Preface.  Hundreds of top scientists gathered in 2008 to discuss the future of energy in America at a time when oil prices were reaching record highs. And here we are again with record breaking prices and no reduction of our energy dependency.  Indeed, under Trump, Republicans tried to get rid of the CAFÉ standards for greater energy efficiency in vehicles and the Energy Star program which rates appliances for how energy efficient they are and how much money you could save.

James Schlesinger, former Secretary of Defense, CIA director, and first Secretary of Energy noted that in his 12-volume Study of History (1934-1961), historian Arnold Toynbee examined the trajectories of various human civilizations and asked why civilizations succeeded or failed. Most often they failed because of a challenge they could not meet. Today, the provision and use of energy pose “an immense challenge, both foreign and domestic”. Then he quoted Charles Galton Darwin, the grandson of the author of the Origin of Species:

“A thing that will assume enormous importance quite soon is the exhaustion of our fuel resources. Coal and oil have been accumulating in the earth for over 500 million years, and, at the present rates of demand for mechanical power, the estimates are that oil will be all gone in about a century, and coal probably in a good deal less than 500 years. For the present purpose, it does not matter if these are under-estimates; they could be doubled or trebled and still not affect the argument. Mechanical power comes from our reserves of energy, and we are squandering our energy capital quite recklessly. It will very soon be all gone, and in the long run we shall have to live from year to year on our earnings. “ Source: Charles Galton Darwin 1953 The Next Million Years

Darwin’s observations are as relevant today as they were a half century ago, Schlesinger observed. “We are going through our capital of inheritance at a remarkable pace.”

Now that we’re back in another energy crisis in 2022 with prices skyrocketing, nuclear power is again being touted as the Answer as a potential source of energy that does not release greenhouse gases during power generation. But while a nuclear revival is likely, Schlesinger said, a nuclear renaissance is not. Major problems regarding fuel cycles and waste storage remain to be solved. And the nuclear labor force has aged dramatically in recent decades, with much of the labor force now on the verge of retirement and far fewer trained workers ready to fill their shoes.

But Ernest Moniz, former Secretary of Energy, was skeptical about the merits of reprocessing back in 2008 because reprocessing technology currently in use can be used in nuclear weapons, and claims for the waste management benefits of reprocessing are exaggerated. John Holdren observed that reprocessing might reduce the volume of waste, but volume is not the constraint on the capacity of a waste repository. The constraint is the amount of heat generated by the waste, and that problem cannot be solved without reactors for reprocessing that are at least 40 to 50 years away. Reprocessing spent fuel makes nuclear energy “more complicated, more expensive, more proliferation prone, and more controversial. If you want nuclear energy to be rapidly expandable, and to take a bite out of the climate change problem, you want to make it as cheap as possible, as simple as possible, as proliferation resistant as possible, and as non-controversial as possible, and that means you don’t want to reprocess any time soon. If nuclear power is to provide a considerable portion of the future U.S. electrical power, we would have to have eight Yucca Mountains by the end of this century in order to store the spent fuel.”

And some more deja vu: U.S. dependence on other countries for oil has weakened the nation’s ability to influence the policies of those countries, said Schlesinger. The growth of oil revenues in countries like Iran and Venezuela has enabled them to be openly defiant with the United States in ways that would not have occurred a decade ago. Russia is reasserting itself after a decade of what it views as international humiliation. Even Saudi Arabia and other U.S. allies in the Gulf of Arabia are not as responsive to U.S. requests as they once were because of the immense increase in their financial assets.

Alice Friedemann  www.energyskeptic.com  Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”.  Women in ecology  Podcasts: WGBH, Jore, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity,  Index of best energyskeptic posts

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NRC (2008) The National Academies Summit on America’s Energy Future: Summary of a Meeting. The National Academies Press. 181 pages. https://doi.org/10.17226/12450

Foreword: A confluence of events is producing a growing sense of urgency about the role of energy in long-term U.S. economic vitality, national security, and climate change. Energy prices have been rising and are extremely volatile. The demand for energy has been increasing, especially in develop[1]ing countries. Energy supplies, and especially supplies of oil, lack long-term security in the face of political instability and resource limits. Concerns about carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, which currently supply most of the world’s energy, are growing. Investments in the infrastructure and technologies needed to develop alternate energy sources are inadequate. And societal concerns surround the large-scale deployment of some alternate energy sources such as nuclear power. All of these factors are affected to a great degree by government policies both here and abroad. To stimulate and inform a constructive national debate on these and other energy-related issues, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering initiated in 2007 a major study, “America’s Energy Future: Technology Opportunities, Risks, and Tradeoffs.”

On March 12, 2008, the price of a barrel of light crude oil exceeded $110 for the first time in history. The next day, more than 800 people gathered in the auditorium of the National Academy of Sciences Building and over the Internet for the 2-day National Academies Summit on America’s Energy Future. While the summit was designed to examine a broad range of energy sources and timeframes ranging years and decades into the future, record-high prices of oil were a constant reminder that the future is fast approaching. As Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Samuel Bodman said in addressing the summit, “The price of oil is so high that it has gotten everybody’s attention.”

A Growing Sense of Urgency

The use of energy permeates our lives. We use energy to cook, to light and heat our homes and commercial buildings, to power industry and agriculture, to transport people and goods, and to drive and fly. The products we buy and the services we employ are made possible by the use of energy. Our well-being, prosperity, and security are all built on the ingenious provision and application of various forms of energy.

The second broad observation to emerge from the study Schlesinger co-chaired is that U.S. dependence on foreign oil is not going to end in the foreseeable future (Victor et al., 2006). One reason for this continuing reliance is the sheer size of the U.S. market. As Paul Portney pointed out, about one person in every 20 on Earth lives in the United States. Yet the U.S. population currently uses about one in every four barrels of oil that are produced. This high usage is why the United States currently imports about two-thirds of its oil. “We use oil in gross disproportion to our numbers,” Portney said.

Past calls to achieve energy independence have failed, Schlesinger observed. In 1973, President Richard Nixon launched Project Independence, which laid out a path to becoming energy self-sufficient by the year 1980. Between 1973 and 1980, imports of crude oil into the United States rose 60%, Schlesinger said. Since that time, they have tripled. “If we are seeking energy independence, we do not seem to be on the right track,” Schlesinger observed.

The main reason for increased imports is the nation’s continued reliance on petroleum for vehicle fuels. “We are not going to reach energy independence as long as the United States remains dependent on the internal combustion engine,” said Schlesinger. even as the fuel efficiency of vehicles improves, the larger number of vehicles caused by a larger population and more vehicles per person will at least partly offset efficiency gains. Furthermore, it takes 20 years to turn over the stock of cars, and older cars, which tend to stay on the road.

Many of the countries on which the United States relies for petroleum are located in unstable parts of the world, Portney observed. In addition, the rise of resource nationalism and the use of energy resources as a political tool have put constraints on oil production. More than 75 percent of the world’s oil reserves are now controlled by national oil companies, which tend to be less efficient at developing their resources (NPC, 2007).

Transporting supplies to market also can be a problem, Jeffery pointed out. Much of the world’s oil passes through a series of vulnerable points, leaving energy consumers susceptible to supply disruptions. Thirty-five percent of all the oil shipped in the world passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Another 34% passes through the Strait of Malacca on the way to China, Japan, and other Asian countries. About 8% passes through the Bab el Mandeb, which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. “Reliance on a small number of oil transit routes leaves world oil supplies open to the possibility of a sudden disruption, whether manmade or by a natural disaster,” Jeffery said.  Oil facilities also are attractive targets for terrorists, Schlesinger said.

A necessary urgency?

Despite the severe problems associated with energy production and use, many people at the summit expressed optimism that the problems can be overcome. Many new technologies are already available that can reduce energy consumption in transportation and in buildings and industry, and other promising technologies are being developed. Moreover, many more people are recognizing the urgency of the energy issue, Bodman observed, which has built support for one of the most important elements of a national strategy: a national imperative to act. “Perhaps as never before, the American people are calling for action,” he said.

Yet many speakers at the summit also asked whether the level of urgency being expressed by the public and by policymakers is sufficient. New technologies can take a long time to develop and implement, especially given the large investments that must be made for new technologies to have a substantial effect in the energy sector. In light of projections that call for the use of energy to double during the 21st century, said Ray Orbach, “I think one can legitimately ask, ‘Where will the energy come from?’”

“We don’t seem to be able to generate the sense of urgency that’s required to address this problem,” said Ernest Moniz. “We talk about doing this and doing that, and before you know it a decade has passed. We can’t afford to waste another 10 or 15 years. We can’t get there from here if we do that. The sense of urgency is one that we need somehow to capture.”

Davis estimated that annual global energy use has probably risen at least 20-fold over the past century.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Even if all use of fossil fuels were to cease today, these models predict another 0.6-degree centigrade increase in temperature during the 21st century, Davis observed. Since all of the IPCC scenarios assume continued use of fossil fuels, all of the scenarios assume temperature increases larger than that amount.

Petroleum and Natural Gas

As the use of energy has risen, questions have multiplied about whether adequate supplies will be available to meet demand. The world’s oil still comes largely from giant and super giant oil fields that were discovered more than 50 years ago; James Schlesinger observed at the summit. Many of these fields are now going into decline, including the Burgan oil field in Kuwait, Canterell in Mexico, the North Sea, and the north slope of Alaska. The Saudis are trying to sustain production in Ghawar, the massive field that provides more than 6% of the world’s oil, but sooner or later that field, too, will go into decline [it has].

“We face a painful transition,” said Schlesinger, “to a future in which we hit a limitation, a plateau, in the ability to produce crude oil.” Schlesinger pointed out that the concept of “peak oil”—when production reaches a maximum and begins to decline—is drawn from geological analogies and ignores such things as technology and the impact of price rises. Nevertheless, supplies of petroleum will be increasingly constrained. EIA projections call for the production of conventional oil to rise from the current 86 million barrels a day to about 118 million barrels a day by 2030. “That means that we must find or develop, given the decline curve and higher aspirations, the equivalent of nine Saudi Arabia’s. I think the probability of being that successful is very low,” said Schlesinger.

Furthermore, with many oil and gas fields under the control of national oil companies, access to these resources is becoming more restricted. For example, Russia has reasserted its control over oil production, Schlesinger observed, and the Russians have made it clear that they are not trying to solve the world’s energy problems. Other countries have taken a similar stance: they will develop their resources based on their own self-interests.

As Ernest Moniz pointed out, the United States increasingly has turned to natural gas for electricity production, partly because the capital costs of natural gas plants are lower than those for other energy sources and because natural gas produces lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions than do either petroleum or coal. But the increased use of natural gas has driven up its price. As a result, U.S. manufacturers that have depended on natural gas for direct energy conversion or as a feedstock are being driven overseas.

National Petroleum Council on Hard truths about oil and gas

The infrastructure requirements are particularly demanding, Nelson pointed out. “We have been living off an infrastructure surplus in the energy business that occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and it’s about used up.” The electrical grid infrastructure, the transportation infrastructure, the coal production infrastructure, and other sources’ production and supply systems require attention. “And the size and scale of this business is such that we’re talking about a lot of money,” said Nelson.

Since the early 1980s, relatively few young workers have entered the energy sector, Nelson pointed out, and relatively few people are in energy-oriented university programs in the United States. Making up the deficit is “not entirely possible from U.S. graduates.”

Nelson’s overall conclusion at the summit was that the challenge currently facing the United States regarding oil and natural gas is unprecedented. Meeting that challenge will require global efforts on multiple fronts, long time horizons, and major additional investments. There is no single easy solution, he said. Individuals, organizations, and governments need to begin taking action now and plan for a sustained commitment.

COAL

As Jeff Bingaman pointed out, the United States has more energy resources in coal reserves than the Middle East has in petroleum reserves. But the current methods for use of coal, either for electricity generation or for the production of liquid fuels, produce substantial amounts of carbon dioxide. For example, even if the conversion of coal to liquid fuels were 100 percent efficient, 1 ton of coal would yield about a half ton of fuel and 2 tons of carbon dioxide. The United States could “wind up spending a great deal of money on coal liquefaction plants that would then be rendered uneconomic in light of future developments related to global warming,” said Bingaman