THURSDAY, FEB 2, 2023: NOTE TO FILE
Module 4-2
The Rationale for a Paradigm Shift in Energy Thinking
This section explores the rationale for the necessary paradigm shift in energy thinking by introducing the concept of Biophysical Economics in order to appreciate that to produce energy requires energy, together with the trending energy efficiencies over time. Thereafter, the ecological and carbon footprint of energy sources, as well as the embodied energy footprint of commonly used materials, further emphasises that our modern society is gripped by a voracious appetite for development, which needs to be seriously addressed in every facet. Finally, some innovative negative emissions technologies are discussed which have emanated from recent IPCC reports together with their implications. The purpose of this section, is to provide a wide lens of key energy issues so as to better understand the urgency that is required to address global energy issues in such a manner that;- is able to sustain our complex society with renewable energy sources; uses low embodied materials to reduce ecological and carbon footprints; and, is discerning in the use of appropriate negative emissions technologies.
2.1. Biophysical Economics
The basket of energy sources available to humanity to sustain itself needs to be understood in the context of biophysical or ecological economics. Herein, some pioneering scientists who understand the physical limits to growth have developed the concept of “Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI)”, also known as, “Net Energy Return (NER)”. One of the pioneers who coined this concept is Charles A.S. Hall. His simple way to explain this concept is that, “A predator, such as a trout or cheetah, cannot expend more energy in chasing prey than it gets from that prey. And, it must also pay for its own repair, depreciation, replacement and R&D”.
The above formula uses energy units to derive a ratio between the total energy delivered compared to the total energy required to deliver such energy. The latter includes the total energy equivalent costs, such as the direct costs of energy production, and the indirect costs, such as the cost to the environment for waste disposal, rehabilitation, road infrastructure, water extraction, pollution, etc. The EROEI ratio for a wide range of energy sources from Dr Charles A.S. Hall is shown in the Figure below. It also shows how the energy return form oil extraction has drastically dropped since the 1930s.
Source: Charles A. S. Hall and John W. Day Jr./ American Scientist, Graph: Matthew T. Stallbaumer. [Note the 100:1 for oil was in 1930 when a shallow hole allowed the oil to gush up on its own.]
The energy return on investment for firewood includes what you spend cutting and splitting it. However, after some rest and a good meal it's 100 percent renewable! PHOTO: ISTOCKPHOTO
The interesting observation of this chart, is the diminishing ratio of oil extraction efficiency over time, and hence the reason why oil exploration is going deeper and wider than ever before. Put simply, the age of peak energy has arrived, and the era of abundant cheap energy is over, as the diminishing EROEI ratios indicate. The implications for economies and sustainability, is that more and more energy will be required to sustain energy hungry economies, thus leaving less and less discretionary income to generate the new capital to sustain aging infrastructure and/or develop new infrastructure for renewable resources.
Paying attention to EROEI ratios can guide decision-makers towards making the more sensible decisions when energy sources are compared. For example, the controversial fracking for gas industry will be found wanting if the true cost of water consumption, wastewater treatment and transport is fully costed, compared to alternatives such as wind and solar energy.
The Biophysical Economics Policy Centre, an international “think-tank”, has been researching the theme of EROEI to help policy-makers understand the importance of energy, especially its biophysical limitations, with respect to economic development policy. This research has evolved around trying to understand the linkages between energy consumption and economic growth, and also, why is it that economic growth since the last global financial crash in 2008 has stagnated in relative terms. Whilst there may be many attempts to explain this phenomena in terms of interest rates, systemic risks, trade wars, etc., a simple explanation put forth by David J. Murphy and Charles A. S. Hall, is that declining EROEI ratios means that relatively more energy is required to create energy, which until before 2008 favoured economic recovery because of relatively cheap energy, whilst post 2008 energy has become relatively more expensive, hence the general sluggish economic recovery.
Another related and more daunting issue about EROEI, is that whilst it may be apparent that societies collapse because of environmental degradation, disease, invasions, extreme climatic events, etc., the underlying cause is economic due to diminishing returns on investments in social complexity, this in accordance to Joseph A. Tainter, author of the book, “The Collapse of Complex Societies”. It has been estimated that complex societies, such as in the first world, require at least a general basket of EROEI ratio of 5:1 to merely sustain themselves, whilst a society with an EROEI ratio below 3:1 will simply collapse (source: Charles A. S. Hall). This is what seemingly happened with the fall of the Roman Empire when the EROEI in terms of its total calorific value from its grain harvest decreased as the terrain could no longer support the relatively higher yields it achieved during its growth and conquest phases, coupled with crippling taxes to support a crumbling empire. Similar parallels are explored in Jared Diamond’s book, “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed”.
2.2. Ecological and Carbon Footprint of Energy Sources
Different methods of generating energy have very different ecological and carbon footprints.
For more information see ShrinkThatFootprint
[Note: CO2 production viewed at time of energy production without including
extendended EROEI view that would include the fossil fuel used to make the
hydroelectric dams, wind generators, solar PV arrays and infrastructure....]
In the chart below from “Our Ecological Footprint”, fossil fuel generated electricity has ten times the footprint of hydro and PVs and a hundred times that of wind. The carbon footprints of fuels and generating methods are given in the following energy conversion tables.
Industrial processes can be heavy energy consumers and can also emit carbon as part of the manufacturing process. An example is the cement industry, which emits up to 8% of the planet’s CO2 (more info).
[Industrial processes, fossil fueled, build dams and alt energy technology. Using solar PV to make solar PV panels and the needed infrastructure including an educational system, financial system, religious, military, legal, medical, entertainment... systems, may not produce net energy.]
Our Ecological Footprint by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees
2.3. Embodied Energy
Embodied Energy And Carbon Coefficients. Table extracted from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310022790_Construction_Materials-Embodied_Energy_Footprint-Global_Warming_Interaction
Embodied energy in common materials
Global CO2 emissions from cement in billions of tones -1 tonne of cement releases ~0.93 tCO2. Source
2.4. The IPCC and Appropriate Technology
Before we look at the forms of appropriate technology we can choose to provide for our needs without compromising biosphere integrity [modern humans do not know their needs from their wants and the endeavor to provide for either/both without compormising biosphere integrity is the Anthropocene mass extinction event], it’s worth considering the recent IPCC reports and their Negative Emissions Technology. As we have seen, in order to achieve carbon neutrality the IPCC has proposed certain pathways to ‘net zero emissions’ and these are being adopted by governments and advocated by mainstream media. According to the Paris Agreements, these pathways will be turned into firm regulatory commitments at the COP26 in 2020.
[Or not, and the following added graphic will not flatten by 2030 and rapidly decline:
].
The term ‘Net Zero Emissions’ is not the same as zero emissions, but entails balancing emissions with drawdown using ‘negative emissions technologies’. It also entails the use of biofuels, which will be discussed below, carbon capture and storage technology as well as certain ‘geoengineering’ projects that including whitening clouds to reflect sunlight (the Albedo effect), fertilising the oceans to sequester more carbon in them, as well as spraying aerosols to create rain. All geoengineering proposals entail considerable risks to biosphere integrity and cannot be tested in the laboratory prior to implementation.
Here we will look at the negative emissions technologies that are already being widely adopted, such as tree planting, and those attracting research funding, such as CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) and DACS (Direct Air Capture and Storage).
This diagram from the NGO Biofuelwatch explains the options and sums up some of the dangers inherent on adopting these proposals.
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CCS will allow the fossil fuel industry to continue to convert fossil fuels to electricity in power plants but the CO2 emissions will be captured in machines that filter out the gas through a process using amines known as ‘scrubbing’. When the filter is full, the CO2 is carried through pipes to be stored in old oil wells. As it is pumped in, the residues of oil rise so that it can be accessed. This is referred to as Enhanced Oil Recovery. CCS has been proposed for industrial production processes driven by coal or oil too. Effectively, it would mean business as usual for a very dirty industry with the impacts of drilling and mining on the environment continuing unabated.
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CCS technology is still in its infancy and at present cannot be up-scaled to accommodate the amount of CO2 and it could also turn out to be very expensive. Who will pay for it given that it will also raise the price of energy and consumer goods? Is this feasible given the imperative for economic growth? Will the expense be distributed equally or fall as a burden on the poor and on developing nations. All of these questions need to be raised and answered.
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DACS uses the same amine scrubbing technology but captures the gas directly from the air. It is being tested on a small scale in various places and the CO2 is not stored underground but re-used either by pumping it into greenhouses to stimulate plant growth or to put the bubbles in bottled water. The main problem with enhanced plant growth through forcing with CO2 is that while the plants grow more rapidly the nutrient content decreases.
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Trees are referred to as negative emissions technologies and already the mania for tree planting to draw down and sequester carbon has started. Given the scale of the deforestation we have witnessed over several millennia, and especially over the last two centuries, reforestation seems like a highly beneficial activity. But there are caveats. The Bonn Challenge is the ‘forest land restoration approach’ to climate change and environmental degradation. The aim is to restore 150 million hectares of degraded and deforested lands in biomes around the world. We must be careful, however, to ensure that the reforestation projects genuinely restore woodland ecosystems rather than using the land for monoculture plantations of fast-growing trees for biofuel energy or other timber industries. Under the Bonn Challenge, 40% of plantations will be allowed, but without independent monitoring the percentage could be much higher. Plantations are highly lucrative for investors as they attract subsidies for carbon sequestration, and for biofuels, and the crop can be sold in 10-20 years. Monoculture plantations have many drawbacks besides the loss of habitat for a diversity of wildlife, including the increased risk of wildfires. Rapidly growing, genetically modified pine and eucalyptus have been developed for plantations which dry out landscapes and ignite easily during droughts. And we must also make sure that indigenous peoples are not moved off their lands in order to plant trees so that effectively reforestation projects turn into land grabs.
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BECCS is extremely popular with Western governments. It entails burning biomass from trees in power stations to generate electricity with amine scrubbing technology for capture and storage. Already, biomass is being regarded as a clean and renewable form of energy for electricity generation, and is subsidized by the European Union and individual governments. However, scandals around the illicit logging of old-growth forests are emerging already and, moreover, studies have shown that burning biomass is not emission-free either.
The IPCC report published in August 2019 entitled “Climate Change and Land” estimates also that carbon can be sequestered in soil through changes to farming methods. Regenerative agriculture also becomes a ‘negative emissions technology’.
There is a great deal of potential here, as we have seen, for agriculture as ecosystem restoration and so we should consider the potential for regenerative agriculture on many functional levels, its potentially beneficial impact on the entire systemic biosphere crisis, restoring habitat to combat biodiversity loss, it’s potential for cooling and combating desertification through rehydrating landscapes, and not merely as a ‘technology’ to sequester carbon with the danger of land grabs and inappropriate land-use change. Regenerative agriculture and reforestation as ecosystem restoration also have a range of beneficial impacts on local communities, revitalizing rural economies and promoting the SDGs.
As we have seen in previous modules, functioning ecosystems are essential for biosphere systems and even for climate regulation. Any technologies proposed as appropriate should be tested against their impact on fully functioning ecosystems.
Module 4, lesson 3
