December 2011 Philadelphia Chapter of Pax Christi U.S.A.
Getting Off Oil Addiction
The perils of our dependence on fossil fuels are well known, although not enough reflected upon. Climate change is real, and its effects are already being felt. As weather patterns change, food crops will be subjected to novel conditions and can be expected to yield less food.
World population is increasing exponentially. At the time of the birth of Jesus, population was about 200 million. It took ten centuries to double to 400 million. By 1850, when Darwin was working out his understanding of evolution, population tripled to about 1.2 billion. By 1950 population had doubled again, to about 2.4 billion. By 1990 it reached about 5.3 billion. Today world population has reached 7 billion.
In the early nineteenth century Thomas Malthus predicted widespread famine as food supply failed to keep pace with growing population. His prediction did not come to pass; Malthus was unable to foresee the technological advances which multiplied the efficiency of agriculture. Early twentieth century commentators agreed that Malthus was wrong, that technological advances would allow food production to keep pace with increased population indefinitely into the future. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, it had become clear that the prediction was not wrong, that famine had been averted for a time, but not permanently. Indeed, severe food shortages are just now on the horizon.
So the impact of our dependence on oil is not only about gasoline and heating oil and petrochemicals; it’s also about fertilizers and tractors and irrigation pumps. Furthermore, our addiction to oil brings wars to protect our vital interests (i.e., oil) and oppression of the have-not people by the haves.
How about coal? It’s much more abundant than oil, right here in the US, where about 20 percent of US production of electricity is from coal. Coal is inherently polluting, producing oxides of sulfur and particulate matter. The resulting “London smog” is much more damaging than the photochemical smog characteristic of automobile exhaust. The sulfur in coal also causes acid rain, damaging crops and waterways. Some of the sulfur in coal is held loosely and can easily be removed by washing. The rest is embedded within the crystalline structure; the resulting oxides of sulfur can be removed only by passing the waste gasses through a scrubber.
Besides, coal needs to be converted into electricity in order to be useful, and even then it can’t power our current automobiles. But much money and effort is being directed toward “clean coal,” developing ways to burn coal in a less polluting way or converting the coal into liquid or gaseous fuel. Beyond these efforts, researchers are developing ways to capture carbon dioxide, an important greenhouse gas involved in climate change, and inject it underground. Even if these efforts are successful, however, there is still the dramatic damage to the landscape resulting from current methods of extracting coal, such as MTR, “mountain top removal,” in which entire tops of mountains are blown off and dumped into the valleys to expose coal deposits and allow efficient strip mining.
How can we get off fossil fuels? There are a number of possibilities. On the campus of Chestnut Hill College, for example, the renovated building housing the Sisters of St. Joseph Earth Center incorporates geothermal heating. Geothermal is not spectacular, but it is relatively simple and straightforward. As we go down through the surface of the earth the temperature drops as we get into layers which do not receive the heating rays of the sun and are not easily warmed by conduction from above. We are familiar with caves and mines where the air is chilly. Much farther down, however, we begin to enter layers which are heated by conduction from the intensely hot molten core. Most of this heat (about 80%) results
from the natural decay of radioactive isotopes below the surface, heat which is trapped by the relatively poor heat conductivity of this rocky layer. The rest is the lingering heat from the massive gravitational contraction during the formation of the planet about 4.5 billion years ago.
Applying geothermal energy to domestic hot water or space heating involves drilling to a depth suitable for producing a sufficient thermal gradient and then passing water down a pipe and then back up to the surface. In effect, the gas or electric hot water boiler or furnace is replaced by hot rocks below.
Where conditions are more favorable, near hot springs or other hot spots, the temperature gradient may be sufficient to drive generators, thereby replacing a fossil fuel power plant. It is estimated that about 10,000 megawatts of geothermal power plants is on line worldwide in 24 countries. An additional 28 gigawatts of direct geothermal heating capacity is installed for district heating, space heating, spas, industrial processes, desalination and agricultural applications. In Iceland, the leading producer of geothermal electricity, 30 percent is geothermal; the Philippines and El Salvador follow at 27 and 25 percent, respectively. The US produces just 0.3 percent.
Of course, there are many other sources of clean energy, solar panels, wind, biogas, cogeneration, and the best of all— conservation. Insulating homes, using fluorescent light bulbs, increasing fuel efficiency in automobiles, encouraging carpooling, improving mass transit, and many others are simple and practical.
Sometimes, however, what seems like a good idea turns out to be a bad one. Adding ethanol (ethyl alcohol, the same as used in alcoholic beverages) replaces a certain amount of gasoline and seems unobjectionable. In the US, gasoline with 10 percent ethanol is just about universal. Ethanol does not have the heat content of the hydrocarbons in gasoline, so fuel efficiency drops a bit. More importantly, American ethanol is fermented from corn (not from sugar cane, as in Brazil) and the corn is grown by agribusiness using petroleum-based inputs. As a result, more oil is consumed in producing the ethanol than is saved by adding it to gasoline. Who benefits? Agribusiness.
Dom Roberti
Dom Roberti, PhD, is a member of CPF
