All close together now

A post-petroleum American dream

Posted by Jon Rynn (Guest Contributor) at 9:55 AM on 13 Mar 2008

"This craziness is not sustainable," concludes The New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert, and he's talking about the economy, not the environment. He continues:

Without an educated and empowered work force, without sustained investment in the infrastructure and technologies that foster long-term employment, and without a system of taxation that can actually pay for the services provided by government, the American dream as we know it will expire.

And without petroleum. Oil is shooting over $100 per barrel, caused ultimately by a looming decline in global supply, and exacerbated by rising demand in China and India, foolish policies such as the occupation of Iraq, and repressive regimes such as in Nigeria. And if we are serious about reducing carbon emissions to near zero in order to avert climate catastrophe, we must scale back our use of petroleum to near zero.

While we're learning to live without petroleum, we need to rebuild the workforce, infrastructure, technologies, and tax system, as Herbert suggests. I will argue in this post that we can accomplish all of these goals by replacing internal combustion engines with electric motors, using other energy sources for other petroleum uses, and perhaps most importantly, by changing the arrangement of the buildings, production, and people in our society in order to eliminate the need for so much petroleum.

In order to understand how to accomplish all of this, we need to know how petroleum is used, so let's look at some numbers!

According to the Energy Information Administration, in 2006, 68 percent of petroleum was used in this country for transportation, 25 percent for industry, and 7 percent for everything else (mostly heat). I used government data (called input-output tables) from 1997, which has the advantage of breaking down petroleum into tiny little pieces, based on the dollars actually spent; Charles Komanoff used 2000 data [PDF] on use of quantities of liquid to try to figure out how petroleum is used. I've put all of these data together in the "petroleum use" tab of my online spreadsheet, called Energy Use. This spreadsheet was also used in my post that concentrated on electricity, "Let buildings heat and cool themselves." Let's go through the categories.

Cars: Between 41 percent (Komanoff) and 47 percent of petroleum use is for cars of various sorts. While plug-in hybid electric vehicles may be a good bridging technology, in order to eliminate petroleum use, we will have to eventually move to an all-electric automobile fleet. Can we really replace 3 trillion vehicle miles' use [PDF] of petroleum with electricity? The Chevrolet Volt will allegedly require 0.4 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per mile; let's use one-third of a kilowatt per mile as an average, which conveniently would mean that we would require 1,000 billion kWh with an all-electric fleet. Our entire yearly usage of electricity is four times that amount; we would need to increase our use of coal 50 percent if those electric vehicle kilowatts came exclusively from coal.

The GM Volt is still not a reality. But there are over 35,000 Chrysler GEM cars on the road. GEM cars are an example of a neighborhood electric vehicle (NEV), which I think is eventually what cars will become. I'm a little surprised that there is not more discussion of them. I know, I know -- they don't generally go above 30 mph, but that's why they are preferable.

According to an article called "Implications of reduced traffic speed on the urban environments," at 20 mph or less, pedestrians "only" suffer 5 percent fatality rates if struck by a car, while at even 30 mph, 45 percent are killed. It's much easier to design cities around slow cars then fast ones. But obviously the problem then becomes one of putting buildings closer together. With NEVs, a three-mile drive would take nine minutes, so a suburb would only make sense if most of what people needed -- stores, public transit, schools, and doctors -- were in close proximity.

Sort of like ... New York City. As it happens, we know that 1.73 billion kWhs were required to run the NYC subway in 2006 (see the spreadsheet). Because everything is so close together in NYC, there were untold vehicle trips not taken in NYC. And we know that the 8 million people of NYC, or at least the overwhelming majority of them, could survive without a car. Let's double that kilowatt-hour number to account for electric buses; figure that a fully electric NYC might require about 3.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year.

Now let's imagine that everybody lived in a town or city that was arranged in a similar way. For instance, here in Evanston, Ill., if you live in or close enough to downtown, you could get by without a car, so NYC is not the only example of a potentially car-free area (see this paper on "traditional neighborhood developments." Also see Christopher Leinberger's paper on walkable neighborhoods in 30 metropolitan areas).

If 240 million people were using subways and electric buses exclusively, then we would need 30 NYCs worth of electricity, or 30 times 3.5 billion kWhs, or about 100 billion kWhs, which is about 10 percent of what we would need if we wanted to replace all car miles with electric vehicle miles.

What about the other 60 million Americans? I assume that in a sustainable society, they would be farming. Agriculture takes up 2 percent of petroleum use, for farm machinery and heating, and such uses would have to be electrified. And instead of transporting all of that food thousands of miles, in order to cut back on energy use, we will need to have labor-intensive organic farm belts around cities and towns, delivering fresh food daily in electric truck and rail -- won't that be tasty! Which leads us to consider the next petroleum hog:

Trucks: Accounting for 9 percent to 13 percent of petroleum use, long-distance trucks should be replaced by electrified rail. Alan Drake argues that electric rail freight is 8 times more efficient than trucks. I assume that small electric trucks would still be required for work around town.

According to my figures, transit and sightseeing account for about 2 percent of petroleum use, which could obviously be electrified, while school buses alone account for 2 percent. As James Howard Kunstler has argued, in order to cut down the huge fleets of suburban school buses, schools will have to be close to homes -- or, as in NYC, public transit would take their place.

Now that living arrangements, transportation, agriculture, and even schools have been transformed into a new American dream, we have a few more categories to clean up:

Construction equipment, which accounts for 2 to 3 percent, will have to be electrified, as will mining, coming in at 1 percent, unless we do the right thing and recycle everything instead; then there's the 1 percent devoted to the military, which we could also do without.

Air, water, and rail: Rail (about 1 percent) is easy to electrify, but water transport (up to 2 percent), particularly cargo ships, would be very difficult. Worldwide, cargo ships account for twice the quantity of C02 emissions as airplanes. Which leads us to air travel, which accounts for 4 to 8 percent of petroleum use, depending on your methodology. Except for flying over oceans, I think airline travel is doomed in the far future, simply because it cannot be electrified. This means that we need a national high-speed rail network to replace the air system we have now.

All of the uses discussed so far have one remarkable quality: they all involve injecting petroleum products into internal combustion engines (ICE). In fact, 77 percent of petroleum is poured into ICEs. Developed in the 19th century, ICEs are extremely inefficient and might not have made it too far into the 20th century if it weren't for the miraculous qualities of petroleum: dense, liquid at room temperature, easy to make flow and then to burn, and conveniently located in large underground reserves. None of these characteristics are to be found all together in any other substance, particularly biofuels or hydrogen. Thus, the need to eliminate the internal combustion engine.

But even if we replaced all ICEs with electric motors, if that new electricity all came from coal, we might have to almost double the amount of coal we currently use. If 46 percent of oil use could be replaced by 1,000 billion kWhs, as we saw in the case of cars, then to replace 77 percent of oil would require about 1,700 billion kWhs, or close to the 2,000 billion kWhs supplied by coal.

So while perhaps a grand plan for solar in the deserts of the Southwest or wind farms in the plains of North Dakota and Texas could provide much of that capacity, we could also achieve the same result by restructuring society so that people, buildings, and production are close together.

Manufacturing, which only uses a few percent of oil for heating, should also be located in belts around city and towns in order to minimize the movement of freight and materials. Chemicals, however, require petroleum for the one use that needs to be replaced by something other than electricity: the raw material for chemicals, feedstocks (from 3 percent by dollar amount to 10 percent of petroleum as liquids). This is one area where it may make sense to use sustainably grown biological raw materials -- assuming we really need the many toxic and polluting chemicals and plastics that we use.

The rest of petroleum use will either go away when all other petroleum use goes away (the 5 percent for petroleum refineries and the 1 percent for pipelines), when rails are used (the 2 percent used for asphalt), or when natural gas could be used, at least for an intermediate period (10 percent for heat, almost 2 percent for electricity generation).

Buildings close together, neighborhood electric vehicles, high-speed rail, solar/wind/geothermal energy, fresh local food, nearby clean manufacturing, millions of jobs needed to construct and maintain these systems -- does this sound like a possible new American dream?

For story: All close together now
17 Comments | Post a Comment

we will have some portable fuels.

While I don't question the desirability of cutting our transportaion/shipping needs, I don't see us not having some reasonable amount of portable hydrocarbon fuels available. Whether from some sort of biofuel, or created from sunlight water and CO2 it should be both feasable and environmentally sound to still have portable fuels for transport. Admittedly the volume of such fuel availability is likely to be a fraction of what is currently available (perhaps 10-20%), but used sparingly that is quite a bit of fuel. In this scenario small efficient plugin hybrids do have a long term future.

by bigTom at 12:42 PM on 13 Mar 2008

bigTom, it all depends...

...on how much can be produced, sustainably, and what it does to carbon emissions. For instance, we had an interesting debate in this post's comments section about the underbrush, or fuel wood, or whatever it's called, that may be making forest fires worse out West. It may be that such fuel could be sustainably harvested, and do the forests some good to boot.

Now, whether it would provide 10-20%, I sort of doubt -- particularly if we're trying to get carbon emissions down. There will probably have to be some small amount of liquid fuel for emergency vehicles (fire, police, ambulance), and whatever military we wind up with will need some, and airlines might use them, if they still exist, for traversing oceans. But on a national level, I suppose it would require some breakthroughs in cellulosic ethanol, but even then we're talking about an enormous amount of electricity to keep a fleet of heavy, long-distance, fast cars going. So as a transition strategy, it sounds great, but I don't see it as a long-term sustainable strategy.

by Jon Rynn at 12:58 PM on 13 Mar 2008

The final spiral?

"What is largely ignored in all the discussion of economic recovery is that world oil production is likely to start its final decline somewhere in the next 36 to 48 months. Once this becomes evident, prices will start moving much, much higher and shortages will develop. In an environment such as this, recovery from a recession will be far more difficult and is likely to be measured in decades rather than months."

"The final spiral will not be difficult to recognize when it comes. Equity markets will drop precipitously. Nearly all economic indicators will turn negative. Oil and other commodities will continue to climb. While this phenomenon will start, or has already started, from the U.S. housing situation, it will spread to other OECD countries, and Asia. For a while, perhaps decades, the oil producing and exporting states will fare much better than those dependent on large imports."

"There is much heated debate over whether and how soon there will be a "techno-fix" for the decline of oil - wind, wave, and solar power, electric transport and much lower energy consumption. The factors bearing on how the various techno-fixes will play out are so numerous and interdependent that it is impossible to make much of a judgment about when or whether they will come in sufficient quantities to continue with anything resembling current civilization."

"The decline in the availability of affordable oil is likely to come in a relatively quick spiral while widely implemented replacements for oil are likely to be measured in decades."

--Tom Whipple, Fall Church News, 13 March 2008

by LPS at 1:37 PM on 13 Mar 2008

Hear it for the small towns too

Excellent post, Jon. Attempting total replacement of current vehicle miles with alternatives to petroleum fuels is a worse than fool's errand that will ultimately lead to panic and disaster. Radical physical restructuring of our towns and cities to accommodate denser and more sociable living patterns is sooner or later inevitable.

Only thing I'd add is that the dense historic cores of large metro areas (Evanston, Manhattan) are not at all the only models for close-together life. ALL small towns used to be this way, and can be again. Not to mention that many of the denser suburbs will repurpose well in this format. Overlaying the convenience of modest personal electric vehicles (including electric bikes a la BioD) onto traditional walkable-scale settlements can be a win-win-win for quality of life as well as for environmental sanity.

But God help the exurbs.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

by spaceshaper at 2:38 PM on 13 Mar 2008

Yes, and I forgot to mention bicycles...

...there's a whole range of vehicles -- sometimes called human powered vehices -- from the normal bicycle, through a BioD-type bicycle, to three and four wheelers -- including with child carriers -- and then I think there are some electric four-wheelers, but I'm not sure. That would take a whole post unto itself though.

I was thinking an interesting policy proposal would be to try to inventory and present plans to rebuild main streets -- you could dig out old photos of life on main streets, complete with people walking around -- partly because that would show people what is possible. And then maybe use government funding to actually rebuild the main streets, and very critically, build housing near the main street, because I think a lot of those main streets would die again because there are Walmarts nearby, they need the foot traffic to survive.

Evanston's a good example of that dynamic, the downtown was dying, and what helped its revival was the building of several rather large condominium (and maybe some rental) buildings. The foot traffic led to lots of stores, which makes the area potentially car-free, and certainly walkable (although cold as hell in the winter).

by Jon Rynn at 2:53 PM on 13 Mar 2008

artificial fuels

Jon, I was thinking more of this sort of thing:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080307191300 ...
than the biologically derived fuels. I've also heard proposals for using concentrated solar to dissassciate the feedstock to directly produce fuels from sunlight. If any of these approaches can be made practical, we can then have renewable fuels that are carbon neutral (carbon negative if combined with carcon capture and sequestration). I also expect that we will have oil availability -but in gradually declining volume for several decades. I'm more concerned about getting the transformation started for the next twentyfive years than with a sustainable endstate. I think we have such a strong disinformation industry (delay1000), and receptive subpopulation that we risk being marginalized if we push too hard. Once we get into the transition, and start getting some mature renewables, it will be a lot easier to obtain consensus on long term sustainable strategies. In the US overcoming the substantial anti-tree hugger demographics is going to be key. This won't be accomplished by frightening them with calls for short term reductions in consumption.

by bigTom at 5:51 PM on 13 Mar 2008

Oil availability?

BigTom,
What makes you believe that we will have oil availability for several decades? What makes you think the decline will be gradual? But if you wish it, maybe it will come true!

by LPS at 6:37 PM on 13 Mar 2008

This is a long-term vision...

...I have heard the argument several times that it might scare people -- I even read a conservative article about how environmentalists want to take away peoples' cars! Sort of a repeat of the "They want to take away your guns" approach; hey, it worked on that one, why not repeat it? So it's my bad for not explicitly saying that this is a very long-term idea. Even if the society were to come to some sort of consensus right now to transform itself off of petroleum, it could still easily take 20 years; in fact, the Hirsch report from the department of energy assumed that 20 years was a reasonable time frame for large-scale changes.

I think it's very important, however, to put out a vison for where we want to end up -- I wrote up one possibility, I would hope that there will be many more. It's a little illogical to say that we should make steps toward something when you don't know what it is that you are going toward. In any case, as LPS points out, we have at least one crisis staring us in the face (peak oil), and another clearly in progress (climate change), not to mention a falling dollar, skyrocketing oil prices, etc.

So I think it's important to show people that an alternative is possible, however far in the future it may be, or else they will simply freak out and probably listen to whatever demogogue comes along first.

by Jon Rynn at 6:52 PM on 13 Mar 2008

35years post peak lower 48 is 50% of peak.

If I assume that the world production curve is similar to the lower 48, then the downward leg of the graph should be pretty long (unless alternatives reach the point where oil is no longer sought). Of course net exports will decline quicker than that, as the domestic consumption of exporters will consume a greater share of their own production. And at least for the USA, the cost of oil imports will pose severe economic costs. That alone should be sufficient incentive for large scale efforts to decrease consumption.

Jon: I do agree that some people should be discussing long term solutions. Making such studies mainstream will IMHO be too likely to be used by the forces of immoderation -as you've mentioned. The political campaign for a turn towards sustainabilty, and the discussion of ultimate sustainability would IMO be better separated. I also beleive that a fifty year plan doesn't make any sense, as scientific/technological advances in that time span will likely invalidate the plan. That last argument doesn't mean there is no value to the exercise, just that we need to consider that the results are provisional.

Personally I don't believe that a peak CO2 concentration of less than about 500ppm is politically achievable. I have hope that we will be able to artificially enhance the return to lower levels -either/both through the use of sequestration of bio/solar-generated fuel CO2, and/or enhanced silicate weathering. In which case the long timespan consequences can be mitigated. I fear if we push for more, we may end up getting less. Such is the perversity of having to deal with human psychology/politics.

by bigTom at 7:25 PM on 13 Mar 2008

To bigTom and Jon

BigTom and Jon,
I think both of you put that quite nicely and bigTom you answered my questions directly. I have to admit that I vascilate between despair and activism and do not think they are mutually exclusive. But I also believe that there are a great many who do not understand the nature of our our energy predicament, so I was probing. I teach a seminar to high school seniors on the subjects of global warming and peak oil and thus walk a fine line between alarmism and hope. It is very easy to lose one's perspective or to wonder what perspectives are realistic. Or whether I will have a job in a few short years.

by LPS at 8:29 PM on 13 Mar 2008

We have a problem, but we can fix it

I think humans freak out when there are huge problems but there is no clear solution. On the other hand, we don't necessarily move if there are solutions but the problem doesn't seem that bad.

So it's necessary to paint the unvarnished truth (mixed metaphor?), but only if there is a clear way out.

Now, if we need to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions, then I think we need some concrete examples of how that might look. In my very first post here, I argued that, as important as they are, goals with numbers attached (like cap-and-whatever or carbon tax plans) have the big disadvantage of not being imaginable. But I sense that one of the reasons that many progessives do not paint pictures as I tried to do is exactly because they are afraid that those pictures will scare people away. Quite a conundrum.

So, one way out of this mess historically has been this -- some group of people, that seem very radical and maybe a little crazy, offer up some audacious ideas. They garner a lot of support, and become, if they are lucky, a "nuisance". Eventually, more "cool" heads enter the discussion (generally what we call liberals), and offer "reasonable" compromises, all the while tsk-tsking about those unreasonable radicals. Eventually, change happens.

You can see this progression from the abolitionists, through the populists, progressives, social democratic reforms of the 1930s, and the movements of the 1960s. I'm just hoping the next wave takes off pretty soon.

by Jon Rynn at 9:03 PM on 13 Mar 2008

Gotta love those numbers...

Jon, I really love the break down of the petroleum use. I've sort of seen these numbers before, but having them fleshed out gives me a better picture of a transition to a fossil-fuel free future, since we just can't go cold turkey on our oil addiction.

Two percent for farming gives me confidence no one will starve. Two or three percent for construction equipment means we can make a good start at densifying our towns and cities as you suggest. And two percent for transit means the skimpy system we have will not fall apart. Nine to thirteen for long haul trucks is worrisome. (So that expansion of freight and intercity rail, and water transport ought to be a high priority for the next Congress.)

But for me the importance of this article is that it shows how clear thinking and rational planning can avert disaster. It suggests how a decent Federal government might begin to respond to a sudden spiral of economic decline and worsening oil depletion. We will still have about 33% of our oil supply (from domestic production) in the initial years after global peak even if the global markets collapse. So the doomer scenario of a total societal collapse is unlikely once we admit that governments will have the possibility of oil rationing. So, for example, in the worst case scenario a simple ban on private automobiles and oil use for home and factory heating (about 60% of our oil use) would be the most effective way to make up for lost imports if there was a sudden breakdown in world markets. (An unlikely proposition, to be sure, but one that could act on our subconscious.)

Now as a free and democratic people our priority is to ensure that the government acts in our interests to preserve the maximal amount of personal liberty. But that individual freedom can only act in an environment where our basic essentials and our security are ensured. So we have to begin to acknowledge that the market left to itself does not have the capability of regulating oil depletion, let alone transitioning us to a sustainable society. Only some degree of rational planning can do that.

But I'm starting to wander off here... Great post! Lots of great ideas.

by Colin Wright at 11:53 PM on 13 Mar 2008

The main "close together"

will be in food production -- growing food where you live makes the global fossil-fuel-dependent network of food transport less necessary, while at the same time we all become farmers & get a bite to eat...

http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus

by LegumeSam at 2:36 AM on 14 Mar 2008

Less is more?

To BigTom:

I do agree that some people should be discussing long term solutions. Making such studies mainstream will IMHO be too likely to be used by the forces of immoderation

Making such studies mainstream will IM equally HO be the only hope of getting these issues taken seriously enough to actually have an effect. Asking for less than you think is acceptable is a pitiful way to enter a negotiation, whether in diplomacy, business, or politics. Such an approach can only result in even more pitiful and inadequate outcomes. Will your position be attacked by the forces of immoderation/denial/delay? Absolutely. They'll use ANYTHING you say, WHATEVER your starting point, and try and use it against your argument - just read the threads on this site populated by the likes of manacker and black wallaby for evidence of that.

The political campaign for a turn towards sustainabilty, and the discussion of ultimate sustainability would IMO be better separated.

Respectfully, I disagree.

I also believe that a fifty year plan doesn't make any sense, as scientific/technological advances in that time span will likely invalidate the plan.

Technofix to the rescue! When? Sometime. Maybe.

I fear if we push for more, we may end up getting less. Such is the perversity of having to deal with human psychology/politics.

Whereas if we push for less, we'll certainly get a magic pony.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

by spaceshaper at 5:51 AM on 14 Mar 2008

Colin, I'm starting to think that housing

is almost more important than transit at this point -- if we could just get people to housing that is close enough to shopping and transit points that they wouldn't need a car, as you suggested in an emergency situation, then we could avert catastrophe (sort of the Dmitri Orlov model, where the Soviets lived in housing they basically owned and were near good transit and shopping).

Some of that might be as "easy" as putting shopping centers in strategic locations, at least in inner suburbs -- there's a new "Town Center", for instance, that has been built according to New Urbanism designs, in Virginia Beach, so it is possible to "retrofit" the suburbs, even, at least to some extent.

by Jon Rynn at 10:57 AM on 14 Mar 2008

say it out loud, depict the future

I'm with Rynn and Spaceshaper. Huddling in fear that the forces of regressiveness will attack our ideas is a foolish waste of time--of course they will attack our ideas. What is necessary is to show the public that Another World is Possible, that changing to a much less energy-intensive way of life need not mean deprivation but could lead to a richer, fuller, more satisfying and relaxed way of life. I don't think there is much chance that we can win the infowars quickly enough to allow a smooth transition to that future--it's much more likely we'll get there in the distant future after a horrible time of warfare, national and local, starvation, the breakdown of governments, and pestilence on a massive scale...all of which will deliver the major reduction in population that will make the transition much easier. Theoretically we COULD get there without killing each other--but only if we behaved rationally, justly and cooperatively. This is highly unlikely. Nonetheless, we must work for sane and just policy, on the off chance that something will give us a break and enable us to succeed despite the huge obstacle which is the media collusion with the oil/coal/weapons/drugs corporations, and the government so intertwined with the media and corporations.

by mwildfire at 11:17 AM on 19 Mar 2008

Another world is indeed possible!

Wildfire, I think here we can draw from history. I think we can anticipate a new New Deal before we could imagine warfare and pestilence.

And before we can get national consensus that we need to change our economic and foreign policies, we can make progress locally. The more susustainable our local communities, the more resilient they will be in the face of energy shocks and job loss. The cities that plan around mass transit, compact development and a robust social safety net will become more desireable places to live.

And as you suggest, we are morally bound to carry forward the best in our western traditions. We have a rich history of people helping each other in hard times. Those democratic strands are not far beneath the surface, if we can find ways to bring them forth.

by Colin Wright at 11:53 AM on 22 Mar 2008

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