Observations on energy crisis in the 21^st Century

Introduction: The situation at present

The Earth’s natural ecological systems are no longer stable.^[1] Climate warming and many other destructive environmental activities caused by humans exceed the Earth’s abilities to absorb change slowly. Evolutionary processes that were present at the time the human species evolved have been so violently disrupted by recent actions of humans that the ecological integrity of the recent past cannot be re-stabilized. Three major processes–population control, consumption of natural resources, and efficiency in the use of fossil fuels–might have reversed the rapid human disruption of the natural ecology of the Earth if they had been recognized and acted upon earlier. The three can no longer be used in time to avoid societal collapse. If population growth had been greatly reduced; if the consumption of natural products had been prioritized and greatly limited; and if the selection and making of goods and services had been done more efficiently, the current crises might have been averted.

The key to understanding the rapidity of the rise and, now, the inevitable collapse of modern civilization is the use of fossil fuels and its coupling with the institutionalization of the ideas of progress and limitless exponential economic growth. Fossil fuels have fed population growth through public health and medical ‘advances’. Fossil fuels, through technology, are basic to the increased production of goods and services. And fossil fuel energy has been flagrantly and extraordinarily inefficiently used with little regard to basic human needs. The world’s population of nearly eight billion can no longer be maintained by the natural resources it uses.^[2] And the wasted energy and consumption of natural materials continue to pollute the land, sea, and air of the Earth.

We now live in an existential predicament in which component systems of the natural ecology of the Earth have overshot their boundaries insuring the collapse of modern civilization. It is not emotionally helpful to have hopes that technology can solve overshoot; nor is it helpful to feel depressed because you cannot face squarely the physical realities of current conditions. Instead, it is essential to understand our present condition. First, I think we need to understand concepts of energy, entropy, exponential growth and their role in creating our current predicament. ^[3] To that end, in this essay I want to discuss the production and consumption of energy and materials in the United States in 2020 and the implications of energy use for the future^[4]. In doing so, I first discuss oil and natural gas production at the national level because that is where political and economic action is most effective. The consumption of energy at the level of individual humans is necessary to see how everyone is involved in consuming. Most of the national data is from governmental sources. Most of the ideas about individuals consumption of energy are from Howard T. and Elizabeth C, Odum.^[5] I then want to relate the consumption of energy to the consumption of natural materials.

Modern societies will be framed by the rise and fall in the use of fossil fuels. The best concept to understand this is the idea of peak energy. Fundamental to the concept is the fact that only a limited amount of useful energy sources exist on Earth. The use of fossil fuels is also limited by the economics of their extraction. The technologies of extraction and refinement have increasingly demanded the use of energy sources that have a low return on the energy that is produced. Production of energy will reach a point at which the actual reserves are depleted or the energy returned on the energy invested (EROEI) will no longer profitable.

Oil Production

The principle source of the idea of peak oil is Marion King Hubbert, who, based on the technologies of extraction and the projected reserves of petroleum in 1956, developed the idea that a peak in the production of petroleum in the United States would occur in the 1970s. (Figure 1.^[6]) At the time, his ideas were not widely accepted; however, his predictions based on the knowledge of proven reserves at that time have proven to be largely correct. ^[7]

Figure 1. The Hubbert curve in a 200 year perspective from 1956

‘Peak Oil’ was largely dismissed by those who thought that the petroleum reserves were unlimited or that new technologies would be developed that would allow the extraction of more oil from existing oil fields. Especially important in understanding Hubbert’s predictions is knowledge of the discoveries of reserves of conventional oil as shown in the following chart. (Figure 2)^[8] The diagram shows that the rate of discovering of conventional oil in the world was declining even as consumption increased. However, with the production from the North Sea fields in the 1960s and Alaska’s North Slope field in since 1975 there was a temporary upward production of conventional oil.

Figure 2. Oil Discovery

In the United States, predictions as to the timing of peak oil changed because of the production of North Slope oil and, since 2008, the application of technologies that have allowed extracting petroleum from “unconventional” sources, such as oil sands, directional drilling, and hydraulic fracturing. The cost of the technologies in extracting energy from unconventional sources makes them more expensive than oil from traditional sources (which are also increasingly in short supply). With improving technology, lower quality but larger oil reservoirs have been brought into production. (Figure 3)^[9]

Figure 3. Energy Resource Triangle

The production of oil in the United States from1900 to 2020 by both conventional and unconventional sources is shown in Figure 4.. Total production of petroleum in the United States, almost all from conventional sources, peaked in 1970 and declined until 2008. The curve shown in red closely follows Hubbert’s predictions. The upturn after 2008 is large due to the production of unconventional petroleum from oil sands and off shore deep water sources. (Figure 5)

Figure 4. U.S. Oil Production Lower 48 States

Wikimedea commons File:Hubbert Upper-Bound Peak 1956.png

Figure 5

A recent analysis of the prospects of the total, world wide production of petroleum has been made by Mattheiou Auzanneau. ^[10] He indicates that peak oil of conventional sources occurred in 2008 and from all sources, will probably peak in the early 2020s.

Figure 6

Natural Gas Production

Natural gas now rivals petroleum production in the United States. (Figures 7 and 8) Natural gas production has greatly increased in recent years because of new technologies. Optimistic predictions are that it will continue to grow in the near future. Nevertheless, a worldwide peak in production is predicted to occur in the 2030s. (Figure 9)

Figure 7

Figure 8

Peak Production of Natural Gas–Worldwide (2030s)US; Russia; Iran; Canada; Qatar; China; Norway….

World Natural Gas 2018-2050 Part 3 of the World Energy Annual Report in 2018.

Figure 9.

The Production and Consumption of all forms of Energy in the United States

In 2020, 79 % of the energy produced in the United States was from fossil fuels (including NGPL=non-gaseous liquid petroleum), 9 % from nuclear, and 12 % from renewable sources. (Figures 10 and 11)^[11]

Figure 10

Figure 11

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, with information from 2019, made a flow chart of the sources of energy, their pathways through the economy, and their destination for consumption. (Figure 12).

Figure 12.

Table 1 The percentage of each of the 5 energy sources supplied to 4 major use categories U.S. primary energy consumption by source and sector (2019)[12]
Supply sources	Percent of source	Demand sectors	Percent of sector
Petroleum 36.2%	70% Transportation 24% Industrial 5% Residential and commercial 1% Electric power	Transportation 28.1%	91% Petroleum 3% Natural gas 5% Renewable energy <1% Electric Power
Natural gas 28.0%	3% Transportation 33% Industrial 27% Residential and commercial 36% Electric power	Industrial 21.9%	34% Petroleum 40% Natural gas 4% Coal 9% Renewable energy 12% Electric Power
Coal 13.9%	10% Industrial <1% Residential and commercial 91% Electric power	Residential and commercial 10.4%	8.5% Petroleum 41.5% Natural gas <1% Coal 5% Renewable energy 45% Electric Power
Renewable energy 11.0%	12% Transportation 22% Industrial 9% Residential and commercial 56% Electric power	Electric power 37.2%	1% Petroleum 38% Natural gas 23% Coal 17% Renewable energy 20% Nuclear electric power
Nuclear electric power 8.4%	100% Electric power

Table 2. Within each of the 4 major demand sector, the various large uses are noted.^[13]

Sector summary
Sector name	Description	Major uses[41][42][43]
Industrial	Facilities and equipment used for producing and processing goods.	22% chemical production 16% petroleum refining 14% metal smelting/refining
Transportation	Vehicles which transport people/goods on ground, air, or water.	61% gasoline fuel 21% diesel fuel 12% aviation
Residential	Living quarters for private households.	32% space heating 13% water heating 12% lighting 11% air conditioning 8% refrigeration 5% electronics 5% wet-clean (mostly clothes dryers)
Commercial	Service-providing facilities and equipment (businesses, government, other institutions).	25% lighting 13% heating 11% cooling 6% refrigeration 6% water heating 6% ventilation 6% electronics

For the first time since the 1950s, US production of energy and US consumption of energy are nearly equal. In the same time period, imports of energy to and from the United States were also nearly equal. Until 2019 much of the US consumption of energy depended on petroleum imports. (Figure 13)

Figure 13

What I hope to have shown in these first thirteen diagrams is that the US economy has been dependent of the production and consumption of fossil fuels, until recently including large oil imports. Coal was the dominate energy source from about 1880 until 1915 and continues to be important today when it still forms 11% of total energy production. Petroleum became the predominate source of energy from 1950 until today. Natural gas also became an important source shortly after World War II and now rivals oil as major energy source. (Figure 14) Observe the overwhelming dominance of fossil fuels and the very small amount of energy supplied by solar and wind power (less than 2%).

Figure 14. US Energy Information Agency

Of the total energy consumed in the United States, two/thirds is lost; only a third is actually used to provide goods and services. This third is what runs the economy. The other two thirds is mostly released to the atmosphere as heat and waste products (entropy). The inefficient use of energy–the escape of heat and the by-products of its break-down–is basic to the pollution of the Earth’s ecosystems.

Another Way of Looking at the Consumption of Energy:

Personal Consumption

As shown above, consumption of energy is often seen as an abstract affair based on its uses in transportation, industry, residential settings, the generation of electricity, etc. These abstract categories of consumption may be further divided and grouped by their intermediate or end use (see Table 2, above). For example, as energy consumption in the manufacturing or driving a car; or of building, transporting, and selling a computer or cell phone. The services that we, as individuals, receive are rarely thought of in terms of energy consumed by each of us. We may think of turning off the lights, driving less, recycling trash but, for example, who thinks of the energy costs of educating a person? Or what are the energy costs of research, development, manufacture, servicing of, and disposing of new medicines and medical devices that we consume? What are our personal energy costs in manufacturing solar panels, building storage units for electricity that is solar generated, or of creating a grid to distribute the electricity, or to replace outmoded or damaged units? These large-scale abstractions interact with other large-scale abstractions; for example, transportation interacts with industry that interacts with commerce that interacts with generation of electricity. And as individuals we are part of all these complicated flow of energy; often a person is the last consumer before use or discard. Thus we have difficulty in seeing how each of us can meaningfully contribute to lessening the problems created by consumption of energy. Many problems of particular uses of energy can be solved when isolated from their context. But more often, energy solutions themselves are problems because they have not been seen as parts of larger systems of energy use.

As a biologist and ecologist, Howard Odum was interested in the ways in which energy flowed through natural systems. But he also saw that energy flowed through cultural systems. He compared energy flow in both pre-industrial and postindustrial societies. Pre-industrial societies lived primarily on solar energy which was stored in the animals and plants that humans consume. These animals and plants were recent consumers of solar energy. ( The ‘wild ecosystem’ in Figure 15) Gradually other sources of energy, such as those that were released from chemical and organic material in soils, allowed the practice of agriculture, whose products can be stored . Wind power and hydro power also became useful sources of energy. However, for most of human existence, energy consumption by humans was limited to sources immediately at hand or in short-term biological storage. In Odum’s diagram of a hunting and gathering tribal group, the sources of energy for an individual are shown as solar energy, widely channeled through wild ecosystems. In an agriculturally based society, temporarily-stored energy allows individual who control the storage to be more politically and socially powerful.

Figure 15

Howard and Elisabeth Odum, 1976. p.225

With the development of technology to capture energy from coal and later petroleum and natural gas, goods and services, became available to many more people. Goods and service, which throughout most of human life had been meager and limited to providing daily existence to most people, now allowed the growth of increasingly complex political, social, and economic institutions, which were intermediaries between the sources of energy and the individuals within modern civilization. As the consumption of fossil fuels grows exponentially, ever greater specialization both within institutions and by individuals, modern individuals now derive most of their energy from fossil fuels. This is indicated in Figure 17 ^[14] by the rectangle where the complex process of energy flows are lumped together. When the total amount of energy consumed in the U.S.–as shown in Figure 16–is divided among individual Americans, the calories consumed by each individual increases great

Figure 16

Odum and Odum 1976.p229 In his book, “Energy Basis For Man and Nature”( p.226) (Figure 17)^[15]

The energy that supports an individual as shown in this flow diagram is derived from everything from government services, clothing, food processing , housing, transportation, social groups, to education and family. [These categories might be broken down, rearranged, and subsumed in the categories used in flow diagram of the United States (Figure 13)] As with a pre-industrial human, only 2,500 calories are need for survival of the human body today. The remainder of the consumption of energy supporting a modern person comes by way of fossil fuels and is difficult, if not impossible, to indicate, exactly, the pathways from the source of the energy used by any individual to its actual consumption. Individuals also process some of that energy and provide high-quality services that are returned in the support of the various institutions to which he/she belongs.

In a further refinement of the process of energy flow that supports an individual, Odum exemplified the ways in which a student who keeps house might consume energy. Figure 18 The overwhelming majority of the energy consumed by an individual comes indirectly from multiple sources. Many institutions and individuals, who are also consuming massive amounts of energy, are the energy source for the consumption by each of us. The more times the energy is processed into higher quality products or services, the more the final consumer has consumed energy. It should be noted that each time that energy is processed, it loses large amounts of energy that is ultimately converted to heat.

Figure 17

Figure 18 p.226

Consumption of Materials

The principal way in which fossil fuel energy is used is though changing matter. The changed matter are the goods (everything from heated air and gasoline to nail polish or electronic tablets) that we humans consume both directly and less directly through their use in supplying us with services (the high-quality services noted in figure 17 and the employment in figure 18.) Natural materials, like energy are depleted, altered, wasted, lost in the processes of manufacturing and use. Although, also like energy, much of the original natural source material is lost to further use, some is recycled and some becomes higher grade products, which, in turn, may be further processed to yet even higher grade services. The original source material will lose bulk in the processing of a product just as energy is lost in each stage of its use. Like energy, much of the natural material may be seen as waste to humans, either discarded directly in the processing or ultimately when the manufactured product is discarded, for example, in land fills, as plastics in waterways or the oceans, exhaust fumes from automobiles, or abandoned buildings. (Figure 20)

Figure 19

Especially large, bulky items such as building materials and feed stocks have contributed to the increased consumption of natural materials. Simply think of the large growth in asphalt and concrete in building roads and structures. Increased use of plastics and paper products have made possible completely new forms of packaging and products. Very special metals have increasingly been required in the final stages of manufacture. Of course, their increased use must be coupled with the problems associated with their direct and indirect disposal.

Although the amount of materials consumed in the United States has greatly increased, the per capita amount has remained fairly constant as the population has also increased. To maintain our standard of living, each person in the United States requires over 38,449 pounds of minerals each year and in a lifetime, almost 3 million pounds. Figure 20.

Figure 20

• 9,426 pounds of stone
• 6,768 pounds of sand and gravel
• 655 pounds of cement
• 142 pounds of clays
• 338 pounds of salt
• 244 pounds of iron ore
• 195 pounds of phosphate rock
• 34 pounds of soda ash
• 28 pounds of aluminum
• 13 pounds of copper
• 11 pounds of lead
• 6 pounds of zinc
• 4 pounds of manganese
• 21 pounds of other metals
• 535 pounds of other non-metals

As with the transformation of energy, materials become concentrated and of higher grade as they are processed. (figures 21 & 22) In Figure 21, the decreasing size of the symbol for materials (the semicircles with pointed tops) and for energy (squares) represent the loss of material bulk and energy in processing.
Some higher quality energy and some waste materials my be recycled.^[16]

Figure 21 Figure 22

Consumption of both energy and materials from the beginning of the 20^th century until today has been exponential. It has resulted in the production of goods and services beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors, most of whom lived much shorter lives, had much simpler diets, and had few of what we find essential to our lives today and to them would have been seen as luxuries. Americans, of whatever social, political, or economic position, live lives with more goods and services than any people at any previous time in the history of the human species. But have we reached the peak of growth of these goods and services, which are based on the use of fossil fuel energy?

Have we run out of cheap energy sources? Have we simply skimmed the Earth’s resources needed to maintain modern civilization? Will we find ways to limit our numbers, our consumption, and our wastes that are causing ecological systems to collapse? I think not. No matter what the immediate cause of possible ecological disasters, which may be caused by benefits of modern civilization, without a steady stream of fossil fuels, civilization, as we know it today, will collapse. We are very near the peak of fossil fuel production. Alternate, safe sources of energy are not known; nuclear power, almost all of which is used to generate electricity, has the potential for great disasters as is shown by Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima; and it has unsolved radioactive waste storage problems. Like nuclear power, solar and wind sources do not supply the great demands for transportation and many manufacturing and processing needs. Furthermore, to expand nuclear, solar, and wind power facilities and networks requires massive amounts of fossil fuel energy. If the disadvantages of using fossil fuels–the disposal of heat and the waste products from manufacturing and discard of products–could be eliminated (and it cannot), their continued use at current rates of consumption would only accelerate the collapse of society by other ecological disruptions.

Possible Futures

Several attempts to model the effects of the passing of peak use of natural resources show possible major disruptions to current ways of life. The model made fifty years ago for The Club of Rome ^[17] is probably the best known. It has been updated with more recent data, which have largely confirmed its basic conclusions. I quote from the introduction: ^[18]

1. “If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.

2. It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future. The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential.

3. If the world’s people decide to strive for this second outcome rather than the first, the sooner they begin working to attain it, the greater will be their chances of success.

4. If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.

5. It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future. The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential.

6. If the world’s people decide to strive for this second outcome rather than the first, the sooner they begin working to attain it, the greater will be their chances of success.”

A review and update of the Limits to Growth model (BAU)or Building As Usual) of 1972 presents three alternative projections of growth and decline of resources, population, food, industrial output, and pollution using recent data.^[19] (figure 23 ) The preferred model of the original study shows a collapse in the early 21^st century.(BAU ). A best fit model using more recent data that shows declining availability of resources indicates a collapse with high pollution rates before the end of the century (BAU2). Another fit with the more recent data assumes a 4%/year growth in technology that would find solutions to global pollution and an increase the production of food. A final model assumes major societal changes. It is the least good fit to current data.

Figure 22

I see little indication that the radical, necessary changes in social, political and economic policies and attitudes can be instituted in the near future; thus ruling out the fourth alternative future. And I do not believe that adequate technology, as projected in Model CT, will be generated at a 4% growth rate, a far higher rate than at present. That leaves Model BAU2 in which both pollution and resource depletion will contribute to a collapse of population, food production, and industrial output, all of which will peak before the middle of this century.

Conclusions

Through the use of technology, energy has has successfully provided the many goods and services that make modern societies so extraordinarily attractive. Humans have welcomed the goods and services because, like all organism they want to reproduce and expand whenever they can. All organisms try to expand until they reach some physical limit. But unlike most organisms, which are limited to energy that is almost exclusively powered by short term capture of solar energy, in the last two centuries, humans have been able to use energy that was created in past geologic ages. Vast volumes of fossilized organic material, which had once depended on solar energy, are today’s fossil fuels. These ancient geologic formations, coupled with new technologies, have driven the progress that created modern societies. Enamoured with the steady flow of goods and services, little thought has been given to the limits of the storehouses of fossil fuels: they seemed vast. However, fossil fuels are limited and humanity has now reached those physical limits

The currently recognized crises in climate change, pollution, extinction of organisms and many other disruptions of natural ecological systems are largely the result of the overuse of fossil fuels. Modern societies should also recognize that fossil fuels now support their social, political, and economic institutions. With a decline in available energy, these institutions, like natural systems, will be ‘polluted’, some will become extinct, most will become radically changed.

As the production of fossil fuels declines from its present near peak, as it must because geological reservoirs are limited and technologies are less able to increase the energy return on the energy invested, the period of a civilization based on fossil fuel use will come to an end. The inability to stop overshooting ecological boundaries will simply accelerate the process of collapse.Modern civilization is merely a blip in the existence of humans on Earth. The growth of modern civilization has rested in large part on the availability of fossil fuels.To show the era of fossil fuels in the perspective of 10,000 years centered on 1974, look at what might be called the Hubbert blip of modern civilization. (Figure 24)

Epoch of fossil-fuel exploitation in human history during the period from

5,000 years ago to 5,000 years in the future^[20]

Figure 24

End of Page Notes

1. Stockholm Resilience Centre ↑

2. Global Footprint Network ↑

3. Howard T. and Elisabeth C. Odum; “Energy Basis For Man and Nature”; 1976; McGraw Hill; New York.and Howard T.Odum “Environment, Power, and Society for the twenty-first century. The Heirarchy of Energy”; 2007; Columbia University Press; ↑

4. Data from 2020 are widely available, having been published in2021. I have also used data from 2019, which does not vary widely from that of 2020. Diagrams from 2019 may better illustrate data than diagrams made in 2020. ↑

5. At a societal level Howard Odum suggests ways societal action might address decline. (Odum, 2007, pp. 389-391). None of his suggestions have been adopted. In a previous paper I have expressed ideas about how individuals might live satisfying lives in coming decades when the current levels of goods and services decline or are no longer available, or when faced with the loss or availability of modern medicines or health care, or when the current levels of communication or travel decline or, even more basically, how will people find food and shelter. And when any of those possibilities arise what could a person do to maintain his/her humanity. ( See paper ‘The Predicament Humanity Now Faces.”) ↑

6. http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/1956/1956.pdf ↑

7. Richard Heinberg has for many years written extensively on ‘Peak Oil’. To my mind he is the leading authority on the concept. He has gone on to write about the implications of power in all its aspects, most recently in the book “Power:Limits and Prospects for Human Survival”; Post Carbon Institute; 2021. Heinberg–https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-10-08/has-oil-peaked/ ↑

8. Ibn-Mohammed, Taofeeq. (2017). Application of mixed-mode research paradigms to the building sector: A review and case study towards decarbonising the built and natural environment. Sustainable Cities and Society. 35. 10.1016/j.scs.2017.09.027. ↑

9. Peter J. McCabe. (1998). Energy Resources – Cornucopia or Empty Barrel? American Association of Petroleum Geolo

   gists Bulletin, 82 (1998), 2110-2134. ↑

10. Matthieu Auzanneau; Oil, Power and War: A Dark History ( Chelsea Green Publishing , 2018)p 581 ↑

11. [Please note that amounts (and thus percentages) vary slightly from one diagram to another because of the way the data are assembled. The measurements are in BTUs or British Thermal Units, one of the widely used terms for energy calculations. A quad is a unit of energy equal to 1 quadrillion British thermal units (BTUs)] ↑

12. U.S. energy facts explained – consumption and production – U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)”. www.eia.gov. Retrieved 2020-09-16. ↑

13.  U.S. Dept. of Energy, “Annual Energy Outlook” (February 2006 ↑

14. The unit used in these diagrams is coal equivalent calories not btu. Within the legends, the figure numbers are from the Odum’s text. ↑

15. The circles represent energy sources; the downward pointing arrows show heat sink or an outflow of degraded energy; the hexagon represents a consumer; the rectangular boxed represent places in which energy is processed; the half circles with pyramid top are storage places; the box-like arrows indicate where two or more types of energy interact. The numbers are approximate amounts of energy. Energy flow shown in solid black lines; money flow in dotted lines. ↑

16. Odum, 2007 p. 83 ↑

17.  Meadows, Donella H; Meadows, Dennis L; Randers, Jørgen; Behrens III, William W (1972). The Limits to Growth; A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. New York: Universe Books. ↑

18. Introduction to The Limits to Growth. ↑

19. Herrington, Gaya. 2021. Update to limits to growth: Comparing the world3 model with empirical data. Journal of Industrial

    Ecology 2021; 25: 614– 626. Another valuable analysis is Turner, G. (2014) ‘Is Global Collapse Imminent?’, MSSI Research Paper No. 4, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, The University of Melbourne. ↑

20. (Hubbert, 1976) ↑