No subject

Smil examines carefully, then dismisses, the dream of returning to
large-scale energy systems derived from biomass (capturing sunlight in
plants, then processing the plants to release energy) including ethanol.
To provide the world's transportation fuels with the most efficient of
these systems -- Brazilian ethanol from sugar cane -- would require a
third of the planet's cultivated land, or nearly all the agricultural lan=
d
in the tropics, Smil points out. Furthermore, such systems not only
require too much land (thus disupting important ecosystem services), they
also require too much nitrogen fertilizer -- so the ecological impact
would be unacceptably large. Excessive human use of nitrogen fertilizer
has been recognized as a global problem for more than a decade. (See
Smil's paper on this and other human disturbances of global material
cycles.)

Despite massive government subsidies, nuclear power has no obvious future=
,
Smil believes. This results from a combination of things -- the rapid
introduction of flawed reactor designs in the 1960s, the Chernobyl
accident, the "serial failure" of fast-breeder reactors, the unsolved
problem of nuclear waste, the unsolvable problem of terrorist threats
involving nuclear material -- all producing dismal public acceptance of
the technology (not to mention investor fear).

Nuclear fusion has been subsidized steadily at the rate of $250 million
per year for the past 50 years, "with nothing practical to show for it,"
Smil observes. He believes it is "extremely unlikely" that nuclear fusion
will play any significant role in future energy scenarios.

This leaves solar energy and fossil fuels.

Smil points out that the sunlight reaching the surface of the earth is
truly enormous compared to human energy demands -- something like 10,000
times as large as all human energy needs. But the resource is diffuse, no=
t
concentrated, so it will require 10 to 100 times as much physical space t=
o
use sunlight instead of fossil fuels (or 1000 to 10,000 times as much
space, if we opt for growing biofuels). Still, direct conversion of solar
energy into both low-temperature and high- temperature heat, plus
electricity, "could supply a lasting, planet- wide foundation for
non-fossil economies," Smil says.

Fossil fuels began supplying humans with more energy than biomass (wood,
charcoal and crop residues) starting in the mid-1890s. However, if fossil
fuels are contributing substantially to the problem of global warming
because they emit carbon dioxide (CO2), then they must be phased out, the
sooner the better, and the transition to solar power must proceed apace.

However, the fossil corporations have a different idea (shared by their
allies in the chemical, automobile, railroad and mining corporations --
plus their loyal representatives in Congress and the White House, plus th=
e
Presidential candidates of both major parties). Their plan is an
end-of-pipe solution -- to capture, compress into liquid, and bury carbon
dioxide in the ground. Given growing public awareness of the large costs
of global warming, this carbon-burial plan -- as far-fetched as it may be
-- is the only way the coal and oil corporations can continue to burn
fossil fuels until there are no more fossil fuels left to burn.

Here (in a very long quotation) is what Vaclav Smil has to say about
burying carbon dioxide in the ground:

"Underground sequestration of carbon -- now routinely sold as both a
feasible and an effective solution to avoid global warming (Socolow 2005;
IPCC 2006) -- is a prime example of what I call the GM approach to
engineering a desirable change. In the early 1970s, when faced with the
legislative fiat to cut automotive emissions of CO, NOx and VOC the
world's largest company chose not to lower them at all but to install
costly and resource-intensive three-way catalytic converters. In contrast=
,
Soichiro Honda, the founder of the eponymous and now legendary engineerin=
g
corporation, approached the challenge as an ecologist and asked:

"'What would happen if catalytic converters were installed in a large
number of automobiles, emitting platinum, palladium, and other heavy
metals that would then enter human bodies? There are too many unknowns.'
(Sakiya 1982:181).

"Honda's engineers thus concentrated on developing their extraordinary
compound vortex controlled combustion (CVCC hence Honda Civic) and theirs
was the first engine to meet U.S. EPA's strict automotive emissions
requirements. Honda's way -- minimizing the production of undesirable
outputs rather than controlling them as an after-thought -- should be
always the guiding principle of any intelligent, far- sighted, rational
design. I do not have to belabor the wider lesson taught by these two
companies. Three decades after it surprised with its innovative engine
design Honda is the world's leading, and a highly profitable, automotive
innovator whose two dominant vehicles, Accord and Civic, set the standard
for car-making in compact and sedan class while GM is a virtually bankrup=
t
outfit (losing thousands of dollars on every car sale) whose products
include such ridiculous monsters as Yukon (24 L/100 km [=3D 9.8 miles per
gallon]) and H1, a military assault vehicle weighing 4,700 kg [=3D 5.2
tons].

"I must hasten to add [says Smil] that underground CO2 sequestration in
the service of secondary oil recovery is most desirable, as is any form o=
f
plant-bound sequestration, ranging from a gradual build-up of soil organi=
c
matter to massive planting of trees. But beyond these highly desirable
actions the stress must be on reducing the emissions, not hiding them in
an uncertain and costly manner. There are simply too many unknowns to
commit enormous investments to an undertaking whose results could be
obtained in many more preferable ways. But ignoring the avoidance
principle that should guide any sound engineering and environmental actio=
n
does not turn sequestration into a more practical proposition: even if we
were to embrace this second- rate option the magnitude of the enterprise
needed to make a real difference will defeat us.

"A key comparison illustrates the daunting scale of the challenge. In 200=
5
worldwide CO2 emissions amounted to nearly 28 Gt [gigatonnes, or billions
of metric tonnes]; even if were to set out only a modest goal of
sequestering just 10% of this volume we would have to put away annually
about 6 Gm3 [billion cubic meters] (assuming that all of the gas is
compressed at least to its critical point where its density is 0.47 g/mL
[grams per milliLiter]). The current extraction of crude oil (nearly 4 Gt
[billion tonnes] in 2005) translates to less than 5 Gm3 [billion cubic
meters]. Sequestering a mere 1/10 of today's global CO2 emissions (< 3 Gt
[billion tonnes] CO2) would thus call for putting in place an industry
that would have to force underground every year the volume of compressed
gas larger than or (with higher compression) equal to the volume of crude
oil extracted globally by the petroleum industry whose infrastructures an=
d
capacities have been put in place over a century of development. Needless
to say, such a technical feat could not be accomplished within a single
generation.

"The obvious question is why it should be even attempted given the fact
that a 10% reduction in CO2 emissions could be achieved by several more
rational, mature and readily available adjustments. The most radical of
these steps would be the reduction of the average annual U.S. per capita
energy (about 330 GJ [billion Joules]/year, or roughly twice the affluent
EU [European Union] level) by about 40%: this transformation alone would
reduce the global carbon emissions by at least 2.5 GT [billion tonnes]
CO2. Of course, this suggestion is always met with derision and the
chances of such a shift are judged to be utterly impossible. But before
you rush to join that dismissive howl recall that when empires unravel
their energy use shrinks.

"The last perfect example was the demise of the Soviet Empire: between
1989 and 1997 the primary energy use in the successor states of the USSR
fell by a third. Then consider the current U.S. trajectory of enormous
accumulated budget and trade deficits, more than twice as large unfunded
health and social security liabilities, absence of any new domestic
savings, gutting of the country's manufacturing, dismal state of its
education, acute strategic overstretch and a crippling dependence on
energy imports (as of 2005 even its net food imports!) -- and you do not
need a great deal of imagination to construct scenarios of a major
economic (choose one: crisis, pull-back, collapse) to be accompanied by
significantly reduced energy consumption." [End of Smil quotation] (Smil
has elaborated elsewhere [1.2 Mbyte PDF] his reasons for believing that
America's global empire is in the final stages of retreat.)

In sum, Smil believes that burying carbon dioxide in the ground is

(1) A monumentally dumb idea because the first principle of good
industrial design is to avoid production of undesirable outputs, rather
than controlling them as an afterthought.

(2) Fraught with uncertainties -- not the least of them being unknown
costs that are surely larger than what is being forecast on the basis of
almost no real-world experience;

(3) Could not be accomplished in a single generation because capturing
even 10% of human CO2 emissions would require creation of an industrial
infrastructure as large as the present-day global petroleum industry,
which took 100 years to build.

(4) Unnecessary because merely eliminating the most obvious forms of wast=
e
from U.S. energy use -- making us as efficient as Europe -- would
accomplish the same thing far more cheaply and far more rapidly (with
considerable health benefits from reduced pollution, I might add).

Smil elaborated on this last point in a short paper in 2002. He pointed
out that the U.S. requires 7 tons of oil equivalent (toe) per person per
year to maintain our present lifestyle. But he shows that a top-notch
lifestyle requires no more than 2.6 toe and arguably even a bit less. "Ou=
r
quest for ever higher energy use thus has no objective or subjective
justification," he concludes.

In sum, we could cut our energy use by more than 60 percent without
diminishing our lifestyle in any way -- and arguably it would be enhanced
because so much pollution would be avoided by the shift.

Burying CO2 in the ground is a General Motors solution when what we need
is a Honda solution.