[Peakoil] prof Marc Jaccard says fossil fuels have a promising future

[Keith Thomas]

The following was broadcast on Radio National this evening (Thursday 6 
July). he is very confident about 'clean coal'.
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Is our relationship to fossil fuels Faustian? Like the Dr. Faustus of 
old, have we made a compact with the devil - who today offers us oil, 
natural gas and coal for our modern convenience, but who one day will 
collect our souls as payment?

Many people believe this.

We depend on fossil fuels for 85% of global energy supply, and yet 
consume this non-renewable lifeblood at a tremendous rate. Surely our 
civilization will crash as we hit the wall of resource exhaustion. No 
wonder bookstores are flooded with titles like, "the coming crisis" and 
"the party's over."

Ironically, others fear we won't run out fast enough. For in burning 
fossil fuels we emit carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas that 
is accumulating in our atmosphere and changing the climate. Scientists 
estimate that concentrations will reach dangerous levels in just a few 
decades, long before we might exhaust our fossil fuels.

But, is this Dr. Faustus picture accurate? Are fossil fuels our 
inevitable foe?

Those who argue that fossil fuel exhaustion is imminent make the 
mistake of focusing only on conventional oil - the stuff that we 
extract from the earth just by drilling a hole and letting natural 
pressure push it out. What they overlook is that a peak in the 
production of "conventional oil" is unlikely to be of significance 
given the substitution potential from the planet's enormous resources 
of unconventional oil, unconventional natural gas, and coal. A refined 
petroleum product like gasoline, for example, can be profitably 
produced from any of these other fossil fuels when the oil price is 
above $40 per barrel - currently it's above $70. This is why gasoline 
today is produced from oil sands in Canada, that's one form of 
unconventional oil, from natural gas in Qatar, and from coal in South 
Africa. The planet has 1000 years of coal at today's use rate and an 
even longer horizon for unconventional resources like gas hydrates - 
frozen clumps of water and methane on the ocean floor. Energy prices 
will not always be low and stable, but we should not assume that 
periods of high prices signal the imminent demise of our still 
plentiful fossil fuels.

Those who argue that we must banish fossil fuels to prevent global 
warming make the mistake of assuming that carbon dioxide emissions are 
an inevitable consequence of getting energy from fossil fuels. They are 
not. And the leading candidates for emission prevention involve 
technologies and processes that have been used in different industries 
for decades.

Fossil fuels can be converted into non-emitting energy like electricity 
and hydrogen using conversion processes that capture carbon dioxide. 
One method involves heating and chemically reacting fossil fuels with 
steam to produce a gas mixture of hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Once 
captured carbon dioxide can be injected into depleted oil reservoirs, a 
decades-old activity to increase oil recovery. Or, it can be injected 
into deep saline aquifers that could hold all of the carbon in our 
planet's fossil fuels. Both of these storage methods have been 
commercially applied.

But zero-emission energy from fossil fuels will not develop without 
policies that prohibit or financially penalize us for using the 
atmosphere as a free waste receptacle. This is because the wide-scale 
addition of capture and storage devices will increase energy costs, 
although not dramatically. The International Energy Agency estimates 
that zero-emission electricity from coal, for example, would increase 
the cost of production by 25 to 50% over the 50 years or so it would 
take to convert the global electricity system. This means a price 
increase of less than 1% a year.

Motivating this technological transition over the next few decades 
without wreaking economic havoc requires either a gradually rising 
greenhouse gas tax or a gradually tightening regulatory constraint - a 
policy approach that allows industry time to develop and market new 
technologies and gives society time to acquire these at the normal 
investment pace for infrastructure, buildings and equipment.

Fossil fuels are still plentiful and indeed might be our cheapest 
option for quickly reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the global 
energy system. If can see beyond our Dr. Faustus fears, we might 
actually come to the surprising conclusion that fossil fuels are a 
friend rather than a foe.

Guests

Mark Jaccard
Professor of Resource and Environmental Management Simon Fraser 
University Vancouver

Publications

  Title: Sustainable Fossil Fuels: The Unusual Suspect in the Quest for 
Clean and Enduring Energy
  Author : Mark Jaccard
  Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN 0 521 67979 6
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Keith Thomas
www.evfit.com
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