Africa-Press – Namibia. OVER THE last few weeks, the news has been dominated by the push to stop using fossil fuels to curb CO2-ouput, seen as the main cause of global warming. Fossil fuels are the devil that needs slaying for mankind and the Earth in general to be saved. However, it comes at a huge price.
What is never really discussed are the negative consequences of fully turning away from fossil fuels. An informative video on YouTube by Goehring and Rozencwajg (G&R), an investment firm focused on commodity markets, is highly recommended viewing. I will summarise their arguments and conclusions for those who do not want to spend 33 minutes watching it. FOOD AND WOOD
G&R argues that cutting out fossil fuels will have a major impact on economic activity, the welfare that can be maintained in the world, and the number of people society will be able to sustain without such energy sources. To support their conclusions, they start by looking at the history of energy and its implications. They base their presentation on research by authors Richard Rhodes, Vaclav Smil and Charles Hall.
Before the Industrial Revolution, mankind relied on energy sources provided by the land: Food grown and wood (or its derivative charcoal) harvested. According to G&R, we start getting reliable data on energy consumption by 1 AD, being 10 000 kcal per day per person, or 16 gigajoule a year. The reader should not be intimidated by the technical expression of energy units and concentrate on relative numbers.
The energy demand of 16 gigajoule was met by food (20%), fodder (30%) and wood (50%). The energy efficiency provided by food and wood is estimated to be 10 units for every unit of energy invested in agricultural activities. This ratio is at crop/forest level. After losses, and after deducting activities to get the energy where it is required, this ratio drops to 5:1. The estimated production per person at the time of 17 gigajoule units, three were required to generate this (17/5 = more than three), four for food and 10 for other ‘basics’, such as construction, warfare, keeping the overlords and churches comfortable, etc, leaving one unit surplus. This surplus is important as it supported non-essential activities and population growth. Given the very small surplus, population growth was minimal for 1 650 years.
The 17 gigajoule per person per day stayed remarkably constant with consumption in England and Wales in 1650 AD – only 25% higher after 1 650 years. With energy still almost exclusively sourced from the land, society relied on land and this put an upper limit on the size of cities. As settlements grew, material had to be transported over increasing distances to support the settlement, eventually exceeding the energy of that material. This is purportedly the reason why the population of the largest cities in history (Rome at 1 AD, Hangzhou in 1200 AF and Beijing in 1800 AD) was capped at one million inhabitants.
However, after 1650 AD, energy consumption started to rise dramatically, made possible by the exploitation of the first coal deposits. Coal (and other fossil fuels) has a much higher energy yield of up to 30 units per unit invested. This dramatically increased surplus energy available for activities other than simple survival. In 2019, for example, of the 75 gigajoule per person produced, 56 gigajoule surplus energy was available. Such spare energy supported population growth, which exploded after 1650, increasing from 0.5 billion to approximately eight billion now.
Moreover, it can be shown that over time there has been an almost perfect relationship between economic output and energy demand. In 2019, the surplus energy allowed mankind to generate 1,8 billion tonnes of steel, 24 million tonnes of copper, etc, all used to create infrastructure and provide us with comforts and wealth. However, the price of all this energy is a large emission of CO2: now 34 billion tonnes a year.
POOR EFFICIENCY The phasing out of fossil fuel burning is supposed to reduce this dramatically. The problem? The very poor energy yields of renewables. Whereas fossil fuels generate 30 energy units per unit invested, it is closer to four for wind and 1,5 for solar. One could argue over the exact numbers, but not the order of magnitude change.
Apart from the poor efficiency, renewable sources are intermittent and require other sources to operate when they are down. This is not a problem when renewables are a small source of energy. However, when they become a major source, the intermittency issue needs to be addressed through buffers/storage facilities, which themselves require large amounts of energy to be built, further reducing renewables’ energy efficiencies.
Based on the above, it is evident that our GDP growth of 3% a year was sustained by fossil fuels. Phasing them out will dramatically decrease overall energy efficiency, slashing our surplus energy available for non-essential items by an estimated 40%, reducing sustainable economic growth to pre-1650 levels. The implications: Mankind will have to accept that the current population growth can no longer be sustained and each person will have to dramatically reduce their average energy consumption. Africa can forget about receiving monetary support from the developed world as they will no longer have surpluses to share.
The Greta Thunbergs of this world will have to be prepared to dispense with air conditioning, central heating, frequent travel, throw-away consumerism, etc. I doubt that many environmental flag wavers realise the full extent of the consequences of what they stand for. We face some hard choices and most of the world is unaware of it. Halting the use of fossil fuels is no panacea and will demand great sacrifices. The recent sky-rocketing fossil fuel prices because of renewables failing to provide what they were supposed to should be a warning sign of things to come.
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