(Image: Zen Buddha Silence by Marilyn Barbone)

July 31, 2022

Vaclav Smil, who has written forty books, just published what may be his best book:How the World Really Works. Essentially, Smil looks at how the world makes food, fuel, steel, and cement. Smil concludes that our use of fossil fuels will probably increase over the next few decades, contrary to what many are hoping or predicting.

Some believe that advances in technology will make old material necessities unnecessary. That may be true eventually, but likely not at all over the next few decades, argues Smil.

Fields will be displaced by urban high-rise agriculture, and synthetic products will ultimately eliminate the need to grow any food at all. Dematerialization, powered by artificial intelligence, will end our dependence on shaped masses of metals and processed minerals, and eventually we might even do without the Earth's environment: who needs it if we are going to terraform Mars? Of course, these are all not just grossly premature predictions, they are fantasies fostered by a society where fake news has become common and where reality and fiction have commingled to such an extent that gullible minds, susceptible to cult-like visions, believer what keener observers in the past would have mercilessly perceived as borderline or frank delusion.

Smil continues:

None of the people reading this book will relocate to Mars; all of us will continue to eat staple grain crops grown in soil on large expanses of agricultural land rather than in the skyscrapers imagined by the proponents of so-called urban agriculture; none of us will live in a dematerialized world that has no use for such irreplacable natural services as evaporating water or pollinating plants. But delivering these existential necessities will be an increasingly challenging task, because a large share of humanity lives in conditions that the affluent minority left behind generations ago, and because the growing demand for energy and materials has been stressing the biosphere so much and so fast that we have imperiled its capability to keep its flows and stores within the boundaries compatible with its long-term functioning.

Smil notes that there are 3.1 billion people whose per capita energy consumption is no higher than that of France and Germany in 1860! These people need to triple their per capita energy use and also build urban, industrial, and transportation infrastructures.

Smil writes:

And how will be deal with unfolding climate change? There is now a widespread consensus that we need to do something to prevent many highly undesirable consequences, but what kind of action, what sort of behavioral transformation would work best? For those who ignore the energetic and material imperatives of our world, those who prefer mantras of green solutions to understanding how we have come to this point, the prescription is easy: just decarbonize–switch from burning fossil carbon to converting inexhaustible flows of renewable energies. The real wrench in the works: we are a fossil-fueled civilization whose technical and scientific advances, quality of life, and prosperity rest on the combustion of huge quantities of fossil carbon, and we cannot simply walk away from this critical determinant of our fortunes in a few decades, never mind years.

Smil explains what his book is about:

This book is an attempt to reduce the comprehension deficit, to explain some of the most fundamental ruling realities governing our survival and our prosperity. My goal is not to forecast, not to outline either stunning or depressing scenarios of what is to come. There is no need to extend this popular–but consistently failing–genre: in the long run, there are too many unexpected developments and too many complex interactions that no individual or collective effort can anticipate. Now will I advocate any specific (biased) interpretations of reality, either as a source of despair or of boundless expectations. I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist; I am a scientist trying to explain how the world really works, and I will use that understanding in order to make us better realize our future limits and opportunities.

Here is an outline based on the chapters in Smil's book:

1. 1. Understanding Energy:Fuels and Electricity
   2. Understanding Food Production:Eating Fossil Fuels
   3. Understanding Our Material World:The Four Pillars of Modern Civilization
   4. Understanding Globalization:Engines, Microchips, and Beyond
   5. Understanding Risks:From Viruses to Diets to Solar Flares
   6. Understanding the Environment:The Only Biosphere We Have
   7. Understanding the Future:Between Apocalypse and Singularity

Understanding Energy:Fuels and Electricity

As of 2020, more than half of the world's electricity is still generated by the combustion of fossil fuels, mainly coal and natural gas.

Smil writes from the point of view of alien probes looking at earth.

By 1900, inanimate prime movers supply about half of all mechanical energy: coal-fired steam engines make the greatest contribution, followed by better-designed waterwheels and new water turbines (first introduced during the 1830s), windmills and brand-new steam turbines (since the late 1880s), and internal combustion engines (gasoline-fueled, also first introduced in the 1880s).

By 1950, fossil fuels supply nearly three-quarters of primary energy (still dominated by coal), and inanimate prime movers–now with gasoline- and diesel-fueled internal combustion engines in the lead–provide more than 80 percent of all mechanical energy. And by the year 2000 only poor people in low-income countries depend on biomass fuels, with wood and straw providing only about 12 percent of the world's primary energy. Animate prime movers hold only a 5 percent share of mechanical energy, as human exertions and the work of draft animals are almost completely displaced by machines fueled by liquids or by electric motors.

During the past two centuries, the alien probes will have witnessed a rapid global substitution of primary energy sources, accompanied by the expansion and diversification of fossil fuel supply, and the no less rapid introduction, adoption, and growth in capacity of new inanimate prime movers–first coal-fired steam engines, then internal combustion engines (piston and turbines). The most recent visit would see a truly global society built and defined by mass-scale, stationary, and mobile conversions of fossil carbon, deployed everywhere but in some of the planet's uninhabited regions.

Smil calculates the increase in the use of fossil fuels. There was a 60-fold increase in the use of fossil fuels during the 19th century, a 16-fold increase during the 20th century, and 1,500-fold increase during the past 220 years. Due to improvements in efficiency, the increase in useful energy was actually 3,500-fold during the past 220 years.

Smil explains the advantages of liquid fuel:

And the advantages of liquid fuels go far beyond high energy density. Unlike coal, crude oil is much easier to produce (no need to send miners underground or scar landscapes with large open pits), store (in tanks or underground–because of oil's much higher energy density, any enclosed space can typically score 75 percent more energy as a liquid fuel than as coal), and distribute (intercontinentally by tankers and by pipelines, the safest mode of long-distance mass transfer), and hence it is readily available on demand. Crude oil needs refining to separate the complex mixture of hydrocarbons into specific fuels–gasoline being the lightest; residual fuel oil the heaviest–but this process yields more valuable fuels for specific uses, and it also produces indispensible non-fuel products such as lubricants.

Lubricants are needed to minimize friction in everything from the massive turbofan engines in wide-body jetliners to miniature bearings. Globally, the automotive sector, now with more than 1.4 billion vehicles on the road, is the largest consumer, followed by use in industry–with the largest markets being textiles, energy, chemicals, and food processing–and in ocean-going vessels. Annual use of these compounds now surpasses 120 megatons (for comparison, global output of all edible oils, from olive to soybean, is now about 200 megatons a year), and because the available alternatives–synthetic lubricants made from simpler, but still often oil-based, compounds rather than those derived directly from crude oil–are more expensive, this demand will grow further as these industries expand around the world.

Another product derived from crude oil is asphalt. Global output of this black and sticky material is now on the order of 100 megatons, with 85 percent of it going to paving (hot and warm asphalt mixes) and most of the rest to roofing. And hydrocarbons have yet another indispensible non-fuel use: as feedstocks for many different chemical syntheses (dominated by ethane, propane, and butane from natural gas liquids) producing a variety of synthetic fibers, resins, adhesives, dyes, paints and coatings, detergents, and pesticides, all vital in myriad ways to our modern world. Given these advantages and benefits, it was predictable–indeed unavoidable–that our dependence on crude oil would grow once the product became more affordable and once it could be reliably delivered on a global scale.

Crude oil's rise and relative retreat

Smil observes:

Mass-scale car usage in Europe and Japan and the concurrent conversion of their economies from coal to crude oil, and later to natural gas, began only during the 1950s, as did the expansion of foreign trade and travel (including the first jetliners) and the use of petro-chemical feedstocks for the synthesis of ammonia and plastics. Global oil extraction of crude oil doubled during the 1950s, and by 1964 crude oil surpassed coal as the world's most important fossil fuel, but although its output kept on rising, supply remained plentiful and so prices were falling.

Smil points out:

In 1995, crude oil extraction finally surpassed the 1979 record and then continued to rise, meeting the demand of an economically reforming China as well as the rising demand elsewhere in Asia–but oil has not regained its pre-1975 relative dominance. Its share of the global commercial primary energy supply fell from 45 percent in 1970 to 38 percent in the year 2000 and to 33 percent in 2019–and it is now certain that its further relative decline will continue as natural gas consumption and wind and solar electricity generation keep increasing. There are enormous opportunities to generate more electricity with photovoltaic cells and wind turbines, but there is a fundamental difference between systems that derive 20-40 percent of electricity from these intermittent sources (Germany and Spain are the best examples among large economies) and a national electricity supply that relies completely on these renewable flows.

In large, populous nations, the complete reliance on these renewables would require what we are still missing: either mass-scale, long-term (days to weeks) electricity storage that would back up intermittent electricity generation, or extensive grids of high-voltage lines to transmit electricity across time zones and from sunny and windy regions to major urban and industrial concentrations. Could these new renewables produce enough electricity to replace not only today's generation fueled by coal and natural gas, but also all the energy now supplied by liquid fuels to vehicles, ships, and planes by way of a complete electrification of transport? And could they really do so, as some plans now promise, in a matter of just two or three decades?

The many advantages of electricity

Smil writes:

...even in this era of high-tech electronic miracles, it is still impossible to store electricity affordably in quantities sufficient to meet the demand of a medium-sized city (500,000 people) for only a week or two, or to supply a megacity (more than 10 million people) for just half a day. But despite these complications, high costs, and technical challenges, we have been striving to electrify modern economies, and this quest for ever-higher electrification will continue because this form of energy combines many unequaled advantages. Most obviously, at the point of its final consumption, electricity's use is always effortless and clean, and the majority of the time it is also exceptionally efficient. With just the flip of a switch, push of a button, or adjustment of a thermostat (now often requiring only a hand signal or voice command), electric lights and motors or electric heaters and coolers are turned on–with no bulky fuel storages, no laborious carrying and stoking, no dangers of incomplete combustion (emitting poisonous carbon monoxide), and no cleaning of lamps or stoves or furnaces.

Smil continues:

The long-term trend toward electrification of societies (rising share of fuels converted to electricity rather than consumed directly) has been unmistakable. The new renewables–solar and wind, as opposed to hydroelectricity whose beginnings go back to 1882–will readily feed into this progression, but the history of electricity generation reminds us that many complications and complexities accompany the process; and that, despite its profound and rising importance, electricity still supplies only a relatively small share of final global energy consumption, just 18 percent.

Before you flip a switch

Smil writes about the role of fossil fuels in creating electricity:

In 1900, less than 2 percent of the world's fossil fuel production was used to generate electricity; by 1950 that share was still less than 10 percent; it now stands at about 25 percent.

10 percent of electricity is created by nuclear fission, 16 percent of electricity is created by hydro power, 7 percent of electricity is created by wind and solar, and a whopping 67 percent of electricity is created by fossils fuels. To be clear: 25 percent of all fossil fuels produced go to creating electricity, and 67 percent of electricity created comes from fossil fuels.

Decarbonization: pace and scale

Reducing net CO2 emissions to zero by 2050 will require large-scale removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. The technology for doing this has not yet been invented. Smil:

Given the fact that annual CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion surpassed 37 billion tons in 2019, the net-zero goal by 2050 will call for an energy transition unprecedented in both pace and scale.

Smil continues:

Decarbonization of electricity generation can make the fastest progress, because installation costs per unit of solar or wind capacity can now compete with the least expensive fossil-fueled choices, and some countries have already transformed their generation to a considerable degree. Among large economies, Germany is the most notable example: since the year 2000, it has boosted its wind and solar capacity 10-fold and raised the share of renewables (wind, solar, and hydro) from 11 percent to 40 percent of all generation.

Smil adds that the problem of intermittancy of wind energy and solar energy could be solved if we used my nuclear energy or if we developed a way store large amounts of electricity. Nuclear energy is very clean and safe, but countries including Germany have way overreacted to the very infrequent problems with nuclear energy.

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