little reason to believe that once we have passed peak oil and the global economy implodes that future maintenance and commitment to safe decommissioning will increase as the tens of thousands of North American dams age. Historically, societies have simply abandoned infrastructure as the society disintegrates. A society in decline simply no longer has the resources to live up to those well-intentioned commitments made when that society was at its peak. The dam-building golden age of the 1950s to 1970s was an age without the foresight of peak oil and its implications for technology and the global economy. That glut of dam building happened without an awareness of the probability that all of those dams would reach old age at a time when society will have gone into terminal decline. It's like a commitment made to maintain a nuclear waste dump in perpetuity as long as the radiation levels in the stored material remain dangerous. It is easy to make such commitments when you see things continuing as they are indefinitely into the future. "All things being equal....." will simply not apply on the other side of peak oil. The rules will have changed. The people who made those commitments in the past will no longer be around to shoulder the responsibility to deliver on those commitments. That will fall to people struggling with simply trying to figure out how to survive the collapse.
--------------------------------------
The following were key documents in the research for this article;
1) FEMA: Dam Failure
2) Dam Failures
3) Notable Dam Failures: Recent Dam Failures and Lessons Learned
4) Reasons for Dam Failures
5) Risky business for dams
6) Flood Disasters in Canada
7) Dam Construction
8) Hydroelectric power generation
Monday, July 30, 2007
Lake Ontario & St. Lawrence River after Peak Oil
The water levels in both Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River are maintained by a significant amount of man-made technology and infrastructure. Principally this is achieved through a series of three dams; the international Moses-Saunders Hydro-Electric Dam at Cornwall Ontario and Messina New York, the Long Sault Dam at Long Sault, Ontario which acts as a spillway when outflows are larger than the capacity of the power dam, and the Iroquois Ice Dam at Iroquois, Ontario which is principally used to help form a stable ice cover and regulate water levels at the power dam. There are also a number of additional dykes, levies and flood control channels and canals such as the 17km Beauharnois Canal which bypasses the Soulanges rapids and carries 84% of the water flow of the river to the Beauharnois power station.
The International Joint Committee (IJC) established by the governments of the United States and Canada is charged with oversight responsibility for boundary waters shared by the two nations, most importantly including the Great Lakes/St Lawrence basin. Part of their mandate is to, through controlling the flow through these various facilities, "regulate Lake Ontario within a target range from 74.2 to 75.4 metres (243.3 to 247.3 feet) above sea level." This involves, unfortunately, a number of variables over which the IJC has no control;
* Global warming is already causing a slight rise in global sea levels and is expected to cause significant rises in sea levels over the coming century, particularly with the anticipated partial or complete melt of the Greenland ice cap and the Antarctic ice cap. Does the IJC then continue to maintain Lake Ontario water levels relative to rising sea levels or does it "fix" the sea level relative to which Lake Ontario levels are maintained?
* Global warming could, additionally, have serious impact over rainfall and snow levels over the Great Lakes basin and the full area that drains into the basin. In this past decade alone precipitation levels in the region have changed significantly. Although the IJC charter allows for significant changes in future weather patterns and inflows, the specifics of how the IJC will respond have not been spelled out.
* The Great Lakes basin drains nearly half a continent. The IJC has no jurisdiction over rivers and tributaries feeding the Great Lakes basin which are wholy contained within either the U.S.A. or Canada, a significant shortcoming of the existing IJC mandate. These waterways, and any infrastructure on them that could affect Great Lakes inflow, fall under the jurisdiction of a hodge-podge of state, provincial, federal, county and municipal governments and their agencies.
* Controlling the levels of Lake Ontario does not automatically control the flow through the St. Lawrence. That is dependent on inflows to the Great Lakes. But St. Lawrence river levels are also affected by other major inflows downstream from the control infrastructure, such as the Ottawa River and Richelieu River.
Worrisome from a post Peak oil perspective is the long-term viability and maintenance of this infrastructure. This concern has been expressed by the IJC itself. In a recent IJC report entitled Unsafe Dams? the IJC stated "In recent years, the Commission has reviewed the terms of some of its Orders of Approval for the construction of such structures. It has become aware that some of its Regulated Facilities are in need of repair and that some existing programs have not ensured that these repairs were made. ..... Existing legislation, regulations, practices and government oversight are insufficient to ensure that Regulated Facilities are safe." Specifically included in this concern are the three dams through which Lake Ontario and St. Lawrence River water levels are managed.
These facilities have now been in existence for several decades. This presents an obvious concern which the IJC have echoed, "Some Regulated Facilities were built early in the century. With aging facilities, maintenance programs are an absolute necesssity. Continuing maintenance programs are being implemented in some cases. Monies that owners budget for maintenance work are, however, sometimes not spent." In the case of the U.S. portion of the Moses/Saunders hydroelectric facility, much of the electricity generated is sold off to two key industries; the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) and General Motors Corporation (GM Powertrain). Most of the rest is sold off at cost to electric supply utilities across New York State. Should either or both of ALCOA or GM fail (GM's survival is even now in question), considering that maintenance and inspection are even now questionable, where will be the economic motivation to maintain the facility?
It is important to note that, at this time, the Canadian Federal government and the Ontario Provincial government have no established Dam Safety Program, though the Ontario Government is said to be working on one. Many of the major river systems feeding into Lake Ontario and the rest of the Great Lakes are controlled by a series of dams. The Trent River system feeding into Lake Ontario at Belleville/Trenton is a good example. In the lower reaches of the Trent River alone, from Frankford down to the Bay of Quinte, there are more than half a dozen major dams. Each of these dams holds back from 10-30 feet of water or more. Should any one of these dams fail, especially a dam further upstream, the volume of water released would simply inundate any dams further downstream, possibly leading to a domino collapse of dam after dam. The impact on Belleville, Trenton and all of the low-lying areas of Prince Edward County would be devestated.
Whether the Ontario Government is working on establishing a Dam Safety Program is, of course, a moot point in the face of a pending peak in global oil production and the potential severe impact on the global, American and Canadian economies. All dams, especially as they age, require significant ongoing maintenance and regular inspection. This is particularly so in a cold climate such as that in the Great Lakes basin with its severe seasonal variations and stresses on infrastructure, particularly dams. Whether the funds for inspecting and maintaining such infrastructure will be available in a collapsing economy is a reasonable question. Whether what funds are available will be spent on the appropriate inspection and maintenance is just as fair. Maintenance is always one of the first things to suffer when budgets get tight. There's no profit in maintenance.
In my article The myth of permanence: post-peak infrastructure maintenance, I explored the potential of future infrastructure maintenance problems on a broad range of sociatal infrastructure. Nowhere, in my opinion, is this more critical than with regard to dams. The Great Lakes contain a full 18% of the total surface freshwater on the planet. All of that water is kept in check by hundreds of dams controlling both outflow and inflow. That is a tremendous amount of aging infrastructure that will need increasing amounts of energy-intensive maintenance to remain viable. The energy that was available during the era when all that infrastructure was built won't be available when it all has to be replaced or decommissioned. The results could be catastrophic.
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