Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 2.5

What is the impact of peak oil and peak coal?

Posted by Joseph Romm (Guest Contributor) at 1:55 PM on 26 Apr 2008

Read more about: oil | energy | coal | fossil fuels | greenhouse-gas emissions

The goal of this post is to explore how peak oil and, yes, peak coal might affect the world's effort to stabilize CO2 concentrations. Here I present calculations I haven't seen anywhere else, and since different sources provide different numbers, please view these as a crude estimates. I welcome corrections.

At recent growth rates for oil consumption, we are all but certain to peak in oil production within two decades -- and if we follow the recent trend-line for coal use (and for coal reserves), we could hit peak coal within three decades. It looks like it simply isn't possible for oil and coal use to sustain for decades the trends that led CO2 emissions to rise 3 percent per year since 2000, if the analysis below is roughly correct. That would be a very good piece of news.

Oil: I have already written at length on oil (see "Peak Oil? Bring it on!"). In 2006, the world consumed about 85 million barrels a day (MMBD) of oil. Oil use had been rising about 2 percent per year, though the recent price jump may have slowed things a tad. And, for the first time, not just the "peakists" but the CEOs of major oil companies think we have a big problem.

The CEO of Royal Dutch/Shell emailed his employees, "Shell estimates that after 2015 supplies of easy-to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand." The CEO of French oil company Total S.A. said that production of even 100 million barrels a day by 2030 will be "difficult." The CEO of ConocoPhillips said, "I don't think we are going to see the supply going over 100 million barrels a day."

Coal: World coal consumption and production in 2006 was about 6 billion metric tons according to the World Coal Institute. World recoverable reserves at the end of 2005 vary by source, but the World Energy Council puts them at 850 billion metric tons, which seems to be a relatively typical figure. Thus, global coal reserves would last some 140 years, at current rates of production and consumption. That said, global coal reserve estimates are of "poor quality" and may be lower than we think, as one recent German study noted [PDF]. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences made a similar point about U.S. reserves last year:

Present estimates of coal reserves are based upon methods that have not been reviewed or revised since their inception in 1974, and much of the input data were compiled in the early 1970s. Recent programs to assess reserves in limited areas using updated methods indicate that only a small fraction of previously estimated reserves are actually minable reserves.

It is worth noting that estimates of world recoverable coal reserves have declined slowly but steadly for two decades by a total of about 15 percent, more than 150 billion tons. Indeed, they have dropped 7 percent from end of 2002 to end of 2005, according to the WEC. As one energy analyst put it, "Reserves figures are dropping far more quickly than actual extraction." For further analysis suggesting reserves are still very inflated, see the German study and this website by Professor David Rutledge of CalTech.

Peak-a-boo

I'm going to run through two scenarios to explore the impact of fossil fuel resources on carbon emissions trends.

Case 1: The first scenario uses the Princeton assumptions from their wedge analysis that carbon emissions will increase 1.5 percent per year through 2050 (a rate that is based on the pre-2000 trend). For now, I will also assume global carbon emissions in 2006 were 8.4 billion metric tons, the number the Global Carbon Project uses, while acknowledging that the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the International Energy Agency both have lower numbers (if you're a masochist, see here [PDF] and here [PDF]).

(I'm also going to assume that the fraction of global emissions that coal is responsible for stays the same through 2050. That number is 36 percent, or 3 GtC in 2006. In other words, I'm going to assume that all fossil fuels grow at 1.5 percent per year through 2050 -- remember, this is a BAU case, not what we expect to happen at all.)

By 2050, then, everything nearly doubles. Global carbon emissions are 16 GtC -- bye-bye, climate -- of which 5.8 GtC is coal. We would be consuming over 160 MMBD of oil. That isn't going to happen. Hard to know exactly what gives, but it doesn't look like we have the oil (and presumably the natural gas) to get anywhere near that number. Coal use would be 11.5 billion tons a year. Actually, it would have to be more if we peaked in oil by, say 2020, at 106 MMBD. We'd probably start turning a fair amount of coal into oil starting by the 2020s -- assuming, again, a BAU case where we don't care about the climate policies.

Case 2: Now let's see what happens if global carbon emissions keep rising through 2050 at the rate they have been growing from 2000 to 2006, about 3 percent per year. Global carbon emissions in 2050 would be about 31 GtC -- uh, bye-bye, everybody!

(Given that we easily maxed out oil -- and presumably gas -- in Case 1, I'm going to assume that they both max out again at a 1.5 percent annual rate of growth, and therefore that all the rest of the growth in CO2 beyond Case 1 is from coal. Thus coal generates 5.8 GtC as in Case 1 PLUS all of the difference between 31 GtC and 16 GtC, which is to say about 15 GtC. And so the total coal emissions in 2050 is roughly 21 GtC -- seven times the current level.)

In Case 2, coal use in 2050 would be 42 billion tons a year. But, in fact, at that pace of growth, we would have used up all of the current existing recoverable reserves before then. And even if we somehow miraculously doubled global coal reserves during that time, we would only have another 20 years of coal left at this rate of consumption!

Conclusion: I believe peak oil and peak coal will in fact interfere with the path that carbon emissions take in the first half of this century to a very great (but difficult to quantify) extent. That is a terrific piece of news for the planet (though, sadly, we have more than enough coal to destroy the climate if we burn most of it).

It is, however, a so-so piece of news for energy and climate modelers, because we lack solid numbers that are widely agreed upon for ...

how much oil reserves we have
how much of a role unconventional oil could play in the next few decades (especially if we exclude much coal to liquids because we're using all the coal up for other uses), and
how much coal reserves we have now, or might have in a couple of decades.

As I've said, Part 4 of this series will look at the politics, policies, market factors, and mindset needed to achieve the 14 to 16 stabilization wedges discussed in Part 2 (here). In that post, I'll also consider qualitatively how peak oil and peak coal will affect those factors. That should give readers a few days to go over these numbers and find my mistakes!

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

For story: Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 2.5
10 Comments | Post a Comment

No mistakes, Joseph

No you laid out some alternatives that seem rational and like any numbers cruncher, I like all numbers equally. I don't believe in "wedges" or whatever you call them, but pressure to obtain less fossil fuel energy as population activity grows 2-3 percent a year certainly will present some major roadblocks.

Nature doesn't have wedges or feed-back loops, it just is what it is. I care not what you call the "do-loop" in your computer program.

But the real crisis - and I wonder why people aren't seeing it this way - is that we have a dire energy crisis on our hands. Everyone made fun of Jimmy Carter as President because he recommended turning down the thermostat and wearing a sweater. My dad worked with Jimmy for a while and found him to be something of an engineering genius - a liability if you're a politician because Americans hate smart people, especially the doofy ones

So here we are again, and this time it is going to hurt three times worse ... maybe get better for a while ... and then go FUBAR. Call it what you want, it simply means that deliveries of fossil fuels like crude oil, natural gas, and coal will start declining based on price, supply, and demand that if graphed go off the map in three directions. Personally, I do not believe in "peak oil" because that is a political buzzword phrase. But we all know the intention and meaning ...

Onward through the fog

by Sam Wells at 6:19 PM on 26 Apr 2008

Needed: A systems science approach

At this point it seems to me we know all of the relevant variables, stocks, and flows. We have a handle on most of the interactions and feedbacks. Isn't it time to construct a systems dynamics model that allows us to test these ideas/numbers. Anyone up for it? Its too big for one person to tackle, but a host of interested and qualified people could do so.

From my POV this is the only way we are going to have a hope of finding leverage points to guide the world back to a sustainable system.

George

Visit my academic site as well.

George Mobus, Associate Professor, Institute of Technology, University of Washington Tacoma, and Professional Student for Life

by gmobus at 6:55 PM on 26 Apr 2008

Peak anything

Joe, I'm with you on most of this stuff, certainly I agree with the broad theories you advance. But I question peak oil and coal - we've been hearing about peak oil for decades. What happens? Oil technology gets better (horizontal drilling, shale oil, tar sands, etc.) and whammo, the peak is pushed off. I suspect the same would be true for some crafty coal companies - if the price is right, they'll get the damn coal. It's not a pretty thought, but it is the historical truth.

Moreover, your scenario leaves out many alternatives, which I firmly believe will be in play in 2020 - fuel cells, solar thermal, geothermal, etc. etc. - all of which you know, since you post on this stuff regularly. Both distributed gen and centralized gen technologies will improve. So while your models are fine with the many assumptions you make, they ignore a lot of stuff. I'm not sure you can draw a conclusion when so much is left out of the analysis. Perhaps you have plans to address this in future posts.

by Capster at 7:42 PM on 26 Apr 2008

Maybe not formal peak, but supply constrained

We may not be at the original definition of peak oil, 50% of all recoverable oil gone, or possibly not even at the more recent definition, maximum production rate, but its looks like the future of fossil fuels is supply constrained. If we look around the world the past few months have seen power problems, often related to coal plants in South Africa, Pakistan, China, and much of SE Asia. It does look like at least for the better grades, that coal supply can't meet demand. Given the massive expansion of vehicle ownership in the developing world, which is likely to substantially accelerate with the $2500 Tata Nano, even if oil production can be raised to say 95MBpd (we are currently at 87), the price is almost certainly going to be bid up even higher.

I don't think the naysayers understand the fact that oil (and other resources) tend to be distributed in a manner such that the difficulty of extraction follows a log normal distribution. That means that the difficulty of extraction can vary by orders of magnitude from field to field. The easier deposits get developed first. With oil the problem is not that we've used up 50%, but rather that the easiest 40% was much much easier to extract than the rest. If the new stuff was only two or three times as tough as the easy stuff, technology could readily cope, but I think it is probably more like 50 times tougher. Given finite oil field development resources, especially of experienced personell, it may not be possible to maintain current production rates. Reserves may sound big on paper, but if we can't get at it quickly enough, scarcity pricing will prevail.

by bigTom at 8:14 PM on 26 Apr 2008
[ Parent ]

Why, no sludge recovery and energy conversion?

Biomass (combined plants, agricultural, human and other animal 'waste') of about 10 million tons per day.

And don't forget there are an estimated 2-3 trillion trees that haven't been cleared yet!

Joe, Any room for a 'Case 3' in your scenarios in which the world population could be 'decimated' within the next 5-7 years due to war, collapsing ecosystems, food, water and topsoil shortages, disease ...

by LGT at 8:36 PM on 26 Apr 2008

If it smells like a peak, ...

BigTom wrote:

I don't think the naysayers understand the fact that oil (and other resources) tend to be distributed in a manner such that the difficulty of extraction follows a log normal distribution.

I wouldn't exactly agree here. (I'd recommend "Beyond Oil" by Ken Deffeyes.) The simplest way to model oil decline is through the logistic curve: the ability to produce is linearly dependent on the fraction of oil that remains. Hubbert did pretty well with this method for the U.S. (1970) but seems to have overestimated by a few years for world production (2000). (The latter miss may be due to the economic slowdown from the seventies oil shocks.) In any case, Deffeyes refined the estimate to 2005, and seems to have been correct for conventional crude oil.

Now unconventional oil (deep-water, heavy oil) is more difficult to extract. But this is just a small but growing fraction of oil production (17/87 in 2010 or 23/60 by 2030 using Colin Campbell's data). Here is Matt Simmons on unconventional oil recently on CNBC:

CNBC: But he's suggesting you are leaving out unconventional sources of energy in your calculations.
Simmons: They make the distinction [between conventional and unconventional], but they don't seem to make the connection about the vast difference of flow. They are so hung up on the total estimated volume. Once they start in a project they say, "Well, the reserves last forever so we can book a million barrels of reserves."
The energy that is consumed to get oil out of the oil sands of Canada -- in massive amounts of potable water and natural gas -- is so vast you are really turning gold into lead. What you get out is a very low quality amount of oil that has to be upgraded and diluted with high quality oil to get synthetic crude. What I can't figure out is why the executives of these oil companies don't understand that.

by Colin Wright at 11:44 PM on 26 Apr 2008

Daring to cross the no-man's land

Good for you, Joseph, in daring the cross the no-man's land between the peak oil and climate change communities. For too long, they have not been talking to one another.

Some comments from the peak oil side.

The estimate of peak oil within 20 years is fairly certain, but probably too conservative. There's evidence that it is much closer, and perhaps may have already occurred.

Among people who are serious about estimates, there seems to be a gradual convergence to this: the date of the peak will be hard to call and hard to recognize, but it is in the current 10-year period. For sure, it is time to start worrying. Nations and oil companies all are making moves that would make sense if they are anticipating a peak.

Coal has received much less attention, and estimates are harder to make.
bigTom made some important points, especially about how the remaining oil will be much harder to get (i.e. more energy will be consumed getting the energy resource, and less energy will be available for use).
The issue of depletion is way simpler than climate change. It should be possible to make better estimates, especially if we could get some transparency into the reserves of oil-producing countries. Presumably estimates will improve, so that the kind of analysis you are doing here will have better data. (A GAO report last year recommended that the government become involved in improving the quality of estimates.)
To get critical feedback, you might consider The Oil Drum website. The TOD folks can be overpowering in their responses, but one can learn a lot, especially from the foremost writers there.
I hate to complicate the model, but FOOD and INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT need to be considered. Michael Klare has just come out with an eye-opening book, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet ... made me realize that conflict over energy is the unpredictable wildcard that could trump all other scenarios. (Moral: we have to come to an understanding with China).

Klare interview
Klare essay
Book excerpt

Bart
Energy Bulletin

by Bart Anderson at 12:02 AM on 27 Apr 2008

Is 450 ppm even the number to aim for?

No quibbles about the thrust of the post - coming at the problem both from a climate science and a "peak stuff" angle is probably very wise. Just wondering about the target number indicated in the title - I've recently heard several speakers question the wisdom of the 450 aim, in light of recent developments such as the accelerated melting in the arctic, decades ahead of predictions by the climate science community.

For example, Bill McKibben at www.350.org argues that aiming for 350 ppm would be much more prudent, and in a recent two-part interview with Jason Bradford of The Reality Report (hosted at Global Public Media), Phillip Sutton (co-author with David Spratt of Climate Code Red: The Case for a Sustainability Emergency) argues that 320 ppm should be our goal (download Part 1 and Part 2 of the interview as mp3). Since we're already decades past both of these figures, this would involve pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Clearly, this is not politically possible just at the moment. Even so, it was only just a year ago that Bill McKibben's Step it Up events very rapidly moved the boundaries of what was politically possible, i.e. what politicians were willing to state as policy goals, and within a very short while, most of the major US presidential candidates were talking 80 by 50. Of course, we've yet to see this translating into concrete action that actually slows down (let alone reverses) emissions trends...

by Staale at 7:37 AM on 27 Apr 2008

Pulling a few 100 Gt CO2 out of air is doable

Mine tailings have shown the way. Transformed into enough magnesite or hydromagnesite dust to make a worldwide 1-mm layer if it fell all at once, but falling in fact over a period of years, our CO2 problem would be no longer a problem.

Energetically this approach -- pulverizing a suitable mineral and dispersing it -- is the least expensive option I know of. I don't see why it wouldn't also require the least political effort.

Perhaps, though, we should not take this relatively easy, very effective route. Beyond CO2 and global warming, what if we run into future problems for which there aren't such neat solutions? Won't we want the CO2 problem still to be with us then, still being addressed ineffectively, so we'll have our hand in?

How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?

by GRLCowan at 12:11 PM on 27 Apr 2008

Economics

I doubt estimates that show energy consumption will double in the next 50 years. Higher prices will price people out of the market or otherwise force conservation.

Poor field hands in China aren't going to be able to afford $4/gallon gas nor will Americans be able to afford $10/gallon gas and drive as many miles as they currently do. $10 a therm natural gas will promote dramatically better insulation, and people keeping their heat much lower. $1/KwH electricity, likewise will cut down on demand, dramatically.

High prices are the future if too many people demand energy. Price is driven by demand. That's why coal used to be so cheap -- nobody really wanted to coal as it was difficult to burn cleanly, and difficult to transport. Oil and natural gas became the preferred fuel in the second half of the 20th future for that reason.

High prices are a natural check on consumption. The world money supply is not limitless, much less any individual. People will only consume as much energy as they can afford -- if they consume more, then they will rapidly run out of credit, and the lights will go dark.

by nycowboy at 9:06 AM on 28 Apr 2008

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