The Crash Course - Chris Martenson [92]
There are promising signs from algal biodiesel,31 which I am interested in because it offers the prospect of nutrient recycling and supplies liquid fuels. But as pleasing as the early signs are from this promising technology, here in 2010 we might note that virtually zero algal biodiesel is yet on the market, meaning that an enormous build-out and scale-up of this technology will be required for it to have any meaningful impact. Again, there’s a world of difference, and usually several decades, between the birth of an idea and full-scale implementation and adoption.
Here’s how the alternatives break down:
Time: Decades. Achieving even modest percentage footholds in our macro energy-use profiles will require a colossal investment. But it needs doing and should be done with all possible haste.
Scale: Absolutely massive. Alternative energy technologies relying on wind, waves, or sun have extremely low (read: unfavorable) “energy densities,” meaning that instead of installing a single power plant, thousands of individual units have to be installed over a much larger area. To simply construct the factories needed to build wind, solar, and other equipment will be a significant undertaking. Serious questions remain as to whether sufficient rare resources exist to build all the panels and wind mills using current technologies. For example, neodymium magnets may run short due to a lack of the neodymium itself, as it is one of the rare-earth elements that China crimped off from the export markets in 2010.
Cost: At this point, electricity from solar and wind sources isn’t cost-competitive with fossil fuel sources.32 While estimating the trillions of dollars necessary to make alternatives a viable replacement for petroleum is a difficult prospect, we can easily state that alternatives would be the highest cost of any of the options. But still, these investments should be made.
Natural Gas
Of all of the potential alternative fuels, natural gas is best suited to become a “bridge fuel” that we can use to transition into a new future of less energy. Recent advances in shale bed drilling seem to have opened up vast new supplies of natural gas, although environmental concerns (around the chemicals used to “frac” the tight shale open so the gas will flow, and their effects on water tables) and the issue of rapid depletion of the wells remain to be clarified before these new supplies can be relied upon.
But if the reserve numbers are to be believed, then there is ample supply of natural gas to “fund” a transition period. Of course, we’d have to tap that account wisely and preferentially use whatever there is to build a more resilient and efficient energy infrastructure, not waste it trying to increase retail sales and other forms of consumption. The EROEI is very high for gas wells, believed to be somewhere over 30.33
However, if we’re seriously and credibly going to use natural gas, then we have to immediately begin the enormous task of retrofitting our energy and transportation infrastructure to use it. Cars will have to be modified, new natural gas fuel tanks must be installed, service stations will need new refueling equipment and storage tanks, pipelines will have to be built, and so on. However, converting a vehicle to run on natural gas is a snap compared to conversion to electricity, and there’s no compelling reason why such conversions should not be done as quickly and as urgently as possible.
As before, there are issues of time, scale, and cost to be considered if we want to credibly exploit natural gas as a meaningful replacement for oil. It’s certainly possible that we can make the switch, but here in 2010, there is no sign that any such plans are even being considered, let alone approaching a scale of implementation that matches the urgency of the situation.
Yes, we could move toward natural gas as a prime energy source. But to do so, we would have to make the shift within a single