Well I may be back to blogging on energy and its role in our lives. I only have done this to try to understand the dynamics of this complex self regulating superorganism we call our current civilization. I have said that if you can’t understand or even try to understand this civilization without seeing it as part of a complex system and complex systems can’t be understood without using the tool of systems analysis. I have the opinion that energy is the keystone resource of our civilization and that means fossil energy. The most important fossil energy is Oil but Coal and gas are also crucial. Without these energy sources we would still be reliant upon the muscle of our animals and ourselves. Most of us would still be laboring by the sweat of our brows to stay warm and to feed ourselves. That changed when the coal miners digging in the coal pits of Newcastle found themselves knee deep in water unable to increase coal production which was the new miracle energy source of the 18th century. Europe had cut down its previous energy source “trees.. and now coal production was imperiled.
It fell to a British inventor, Thomas Newcomen in 1711 to step in with a practical solution. He designed a pump powered by steam from burning coal which operated a pump to remove the water from the mines. It was crude but it worked. It was not the first attempt at utilizing the miraculous power of steam. In the first century AD a Greek called Hero who lived in Alexandria came up with the first device to try to utilize the power of steam to run a “machine. That insight never developed legs for a variety of reasons Coal mine pumping technology was steadily improved and it wasn’t long before other inventors saw the incredible utility of steam to use it for powering all manner of machines. Oil eventually supplanted coal in many uses and gas supplanted oil right up to this day. We have always had energy from biomass(mostly wood) and some water and wind power but even today fossil fuels are still 82% of world energy. We have economists and politicians telling us that because all this burning of fossil fuels is creating carbon dioxide emissions which are heating up our planet, that we need to reduce or eliminate them if we are to “save” our planet. Instead of getting our energy from finite sources we need to get our energy from “renewable” sources which have no emissions to heat up the planet. What’s more we are told we must try to remove these emissions as well which will in theory reduce and eventually and hopefully reverse planetary warming. We will have to “decarbonize” our energy and if we have to continue to use these fossil fuels for a while longer we will have to invent ways to remove Co2 as well as use little or none going forward. Every problem has a solution, right? This is the solution. All future energy will be from renewable energy. If we have to use a fossil energy source we will have to offset that emitted energy with technology that remove it so there will be no net increase in emissions. That is the “net zero” part of it. How this is supposed to be done will be by means of technology not yet invented and current methods such as increasing the efficiency of existing machines and using less energy to heat and cool our homes and factories. If you build a Tahoe you will have to offset the energy of that Tahoe from the build to the energy emitted during its life time by planting trees for example. That will keep the energy to a net of zero emitted C02. Of course we will try to pour investments and subsidies iinto something more effective by inventing methods to “capture” those emissions. Something is bound to be invented if we pour enough money into research and development. Good old American Know How will eventually save the day. These ideas come out of the mouths of politicians and analysts and economists. They also flow from the mouths of school children and adults who see the damage of a warming world possibly dooming their future.
All of this activity to reduce global warming or climate change has led to a kneejerk response. Climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels. Ergo stop burning fossil fuels. It has become a single issue with a single solution encouraged and promoted by conferences and meetings for the past several decades generating more proposals and aspirations from politicians and economists full of sound and fury and to date: signifying nothing!!! Is Net Zero a stupid idea or one whose time has come? In this and following blogs if I write them, I will try to lay out why the Net Zero movement will be hard pressed stopping the trajectory of climate change.
In fact Net Zero is a terrific idea and one that should be implemented whenever and wherever practical. But remember: Net Zero is not reducing emissions,. It is offsetting emissions. Reducing carbon emissions should be the necessary ambition to be pursued as a policy objective if it could work. The problem is that a Net Zero framework can’t and won’t solve the emissions of CO2 in the world’s industrial economies. I will try to show why doing something as simple as decarbonizing our energy supply by stopping the combustion of coal, oil and gas as a crash program is flawed and impractical. That we should do everything in our power to reduce emissions is laudable and essential but in order to attack this one aspect of industrial global pollution we simply must try to look at it with a big picture perspective. That is, we need to look at the entire world. Think of the world as a forest. We cannot just focus on just one tree in the forest. Concentrating on global warming from carbon emissions s just one aspect of one tree.
There is likely more than one cause of global warming/climate change and human induced CO2 production by fossil fuel burning is certainly a major cause but I will not enter that discussion. If the major cause is C02 from burning fossil fuels that is a cause that will eventually go away starting in this century. We are past peak production of oil, gas and coal in most regions. It is a problem with a solution and the solution will be depletion. In the next blog I will try to layout the role of fossil energy in developing and maintaining our industrial economy.
