You must discover a thing before you can produce it. Produce a resource too fast and you spend too much on equipment and cut into profits. Produce a resource too slowly and you lose the time value of money. Under normal economic conditions resources are developed over 38 years so production rate equals discovery rate with a 38 year lag.
Because the discovery process is a random process and because finding a ting removes it from future discovery the rate of discovery follows a logistic function.
To understand how this works think about a bowl filled with 50 red ping pong balls and 50 white ping pong balls. Close your eyes randomly select a ball. 50/50 chance you will get a red one or a white one. If the ball is white, put it back. If its red put it aside. So, your cost of getting a red ball is 2 tries. As you proceed to do this, you produce 25 balls. 25 are left in the bowl. 50 white balls remain as well. Now there is a 1 in 3 chance you get a red ball and a 2 in 3 chance you get a white ball. The cost of the red balls have increased to 3 tries from two. By the time you have produced 40 of the 50 balls there are 10 red balls left in the bowl, and 50 white balls. Now the chance is 1 in 6 of getting a red ball. The cost of getting a red ball is 6 tries. By the time you produce 45 red balls 5 are left in the bowl and 50 white balls remain. The cost rises to 11 tries. After all 50 red balls are removed, the cost rises to infinity tries. There are no balls left. This produces a logistic function. Any similar process of randomly looking for things that are removed from future discovery produces a logistic function.
Shell Oil Company like many maor companies retained top notch geophysicists throughout their history. In 1956 Shell’s chief geophysicist reported his findings in the literature. The discovery rate for oil in the United States had already peaked in 1932 and this meant production of oil in the United States would peak in 1970 given the 38 year lag discussed earlier. The shape of the discovery curve for oil world wide indicated that oil discovery would peak in 1962 which implied all things being equal oil production would peak world wide at 40 billion barrels per year by 2000 AD.
Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Louis Strauss was asked about what America would do when it ran out of oil in 1956. Strauss laughed and replied by 1970 energy would be too cheap to meter. Strauss explained that a hydrogen bomb costing $5 million could flatten a city of 5 milion people. The same technology that made h-bombs possible make fusion power plants possible that supply 5 milion people with all the power they need for 100 years at the same $5 million cost. That’s $0.01 per person per year for 100 years. Too cheap to meter. AEC had completed project Sherwood which showed how to commercialise fusion power made from h-bomb technology.
That technology has remained classified and Strauss was dismissed after these statements and his statements discredited. Hubbert was dismissed after his statements and those statements likewise discredited.
In November 1962 oil discovery rates peaked world wide. In 1971 Richard Nixon went off the gold standard and issued the petrodollar, allowing US financial interests to control the rate of production of oil, keeping it in the 20 billion barrel per year range. The price of oil has risen from $1.25 per barrel in 1956 to over $125 per barrel by 2008. Despite fluctuations in price since then dueto Covid 19 impact on demand, the age of oil is expected to end in the 2025–2040 time frame and beyond. This doesn’t mean oil will disappear entirely. It does mean that oil will not be competitive with alternatives after that time, and its use will be constrained compared to today.
The cost of energy and its availablity is an important determinant of wealth and prosperity of an industrial economy.
The wealthiest nation in terms of GDP per capita on Earth is Monaco with $165,000 per person is Monaco. The poorest nation on Earth is Zaire with $800 per person GDP. The world averages $11,000 per person. The USA averages $60,000 per person. Energy consumption rates are proportional to GDPper capita.
The cost of energy determines how much surplus wealth is available to grow an economy. High energy costs slow eonomic growth. Low energy costs spur economic growth.
Population growth rates are below replacement levels in welthier nations, they run higher in poorer nations. Economic growth reduces human numbers and makes life more sustainable despite the growth. Providing we have adequate energy supplies at prices substantially less than we pay today.
With sufficient energy the world could easily sustain a $165,000 per person per year GDP for 11 billion people. At this income level population growth rate declines year over year. Furthermore, demand for wealth, like the demand for food, saturates at this level. Meaning that future growth will not take place per capita at the same rate as it would today if given the opportunity.
With 1.1% per annum population growth over the next 20 years we will have 9.6 billion people.
Today 7.7 billion people consume 5.4*10^20 Joules to produce $89.5 trillion per year. In 20 years growing to $1,584.0 trillion requires 184.5*10^20 Joules of primary energy. 19.3% growth per annum in energy use. 15.45% economic growth per year. Today energy growth rises at a 3% rate whilst economic growth is in the 2.5% per year range. Energy costs overall are $6.4 trillion per year. Reducing energy costs to $2.1 trillion per year with adequate supply supports 20% growth in primary energy which supports 16% growth in economic activity.
Today we burn coal, natural gas and oil to produce the vast majority of energy. Supplies are limited and they produce pollution. To grow our economy we must supply 4.5 billion tonnes of hydrogen gas at $2.1 trillion per year. $0.46 per kg. About 12% current price for hydrogen and in quantities far in excess of their availablity today.
Each tonne of coal produced disturbs 40 square meters of land. Converting this land to ultra-low cost solar panels ends the use of fossil fuels whilst sustaining high living standards and low population growth rates.
By 2040 AD we will require 153.6 billion tonnes of hydrogen at $0.23 per kg. Half the price of 2020 AD hydrogen to sustain economic growth. $35 trillion in energy sales in a $1,584 trillion per year economy. 15.1% growth rate in sales each year. 3.4% reduction in cost of hydrogen over the term each year.
I have a hydrogen producing solar panel that produces hydrogen at $70 per tonne. $0.07/kg at a rate of 26 kg/m2. 4.5 billion tonnes require 173,077 km2 of solar panels. 153.6 billion tonnes require 5.908 million km2.
Now 7.881 billion tonnes of coal are produced every year currently throughout the world. 40 square meters of Earth is disturbed for each tonne. 315,240 km2 of surface mines are generated per year. 180 billion tonnes over the past 40 years have created 7.2 million km2 of surface mines that are used as solar collector sites. The development of this land in this way avoids future use and and reclamation costs.
Definitely. If you add up the losses in the entire fuel pathway from well to wheels, there are some key differences that put EVs ahead.
- A utility scale generator is at least twice as efficient as the small internal combustion engine in a gas vehicle.
- Generally exhaust from the utility will be treated better than in a gas vehicle.
- In most cases, the power plant is not located in the urban center, so even though it pollutes, it does so away from population centers where people are breathing the pollutants.
- With gas vehicles, you pretty much are stuck with gasoline or diesel. With EVs, the energy source can come from several sources (and sticking with fossil fuels at the moment because your question specifically asked about it), including natural gas, which when extracted properly and burned completely is probably one of the best fossil fuels you can use in terms of energy extraction vs. harm to the environment.
But I need to point out that your question does have a flaw. Yes, the electricity that powers electric cars CAN come from fossil fuels, but it doesn’t have to. And even if you don’t take steps to use renewables (such as putting up solar panels, or paying renewable energy tariffs for your electricity), the electricity mix is getting “greener” all the time. For example just 5 years ago, the US got 44% of its electricity from coal. It’s now 38%. Non-hydro renewables have gone from 2% then to 7% now. And since coal plants continue to be retired, and it’s now cheaper to install and run solar and wind than any other fuel source for electricity, that’s only going to get better. In fact, on average in the US, only 68% of electricity comes from fossil fuels, whereas for gas vehicles, it’s holding steady at 100%.
There is a detailed model that takes into account efficiency, emissions, resource usage and many other factors for many different fuel pathways including gasoline, diesel, biofuels, etc. Here is a link to some of the latest results:
https://greet.es.anl.gov/results
And if you want, the GREET model even does a cradle to grave analysis so you can see what the relative impact of having the BUILD an EV vs. an internal combustion vehicle is (spoiler, as with similar myths, it’s not true that building an EV is more harmful to the environment than any benefit it will gain).
The Union of Concerned Scientists does studies that tally the net effect of all those fuel pathways to put together a comparison of EVs vs gas vehicles. The following chart illustrates the fact that on average in the US, EVs are equivalent to gas vehicles that get 68mpg. And each year it keeps getting better thanks to the grid being cleaned up.
(there are regional variations due to the fact that each region has a different mix of renewables vs. fossil fuels).
If you had bothered to look around, ie, cared about the truth, you would discover that
- Less than 65% of the world’s electricity is generated by fossil fuels and that number is falling. The most recent data I found in my quick look around was from 2017, but that’ll do for the purpose at hand.
- About 10% of the world’s electricity comes from nuclear power, again from 2017. Some places are abandoning nuclear and other places are building it, but 10% is probably still pretty close to right.
- Some folks, myself included, consider nuclear energy to be relatively clean, especially with regard to greenhouse gases. Current commercial technology produces very nasty waste products, but very little of it when compared to fossil fuels expended to generate the same amount of electricity. Newer designs can do much better, but seem to be lost in Chicken Little limbo.
- Focusing on “is” is misleading. Time matters. Today is not yesterday and tomorrow is not today.
Two big reasons to consider electricity “clean”(ish):
- It can come from many sources — hydro, solar, wind, nuclear, biomass, etc that are (or, in the case of biomass, can be) carbon neutral. And, each year, more and more of it is coming from those sources.
- To the extent that it isn’t clean. Fewer, larger generation plants can be located away from population centers and wastes scrubbed or sequestered more efficiently than lots of small energy sources burning hydrocarbons. This hasn’t been working well for CO2 sequestration, but it is theoretically possible.
Electricity itself can be “clean”. It’s just the method of generating it that can be dirty. So in the example in the question, 90% of global electricity is generated by dirty energy resources, fossil fuels.
Electricity generated by clean methods, wind, water, solar, nuclear, geothermal etc, all has emissions profiles that are basically non existent compared to fossil fuels. Combine that with the other facts, that they have become a lot cheaper AND are essentially in infinite supply and you define “sustainable”, “clean” electricity.
These sustainable resources are now growing faster than fossil fuels which is why the global aggregate energy consumed is now heading north of 10% and replacing coal and natural gas. Oil will be replaced soon by gasoline from cellulosic sources.
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1 Comments
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