In The Bottomless Well: The twilight of fuel, the virtue of waste, and why we will never run out of energy, Peter Huber and Mark Mills argue that the massive energy “losses” during energy production aren’t bad, as outside critics of the U.S. energy economy want to assert. They are actually the most necessary and beneficial part of America’s energy use—they refine energy sources into usable energy.
The Bottomless Well was published in 2005
To put it as bluntly as it can be put, the “waste” of energy is virtue, not a vice. It is only by throwing most of the energy away that we can put what’s left to productive use. The cold side of the engine—where we discard most of the energy—is as essential as the hot, where we suck it in. More essential, in fact. It is by throwing energy overboard that we maintain and increase the order of our existence.
The electricity at the plug arrives from the enormous generator in some utility’s central power plant. What spins the generator’s shaft is a steam turbine. The steam comes from a boiler, which is heated by furnace, which most probably burns coal. In the very best power plants, half of the raw heat available in the coal is consumed inside the plant itself in converting the other half of the heat into electricity. Less efficient power plants—smaller ones used as stand-by generators, for example—consume two-thirds of their heat to refine the other one-third into electricity. The whole business, in short, reeks of a Ponzi scheme, with each successive tier of the pyramid feeding voraciously off the one beneath—and with new tiers constantly being added at the top. Small wonder that so much of our energy economy is often characterized as wasteful. Casual observers are easily convinced that there must be a better way.
The energy Ponzi scheme is invariably framed—and lamented—as a symptom of grotesque waste. In the standard graphical presentation, the noble pyramid is portrayed, instead, as a squid-like creature, expelling waste through every tentacle. Updated versions of the energy squid are now routinely wheeled out to demonstrate how most of the energy we use goes to “waste” or (more colorfully) disappears down a “rat hole.”
But something far bigger than a wasteful rat hole is at work when you are looking at the 95 percent or more of total demand. That much demand can’t all be blamed on bad engineering. If the main use of energy is to condition energy itself, then “energy” isn’t the right metric at all, and the “energy economy” must in fact center on something quite different. Engines and generators are obviously doing something for us that isn’t captured by any of the conventional metrics of energy and power.
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Earthworks’s Oil and Gas Accountability Project has recently commissioned a report on behalf of anti-drilling special interests, and delivered it to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, donning the title: “A Human Rights Assessment of Hydraulic Fracturing for Natural Gas.” This flagrant instrument of green propaganda alleges that the “environmental damage” created by hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), the contentious natural gas extraction process that involves blasting a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals underground, poses “a new threat to human rights.” The basis of this accusation rests upon a citation of a recent United Nations Resolution that states, “environmental damage can have negative implications, both direct and indirect, for the effective enjoyment of human rights.” Again, the archetypal environmentalist assumes the posture of the humanitarian do-gooder, when in reality, their green agenda with the “at-all-costs” underpinnings will ravage the already depressed economies of those areas in upstate New York where natural gas development offers hope for impoverished people.
The report enumerates the possible (not affirmed) risks to air quality, ground surface waters, climate change, soils and ecosystems that qualify as “violations” of human rights (26 violations, to be exact), even though they admit that “the current state of knowledge about potential human health and environmental impacts of these airborne and waterborne contaminants, as well as of their mixtures and interactions, is poor.” It goes to the level of labeling fracking a “human rights” issue because it overrides all other possible policy tests. The report states, “Human rights standards are recognized as trumping other types of policy considerations such as utility, cost-benefit analysis, economic value, social policy, etc.” The cherry on top of this outrageous assessment is that the last two listed human rights accused of being violated by fracking pertain to the Nuremberg Code— a document that assures the rights of medical subjects that came out of the World War II Nuremberg Trials where Nazi doctors were rightly accused of performing atrocious experiments on prisoners in the concentration camps. As stated, there is no evidence that fracking poses a threat to the environment, let alone to human rights. To parallel real human suffering with an industrialized process that mitigates human struggle by creating wealth is insulting and absurd.
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Ask people about the future of energy, and you’ll probably hear mention of “solar,” “wind,” and “ethanol.” These developing energy technologies have been invested in, loaned to, subsidized, and mandated—yet they’ve repeatedly fallen short.
If the vaunted renewables aren’t yet ready for prime time, what will we do if, for example, Iran makes good on its threat to close the Strait of Hormuz and blocks a significant supply of the world’s energy? Just the fear of a supply disruption bumped up the price of oil.
The geopolitics provide a perfect backdrop for pushing the pipeline that will boost the economy through more jobs and price stability, provide energy security, and help balance the trade deficit. Opponents see building the Keystone XL pipeline as a flashpoint for the struggle between old and new energy paradigms—yet with the failure of so-called future energy, the pipeline is representative of our energy future.
Untold billions of taxpayers’ dollars have been spent trying to force renewables into an unnatural economic timeline with the expectation that the laws of nature will bow to the laws of politicians. Yet, not one of them produces a significant percentage of our energy needs. If we lost 20% of our renewable energy, we’d never feel it. If we lost 20% of our oil supply—the amount that goes through the Strait of Hormuz, we could be back to the rationing and gas lines that are reminiscent of the Carter administration.
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An Occupy Orange County protester decries mankind’s existence: “Our very existence is bad for the planet.” “Another protester told” an interviewer “that human beings are parasites,” adding that “if you take humanity off this planet, the planet would explode with prosperity.”
In May, a group of Nobel laureates and others gathered to put humanity on trial, to decide whether humanity had breached its relations with the planet. Representing “the planet” was none other than Obama science and technology advisor Mario Molina.
Delegates to a U.N. climate change conference signed a petition to ban water, which the petition referred to using an obvious chemical name for water that anyone who has studied science or taken a chemistry course would logically recognize (as “dihydrogen monoxide”). The petition cited the fact that water can erode rock or metal over time.
The Washington Post gave a thumbs-down to the billions of dollars dumped into electric vehicles by the Obama Administration, noting that these electric vehicles are not a “solution to America’s dependence on foreign oil, or to global warming, in the near future. They simply pose too many issues of price and practicality to attract a large segment of the car-buying public.” It pointed out that subsidies for electric vehicles are “trickle-down economics” that benefit a wealthy few at the expense of taxpayers. (Each Chevy Volt costs taxpayers up to $250,000).
The Post also criticized the costly ethanol subsidies backed by the Obama Administration, noting that a recently-expired ethanol tax credit “badly distorted the global grain market, artificially raised the cost of agricultural land and did almost nothing to curb greenhouse gas emissions. A federal law requiring the use of 36 billion gallons of ethanol for fuel by 2022 still props up the industry, but the tax credit’s expiration is a victory for common sense just the same.” The Obama Administration supports ethanol subsidies, even though they have a history of spawning famines and food riots overseas. It has forced up the ethanol content of gasoline through EPA regulations, even though ethanol production results in deforestation, soil erosion, and water pollution. Back in 2008, leading environmentalists lamented the devastating impact of ethanol subsidies on the global environment and the world’s poor in the Washington Post. They noted that thanks to ethanol mandates, “deadly food riots” had already “broken out in dozens of nations,” such as “Haiti and Egypt.”
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From the 12/30/2011 Cooler Heads Digest:
This week the EPA finalized the 2012 biofuel volume mandates under the Renewable Fuel Standard, as established by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The controversial cellulosic “mandate” is currently set at 8.65 million gallons, down from an initial “requirement” of 500 million gallons as set by the EISA. In previous years, the EPA has held cellulosic requirements at levels greater than zero gallons, despite it being commercially unavailable. As a result, refiners have been required to purchase cellulosic “credits” from the EPA in lieu of purchasing the (nonexistent) cellulosic ethanol. Refiners expect to spend roughly $8 million complying with this bogus program in 2012 unless cellulosic ethanol finally materializes.
In related ethanol news, this week also marks the end of the ethanol tax credit (VEETC) and the corresponding tariff on ethanol imports. As the Wall Street Journal noted today: “Congress created ethanol subsidies in 1978, expanded them in a 1980 bill, and then rinsed and repeated in 1982, 1984, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1998, 2004, 2005 and 2007.” The more damaging mandate, the Renewable Fuel Standard, remains in effect.
The RFS will require oil refiners to blend 15.2 billion gallons of biofuels into our fuel supply this year, and will increase to 36 billion gallons by 2022. How this will be possible remains to be seen, as consumers have shown little interest in purchasing vehicles that run primarily on ethanol, and there are a number of difficulties in requiring that non-modified cars run on gasoline containing much more than 10-15 percent ethanol.
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