And the big beast lurking in the background - or the Holy Grail, depending on your POV - is economic artificial synthesis of petroleum and other hydrocarbons ab initio. Nobody’s achieved it yet, but whoever does will become a trillionaire.
I believe it’s been achieved, but not economically. Or not quite economically. I figure what, 15 years, given the status on it two years ago. Maximum.
Wrong. We already have plenty of methods to transform coal into liquid fuels. These methods are not secret, and have been known for decades, and have been used on an industrial scale in the past, most notably by Germany during WWII and South Africa during the embargo.
Or, if you mean by “economic artifical synthesis”, the ability to synthesize liquid fuels for cheaper than we can produce gasoline today, well, I’d say this will never ever happen. We can produce all the liquid fuel we want to any specification from any feedstock we want, but that doesn’t mean we can produce it more cheaply than we can produce diesel and gasoline from crude oil.
The people who produce synthetic liquid fuels will make money, but these fuel factories will be very expensive to build and run. Plus they’ll have lots of competition, because as I said, these methods are not secret, they just take a lot of capital equipment. Any industrial megacorp could build one of these plants, but it’s likely that the builders will be among the already existing energy corporations.
Yes, but I specified ab initio, not from coal. We cannot yet economically produce petrol from thin air. I’m not sure we can do it at all.
The debate also swings on just what you consider a Malthusian catastrophe to be. I suppose the worst case for oil is that it all evaporates instantly as if a switch were flipped, leaving the entire world completely unprepared.
We already have some very limited progress in alternatives, so the worst case is out. I think the closest we can get to it is by following the Gospel according to Econ 101:
Sneer at ‘catastrophists’ when you say that! Because consider:
Waiting for the market to adjust for something that has relatively no alternative is a little risky, no? Nothing guarantees fuel supplies/prices cannot change quickly; reacting to changes in fuel supply necessarily can’t change quickly.
Do you guys want to tell the unwashed masses that this is what you have in mind for them? Or do you want to wait until the bottom falls out to explain it? How do you think the market would react if your average everyconsumer were aware that global oil production is predicted to permanently drop?
To answer Ravenmann, I suppose developing countries could still grow without increasing their petroleum consumption. I think it will be more difficult to do it that way. Look at this handy chart of inflation-adjusted oil prices going back to 1946. Back then a barrel cost about $17. The price was stable until 1972-1977, when it jumped from ~$20 to over $51. 250%. Recently it peaked at over $92- the peak oil guys would say this was the economy bumping into the global production ceiling. And why would the price spike as if there were an oil embargo when there wasn’t an oil embargo? Anyway, the prediction is for some years of volatility, followed by a continuos drop. What happens then? (Let’s say prices could get as high as one order of magnitude higher than in 1946.)
Depends. If there is an alternative energy infrastructure in place, the price of energy overall will remain stable, supplies will remain available, and it won’t be too big of a deal. If we wait until oil prices spike to develop alternatives, the oil companies will make a forture, there will be shortages in some places, but to level with you all I think I would continue to do ok. Probably many of you would, too. But someplace in the world that isn’t Afghanistan or Iraq, people would starve or kick off in instabilities or what have you. Or developing countries wouldn’t run so many tractors and cranes because they just don’t have the cash, and aren’t exactly receiving tons of loans for some reason either. You might not even hear about it.
So- how many of those guys do you need before the results can be considered ‘Malthusian’?
Well, not from thin air, but I was thinking culturing algae would qualify as ab inito.
There have been studies about converting both locomotives and barge/ocean ships to coal, and I have had my group conduct some of them. In many cases it would probably be better than coal-oil from an economic standpoint, but possibly not from an environmental standpoint. It’s difficult to quantify because it relies upon assumptions about emissions targets (NSPS versus World Bank, etc.)
Not just during the embargo - Sasol has been continuously making coal-oil, and has plans to double their capacity. That having been said, the wisdom of doing such is a subject of a lot of debate in the industry. Personally I don’t know the answer.
Translation: It probably isn’t so great.
One can find technical papers and research saying that if Sasol really ramps up their coal-liquids production, then South Africa will change from being a coal exporter to a coal importer within as early as 30-40 years. Since something like 90% of their country’s electricity is from coal, and AFAIK almost all their plans for electrical growth are in coal, this would be disastrous in several ways. So they get to pick their poison - import more oil now, or import more coal later.
If I had to pick, I would choose to import coal. Especially in the context of this thread, considering oil supplies are projected to tighten up.
I bet that coal oil production makes a huge mess though. Do you have any good articles for me to increase my understanding of this industry?
Ah, but coal supplies are also going to tighten up as well. Looking ahead 30-40 years in the Southern hemisphere, we see a situation where Australia may be the main viable supplier of coal to South Africa, and they’re going to be quite expensive at that time. South America will likely be sending its best coal to Europe (which will still be burning a decent amount of it), some plants in the East US, and possibly to the whole host of coal plants being planned for South America itself. Indonesia will be out of cheap bituminous coal and the sub won’t work that well with South African boilers, and China will be importing coal as well by that time. Russia and the Ukraine might still be exporting coal, but it will be dear. In short, the answer is quite complicated and involves a lot of magic.
On that subject, no, no better than I could Google for any.
Don’t you expect the US to export coal, even though it will appear to exacerbate global warming?
No magic involved if you take the ‘Malthusian catastrophe’ alternative.
I suppose you have a good reason why we don’t increase global production of things like wind and solar power starting like, 30 years ago :rolleyes:
Ok, just thought you might know a good one.
Because even today solar power isn’t efficient or scalable enough to meet even a fraction of our energy needs, let alone as the technology was 30 years ago?? Could that be the reason?
Just a thought…
-XT
Not to any significant amount. We do not have a transportation infrastructure suited to economically export a lot of coal. We export some, true, but there is a premium on it, and much of that is met coal. Sure things can change a lot from now until then but I don’t seriously see it happening.
‘Even today’ is relative. 8 years of Reagan and a dozen years of Bushes were not exactly the shot of adrenaline alternative power generation technology needed to develop robustly over the last 30 years. Could that be the reason :rolleyes:
And I think solar power is more scalar than you imply. I don’t think it derails the discussion to talk about it. Got any data or authority with which to further set me straight?
I honestly do not have a sense of scale when it comes to coal exports. What is ‘a lot of coal’? Googling around on met coal revealed that a variety of companies are signing contracts to export millions of tons of it at the higher met coal price.
And considering the financial shape we are in, how much coal we have, and how little we export in general, doesn’t it make sense to ship something off? The carbon footprint will balance out because a) we will use more alternative energy whether xtisme likes it or not and b) CO2 emissions from the combustion of gasoline are projected to drop off dramatically. Isn’t that great?
Why would you think I wouldn’t like it? I would LOVE it if we could use more alternative energy. I also think that we WILL be using more alternative energy in the future. Sadly, ‘more’ means we go from a percentage point or so to, oh, say 5%. Alternatives like solar simply aren’t going to scale up to much more than that, not in the foreseeable future anyway…and certainly not 30 years ago. Not even if you were willing to pour hundreds of billions or even trillions into it.
As to the coal question, I really don’t know…but I believe that this is exactly the field that Una is involved in, and is somewhat of an expert on, so I’d probably take her word for it unless there is some convincing evidence she is wrong. Just an observation.
-XT
You asked about future predictions, and I am giving a guess. Here’s my basis:
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I do not expect 30-40 years from now (the time frame we were looking at) that there will be much economical central/northern Appalachian coal which can be shipped to other countries, and I also expect production to fall to where it can barely meet domestic need.
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I do not expect a large market for Illinois Basin coal outside the US due to the sulfur and chloride issues with the coal. Very few folks are interested in it.
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Colorado and Uinta Basin coal does not have the rail infrastructure in place to move large amounts for export, and building it would be expensive. Also, reserves of the best coals from those regions will start to tighten up unless major new underground production starts. Environmental regulations may constrain this.
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The San Juan Basin will likely contract to only serve plants within a 200-mile radius for a variety of production/environmental reasons.
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ND/TX lignite are both not wanted by anyone else on the planet.
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Southern Utah coal, which would have made a good export coal, was locked up by Clinton in a very shady deal in his Presidency which folks in the industry are still shaking their heads over today.
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PRB coal, the coal which has by far the best prospects for export, has a lot of supply, but by 30-40 years the resources are going to be heading west into the deposit, possibly ending surface production at some mines and raising the cost. This coal has some ability to head east, but environmentalists are fighting tooth and nail any rail expansion. They would love to send it west, but California, Oregon, and Washington will fight tooth, claw, and anything else they can throw into the mix to prevent this. Add to this we were talking about South African plants, and PRB coal is not well suited at all to those power plants.
I could write for hours on this, but I think I should stop now.
Let’s not get carried away. Googling around some more I found an example of a major alternative energy project in Colorado with some good associated data. Let me know what you think:
I did just change the subject to wind power- there seem to be bigger projects in wind compared to solar in the US right now. Notice they’re getting 250 megawatts for a half-billion dollars. This one company will control 800 MW of alternative capacity once this is complete. Contrary to what you said, pouring ‘billions or even trillions into it’ has an effect- and would have 30 years ago too. And Colorado at least expects to generate 30% of its electricity by 2020 with alternatives. That’s a lot more than 5%, and in ‘the foreseeable future’ to boot.
Granted, I don’t know if they are including projected increases in electricity demand for vehicles in that 30% or not, but it still seems significant to me. Maybe not enough to stave off catastrophe? I bet Bangladesh isn’t investing a half-billion in wind projects right now… what do you think?