Peak Everything, Overshoot, & Collapse

Preface. This post has excerpts from energy expert Vaclav Smil‘s 2024 free paper “Halfway between Kyoto and 2050“. Smil’s book is free, here. Below is a shortened, reworded article from Scientific American in 2014 written by Smil on this topic as well. Another post of Smil’s on an energy transition from 2010 is here with yet more insights on other topics.

The best book of all on this topic, and quite a fun read, is More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz

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, Financial Sense, UCSC, 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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Smil V (2024) Halfway between Kyoto and 2050. Zero carbon is a highly unlikely outcome. Fraser Institute.

The most obvious way to start assessing the progress of the required energy transition is to look at what has been accomplished during the past generation when the concerns about global decarbonization assumed a new urgency and prominence. Contrary to common impressions, there has been no absolute worldwide decarbonization. In fact, the very opposite is the case. The world has become much more reliant on fossil carbon (even as its relative share has declined a bit). We are now halfway between 1997 (27 years ago) when delegates of nearly 200 nations met in Kyoto to agree on commitments to limit the emissions of greenhouse gases, and 2050; the world has 27 years left to achieve the goal of decarbonizing the global energy system,

All we have managed to do halfway through the intended grand global energy transition is a small relative decline in the share of fossil fuel in the world’s primary energy consumption—from nearly 86% in 1997 to about 82% in 2022.  But this marginal relative retreat has been accompanied by a massive absolute increase in fossil fuel combustion: in 2022 the world consumed nearly 55% more energy locked in fossil carbon than it did in 1997 

By 2023 the absolute reliance on fossil carbon rose by 54% worldwide since the Kyoto commitment. In that quarter century, the world has substantially increased its dependence on fossil carbon.

Despite international agreements, government spending and regulations, and technological advancements, global fossil fuel consumption surged by 55% between 1997 and 2023. And the share of fossil fuels in global energy consumption has only decreased from nearly 86 percent in 1997 to approximately 82% in 2022.

The first global energy transition, from traditional biomass fuels such as wood and charcoal to fossil fuels, started more than two centuries ago and unfolded gradually. That transition remains incomplete, as billions of people still rely on traditional biomass energies for cooking and heating.

Converting energy-intensive processes (e.g., iron smelting, cement, and plastics) to non-fossil alternatives requires solutions not yet available for largescale use.

The energy transition imposes unprecedented demands for minerals including copper and lithium, which require substantial time to locate and develop mines.

Globally, coal and oil surpassed wood as the leading energy sources just before the end of the nineteenth century, and hence for the past 125 years we have been a predominantly fossil-fueled civilization (Smil, 2017).

CCUS By 2023 there were about 40 relatively small projects in operation capturing a total of about 45 million tons globally, or a bit more than 0.1 percent of all annual emissions from energy use (IEA, 2023a).

Geothermal generation also goes back more than a century

Notice that the post-1958 rise has been uninterrupted: average annual concentrations show a steady rise that continued even during the years when global CO2 emissions had temporarily declined: even in 2020, when COVID restrictions cut the emissions by 2 percent, the Mauna Loa level rose by 2.56 ppm.

Complex interactions of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere and unknown levels of future greenhouse gas emissions make it impossible to pinpoint the degree of global warming that will be experienced by 2050.

When the world began to undergo its first energy transition during the 19^th century, it had to replace about 1.5 billion tons of mostly locally cut and burned wood with coal and, after the 1860s, also with hydrocarbons (Smil, 2016a). In 2022 the world produced nearly 8.2 billion tons of coal, almost 4.5 billion tons of crude oil, and 2.8 billion tons of natural gas, all extracted very efficiently and mostly in a highly concentrated manner from large mines and from enormous hydrocarbon fields on every continent

In terms of final energy uses and specific energy converters, the unfolding transition would have to replace more than 4 terawatts (TW) of electricity-generating capacity now installed in large coal- and gas-fired stations by converting to non-carbon sources; to substitute nearly 1.5 billion combustion (gasoline and diesel) engines in road and off-road vehicles; to convert all agricultural and crop processing machinery (including about 50 million tractors and more than 100 million irrigation pumps) to electric drive or to non-fossil fuels; to find new sources of heat, hot air, and hot water used in a wide variety of industrial processes (from iron smelting and cement and glass making to chemical syntheses and food preservation) that now consume close to 30% of all final uses of fossil fuels; to replace more than half a billion natural gas furnaces now heating houses and industrial, institutional, and commercial places with heat pumps or other sources of heat; and to find new ways to power nearly 120,000 merchant fleet vessels (bulk carriers of ores, cement, fertilizers, wood and grain, and container ships, the largest one with capacities of some 24,000 units, now running mostly on heavy fuel oil and diesel fuel) and nearly 25,000 active jetliners that form the foundation of global long-distance transportation (fueled by kerosene) (Hedges and Company, 2023; Ener8, 2023; CH-Aviation, 2022).

On the face of it, and even without performing any informed technical and economic analyses, this seems to be an impossible task given that:

• we have only a single generation (about 25 years) to do it;
• we still have not deployed any zero-carbon large-scale commercial processes to produce essential materials; and
• the electrification has, at the end of 2022, converted only about 2% of passenger vehicles (more than 40 million) to different varieties of battery-powered cars and that decarbonization is yet to affect heavy road transport, shipping, and flying (IEA, 2023c).

Coal surpassed global wood combustion only in 1900, and its share of energy supply peaked only in the mid-1960s.

Oil began to supply more than 25% of all fossil fuels only during the late 1950s, nearly a century after its first modern commercial extraction, and natural gas began to contribute more than 25 percent of fossil energy supply just before the end of the 20th century, after some 130 years of the industry’s development (Smil, 2016).

Nearly 3 billion people (in Africa, monsoonal Asia, and Latin America) still depend, mainly for cooking, some also for heating, on traditional biomass energies: fuel wood (and charcoal made from it), straw, and dried dung still supplied about 5 percent of the world’s primary energy in 2020.5

In the past, replacing wood stoves with coal stoves, waterwheels and wind mills with steam engines, teams of horses with diesel engines, and oil and gas lamps with electric lights required new, extensive, and complicated infrastructures. They were needed to extract (coal mines, oil and gas fields, and dams), prepare (coal sorting and cleaning, crude oil refining, and natural gas processing), transport (railways, pipelines, ships, trucks, and high-voltage transmission lines), and convert (steam engines, steam and gas turbines, furnaces, boilers, turbogenerators, transformers, and electric motors) new forms of energy.

The unfolding energy transition requires not just very large numbers of new wind turbines and photovoltaic panels to generate “green” electricity. Renewable generation also needs expanded high-voltage transmission lines (overhead wires and undersea cables from offshore wind sites) to bring the electricity from the windiest and sunniest places to often distant cities and industrial areas.

We would need substantial quantities of solid and liquid fossil carbon even in the zero-carbon world for paving (asphalt) and for industrial and commercial lubricants.

What I have called the four pillars of modern civilization—cement, primary iron, plastics, and ammonia—now depends on fossil fuels, and replacing them with alternatives will require the development of new mass-scale industries and distribution networks ranging from green hydrogen (made by electrolysis of water by green electricity) and ethanol to new synthetic fuels

Annual use is now more than 110 million tons of asphalt and more than 40 million tons of lubricants derived from crude refining (Venditti and Fortin, 2023, May 13; Shah, Woydt, and Aragon, 2020).

The unfolding transition thus relies on techniques that are not (as yet) compellingly and across-the-board cheaper, more reliable, and more than the conversion they are replacing. Moreover, some of them (above all, new reactors and mass-scale electricity storage) will require a great deal of further expensive development.

The best available battery has a gravimetric density of 500 watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg) (Amprius, 2023). Gasoline rates 12,200 Wh/kg, which is a 24.4 times greater energy density.

The absolute cuts in carbon emissions that took place in large economies such as the EU (-23 percent) and the US (-9 percent) were far surpassed by massive absolute increases in emissions from the world’s two largest industrializing nations, China (whose emissions rose 3.3 times), and India (whose emissions rose three-fold). Emissions also rose for Middle Eastern hydrocarbon producers (Saudi Arabia’s about 2.3 times) and among other smaller emitters.

Between 1997 and 2022 annual emissions of CO2 from the fossil fuel energy sector (CO2 from fuel combustion and processing, the CO2 equivalent of CH 4from extraction, flaring, and pipeline leakage) rose from about 25.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) to about 39.3 billion tons (a 54 percent rise) (Energy Institute, 2023c).

After cutting our relative dependence on fossil fuels by just 4% during the first half of the prescribed post-Kyoto period, even if there was no further increase in CO2 emissions we would have to cut it by 82% by 2050.

After increasing our dependence on fossil fuels by almost 180 exajoules since 1997, to reach zero carbon in 2050 we would have to eliminate almost 500 EJ (that is equivalent to about 12 billion tons of crude oil)—even if there were no further consumption increases.

But non-carbon energies would have to replace not only all of today’s carbon fuels, but also cover all the additional increase in global energy use anticipated by 2050. As expected, long-range forecasts differ, but global energy demand (reduced by higher conversion efficiencies) is set to grow by at least 10 to 15 percent by 2050.9

Nuclear electricity generation has been only 33% efficient (and no imminent breakthroughs are expected).

One kilogram of the hydrogen is equivalent to about 33 kWh of electricity but its production by electrolysis of water needs about 50 kWh/kg (US EIA, 2023a; Marouani et al., 2023).

Primary electricity (hydro, nuclear, wind, solar, and a small contribution by geothermal plants) accounted for no more than about 18% of the world’s primary energy consumption, which means that fossil fuels still provided about 82% of the world’s primary energy supply in 2022.

The endless announcements of new wind farms and the sight of large areas covered by PV cells make most people believe that we have gone much further toward renewably electrifying everything.

Despite decades of promises that the arrival of large numbers of small modular reactors (SMRs, up to 300 MW) was imminent, and that they would resurrect stagnating electricity generation by nuclear fission, and despite some 80 different designs, in 2023 not a single SMR was operating anywhere in the West. China has only a single test prototype (IAEA, 2023).

Steel is, and it will remain, modern civilization’s dominant metal, indispensable for all infrastructure, housing, transportation, agriculture, and industrial production (Smil, 2016b).

In 2022, the output of this primary BF-BOF steel reached 1.4 billion tons. The forecasts are that no less than 2.6 billion tons of the metal will be needed in 2050. Even with raising the EAF steel share to 35%, demand would require roughly 1.7 billion tons of green iron (World Steel Association, 2023; ArcelorMittal, 2023). Instead of reducing iron ores with carbon (and emitting CO2), in the zero-carbon world we would have to reduce them with hydrogen (Fe2O3 + 3H2? 2Fe + 3H2O). This means that by 2050 the annual output of 1.7 billion tons of green steel would need about 91 million tons of green hydrogen

Ammonia is an even more important product: about 85% of its annual production is used to make synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers without whose continuing applications about half of today’s world population could not survive (Smil, 2022a).  In 2022 the annual output of ammonia reached about 150 million tons; forecasts are that at least 200 million tons will be needed by 2050. The fossil carbon-free Haber-Bosch ammonia synthesis process would need about 44 million tons of green hydrogen by 2050.

These two key material processes, the making of steel and ammonia, would need an annual production capacity of some 135 million tons of green hydrogen by 2050. Depending on additional needs for transportation and heating, from industries (from glassmaking to food preservation), and for peak electricity generation, the total demand for green hydrogen could be easily as high as 500 million tons by 2050.

Electrolytic production of green hydrogen needs about 50 MWh/ton: making 500 million tons of green hydrogen by 2050 would thus require about 25 PWh of green electricity, the total equal to about 86% of the 2022 global electricity use (IRENA, 2023). To repeat, this renewably generated electricity would be dedicated to the production of green hydrogen alone!

A typical electric vehicle contains more than five times the amount of copper (80 versus 15 kg) of an internal combustion car engine. The take-over of EVs by 2040 would need more than 40 times as much lithium as is currently mined, and up to 25 times the amount of graphite, cobalt, and nickel (IEA, 2021c).

Copper offers a stunning example of these environmental externalities. The metal content of exploited copper ores from Chile, the world’s leading source of the metal, has declined from 1.41% in 1999 to 0.6% in 2023, and further quality deterioration is inevitable (see figure 7) (Lazenby, 2018, November 19; Jamasmie, 2018, April 25; IEA, 2021c).

Using the mean richness of 0.6 percent means that the extraction of additional 600 million tons of metal would require the removal, processing, and deposition of nearly 100 billion tons of waste rock (mining and processing spoils), which is about twice as much as the current annual total of global material extracted including harvested biomass, all fossil fuels, ores and industrial minerals, and all bulk construction materials.10

Extracting and dumping such enormous masses of waste material exacts a very high energy and environmental price as it puts new, supposedly “green” energy uses even further from the goal of maximized material recycling. Moreover, copper’s production is dominated by just a few countries (Chile, Peru, China, and Congo), and China alone refines 40% of the world’s supply. China processes even more of the other minerals required for green energy conversion: nearly 60% of lithium, 65% of cobalt, and close to 90% of rare earths (IEA, 2021d; Castillo and Purdy, 2022).

That makes OPEC’s grip on crude oil (now 40% of global production) a relatively restrained affair!

Further, when countries from Canada to Germany find it impossible to construct enough basic housing for their populations, it is obvious that any accelerated installation of green energy projects and infrastructure will be restricted by shortages of experienced labor. Germany, thanks to its Energiewende (energy transition) is the EU’s leader in the pursuit of greenness and it is already affected: in 2023 the country lacked about 216,000 skilled workers to expand solar and wind power, and the now mandatory installation of heat pumps needs another 80,000 technicians (KOFA, 2022; Smarter Europe, 2023). Similarly, the US is finding that labor shortages will slow down any radical plans it has for green energy transitions (Colman, 2023, February 27).

We do not know either the eventual magnitudes and shares of specific energies that would enable the carbon-free world to be a reality or the extent of their global infrastructures. These realities cannot be determined decades ahead; they will be formed gradually and, to a significant degree, unpredictably. This makes any overall cost estimates questionable.

More importantly, wind and solar are intermittent (variable) modes of generation that need back-up when nights, cloudiness, and calm (or winds too strong to operate wind turbines) intervene (BloombergNEF, 2023, June 7). As long as solar and wind supply relatively low shares of total electricity generation, such needs are readily covered by existing base-load coal-fired or nuclear generation, by near-instantly available gas turbines, or by imports from neighboring countries.12 Once the intermittent sources become dominant and all gas-turbines are gone, they will need either extensive high-voltage interconnections to bring electricity from more distant regions or substantial capacities of longer term electricity storage.

the IEA has estimated that meeting the global decarbonization goals would require adding or refurbishing more 80 million kilometres of transmission grids by 2040. That is the equivalent of the entire existing global grid in 2023 and one predicated on the further mass-scale mobilization of steel, aluminum, copper, and cement (Appunn, 2021, April 29; IEA, 2023f).

And, so far, only pumped hydro storage (requiring specific terrain configuration and impossible in lowlands) can provide as much as a gigawatt of power for many consecutive hours. But renewably electrified megacities of the 2040s in monsoonal Asia might need (during a typhoon day) storage of many gigawatts (5 to 20 GW) for 10 to 20 hours (rating up to 400 GWh), while today’s largest lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery energy storage (Moss Landing in California) is rated at 750 MW/3 GWh, two orders of magnitude lower.

Nobody can offer a reliable estimate of the eventual cost of a worldwide energy transition by 2050 though a recent (and almost certainly highly conservative) total suggested by McKinsey’s Global Institute makes it clear that comparing this effort to any former dedicated government-funded projects is another serious category mistake. Their estimate of $275 trillion between 2021 and 2050

In reality, the real burden would be far higher for two reasons. First, it cannot be expected that low-income countries could sustain such a diversion of their limited resources and hence this global endeavor could not succeed unless the world’s high-income nations annually spend sums equal to 15 to 20 percent of their GDP. More importantly, this ultimate global transformation project would face enormous cost overruns. As the world’s most comprehensive study of cost overruns (more than 16,000 projects in 16 countries and in 20 categories, from airports to nuclear stations) shows, 91.5 percent of projects worth more than $1 billion have run over the initial estimate, with the mean overrun being 62 percent (Flyvbjerg and Gardner, 2023). Applying a 60% correction would raise McKinsey’s estimate of the cost of global decarbonization to $440 trillion, or nearly $15 trillion a year for three decades,

China is now responsible for 31 percent of global emissions from energy use, the US for 14 percent, the EU for 11 percent, India for 8 percent, Russia for 4 percent, and Saudi Arabia and Indonesia each for about 2 percent. What are the chances that this Big Seven will move harmoniously and steadfastly for the next 27 years toward the common goal of zero carbon by 2050?

What incentives does Russia have—being in a de facto state of war with EU/US in Ukraine—to join the West in decarbonizing when hydrocarbon exports are the foundation of its otherwise weak economy? How eager will China be to work with India (there is still no peace treaty between the two nations) and with the US, bent as it is on a newly embraced decoupling? Why would India, now trying to replicate (at least to some degree) China’s post-1990 economic ascent, forgo the use of its coal when China has quadrupled its extraction during the past 30 years?

Denmark, with half of its electricity now coming from wind, is often pointed out as a particular decarbonization success: since 1995 it cut its energy-related emissions by 56 percent (compared to the EU average of about 22 percent)—but, unlike its neighbors, the country does not produce any major metals (aluminum, copper, iron, or steel), it does not make any float glass or paper, does not synthesize any ammonia, and it does not even assemble any cars. All these products are energy-intensive, and transferring the emissions associated with their production to other countries creates an undeservedly green reputation for the country doing the transferring.

Modern forecasting in general and the anticipation of energy advances in particular have an unmistakable tendency toward excessive optimism, exaggeration, and outright hype (Smil, 2023b).

During the 1970s many people believed that by the year 2000 all electricity would come not just from fission, but from fast breeder reactors, and soon afterwards came the promises of “soft energy” taking over (Smil, 2000).

“Even if we were to replace just 60 percent of today’s fossil fuel consumption, we should be investing about six times more, or about $13 trillion a year, to reach zero carbon by 2050. Making it $15-17 trillion a year (to account for expected cost over-runs) seems hardly excessive, and it takes us, once again, to a grand total of $400-460 trillion by the year 2050, good confirmation of a previously derived value.

Vaclav Smil. January 2014. The Long Slow Rise of Solar and Wind. Scientific America.

• The major global energy transitions—from wood to coal to oil—have each taken 50 to 60 years. The current move to natural gas will also take a long time.
• There is no reason to believe that a change to renewable energy sources will be exceptionally fast. In rich countries, “old” renewables such as hydroelectricity are maxed out, so growth will have to come from new renewables such as wind, solar and biofuels, which provided only 3.35 percent of the U.S. supply in 2011.

Most people think that the 19th century was dominated by coal and the 20th century by oil and that the 21st will belong to renewable energy.  But it isn’t true.

Even with the rise of industrial machines, the 19th century wasn’t run on coal. It ran on wood, charcoal, and crop residues (mostly cereal straw) which provided 85% of all energy worldwide.

Coal didn’t provide 5% of energy until 1840, and didn’t reach 50% until 1900. This rise from five to 50% took about 60 years.  It wasn’t until 1885 when fossil energy (mostly coal, some crude oil, and a tiny amount of natural gas) surpassed the energy provided by wood and charcoal in the United States, in France this occurred in 1875, Japan 1901, and the U.S.S.R 1930, China 1965, and India the late 1970s.

Likewise, in the 20th century the biggest energy source was coal, not oil.  Crude oil didn’t surpass coal until 1964.

And yet because GDP and populations were growing exponentially, coal continued to be used in such huge amounts that it ended up being the 20th century’s most important fuel, contributing 5.3 yottajoules (YJ — 24 zeros) compared to oil’s 4 YJ.

Although natural gas is seen as the bridge to the future, only the USSR and UK use more gas than oil.

If wood to coal and coal to oil took roughly 50 to 75 years for each transition, the same can’t be extrapolated to renewable energy. First, consider the scale – about 450 exajoules (18 zeros) of fossil energy is used by the world, 20 times more than during the 1890s.  Generating this much energy without fossil fuels is daunting.

Second, wind and solar are intermittent, yet society needs a reliable, uninterrupted supply of electricity around the clock.

My comment to expand on Smil’s second point: In the United States in 2014, electricity was generated with 66% fossils, 20% nuclear, 6.3% hydropower, 1.6% biomass, 0.4% geothermal, 4.4% wind, and 0.5% solar.  Wind and solar will not only need to replace fossil fuels, but nuclear power as well, since far more plants are closing than being built.  If there were a way to store excess solar and wind energy renewables might have a chance of replacing fossil fuels, but there are no large scale energy storage systems that are even close to being commercial, except hydropower with very few places to put more dams, and compressed air energy storage where there are even fewer places to put them (only one exists in America), and not enough materials on earth to build a battery that could store just 12 hours of worldwide generated power (Barnhart 2013).

Third, again my comment: electricity is only 18.7% of the overall energy consumed by society. Oil powers most transportation, oil and gas are used in 500,000 products made with fossils as both feedstock and the energy source to make products — especially the natural gas fertilizers that feed 4 billion of us, and some processes and nearly all transportation involved in manufacturing, industry, mining, and agriculture.  Overall fossils provide 80% of all energy consumption, and have for many decades. Renewables are growing far too slowly to replace this energy, and will always depend on natural gas to be balanced and as a backup.

Fourth (again my comment) we don’t have an electric way to run for heavy duty trucks, neither batteries or overhead wires that can scale up, and certainly not before fossils start to decline, yet their production for every step of their life cycle depends on fossils, nor do we have electric ways to make cement, steel and many other products except for very small batches.

Fifth, and finally back to Vaclav Smil, “the final factor that will lead to a prolonged shift to renewables is the size and cost of the existing infrastructure.” Even if renewables were free, it would be economically unthinkable for nations, corporations, or municipalities to abandon the enormous investments already made in the fossil fuel system, from coal mines, oil wells, gas pipelines, refineries, and hundreds of thousands of filling stations — infrastructure worth at least $20 trillion (Smil left out the existing billions of cars, trucks, and equipment that runs on combustion engines and much more). China has spent half a trillion dollars for 300 gigawatts of coal generation from just 2001 to 2010, and expects those plants to run for at least 30 years.

Smil suggests that the only way to speed up a transition is to use less energy.

Barnhart, C., et al. 2013. On the importance of reducing the energetic and material demands of electrical energy storage. Energy Environment Science 2013(6): 1083–1092.