The End of Fossil Fuels

We happen to be living in a unique era: the very short portion of human history in which we become totally addicted to fossil fuels, and consequently we use them up. All of the elements of a true addiction are present: We get a short term high, and we suffer long term health problems. The air pollution, the sedentary life styles, and the global warming are all injurious to health.

If the sum total of human life (from Lucy until the time we become extinct) is a long-life light bulb, the fossil fuel era is a flashbulb. A graph of petroleum usage from year 1 to 3000 would be a line approximately zero everywhere except for the little blip of a hundred years or so duration, in which we are now living.

The era could be lengthened by taxing these fuels highly and taking other measures to encourage conservation, but our addiction is more powerful than any compassion for future generations or ourselves, so it is all but inevitable that petroleum will be mostly all gone soon. (What is “soon?” In your lifetime if you are twenty something, I think.) “Mostly all gone” means plenty remaining, but too expensive to be practical.

The above graph could be regarded as an obscene gesture toward people of future centuries. Imagine some future ice-age. People will read about us and wonder how we could be so selfish.

A reasonable guess is that around the middle of this century, petroleum will be a luxury substance- too expensive to use for ordinary purposes. The end of coal is harder to foresee, but this resource is obviously not permanent; nor is uranium.

The Future

As the non-renewables (oil, gas, uranium, and coal) near depletion, and therefore become too expensive, there will be increasing incentives to develop the renewable sources of energy. Since these sources vary in availability from one locale to another, our energy sources promise to become more eclectic. Huge electric power plants will be needed for industry, but it is uncertain whether they will able to compete with the eclectic-electric plants for home use. Homes or groups of homes will be energy self-sufficient. (This can be accomplished today with an investment that is rather high, but the price is dropping.)

Off-the-grid living, practiced today by a very small percentage of people in industrialized countries, will eventually make good sense economically as well as ecologically. By investing in the means to generate your own electricity from the sun and the wind, you avoid having to buy it from someone else. Major lifestyle changes will occur: do you really want to invest several kilobucks extra just to be able to use that 1200 watt hair dryer? People living in abject wealth would. Most people will Thoreau away some of their appliances.

Certainly a determined effort will be made to keep people dependent on outside sources of energy. Liquid and gas fuels can be made from coal, and alcohol can be made from grains, to name a few which would satisfy the cravings of petroleum addicts. But economics will make these temporary unless a cheap way of making alcohol from cellulose is developed.

Of course the big power companies will probably receive the tax-payers' largess one way or another. We provided the funds for the research and development leading to the nuclear power plant, and we are currently providing the funds for the work on controlled fusion. If this turns out to be feasible, which seems like a good possibility long term, it will be a gift to Big Power. Another distinct possibility is that we will build a huge orbiting solar-electric station and microwave the energy to earth. We know that this can be done; the fact that the small-power path is cheaper and better does not guarantee that we will go small.

It seems very likely, however, that small power will become ubiquitous before fossil fuels become terribly expensive. New solar cell designs will make electricity from the sun competitive with that from conventional fossil fueled power plants, probably in early 21^st century. And as fuel costs increase, incentives to improve efficiency increases, so our "need" for large amounts of power in the home will diminish.

Some of the promising solar cell designs include a thin film type developed at the University of New South Wales in Australia, a cheap concentrating type built by Amonix, inc. of Torrence, California, an amorphous (non-crystalline) type developed by Energy Conversion Devices of Troy, Michigan. Solar roofing might be the way to go. Solar Integrated Technologies in Los Angeles makes roof panels with electric output. One way or another, solar cells will proliferate in the future.

Wind energy is competitive now. In windy areas like Cleveland, it would pay to invest in a tall wind machine at a high location. Wind technology is old, and it is unlikely that there will be large price reductions due to design changes. (Some reductions could occur through mass-production.) As energy prices climb, conservation and energy efficiency will become increasingly more important. It will make economic sense to design homes to be totally dependent on solar heating. This can be done now; there is no breakthrough needed.

In lighting, the fluorescent light is nowhere near the optimum theoretical efficiency, so there is the possibility of large improvements. (The firefly has about ten times the efficiency of a fluorescent light bulb.) Light-emitting diodes (LED’s) are now available in white. These are good for directional lighting such as flashlights or reading lamps, but they are not as efficient as fluorescent for general purpose lighting.

Transportation is an energy glutton, hence there are potential savings in this area. The car of the future is likely to have an electric motor powered by batteries or fuel cells. Batteries would be recharged by solar or wind-produced electricity; fuel cells would probably be recharged by hydrogen generated by electrolysis of water (undrinkable water can be used for this). Hydrogen is a likely fuel for trucks, buses, trains and airplanes. The exhaust from these vehicles would consist of water vapor and a few oxides of nitrogen, a great improvement over their exhaust today. Dirigibles are more efficient than airplanes, especially for short hops, so they are likely to make a comeback. Mass transit should be promoted over cars, and of course the bicycle is the ideal vehicle in many ways.

In manufacturing, there are many processes which use huge amounts of heat, and then heat is a waste product. Waste heat could be used to generate electricity. Conversely, waste heat from electric power plants should be put to use. Co-generation is the buzzword for these technologies. Most chemicals and plastics are made from petroleum, so we will need to develop other ways of producing them.

Farming, that great American success story, uses more oil energy than it produces in food energy. In other words, if we could eat petroleum for our total diet, less would be used up than is used in American agriculture currently. In terms of food output per barrel of petroleum used, ours is the least efficient agriculture in the world. This will change. Energy-intensive farm products will be priced out of the market, so farming methods will change. We could emulate some more "primitive" methods if nothing else works. Maybe we need a reverse Peace Corps.

I am fairly confident that the future will resemble my predictions here. I wish I could say that the population of our planet will be limited to the number the planet can reasonably support. We will wean ourselves from fossil fuels naturally due to the forces of economics. What will cause us to have fewer children? Will there ever be a twentieth century Pope? Hopefully, there will be. Morosefully, there won't be. If movements to limit population growth fail, then population will be limited by the traditional means: disease, starvation, war and violence. (If there is a devil, (s)he is delighted with the Pope's pious pronouncements against population planning.)

To finish on a positive note, the end of petroleum will make war more expensive and therefore less frequent. And if you like your electronic toys, you will be pleased to know that these technologies will continue to flourish, because they need not be heavy users of energy.

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