Food to 2050

This post continues an exercise I began a month or so ago of trying to figure out how civilization could be moved to a mostly sustainable footing by 2050, while still being recognizable as civilization, and in particular allowing some continued level of economic growth between now and then, especially in the developing countries.


…In Powering Civilization to 2050 I argued it was potentially feasible to transition to power civilization with a mix of solar, wind, and nuclear energy, with the transition well on the way to completion by 2050. (Luis de Sousa made a broadly similar argument in Olduvai Revisited 2008). This would require a period of belt tightening and conservation in the next couple of decades, but once the transition had overcome the critical threshold (as solar energy in particular became cheap), I suggested energy in general would get cheap again. I adopted the UN medium population projection which has population at about 9 billion by 2050, with growth slowing sharply. Making plausible assumptions for economic growth between now and 2050 if energy was available, we got to a world GDP of about $350 trillion in 2050 (in 2006 purchasing power parity dollars), versus about $70 trillion in 2007

If the average global citizen was significantly wealthier in 2050, they would undoubtedly want to drive more. The switch to primarily electrical energy sources for civilization would preclude doing this with all liquid fuels. In Four Billion Cars in 2050? I argued that, given that the average citizen will be living in a dense third world city by 2050, we can assume rates of ownership typical of the most car-free corners of western Europe at the moment (Holland), which gives rise to a few billion cars in 2050. I further argued that it seems feasible that this many plugin-hybrids could be built – there appears to be enough lithium for the batteries – and run on less than 10mbd of liquid fuels.

The Oil Drum