"Abundant, inexpensive, and reliable energy is taken for granted, and the citizens of rich countries seem to expect this to continue indefinitely; Reality is different: this veritable fairytale is threatened by many changes-some of which are already upon us, others that are discernible on the horizon."

The twentieth century was the first era dominated by fossil fuels and electricity, and their vastly expanded supply, lower cost, increasing flexibility of use, and ease of control have created the first high-energy civilization in history. This remarkable increase in power at our fingertips has transformed our world. Mechanization and chemization of agriculture have given us a plentiful and varied food supply: more than a fourfold increase in crop productivity during the twentieth century has been made possible by a roughly 150-fold increase of fossil fuels and electricity used directly and indirectly in global cropping.

Increased energy usage also undergirds longer life expectancies (in excess of 70 years throughout the affluent world), the result of better nutrition and medical advances whose dependence on energy inputs, ranging from food pasteurization to vaccine refrigeration, is little noticed. A reliable electricity supply has also created the first instantaneously interconnected global civilization. And inexpensive energy has allowed an unprecedented degree of personal mobility through mass ownership of cars and frequent air travel.

Although our societies are dependent on incessant flows of commercial energies, provision of these critical inputs is not commensurately valued by the supposedly rational markets. Some days the stockmarket value of corporations such as Microsoft or Oracle can reach levels higher than the entire capitalization of such giant energy-supply companies as PG&E or Consolidated Edison-yet the former ~ enterprises cannot exist without the latter.

If the markets work this way, it is hardly surprising that our dependence on massive energy flows goes largely unnoticed. Abundant, inexpensive, and reliable energy is taken for granted, and the citizens of rich countries seem to expect this to continue indefinitely. Reality is different: this veritable fairytale is threatened by many changes-some of which are already upon us, others that are discernible on the horizon. Consequently, any appraisal of a civilization's outlook must include a closer examination of its changing energy affairs.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, most people did not use fossil fuels, although in the United States average per capita primary consumption of coal and oil (and some hydroelectricity) already amounted to about 2.5 tons of oil equivalent (TOE). Yet much of this energy was wasted. After subtracting conversion losses-over 99 percent in early carbon-filament lightbulbs, 95 percent in steam locomotives, and about 80 percent in coal stoves-useful energy providing the desired services (light, locomotion, and heat) was less than 0.5 TOE.

At the century's end, the global consumption of primary commercial energies (coal, oil, natural gas, and hydro and nuclear electricity) has increased sixteenfold, with average annual per capita supply of commercial energy more than quadrupling to about 1.4 TOE. The flow of useful energy has increased dramatically because of higher efficiencies in traditional energy converters and new machines and devices introduced during the century. Today's best lighting is almost 20 percent efficient, while converters ranging from large electric motors to natural gas-fired furnaces have efficiencies in excess of 90 percent.

Consequently, affluent countries have experienced eight- to twelvefold increases in the per capita supply of useful energy during the twentieth century, and the gain has been twenty- or even thirtyfold in many low-income countries undergoing rapid modernization. This conservative calculation indicates that the world now has at its disposal about 25 times more useful commercial energy than it did in 1900, or more than eight times as much in per capita terms. And this energy now derives mostly from forms that are much more convenient to use than wood or coal, with hydrocarbons (crude oils and natural gases) supplying

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roughly two-thirds of the total. In rich countries coal now has just two markets: a small one for the production of metallurgical coke, and a large one for electricity generation.

The expanding use of electricity has been another key mark of twentieth-century progress. In 1900 less than 2 percent of the world's fossil-fuel output was converted to electricity; in 2000 the share surpassed 30 percent. Electricity is the preferred form of energy because of its high efficiency, instant and effortless access, perfect and easily adjustable flow, cleanliness, and silence at the point of use. In addition to revolutionizing industrial production and services, electricity has helped implement profound social changes by easing household chores through mass ownership of various appliances and by allowing instant global communication. And it has become an incredible bargain: after factoring in higher disposable incomes and improved conversion efficiencies, a unit of useful electrical service in the United States is as much as 600 times more affordable than it was a century ago.

Contrasts between energy flows that are now routinely controlled by millions of individuals, especially when compared to the experiences of their great-grandparents, provide more stunning illustrations of the expanded use of energy. In 1900 a fairly affluent American urban housewife could turn on inefficient, low-power bulbs whose power totaled less than 500 watts. Today's all-electric suburban house has scores of lights and appliances whose installed power capacity can exceed 30 kilowatts, a seventy- to eightyfold increase from 1900.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a farmer holding the reins of two good horses and perched on a steel seat while plowing his field controlled a sustained delivery of no more than 2 horsepower. A hundred years later his grandson driving a large tractor while sitting in an upholstered, elevated, and air-conditioned cabin effortlessly controls more than 300 horsepower. Moreover, in 1900 an engineer operating a transcontinental locomotive con- trolled no more than about 1 megawatt, or roughly 1,340 horsepower, of steam power as the machine traveled at 60 miles an hour (100 km/h). Today a pilot of a Boeing 747 on the same route merely watches a computerized discharge of about 120 megawatts (more than 160,000 horsepower) as the jumbo jet cruises at 560 miles an hour (900 km/h) some 9 miles (11 km) above the ground.

As the twenty-first century dawns, the last century's fo- cus on achieving greater and more efficient use of energy will give way to heightened concern about global energy matters, especially in the next 10 to 20 years. First is the challenge of rising energy demand, particularly for hydro-carbons and electricity. The 1990s showed that consumption appears to be insatiable even in those rich nations that are already by far the largest users and importers of energy. Between 1989 and 1999, energy consumption rose about 15 percent in the United States, 17 percent in France, and 19 percent in Australia; despite a stagnating, even declining, economy, it expanded 24 percent in Japan. This trend has been driven almost completely by private consumption: industries and services have generally reduced energy use per dollar of their final products, but increased travel, larger homes equipped with more appliances, and higher consumer spending have pushed energy use to record levels.

Although nearly all these countries have low population growth, other realities-including mass immigration to both North America and Europe; profligate, debt-driven spending; and widespread emotional attachment to cars as extensions of personality-will promote higher demand for fuels and electricity. In most of the populous low-income countries whose potential energy demands amount to large multiples of current use, growth in energy consumption has recently been at least as high as, or higher than, that of the richer nations, although they remain far behind in relative consumption. Nothing indicates this better than international comparisons: North America's energy consumption mean is now about 8 TOE per capita, and the European average is approximately 4 TOE-but China's mean is 0.6, India's less than 0.3, and Bangladesh's not even 0.1 TOE. Long-term forecasts of energy use have been notoriously poor, but even conservative predictions see a 50 percent increase in the global primary energy consumption by 2020.

Satisfying the world's energy demand thus will be more challenging than in the past-and the task may become more difficult because of a widely anticipated decline in global crude oil production during the next 20 years, and because unequivocal indications of potentially serious global warming may become apparent. The first scenario would likely lead the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to once again take control of the world oil market, a momentous change with implications ranging from much higher energy prices to the possibility of a dangerous escalation of geopolitical contests in the Middle East. Consequences of planetary climate change attributable largely to the generation of greenhouse gases from the combustion of fossil fuels can be foreseen only in qualitative terms: confident quantification of numerous impacts remains elusive.

Another concern is the absence of any commercially available and effective technical fixes to deal with these challenges: the dual task of securing expanded energy needs while reducing fossil-fuel dependence has no simple solution. Finally, there appears to be both an incomprehensible lack of urgency on the part of policymakers and the public in dealing with these realities and an institutional incapacity to make effective, no-regret decisions and to pursue long-range energy policies.

The affluent, high-energy nations and the low-income, low-energy modernizing countries thus appear to be at major, and very messy, energy crossroads: we obviously

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cannot proceed as we have for generations, but this retrospection does not point to any obvious, all-embracing solution. Unsure of what combination of new goals to follow, both governments and individuals prefer the delusions of an indefinite extension of the status quo to the pursuit of many effective, readily available measures that could help with the truly global task of ensuring adequate energy supply while minimizing its environmental impacts.

Recent forecasts of an imminent decline of global oil extraction are just the latest additions to a long list of predictions of the end of the oil era. Previous forecasts proved wrong because the timing of this event depends not only on the little-known quantity of ultimately recoverable crude oil resources but also on the future rates of demand growth, which are determined by a complex interplay of energy substitutions, technical advances, government policies, and environmental considerations. For , example, excessive concern about supply would be unnecessary if the gradual decline in production following the not-too distant peak of the global oil output would be more than compensated by cheap natural gas and a rapid diffusion of photovoltaics, which directly convert solar radiation to electricity. But natural gas may not be available for all desired substitutions, its prices are bound to increase, and photovoltaics are still far from being in the mainstream of commercial energy supply.

Unfortunately, several trends point to high probability of yet another oil crisis whose impact may be even greater than that of the oil crisis of 1973-1974 (OPEC'S quintupling of prices from about $2 a barrel to just over $11 a barrel) and 1979-1980 (when the Iranian monarchy's 1979 collapse drove average prices up to $35 a barrel by 1981). OPEC'S powers eventually were undercut by reduced energy consumption in rich countries and by the development of new, non-OPEC supplies. The cartel produced about 56 percent of all crude oil in 1973-but only 29 percent by 1985. Both these trends have changed. Global crude oil demand rose nearly 12 percent during the 1990s, and modernizing countries currently are putting a new strain on the export market. China, for decades self-sufficient in oil (and even a small oil exporter), became a net importer of petroleum and refined products in 1993; its imports in 2000 nearly doubled to 70 million tons, and conservative forecasts see purchases of 100 million tons by 2005 (only the United States and Japan would be larger oil importers).

Not surprisingly, OPEC'S share of global crude oil output is back to over 40 percent, and increased extraction aimed at a temporary stabilization of rising prices, the absence of any major new non-OPEC supplies ready for immediate production, and the collapse of extraction in the countries of the former Soviet Union (by 2000 their 20 percent share of the world output had been halved) make it very likely that OPEC'S share of the world oil market will once again rise above 50 percent before 2010 (the cartel expects at least 46 percent by that time). Of even greater concern is tile increasing share of OPEC exports that will be coming from its Middle Eastern member states, all Muslim and most either overtly anti-Western or only opportunistically friendly! The stage thus is being set for a third round of sudden oil price increases and their unpredictable economic and geopolitical consequences. Recent increases in crude oil to almost $40 a barrel can be seen as a mere trial run of developments to come.

A NO-REGRET STRATEGY

It now appears increasingly unlikely that even an unlimited flow of cheap oil or inexpensive natural gas would allow the multiplication of future fossil-fuel use comparable to twentieth-century expansion. Although the complexities of global climate change preclude any confident quantitative forecasts, rising atmospheric levels of anthropogenic greenhouse gases may already be changing the earth's climate-and global warming conceivably could increase at an unprecedented rate during the twenty-first century, resulting in an unpredictable range of biospheric, economic, social, and political impacts.

These inherent uncertainties have made it easy to turn the debate about global climate change into pointless arguments about the actual extent and rate of future warming and about the magnitude of net losses (or even benefits) arising from that change. This is a counterproductive approach. Faced with such uncertainties, the only responsible way to act is as risk minimizers and to take bold steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: such a course makes perfect sense even if global warming eventually did not to occur, or if it proved to be a tolerable change. The no- regret strategy of reduced energy consumption in production and households, more efficient fossil-fuel use, the substitution of coal with natural gases, and the introduction of appropriate non-fossil-fuel conversions would cut green- house gas emissions and reduce photochemical smog, acid deposition, water pollution, and land degradation.

The high frequency and high levels of photochemical smog that now prevail in all the world's large cities-Atlanta or Athens, Bangkok or Beijing, Taipei or Toronto- have effects that have spilled to surrounding regions. High levels of ozone, the most aggressive oxidant in photo- chemical smog, have contributed to the worldwide epidemic of asthma and to higher respiratory mortality; ozone

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also has reduced crop yields, especially in the United States and China. During the past two decades, emissions of acidifying sulfur and nitrogen oxides have been reduced (but far from eliminated) in North America and Europe, but they are increasing in Asia. Growing tanker shipments of crude oil, drilling for and refining hydrocarbons, coal mining, and thermal-electricity generation all result in water pollution. Surface extraction of coal, and infrastructures of fossil-fuel transportation and processing (tanker ports, oil storages, pipelines, refineries, power plants, high-voltage lines) also claim a great deal of land.

A no-regret strategy of reducing our fossil-fuel dependence would ease all these burdens. But despite the potentially immense and long-lasting consequences of global climate change and regardless of the undeniable benefits of reduced smog, acid deposition, and water and land degradation, inadequate progress has been made in this direction. The United States, the world's largest energy consumer, will not meet its Kyoto Treaty obligations requiring it to cut its carbon dioxide output to 7 percent below the 1990 level (this treaty requires the wealthy nations to cut their carbon dioxide emissions below their 1990 levels by 2007). And China, with its modernizing aspirations, refuses to sign any agreement limiting its expansion of fossil-fuel consumption. Two reasons explain this lack of commitment. First, there is no simple, single solution to this challenge of reducing emissions; and there has been an inexplicable absence of determination and commitment to pursue even those obviously effective steps that rely on well-known techniques, proper pricing (heavy subsidies have been common), and effective legislative measures.

None of the alternatives to fossil fuels that were extolled during the second half of the twentieth century as perfect solutions to our future energy needs has fulfilled its early promise. Most notably, between the mid-1950s and the early 1970s, many experts were convinced that by 2000 the world's energy use would be dominated by inexpensive nuclear electricity. The nuclear power industry, however, has undergone a dramatic devolution in all but one of the countries that pioneered its rise. Weaker post-1975 demand for electricity, runaway construction costs, safety concerns, and the unresolved problem of long-term disposal of radioactive wastes gradually ended the industry's growth. Public perception of intolerable risks was sealed by the core meltdown and the release of radioactivity during the 1986 disaster at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union. Although nuclear fission produced about 17 percent of global electricity by 2000 (22 percent in the United States, 70 percent in France), prospects for any major expansion outside China, and perhaps Japan, are very unlikely.

Nor have the "soft" energy sources-small-scale, decentralized conversions of solar radiation (mostly by using photovoltaic cells), biomass (into both liquid and gaseous fuels), and wind, ocean wave, and water flows-made the decisive difference promised by their advocates, who were opposed to nuclear power and fossil fuels. In the United States, these renewable, small-scale energy conversions (excluding large-scale hydro generation) supplied less than 4 percent of all primary energy use during the late 1990s. It is difficult to envisage a scenario where their share would go up four- or fivefold to 15-20 percent during the next two decades.

Prospects for major contributions by soft-energy sources in populous low-income countries are no brighter as rapid urbanization and industrialization of those nations require much-expanded large-scale supplies for the still-growing megacities of 10 to 20 million people, be they Beijing and Cairo, or Mexico City and New Delhi. And it remains highly uncertain how much and how fast large cities will be able to relieve their most pressing environmental problem-high levels of photochemical smog, which causes higher morbidities and mortalities and increases damage to crops and materials-through mass diffusion of low- or non-polluting vehicles.

This technical fix, too, has been tantalizingly close on the approximately ten-year-but always receding-horizon. At least one thing now appears clear: electric cars, promoted as the best solution just a few years ago, have fallen out of favor, and fuel-cell vehicles are now seen as the better option. Although various fuels are under consideration (gasoline, methanol, and hydrogen fuel cells), the initial operating costs of hydrogen-based transportation will be very high, and it is unclear how competitive these cars will be with the already available high-efficiency hybrid drives.

Nearly 30 years ago, the Nixon administration came up with Project Independence, which aimed to make the United States self-sufficient in energy by the 1980s. Unrealistic as that plan was (the United States now imports more than 20 percent of its total primary energy use, and almost 60 percent of all liquid fuels), its framers at least tried to look well ahead. Higher energy prices were the main driving force, but legislative changes of the 1970s were not insignificant. These included better building codes reduced energy consumption in housing, and mandated limits of minimum car-fleet performance-corporate automotive fuel efficiency (CAFE) standards-that more than doubled the average United States rate from just 13.4 miles per gallon (MPG) in 1973 to 27.5 MPG in 1985.

These measures helped break OPEC'S power, but the resulting slide in crude oil prices almost instantly stopped any serious effort to shape long-range American energy consumption. CAFE has remained at 27.5 MPG for the past

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15 years-and that rate does not apply to sport utility) vehicles (SUVs), which are classified as light trucks and commonly get less than 20 MPG. Why is suv-obsessed America surprised when its falling oil output (down about 15 percent during the 1990s) and the rising gasoline demanc (up about 7 percent since 1989) has, as it had to, bumped into OPEC'S production ceiling and led to more than a 5( percent increase in gasoline prices in a matter of months? Perhaps the most touching outcome of this situation was seeing President Bill Clinton beg "friendly" OPEC nations to boost their oil output, and hearing assorted members of Congress talk about the need for long-term energy policy-after the huge SUVs were allowed to gain more than half of the new car market. This absence of any rational policymaking is particularly regrettable in view oj what could have been accomplished. Continuation of the 1973-1985 CAFE trend would have by now lifted the rate above 40 MPG-and this performance would still be fall below the best technical capacity: the hybrid Honda Insight now delivers 61 MPG in the city and 70 MPG on the highway. Incremental progress to about 40 MPG would have been enough to halve United States crude oil imports and save at least $30 billion annually while greatly reducing photochemical smog and lowering carbon dioxide emissions.

Constructing catastrophic scenarios is easy, and, unfortunately, a combination of relatively rapid anthropogenic global warming, declining global crude oil production, rising rivalry over access to Middle Eastern hydrocarbons, the inability of new energy conversions to fill the growing oil gap, and the continuing refusal to pursue rational long-term solutions makes global warming an uncomfortably high probability. Fortunately, the outcome is still open. Will we act only when energy prices are soaring (as we did between 1973 and 1985), or when an acutely demonstrable environmental risk arises (as we did after the discovery of Antarctic ozone hole when we banned the use of chlorofluorocarbons)? Can only such drastic realities stimulate action-or will we adopt all those readily available, common-sense solutions as a matter of determined, long-range no-regret energy policy? The fortunes of modern civilization will depend on this choice.

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Note

1. OPEC states include Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Algeria, Nigeria, Venezuela and Indonesia.

VACLAV Smil is Distinguished Professor at the University of Manitoba and the author most recently, of Energies (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997) and Feeding the World (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000).

Reprinted from Current History magazine December, 2000. by Current History, Inc.

Article Citation:

Smil, Vaclav. 2001. "The Energy Question, Again." Robert M. Jackson (ed.), Annual Editions: Global Issues 01/02 Seventh Edition. pp. 65-69.