Our Long-Term Energy Future

Al Hanners is a retired geologist who worked worldwide for a major U.S. oil company for nearly five decades. He worked in the Middle East for the company in the early 1970s.

Cheap oil has driven the American economy and led to suburban sprawl that is the bane of mass transportation, to large over-powered, gas-guzzling private vehicles as status symbols, and to cheaply built, poorly insulated houses that require much fossil fuel to heat them. Many Americans understand that progressive depletion of oil reserves is accelerated by increasing demands for oil by the growing economies of China and India and is keeping gasoline prices high. While some Americans are having difficulty paying for fossil fuel to heat their homes this winter, the price of gasoline is still too low to shake complacency. We are okay now, they think. The future has always taken care of itself, so why worry?

I am a grandparent and old enough to be concerned about my descendents and all Americans. I am not alone. The September 2005 Scientific American cover headline is “Crossroads for Planet Earth,” the cover of the January 14, 2006, Economist headline is “Danger Time in America” and the title of the recent book by Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin is “Empire of Debt, The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis.”

Many people think only of short-term solutions. For example, natural gas provides an excellent transition from oil, but it also is a natural resource subject to skyrocketing prices as it becomes depleted. In fact, the September 2005 Time Magazine cover called natural gas the next energy crisis. Conservation is a worthy cause but conservation alone would no more drive our economy in the long run than replacing your 15 mile per gallon gas-guzzler with a 60 mile per gallon hybrid would take you where you want to go without fuel.

Misleading statements by the media and misleading ads lead to complacency. Consider these: “We make electricity from hydrogen.” “Hydrogen is one of the most abundant elements on earth.” These statements are true, but taken out of context they are misleading. Fuel cells make electricity from hydrogen, but where does the hydrogen come from? Hydrogen is, of course, one of the two elements that make up water in oceans, lakes, ice caps and streams. In fact, it takes energy to make hydrogen and, as of now, most hydrogen is made from fossil fuels because it is cheaper than hydrolysis of water.

Long-term alternatives to oil are also alternatives in the short term, especially those that make electricity: wind, solar power and fast-neutron nuclear power plants. We have enough coal to power electrical generators for a century or more. I can only hope that we have enough wisdom not to pursue that alternative. Also discussed in this article are biofuels and tar sands.

We Americans have the largest debt of any nation in the world and we are not making more than a token head start on alternative primary energy sources. Democracies are governed by crises. I am concerned that when the oil crisis hits us we will not have the capital to build the needed alternative energy infrastructure and will lack the credit to borrow funds.

Wind power is a success story in alternative energy because it now is close to being competitive with conventional energy sources. It will be cheaper as fossil fuels are depleted. The Interior Department plans to open 20 million acres in nine western states to wind power. One objection to wind power has been that it is unreliable, but experience has shown that provided there is a broad grid, irregularity in wind strength tends to balance out, and especially if solar power is supplied to the same grid. Also windmills kill migratory birds. Research is needed to find ways to prevent that. Raw wind potential in the United States is said to be 10 times the total present electrical generation capacity. That may be pie in the sky estimate, however, wind now provides only 0.001 percent of U.S. power, so there is both potential and need to increase wind power.

Photovoltaics, solar power, is also an important alternative source of electricity abetted by 31 U.S. states that allow net metering where the utility buys solar power from customers at the same price it charges for electricity used. Unfortunately, few cities currently let that apply to sources of electricity from rooftop solar arrays. Local politics is blocking expansion of solar power. Only informed voters have the ability to change that.

Another factor blocking more rapid expansion of solar power is the shortage of quality quartz to make solar cells. Recent research has shown that it is not just the quantity of impure particles that affect the quality of quartz, but also the size of the particles. Heating quartz tends to cause small particles to coalesce into bigger particles and thus increase the effectiveness of quartz in solar cells. While that technique is still in the experimental stage, it is worth pursuing in the quest for more and less expensive solar cells.

Bellingham is the “cloudy city of the north,” so how effective is solar power here? I learned a few years ago while camping in Silver Fir Campground on Mt. Baker Highway that it is better than I thought. The host had a huge motor home where he lived and I was surprised to see his motor home brightly lit at night. There were no power lines to the motor home so how did he light it? He said he did it with a modest size set of solar cells on the roof, in spite of the fact that the trees partly shaded the solar cells. He installed it himself and did the whole thing at a cost of $700! He also was a host at a park in Arizona in the winter. There his solar power provided enough electricity to also run a television set. (See articles on pages 10 and 11.)

A nuclear power plant splits atoms in a chain reaction that produces fast neutrons and heat, and steam runs electrical generators. In a simplistic way once taught in beginning physics classes, and sufficient for our purposes here, an atom consists of one or more electrons and one or more protons. A proton is composed of one too many neutrons. The more neutrons, the heavier the chemical element. Some heavy chemical elements, and notably uranium, gradually break down naturally.

Uranium ore contains two uranium isotopes, U-235 and U-238. U-235 is easily split (fissionable) by a slow neutron. U-238 when hit by a slow neutron captures it and is converted to plutonium. The first nuclear reactor built made plutonium to make atomic bombs and was a slow-neutron reactor (SNR).

Most of the nuclear power plants ever built use SNR. In some respects slow-neutron reactors and fast-neutron reactors (FNR) are alike. Fuel rods are inserted into the core to make the chain reaction. Other rods are poised for insertion into the core to shut down the reactor in an emergency. The difference between the two types of reactors is in the coolants used to transfer heat and control the speed of the neutrons, and differences in the fuel used. SNRs use water to transfer heat and slow down fast neutrons made by the chain reaction. Most of the energy produced by SNRs comes from U-235. Therefore, fuel using enriched U-235 is used. No doubt Iran is doing that in preparation for making plutonium for atomic bombs.

No fast-neutron reactors have ever been built in the U.S., but several were built in France, Japan, and Russia and two are still in use. India and China have announced that they intend to build FNRs. A 1000-megawatt SNR would produce 100 tons of nuclear waste per year that would have to be safely stored for 10,000 years. On the other hand, FNRs that burn waste from slow-neutron reactors would produce one ton of waste per year that would have to be safely stored for 500 years, a very long time. Recall that Columbus discovered America about 500 years ago. A brief article in The Bellingham Herald on 11/26/05 dealing with nuclear waste disposal in Yucca Mountain in Arizona said the need for space is being reassessed. Therefore, it appears that the U.S. government, which is very secretive about things nuclear, is now interested in fast-neutron reactors.

When fuel rods in SNRs are replaced after about three years of use, most of the energy still remains in the plutonium, plutonium’s isotopes and other heavy metals produced by the chain reaction. Those heavy metals are fissionable by fast neutrons, and for those reasons, FNRs can burn waste from slow-neutron reactors after it is processed onsite.

Instead of water, liquid metal is used to cool the core and transfer heat. Liquid sodium commonly is used because it slows neutrons very little. The liquid sodium is pumped to a heat exchanger where water is used to make steam that runs an electrical generator.

Uranium is a deplete-able finite resource. If, when slow-neutron reactors reach the end of their useful lives they would be replaced by fast-neutron reactors, no mining of uranium would be required for centuries. If nuclear power plants will be built in spite of citizens’ rejection of any nuclear power plant, it would be propitious to support fast-neutron reactors.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 requires 7.5 million gallons of ethanol and biodiesel in the nation’s fuel supply by year 2012. Biofuels are made from the starch in corn kernels, sugars in sugarcane in Brazil, and cellulosic fibers in agricultural plants including cornhusks and stalks often considered waste, and wood chips. Ethanol is the most common biofuel because the starch in corn kernels is easily converted to sugars, and sugars are fermented into alcohol. Moreover, standard gasoline engines can run on blends of up to 15 percent alcohol and a modified engine can use up to 85 percent ethanol.

In contrast, cellulose in biowaste is difficult to convert to sugars. Making ethanol from cellulose first requires mechanical breaking of plant matter, then treatment with enzymes to break the cellulose into sugars to make alcohol. The process uses considerable energy and has been costly. However, research on using anaerobic bacteria shows promise of reducing costs.

The benefit of using biofuels is controversial even among environmentalists. Some consider the federal government requirement of the use of ethanol to be a subsidy to corporate corn farmers because an increase in the demand for corn would increase corn prices. It would require an estimated 60 percent of all agricultural farmland to replace all of our fossil fuels with biofuels. Even converting all cellulosic corn-husk and stalks into biofuel can be counterproductive. All gardeners and family farmers know that organic material is required in soils to produce good crops.

That is not to say that what is truly waste should not be converted to biofuels, and that includes oils from restaurants. It takes a lot of energy to till the soil to grow and harvest corn, and currently that is in the form of diesel from fossil fuels, and to make fertilizer by taking nitrogen from the air by use of energy from fossil fuels. There is loss of groundwater in natural reservoirs because of irrigation, and the loss of soil especially by corporate farmers who use a discounted rate of return to plan their operations and their investments. They do not conduct sustainable operations like family farmers who want to pass their farms on to their children.

Currently the top issue in the Washington state legislature is “energy independence,” something unachievable for our state with biofuels, but it might be by adding wind and solar power. Governor Gregoire has proposed $17.5 million low-interest loans for a crusher to turn “canola” into oil, and for refineries to convert that oil to biodiesel. Rep. Janea Homquist, a Republican from Moses Lake, is the driving force to produce biofuels to benefit Washington farmers east of the Cascades. Governor Gregiore’s proposal, one suspects, is a counter measure seeking votes from Eastern Washington’s farmers.

Let us first explain what canola is. In western Canada, extensive fields are yellow in spring due to “rapeseed” in bloom a crop raised to produce oil. I was mystified when I moved to Bellingham where rapeseed was never mentioned but the word canola appeared. Were rapeseed and canola the same thing, I wondered? So I did an extensive investigation. Canola is the brand name for margarine made from rapeseed by the Canada Oil Company. Evidently, Canadians wisely thought any mention of rape in a product to be eaten would be repugnant to American housewives and named it canola.

You probably have eaten Canola Harvest margarine and seen mustard with yellow flowers blooming in Whatcom and Skagit counties. The scientific name is Brassica campestris and the common name in botanical books commonly used here is common mustard or bird rape. The Canada Oil Company claims that the name canola is justified because it has modified bird rape. By definition commonly agreed on by scientists, a species includes those living things that can mate and produce fertile young. I’ll wager anyone that by that definition canola and bird rape are the same species. Promotional names misinform consumers. I haven’t seen or heard any information on the economics of producing biodiesel from common mustard. Perhaps the hard facts of economics are not important because politics trump sound economics.

After Brazil invested billions of dollars in technology, it now is making ethanol from sugar in sugar cane at a current cost less than gasoline. Even though cars fueled by ethanol net fewer miles per gallon than those using gasoline, the cost per mile of the two alternative fuels is about the same. Moreover, ethanol puts less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than gasoline. New fossil fuels offshore and ethanol make Brazil energy independent. However, Brazil has unique circumstances that could not be followed here in the U.S. Brazil has plenty of land, the right growing conditions, including rain and cheap labor.

We have enough coal to last more than a century so sometime in the future coal is likely to be even more involved in the politics of energy supply than it is now. Today coal is used primarily to power plants generating electricity to light, heat and air condition homes and businesses. But coal could do much more. Electricity from coal could be used to produce hydrogen from water and thus operate fuel cells for transportation. Perhaps even more importantly, during World War II, Germans, cut off from foreign sources of oil, made liquid fuel from coal. Right now diesel made from coal is nearly economically competitive with diesel made from oil provided that damage to the environment is not factored in.

There has been a war on science at least back to Galileo (1564-1642) and beyond. Galileo amassed evidence that proved that the earth revolved around the sun and that the earth is not the center of the universe as had been believed. He was forced to recant and he spent the last seven years of his life under house arrest.

The war on science dealing with global warming is more serious with respect to coal than other fossil fuels. Of all the fossil fuels, coal produces the most carbon dioxide per unit energy produced, and C02 is the leading greenhouse gas. About 40 percent of carbon dioxide released in the United States in year 2003 came from coal, and that in spite of the fact that most of that coal was used to power electrical generators in the eastern United States to produce electricity to light homes and businesses.

In the long run, carbon dioxide emissions from other fossil fuels will decrease as they are depleted, while our huge coal reserve could be used not only to light homes and business but also for other purposes that emit carbon dioxide. Moreover, the coal business has a cozy relation with our federal government both among producers of electricity from coal and with politicians from states that produce coal. Not only has enough been written on the war on science to fill a book, it already has, “The Republican War on Science” by Chris Mooney. On 1/29/06 The Bellingham Herald published the following from the NY Times News Service:

“The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush Administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in greenhouse gasses linked to global warming. The scientist, James E. Hansen, said that officials at NASA had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers and postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.”

The CBS TV show “60 Minutes” on 3/19/06 not only interviewed James Hansen but showed the actual downgrades his articles on global warmingby the Bush Administration lawyer of before they were submitted to Congress.

Because mountain glaciers and polar ice are melting, many Americans believe that the earth is getting warmer. The principal debate is over whether warming is a natural phenomenon or whether it is caused or accelerated by carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.

Here is some support for human-caused climate change. Carbon dioxide in air bubbles in cores taken from Antarctic ice climbed from 280 parts per million two centuries ago to 380 parts per million today while temperatures increased one degree Fahrenheit. That negates the hypothesis of scientists years ago that oceans would absorb the increased carbon dioxide. They did not. Between the years 1988 and 2002, climate change scientists reached a strong consensus that humans cause climate change.

In spite of that, not only did the United States not sign the Kyoto Protocol, it encouraged the sale of energy guzzling private transportation, made the Clean Air Act more favorable to power plants using coal as fuel, and did not attend the recent international meeting in Montreal on the Kyoto Protocol that will expire in year 2012. I am saddened by the widening gap between the U.S. and Canada indicated by the Canadian Petroleum Geologists Association’s strong support of the Kyoto treaty, and the miniscule protest in American media of the boycott of the Montreal meeting on it.

On the one hand, I regret that I will never know what happens when the crunch on oil depletion occurs. On the other hand, perhaps I will be lucky not to know.

The CBS TV program “60 Minutes” on 1/22/06 stated that the fossil fuel reserve in the Athabasca Tar Sands available by current surface mining technology is enough to supply the United States for a century. Hence, remarks here are warranted.

The Athabasca Tar Sands are not ours. They are located about 400 miles north of Montana in Alberta, Canada, a sovereign nation. Thus, the energy available there would do nothing to provide Americans with energy self-sufficiency. Surface mining and hot water treatment to prepare heavy oil for shipment has been in operation for a quarter of a century. Much of that oil is exported to the United States. Canada may not want to accelerate exploitation but save it for Canada’s own future use. Moreover, producing marketable heavy oil from the tar is a dirty process polluting the atmosphere. It already is being protested by Canadian environmental organizations.

The tar in the Athabasca sand is petroleum oil that has lost volatiles through natural processes. So why did the Canadian Petroleum Geologists Association support the Kyoto Protocol? Because utilization of tar sands is guided by engineering, not geological exploration, a situation similar to that of coal, and both are very dirty fossil fuels. §