Ecology and Economics

Blogging the Sustainable Energy Forum

Today Ethan Heitner at TomPaine.common sense wrote a post about last weekend's Peak Oil and the Environment forum.

… The Sustainable Energy Forum … represented a convergence—the top minds of environmental science, economics, and geopolitics discussing the same problem, with a few politicians, businessmen, historians, and journalists, from a wide variety of angles. Peak oil, the term used to describe the problem of running out of the main fuel of our economy for the past hundred years, and climate change—the description of the costs of that economy. … There was a consistent message: our current way of life is neither desirable nor sustainable. The environment is not a luxury good.

Of course, within that consensus, there are debates. Brian Schweitzer, the Democratic governor of Montana, was there to plug coal-to-gas liquification and carbon sequestration as solutions. He's frequently vilified by those who argue convincingly that simply replacing one fossil fuel for another is not viable. Yet even he agreed that the only solution available to us right here, right now, immediately to mitigate the alarming effects of our problems is to sharply, dramatically reduce not just oil consumption, but energy consumption. "Make conservation cool. How low can you go?"

Meanwhile, straight-up economists like Herman Daly argued that our underlying economic goals need to be rethought [PDF, Brian Czech and Herman Daly]. The "American dream" as defined by Enron’s Ken Lay as "living a very expensive lifestyle" doesn’t work any more.

... Jack Santa Barbara … summed up the conference's agreements:

A full environmental impact is needed for all solutions ... Whatever we do now will be scaled up and done by others, repeated again and again ... Even renewable energy sources can be used unsustainably ... It's not an oil addiction—it's an addiction to high per-capita energy consumption ... We have to get the goals right. Is it a high GDP or high human wellbeing?

His optimistic advice?

We already have many of the tools available to us now ... A theory of a steady-state economy ... We already ban substances that are harmful ... we already have a system of ecological taxes ... all that is needed is political will. ...

Also: The Oil Drum has several posts on the conference: here, here, here, (lots of comments too) with more to come. Stay tuned!

Peak Oil: Problem Overblown?

The Economist recently ran a story airing Peak Oil concerns from "pessimists" and counters from "optimists." NPR ran a similar spot May 2.

FINANCE & ECONOMICS
The oil industry
Steady as she goes [$]
Apr 20th 2006 | BAKERSFIELD, CALIFORNIA, AND CALGARY, ALBERTA
From The Economist print edition

Why the world is not about to run out of oil
…For years a small group of geologists has been claiming that the world has started to grow short of oil, that alternatives cannot possibly replace it and that an imminent peak in production will lead to economic disaster. In recent months this view has gained wider acceptance on Wall Street and in the media. Recent books on oil have bewailed the threat. Every few weeks, it seems, “Out of Gas”, “The Empty Tank” and “The Coming Economic Collapse: How You Can Thrive When Oil Costs $200 a Barrel”, are joined by yet more gloomy titles. Oil companies, which once dismissed the depletion argument out of hand, are now part of the debate. Chevron's splashy advertisements strike an ominous tone: “It took us 125 years to use the first trillion barrels of oil. We'll use the next trillion in 30.” Jeroen van der Veer, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, believes “the debate has changed in the last two years from 'Can we afford oil?' to 'Is the oil there?'”

But is the world really starting to run out of oil? And would hitting a global peak of production necessarily spell economic ruin? Both questions are arguable. Despite today's obsession with the idea of “peak oil”, what really matters to the world economy is not when conventional oil production peaks, but whether we have enough affordable and convenient fuel from any source to power our current fleet of cars, buses and aeroplanes. With that in mind, the global oil industry is on the verge of a dramatic transformation from a risky exploration business into a technology-intensive manufacturing business. And the product that big oil companies will soon be manufacturing, argues Shell's Mr Van der Veer, is “greener fossil fuels”.

The race is on to manufacture such fuels for blending into petrol and diesel today, thus extending the useful life of the world's remaining oil reserves. This shift in emphasis from discovery to manufacturing opens the door to firms outside the oil industry (such as America's General Electric, Britain's Virgin Fuels and South Africa's Sasol) that are keen on alternative energy. It may even result in a breakthrough that replaces oil altogether.

To see how that might happen, consider the first question: is the world really running out of oil? Colin Campbell, an Irish geologist, has been saying since the 1990s that the peak of global oil production is imminent. Kenneth Deffeyes, a respected geologist at Princeton, thought that the peak would arrive late last year.

It did not. In fact, oil production capacity might actually grow sharply over the next few years (see chart 1). Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), an energy consultancy, has scrutinised all of the oil projects now under way around the world. Though noting rising costs, the firm concludes that the world's oil-production capacity could increase by as much as 15m barrels per day (bpd) between 2005 and 2010—equivalent to almost 18% of today's output and the biggest surge in history. Since most of these projects are already budgeted and in development, there is no geological reason why this wave of supply will not become available (though politics or civil strife can always disrupt output).

Peak-oil advocates remain unconvinced. A sign of depletion, they argue, is that big Western oil firms are finding it increasingly difficult to replace the oil they produce, let alone build their reserves. Art Smith of Herold, a consultancy, points to rising “finding and development” costs at the big firms, and argues that the world is consuming two to three barrels of oil for every barrel of new oil found. Michael Rodgers of PFC Energy, another consultancy, says that the peak of new discoveries was long ago. “We're living off a lottery we won 30 years ago,” he argues.

It is true that the big firms are struggling to replace reserves. But that does not mean the world is running out of oil, just that they do not have access to the vast deposits of cheap and easy oil that are left in Russia and members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). And as the great fields of the North Sea and Alaska mature, non-OPEC oil production will probably peak by 2010 or 2015. That is soon—but it says nothing of what really matters, which is the global picture.

When the United States Geological Survey (USGS) studied the matter closely, it concluded that the world had around 3 trillion barrels of recoverable conventional oil in the ground. Of that, only one-third has been produced. That, argued the USGS, puts the global peak beyond 2025. And if “unconventional” hydrocarbons such as tar sands and shale oil (which can be converted with greater effort to petrol) are included, the resource base grows dramatically—and the peak recedes much further into the future. {emphasis added}

Upcoming Forum: Peak Oil and the Environment

Sustainable Energy Forum 2006 Peak Oil and the Environment
May 7-9, 2006
Marvin Center, Washington, D.C.
Sponsor: The University of Maryland’s Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology Program

Sustainable Energy Forum 2006 will bring together scientists, policymakers and advocates from government, environmental NGO's and civil society groups to identify the challenges and opportunities for a sustainable energy future.

Our recently diagnosed "addiction to oil" has reignited interest in energy independence:

Global warming, geopolitical instability, and high oil prices have focused awareness on our need for energy alternatives. However, resource constraints may pose more proximate threats to human well-being on a global scale.

The Department of Energy, US Army, major oil companies, and the NY Times have recognized the widespread implications of reaching the maximum rate of global oil production: Peak oil will present unprecedented challenges to ecological sustainability and economic resilience, regardless of the peak’s timing.

These are a few of the key issues regarding peak oil and its implications that will be addressed during SEF 2006:

• What are the geologic and production constraints implicit in peak oil?
• What are the geopolitical implications of reaching the peak?
• What are some options for transportation fuel alternatives and their viability?
• What are the environmental implications of the energy alternatives being pursued?
• How much time do we have to implement alternatives?
• What does net energy have to do with how we respond?
• How much energy is needed for human well-being?
• What options do we have for reducing demand?
• What policy approaches are critical to moving forward?

Our current energy trajectory is unsustainable: How the world responds to peak oil will determine how much energy is available to meet human well-being in the future.

Addiional background information:

SPEAKERS & PANELISTS:

Roscoe Bartlett    U.S. Congressman, 6th District Maryland

Roger Bezdek   President, Management Information Systems, Inc

David Blittersdorf   President, NRG Wind Systems

Lester Brown President, Earth Policy Institute

William Catton   Professor emeritus, WSU; Author, Overshoot

Cutler Cleveland   Director, Energy and Environmental Studies, Boston U

Robert Costanza   Director, Gund Institute for Ecological Economics

Herman Daly   Professor, Public Policy, University of Maryland

Julian Darley   Founder, Post Carbon Institute; High Noon For Nat. Gas

Kenneth Deffeyes   Professor, Geology, Princeton University

Claudio Filippone   Director, Center for Advanced Energy Concepts, UMD

Charles Hall   Professor, Environmental Science, SUNY Syracuse

James Hansen   Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Richard Heinberg   Author, The Party's Over, Powerdown

Michael Klare   Professor, Peace & World Security, Hampshire College

Daniel Lashof   Deputy Director, NRDC Climate Center

John Marano Adj. Professor, Energy Systems, University of Pittsburgh

Bill McKibben   Author, The End of Nature, Enough

Pat Murphy   Executive Director, The Community Solution

David Pimentel   Professor, Agricultural Sciences, Cornell University

Megan Quinn   Outreach Coordinator, The Community Solution

Mona Sahlin   Minister for Sustainable Development, Sweden

Jack Santa Barbara   Director, Sustainable Scale Project

Brian Schweitzer   Governor, State of Montana

Art Smith   CEO, John S. Herold, Inc

Joseph Tainter   Author, The Collapse of Complex Societies

Everything is connected: wetlands and bird flu

(Cross-posted at the Oikos Blog)

Here's another reminder that things are connected in ways we don't always understand and the environment isn't just something "out there" that we can ignore: environmental problems far away can have surprising impacts on us.

A United Nations (UN) report just released says restoring the world's wetlands may be critical to preventing outbreaks of avian flu, as their revival will keep migratory birds from mixing with domesticated fowl. It says the degradation of wetlands has forced wild birds, some carrying the deadly H5N1 strain, into alternative habitats. That increases the risk of the spread of the disease to poultry and, in turn, humans:

"The loss of wetlands around the globe is forcing many wild birds onto alternative sites like farm ponds and paddy fields, bringing them into direct contact with chickens, ducks, geese and other domesticated fowl," the report said.

The report, which has been presented at a two-day conference at the Nairobi-based UN Environment Program (UNEP), notes that contact between migratory birds and their domesticated cousins is a major cause of the spread of avian flu.

That includes the H5N1 strain, which is potentially deadly to humans. "We know there is a very tight link between the conditions of ecosystems and the likelihood of threats to human health," David Rapport, a Canadian professor of ecosystem health and the lead author of the study, said.