Energy & Modernity
Money is a mere representation. At all times money is fundamentally a matter of faith. Despite every entry on every account ledger, all money’s value requires faith. As with all matters of faith, discussions about the nature of money quickly get squishy. This in no way diminishes money's importance as George Bailey retorted to his guardian angel Clarence’s revelation of no need for money in heaven, “It comes in pretty handy down here Bub.” After all sisters and brothers, if there no faith, if only in each other and there is no faith greater or more difficult, society itself wouldn’t exist.
On the other hand, energy is a very, very hard thing, a catholic, universal one at that. Modernity is largely a product of homo sapiens’ ability to harness energy, especially our burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil, and natural gas. Modernity came about not by faith, but by the application of the concrete knowledge of the laws of physics and chemistry. Certainly, modernity has longer cultural roots, paradoxically some even ancient. Yet, as any American would indisputably conclude, if they were ever to consider such a thing, the modern began with the burning of coal to fire steam engines leading to the world we know today, where a seemingly endless supply of cheap fossil fuels promotes the unprecedented extravagance of conspicuous energy waste as a premier symbol of wealth and power.
In recent decades, modernity has come under question, most not particularly useful, a great many plain silly. However, questions on modernity's very foundation, an existential matter, concerning the future of fossil fuels grow increasingly serious. Starting a half-century ago, questions regarding plentiful, cheap supply, particularly in regards to oil, first reached public attention. They were quickly ignored, then literally papered over with ever greater debt. The world's largest oil consumer, the United States, began a decades long economic decline, increasing numbers of people moved to the wrong side of a wealth scale defined substantially by energy consumption.
In addition, an energy landscape largely painted by physics and chemistry saw biology assert itself. Questions emerged regarding the impact of two-centuries of fossil fuel burning on various aspects of the planet's ecology, including the growing ecological dislocations caused by changing climate patterns.
In recent years, the climate issue has confoundedly and unhelpfully come to define all issues regarding energy. Amusingly for someone who closely followed the oil situation for fifty years, the climate issue in America overwhelmingly became associated with American car culture. In the US, the automobile represents modernity’s most vulgar and hautest culture. An exclusive focus on energy via climate has resulted in a literally mad rush to electrify American car culture, completely disregarding as previously with oil, the other vast ecological implications such a process would entail. Such a response can be expected from a people taking energy waste not simply for granted, but as a God given right, modern culture comprised of far too little reflection and far too great a belief in technology promoted by billionaire hucksters.
We are told we are in an “energy transition.” For self-identified environmentalists it is a transition to renewable sources, for the more tech besotted to nukes. For both, the solutions are too simple, plug and play as they used to say in the high-tech world, moving from one energy source to another. Here, energy, like money, becomes faith and this is not good for anybody. There is no quick couple decades easy transition from processes and technologies that took two-centuries to become entrenched. It is change requiring not just a switch in energy generation, but imperatively a change in culture, a transition, or better, a transcending from the modern to post-modern.
Demonstrating just how far the US is away from any notions in this regard, Joe Biden, the first Climate President, made what can only be described as a charlatan, completely obscene decision allowing more Alaska oil drilling in one of the planet's last semi-wild areas. The president OKed drilling for what at best might gain 180,000 barrels of oil a day. From an American consumption perspective that's less than 1% of daily oil use, globally .2%.
Alaska oil came on line in the late 70s helping relieve the oil pressures of the era. However, production peaked in 1988 and has headed down since. Biden’s Alaska bungle won’t add much, especially in relation to what was being produced 35 years ago. The idea we should be conserving, changing our oil habits instead of more drilling remains as radical it ever was, though today it doesn’t stop the president in the next breath of preaching climate end times.
If you're advocating an energy transitioning and can't conceive of forgoing a 1% increase in oil supply, nothing you say can be taken seriously. But why would anyone take Joe Biden seriously about anything energy related? He arrived in DC in 1973, the same year as the first “Oil Shock'” and has done nada. It's always been astounding to me that a 12 year old learned from those Oil Shocks there was not an unlimited supply of oil on a finite planet, but over the next fifty years, I then repeatedly learned it was pretty much a lesson lost on every other American. In fact, the idea there is a limited global oil supply is downright un-American.
It might prove helpful if the world is to move away from fossil fuels, we understood a little about the current energy picture. In doing so, it's important to always keep in mind energy figures, no matter where they're from, are notoriously loose, but we need to work with what we got. The most essential global view is the vast inequality in energy usage and access across the planet.
According to BP's (British Petroleum) Statistical Review of World Energy 2022, the United States with just 4% of the world's population consumes 16% of total global energy. The entire continent of Africa with 15% of the global population consumes only 3% of global energy supplies. The rest of the world falls in between these extremes. US per capita energy use is an outlier well above the rest of the planet, while African energy usage is representative of a much greater number of people than just the African continent’s. On a per capita basis, the majority of the world is closer to Africa's energy use than the United States. So, there’s a diversity of energy problems, most are looking for access, a few have a massive waste problem.
The US refuses to acknowledge energy waste, otherwise known as President George HW Bush put it three-decades ago “the American way of life.” Over the last half-century instead of seriously addressing energy waste, much less just being more efficient, Americans sought the elixir of another fossil fuel, natural gas. There's nothing new about natural gas. In varying amounts it accompanied every oil well ever drilled. For a long time much of the gas from oil wells was released or flared (burned and released) into the atmosphere, it wasn't economically worth capturing. However, with the 1970s Oil Shocks, a concerted effort began to diversify US energy supplies, most successfully ramping up in the 1990s by burning ever more natural gas for electricity generation.
Natural gas as a percentage of fuel for US electricity generation went from 12% in 1990 to 38% in 2021. Across the same 30 years, coal decreased from 52% of generation to 22%, not so much a transition as a substitution of one fossil fuel for another. If you're counting carbon not so good. This transition took 30 years. Today, burning natural gas has become increasingly prevalent across the planet along with calls for much greater adoption, yet it’s still promoted as a “transition fuel.” In actuality, the world's creating a greater fossil fuel dependency.
Natural gas dependency is quickly proving more problematic than oil dependency. Far worse than OPEC's grip on remaining global oil reserves, only five countries―Russia, Iran, Qatar, US, and Turkmenistan―have 65% of global natural gas reserves, the first three alone account for 50%. The bane oil politics has been for this planet will be dwarfed by natural gas politics. It should be added, based on current usage, today's reserves allow for fifty years of supply, if you quickly doubled usage, it would only be half that.
With the criminally stupid war in Ukraine, liquid natural gas, (LNG) has gotten a lot of attention. LNG is natural gas cooled (-260 degrees Fahrenheit) to the point of becoming a liquid, itself an energy intensive process. The idea LNG is going to be produced in a handful of places and shipped across the oceans to power the globe is faith based energy thinking at its worst. Best current example, all the hype concerning the US’ ability to replace Europe's Russian gas supply. A recent Reuters' article titled “U.S. poised to regain crown as world's top LNG exporter” states ( again, take these numbers with a big grain of salt), “U.S. exports of natural gas LNG rose 8% to 10.6 bcfd (billion cubic feet a day), 7.2 bcfd, of U.S. LNG exports went to Europe.”
According to BP Stats, Russian gas exports to Europe in 2021 were 15 bcfd, so 7.2 bcfd is 46%. Much of the American supply came from diverting US LNG exports from Asia and elsewhere leading to increased prices, including increased prices in the US. Any thinking natural gas, especially in regards to LNG will meet global energy needs based on established patterns of energy usage is to say the least extremely bad thinking, and again, none of this includes carbon counting for those concerned.
Industrial economy remains fossil-fuel based, a little hydro, and the addition of some nuclear power over the last six-decades. With the Oil Shocks of the 1970s, the previous completely uncontrolled growth in American energy consumption did decrease, largely because the US began offshoring much of its industrial base.
After the great financial meltdown in 2008, both electricity generation and oil use flattened, with neither since surpassing the highs set in 2007. More than anything this demonstrates a greater number of people were kicked to the back of the American energy bus. It was certainly not a result of a concerted effort to become more efficient, in fact just the opposite, this was the era of the much ballyhooed but ephemeral Shale Revolution.
We need a massive rethink on how the world utilizes energy. The idea we're going to simply continue doing what we do, the greatest and gravest example being American car culture, by simply plugging into a new energy sources needs to be recognized as a nonstarter before inflicting too much damage. Electrify transportation, absolutely, start with trains, buses, and bicycles, with the caveat battery usage needs to be very, very carefully rethought, it is not the only way to store energy.
We need to flip how we look at energy and focus on how we restructure society around available renewable energy sources. The sun is a safely placed, plentiful fusion reactor, we haven’t even started to think how best to use the energy it provides.
The FT has an interview with Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo. She is working on restructuring Paris to be less car-centric and more conducive to walking and biking. It is a return to making life's daily necessities available without having to get in an automobile. It is the greatest post-modern thinking to ever come out of France, not that that bar was ever set very high.
The burning of fossil-fuels defined modernity. A world moving beyond fossil-fuels is a world transcending modernity.