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Page added on May 5, 2013
Robert Rapier: The Scientific Challenges To Replacing Oil with Renewables
So, assuming the Peak Oil camp is on to something, what’s the likelihood for a disruption-free transition to another energy source that can replace the energy output we currently enjoy from oil? There’s no shortage of promising claims from new laboratory experiments, and there is a lot of optimism in political and entrepreneurial circles that renewable, alternative forms of energy (wind, solar, biofuels, etc) may be able to fill the “energy gap” in time. How realistic are these hopes?
Not very, says Robert Rapier, energy specialist and Chief Technology Officer of Merica International.
The problem is one of return on invested energy. It is extremely difficult to create fuels with the same energy-density Nature has concocted over thousands of millennia without using up as much (or more) energy in the process.
7 Comments on "Robert Rapier: The Scientific Challenges To Replacing Oil with Renewables"
BillT on Sun, 5th May 2013 3:31 am
“…The problem is one of return on invested energy. It is extremely difficult to create fuels with the same energy-density Nature has concocted over thousands of millennia without using up as much (or more) energy in the process…”
BINGO! Every ‘alternate’ energy source requires MORE total energy input than is netted from output when ALL factors are considered. We will slowly wind down our energy consumption over the next few decades to something sustainable. That will be a tiny fraction of today’s energy use in the West.
Systems will eventually shut down. Global shipping will dwindle to only necessities, not fuels or I-junk. Electric grids will contract. Roads will go back to gravel and then dirt. Bridges will be closed. Food will be grown locally or not at all. The internet will go back to only government use, etc.
That assumes that climate change gives us time to do even that much. Perhaps Mother Nature has other ideas. Or, perhaps the nuclear world war that has been in the wings for 70 years will actually happen. Stay tuned…
DC on Sun, 5th May 2013 8:57 am
We do not have a science or technology problem. That red-herring is always put out there by the corporations and their spokesmen in order to maintain the status-quo.
“Just wait a wait little while longer and ‘Science’ will make everything ok”.
Except its, not, and it wont. Our problem(s) are over-population and over-consumption problems mainly. Some scientists warn of the these twin dangers(but are often ignored or attacked), other scientists devote themselves to measuring just how bad the damage is.
The issue has never been lack of know-how, but the priorities of our corporate rulers. Renewable can provide energy, but they cant run suburbia, GM, Wall-mart and Mcdonalds. Thats why all the blue smoke about more ‘science’ being needed to fix the ‘problem’. Gotta figure out a way to keep Wall-mart in business with renewables and private 5000 pound grocery fetchers(however powered) for each person that wants one, or its not ‘worth’ doing, is the attitude.
Arthur on Sun, 5th May 2013 9:22 am
“not fuels or I-junk.”
Bill, I bet you spend the best part of your day using this ‘I-junk’. Where would you be without it? Without I-junk, the rest of the world would never learn that I-junk is, well I-junk 😉
BillT on Sun, 5th May 2013 11:36 am
Arthur, I came into a world without it and I will leave this world when it is all gone. No loss. Just convenience. I use it to keep up with world events and to play with techie minds that believe that their tech religion will save the world even when all facts point the other way. Tech is destroying the world.
When it disappears, it will mean that humanity is losing to Mother Nature. I’m on her side. We don’t deserve to exist. An experiment gone bad. Nothing more or less.
Arthur on Sun, 5th May 2013 12:42 pm
“When it disappears, it will mean that humanity is losing to Mother Nature. I’m on her side. We don’t deserve to exist.”
Hmm, there is no difference between ‘Mother Nature’ and us. I think humans are a fascinating species and that the end is not yet in sight, allthough cruel ‘resets’ on a global scale are certainly possible, as every peaker suspects. I have a little more empathy with these suffering creatures that are the result so far of the endless road between the plankton of billions of years ago and the present. The universe is in essence, as the Germans put it ‘eine werdende Gott’, not sure how to translate that into English (a becoming God?) and that we are all ‘Figuren im Traum Gottes’ (‘Figures in the dream of God’?)… meaning that the Universe is a slowly awakening God and that will be annihilated at the moment of full awakening… and the process will start all over again.
Life, love it or hate it, but there is no escape from it.
John Kintree on Sun, 5th May 2013 2:26 pm
If you listened to Rapier’s comments, he mostly limited his critique to biofuels, and said that wind and photovoltaic might have better values for EROI.
dave thompson on Sun, 5th May 2013 3:05 pm
A very good and to the point discussion. As I drive in traffic and see the line, miles in front miles behind………