Coal is the enemy of the human race, pant-wetting terror edition

Blackout: Heinberg on dwindling coal reserves and the siren song of “clean coal” 13

Richard Heinberg - BlackoutBlackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis, Richard HeinbergThere isn’t nearly as much coal left as most people think. “Clean coal” will run down limited reserves even faster. If humanity doesn’t begin massive, sustained investment in renewable power sources immediately, civilization could be at risk before the end of the century. And that’s without considering the impacts of climate change.

Such is the stark conclusion of Richard Heinberg’s Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis, which despite its dry tone and technical complexity is one of the scariest f*cking books I’ve ever read.

Right now the U.S. is on the verge of a momentous gamble, as reflected in the ACES bill: betting that long-term emission reductions can be achieved via carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). ACES postpones serious domestic reductions for over a decade on the assumption (hope?) that CCS technology will mature and drop in price enough to enable the indefinite use of coal.

Similarly, at U.N. talks it is fervently hoped that CCS will enable coal to continue driving developing-world economic expansion (as oil declines, coal use has risen). Nothing approaching WWII-scale investment in renewables and efficiency is on the table.

It’s a game-theoretic exercise played for Dantean stakes. If Heinberg is right, policymakers are operating under two fateful, and possibly fatal, illusions.

First, they think the U.S. has a “250-year supply” of coal, and that China, Russia, Australia, and India have similarly inexhaustible supplies. They’re almost certainly wrong.

The bulk of Heinberg’s book is a methodical walk through several recent studies on coal reserves. (One of the most shocking facts about coal reserves is how little we know about them—they were scarcely studied in any systematic way before 2005.) If you have time for just one, check out “Coal: Resources and Future Production” [PDF], by Germany’s Energy Watch Group. It’s a page-turner!

A key feature of recent studies is that they abandon the conventional but misleading expression of coal supplies: reserves-to-production ratio, or R/P. Divide total reserves (how much is in the ground) by the current rate of production (how much we’re using) and voilà, a big number—a 250-year supply, even.

But rates of fossil-fuel production are not, indeed cannot physically be, static. The easiest reserves are found first. Over time, as more accessible seams are mined out, what remains is increasingly difficult to obtain and expensive to transport. In every coal field,  every country, every region, the energy-return-on-investment (EROI) rises, peaks, and declines. Post-peak, it takes more and more energy to reach the coal and get it where it needs to go. The crucial issue is not how much coal is left in the ground but where we are on the curve, and more to the point, when we cross into negative EROI, the crucial line after which it takes more work to get coal out of the ground than coal returns in energy.

Obviously that line is a moving target. It depends on commodity prices, technology, the cost of transport, and any number of other dynamic variables. Nonetheless, it’s possible to sketch a basic bell curve for EROI (a “Hubbert linearization,” in dorkspeak) for coal production. That’s what the Energy Watch Group (EWG) and others have recently done, and as it turns out, the news ain’t pretty.

(This will all sound very, very familiar to the peak-oil crowd. Turns out coal is a finite fossil fuel too!)

According to the EWG, global coal production will,  best-case scenario, peak and begin declining about 20 years from now. Yikes.

Energy Watch Group - global coal reserves

The second fateful illusion: that carbon capture and sequestration can enable the continued expansion of coal use.

Industry insiders admit that CCS technology will not be developed, and costs reduced enough to prompt widespread adoption, until 2035 at best. By then, if CCS becomes a primary climate strategy and EWG-style analysis is correct, humanity will be in the grips of four interrelated costs and risks associated with coal. Quoting Heinberg:

• the need for substantial investment in new CCS technology;
• higher coal prices and shortages due to depletion;
• higher electricity generating costs due to the use of IGCC and CCS; and
• lower electricity generation efficiencies due to the use of CCS, requiring more coal to produce an equivalent amount of electricity.

So at a time when supplies are declining, while commodity and transportation costs are rising, we’ll need much more coal to get the same amount of electricity from a more expensive generation technology. Surely you see the wisdom of the strategy.

Another issue that doesn’t get the press it deserves is the investment necessary to produce the infrastructure for widespread CCS. It’s mind-boggling. Ultimately humanity would be burying more than twice the amount of CO2 that it digs up in coal, more than eight times the amount of yearly volume handled by the global crude oil industry (according to Vaclav Smil). Building the new-gen plants, running more railroad cars to bring the increased coal supplies necessary to run them, building and burying all the CO2 pipelines, maintaining CO2 burial fields ... it all requires not only an enormous amount of money but an enormous investment of energy, and fossil energy is a finite commodity.

Heinberg’s conclusion: it’s renewables or nothing.

Imagine the remaining reserves of oil and coal as a savings account. There’s a lot in the bank, but pretty soon income is going to decline and savings are going to get drawn down. The question before us is: how fast should we draw down our fossil savings, and what should we spend them on?

Spending on CCS poses a fateful opportunity cost. If scaling up renewables and efficiency (R&E) is difficult today, it will be doubly so when savings have been drained pursuing CCS infrastructure. According to the scenarios developed by Heinberg and the Post Carbon Institute, massive CCS investment would at best delay an energy crash by a decade or two. I’m dubious of these kinds of scenario exercises, but it’s inarguable that after all that fossil energy is spent on CCS, it can’t be retrieved. There’s no do-over. If it doesn’t work out, the energy needed to build out R&E infrastructure will only be more expensive.

One subject on which Heinberg strikes me as unduly pessimistic is the potential for R&E. He and the Post Carbon Institute think the best-case scenario is a massive, controlled, humane reduction in human population alongside a transition to a much lower-energy, localized form of life. For my part, I incline bright green. Worldchanging‘s Alex Steffen put it well in a recent tweet: “To be bright green is to know that a sane respect for planetary limits imposes no meaningful limits on humanity’s potential, at all.” It is possible to flourish sustainably.

But that’s an argument for another time. At minimum, a sustainable future requires the best possible understanding of available coal reserves and their likely cost. If “clean coal” turns out to be a phantom, chasing it will not only waste time, it may foreclose the only decent options we have left.

David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.

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  1. mwildfire Posted 7:16 am
    28 Jul 2009

    Good review. But I do want to question this "bright green" optimism: “To be bright green is to know that a sane respect for planetary limits imposes no meaningful limits on humanity’s potential, at all.” It is possible to flourish sustainably.What is meant by "humanity's potential," and by "flourish"? I believe this statement is true, as long as you don't think we can keep increasing, or maintain, humanity's population, or economic growth. Heinberg is right: we need to quickly reduce our population and relocalize our economies, and we need to get off the conumption mania. We also need to correct millennia of injustices, and embrace the poor and darker-skinned, which necessitates even more drastic cuts in resource use in the rich countries. I would argue that we could do all this, and flourish as never before, at last living up to our potential.But--sigh--we won't. There is no evidence of movement in the right direction at anything remotely like what's necessary. So, instead, we will have a sudden (probably) die-off, after doing great damage to the Earth's natural systems...and then, if we're lucky, the survivors will eventually knit together a new civilization with the wisdom and sanity of the earlier inhabitants of the western hemisphere.

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  2. Asher Miller Posted 9:04 am
    28 Jul 2009

    Hi Dave,Thanks for the thoughtful take on Blackout. You hit the nail on the head when you say: "The crucial issue is not how much coal is left in the ground but where we are on the curve,
    and more to the point, when we cross into negative EROI, the crucial
    line after which it takes more work to get coal out of the ground than
    coal returns in energy."Frankly, Energy Return On Energy Invested is the bottom line, for all sources. And the numbers are not pretty.At the risk of speaking for Richard, I can assure you that he doesn't relish being the bearer of bad news. And I agree with MWildfire... "Flourish" is a subjective term. We certainly believe that individuals and communities can flourish in the post-carbon age, but only if we significantly shift our definition of what that means. The Transition Town movement, started in the UK but spreading rapidly in the US and around the world, is the truest embodiment I know of a hopeful vision for the future.As you know, we're not just dealing with energy scarcity, or climate change. We're facing water scarcity, biodiversity loss, habitat destruction, other diminishing resources, and an economy built on phantom wealth. It's that complex reality we have to wrestle with. I suppose you can call it "pessimistic" to say that, but I'm afraid it's time to face reality. best,AsherPost Carbon Institute

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  3. cyberfarer's avatar

    cyberfarer Posted 10:53 am
    28 Jul 2009

    There is no substitute for cheap oil, not even coal though we will try. Heinberg and the folks at Post Carbon are correct - the only option is a managed power-down to a very different sort of economy and world.The statement, “To be bright green is to know that a sane respect for planetary limits imposes no meaningful limits on humanity’s potential," is only true so long as humanity's potential is not measured in terms of material wealth.  

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  4. tboggia Posted 11:12 am
    28 Jul 2009

    Great post. I'll definitely pick up the book. 

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  5. gullyfourmyle's avatar

    gullyfourmyle Posted 12:18 pm
    28 Jul 2009

    The story is a hell of a lot scarier than Blackout. This book doesn't mention CHEMICAL WINTER. That is the phenomenon that is altering DNA worldwide in every living thing. Blackout in a world sense would actually be a good thing since it will interupt the chemical destruction of all animate living things that is going on right now thanks to the deadly solvents being pumped 24/7 into the atmosphere and ultimately inhaled, ingested and absorbed.If the end of coal actually did happen and shut down a major portion of the electrical grid, there would be a massive die-off of humanity. As a result, the tonnage of chemicals pumped into the atomsphere would fall as well. That would give the planet the first opportunity to  heal in nearly a hundred years.Right now  the high powered lacquer thinners that we are dissolving our air with are increasing in strength. They are not yet at the level outdoors that our buildings are polluted with indoors. Our indoor atmospheric contamination is at the heart of many immunological conditions such as Asthma and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. Those conditions indicate serious breaches in our immune systems. Most people think these problems are human problems only. They are not. Wildlife and domesticated animals are far more sensitive than we are and they are dying in droves. The number one killer of cats and dogs - household pets that spend most of their time inhaling and licking your toxic solvents off their fur near ground level is cancer. Considering they for the most part eat scientifically formulated diets there is no way they should be dying of cancer in what has to be the biggest epidemic going on globally and it hasn't received any attention at all.These are the harbingers of your future in your own house. Your kids probably spend a lot of time near ground level too. Airborne chemicals are heavy and sink to the ground so they are densest the closer you get to the ground. Children younger than two years have no immunological protection from these chemicals. Immune systems are not completely formed until approximately sixteen years old. So that kind of tells you where brain tumours in children comes from doesn't it?There are hundreds of thousands of corrosive, acidic and simply poisonous chemicals floating around in the atmosphere and most of them combine well with coal emissions - clean or otherwise. Coal emissions in combination with all those other dandy chemicals form an industrial strength coating on everything they settle on including every aspect of vegetation that at some point is eaten by something. When that something eats the poisoned food, it may not die immediately. It may simply store the poisons. Therefore everything that eats vegetation on earth is becoming incrementally more poison to itself and everything else that will at some point eat it. The poisons are travelling quickly up the food chain and the toxicity is increasing rapidly.While those poisons are in a body - yours or a caterpillar, they are not merely excess baggage. They are little packages of pure energy that were created to do one thing exceptionally well - turn what they touch into a liquid. Unless you are made of glass or some form of igneous rock, that means you. Most living things do not function for long once their organs become puddles (tumours).Genetic code does not function well as a puddle either. So you can imagine what is about to happen to future generations of higher life forms on this planet thanks to oil and gas interests. Forget about being dumped back into the stone age. Think in terms of your future offspring as one celled animals. Not bad for a full circle when you think about it. All this time you thought it was ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But really it was single celled animals to complex animals and back again.You probably don't believe a word you just read. I hope not. I hope you take the time to do a little research on your own so you can find out for yourself that CHEMICAL WINTER is the big problem, not coal, not global warming and not climate change.The best thing that could happen is for coal and oil to run out in the near future. Most of us would die but at least some of the human race would survive. Let's hope the survivors can still read enough to avoid making the same mistakes.  

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  6. robert.hargraves Posted 7:30 am
    30 Jul 2009

    I like the concept of "peak coal".However, it's not "renewables or nothing" because of the nuclear option. With effective R&D we can complete development of the liquid fluoride thorium reactor and produce energy at $0.03/kWh, which is the price that will undercut coal economics and stop coal burning. This high temperature LFTR technology can also disassociate water into oxygen and hydrogen, a feedstock for recycling CO2 into methanol or dimethyl ether, which are gasoline and diesel subsitutes.Aim High, an introduction to the technology and benefits of the liquid fluoride thorium reactor, is posted at http://rethinkingnuclearpower.googlepages.com/aimhigh 

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    1. gullyfourmyle's avatar

      gullyfourmyle Posted 11:45 am
      31 Jul 2009

      As good as you make Thorium sound, there are still some huge problems to overcome - particularly with spent fuel. That issue makes Thorium to all intents and purposes, just as hostile a disposal process as uranium does. It is not a simple solution but it does deserve the research required to see if we can wean ourselves from Middle East oil and in the process, curb our fossil fuel emissions.

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  7. biscuits Posted 11:27 am
    30 Jul 2009

    Some people are really crazy. And so many of those crazy people have websites.Peak coal is pretty scary, though 

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  8. so left i am right's avatar

    so left i am right Posted 6:47 am
    31 Jul 2009

    It used to be that coal extraction (mining) was done way off the radar. Far from public view. Why? That’s where the easy coal streams are and because it’s a big fat toxic mess that they like to keep out of site.   Today, at least here in Southern Indiana, they are now extracting coal right next to farms on major state roads. Huge man made mountains of rock, dirt and sludge 100+ feet tall stand literally, right next to farm houses and old stately barns. Gone are the fields where the soybeans or corn once grew, all be it with fossil fuel based fertilizers. No more cattle grazing here, just massive mechanical monstrosities moving earth at a feverish pace. These extraction facilities are scattered all over. Not one big site. Many smaller ones that are still hundreds of acres each.   I think that’s a sign of us fighting over the scraps.

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  9. robert.hargraves Posted 2:13 pm
    31 Jul 2009

    Regarding thorium waste, please do check the website. The appendix explains why the long lived waste is < 1% of that from today's LWR reeactors. Or Google "aim high thorium".

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    1. gullyfourmyle's avatar

      gullyfourmyle Posted 6:00 pm
      31 Jul 2009

      I did check. The problem is that Thorium has the potential to be used in a much more diverse way than uranium. Once the initial problems are sorted out as with anything else, the technology will expand beyond the nuclear and oil and gas industries as they are today. Therefore the amount of waste that needs to be dealt with will be in quantities that will quickly become unmanageable.Remember this stuff has the potential to replace the entire energy sector. As such the enormous amount of waste material that will eclipse anything generated by the existing nuclear industry that we still don't know how to deal with will have to be stockpiled somewhere. We still haven't learned how to deal effectively with non-tech garbage. Virtually every single landfill site in North America is leaking poisons into the ground water. There are hundreds of thousands of these sites all over North America. The rest of the world has similar problems, some of which make super fund sites look like sand boxes.Bush wanted to build 700 new nuclear reactors. Imagine what would happen with Thorium. In fact it probably will happen. If it does, it will likely be the cherry on the icing on the cake of life ending pollution even though at the end user stage there are no emissions. Don't forget our population is on its way to 9 billion emissions generating souls in the not too distant future. Thorium if it works out as you envision, will escalate those numbers and 9 billion people and their waste will feel obligated to jump to 18 billion. We will be afloat in our own garbage and toxic emissions.Then there is your crippled and thoroughly poisoned water table that is being drained as fast as US citizenry and industry can think of new ways to use it up. Expanding population, expanding energy availability and rapidly shrinking water resources does not add up to sustainability even though, if looked at separately sector by sector, the energy aspect looks like it could be solved.A systemic solution that includes human population controls is what is needed, not just an energy solution. In fact if the population in the lower 48 were reduced to sustainable numbers, there would be no energy shortage. 

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  10. Billhook Posted 3:37 am
    01 Aug 2009

    From Gulleyfourmyle 1st post above :"Airborne chemicals are heavy and sink to the ground so they are densest the closer you get to the ground."Does this mean that tinfoil hats are really less use than shin-pads ?Regards,Billhook  

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    1. gullyfourmyle's avatar

      gullyfourmyle Posted 9:04 am
      01 Aug 2009

      I think in your case Billhook you should stick to shin pads. The destructive genetic effects of Chemical Winter have apparently already begun to take their toll in your case. The damage is irreversable. :)

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