The Crash Course - Chris Martenson [90]
On top of this story, some people like to introduce the idea of converting coal to liquids to use in our fuel tanks. The coal-to-liquids (CTL) idea has a certain appeal. If the United States and other areas of the world have a lot of coal, then why not convert some of that coal into liquid fuels that we can put into our vehicles?
Unfortunately, you don’t have to scratch very hard at that idea to discover its flaws. First, there are no CTL plants running in the United States, and there are precious few anywhere in the world, raising the question of whether we could even build them fast enough to make a difference. Second, it’s a horribly inefficient way to use coal, wasting a lot of the energy content in coal at a time when we really shouldn’t be wasting much of anything. Third, there may not be enough coal coming from existing and planned mines to handle our base electricity needs, let alone supply an entire new industrial use.
On this last point, we will note that in 2010 China is building the equivalent of one new 1 gigawatt coal-fired plant every week25 and consumed a full 50 percent of all the coal used in the world that year.26 Given that China doubled its energy consumption between 2000 and 2008, and given its current plans to continue building out its coal-fired electricity infrastructure at a very rapid clip, it’s a pretty safe bet that there will be some stiff competition for available coal supplies in the future.
Putting it all together for the United States, if coal becomes a net import product by 2015, the energy quality of existing coal declines, and demand ramps up worldwide by significant margins, the idea that coal will play any sort of a redeeming role for the loss of petroleum production might qualify as wishful thinking.
While some still, even today, mistakenly claim that the United States has 250 years of coal left, once we factor in declining coal grades plus the need for increased consumption to support increased energy growth, it’s entirely possible that U.S. coal won’t last even 50 years. Will coal play an important role in our energy future? Undoubtedly. Will coal be the energy savior that will enable us to make a seamless transition away from oil to something else and last for hundreds of years? No.
Here’s how coal breaks down as a possible candidate to fill the liquid fuels gap being left by Peak Oil:
Time: Decades. There are no operating coal-to-liquids (CTL) plants in the United States, nor are there very many anywhere in the world. It would take several decades to open up new mines to feed additional coal to this industry and to build sufficient CTL plants.
Scale: Assuming the world wants to get to the equivalent of 105 million barrels of oil a day by 2030, but that oil has instead peaked and slipped slightly to 65 million barrels per day, this implies the need to construct and feed 800 CTL plants, each with an average daily output of 50 thousand barrels.
Cost: Assuming that each plant costs $5 billion to build and produces 50,000 barrels a day, the world will have to invest $4 trillion just in the construction of the plants.27
The Alternatives
When people think of alternative energy, they are primarily talking about means of getting electricity