Although the price of a barrel of oil has fallen from a recent record-high, economic turmoil and continued concerns about global climate change have brought new attention to the world’s dependence on oil and whether there will be enough of it to meet future energy demands. Oil is essential to modern life, from transportation to food production and storage, to electricity generation, medicines and chemicals. Nearly every aspect of the global economy relies on affordable oil.
Tim Parsons, director of Public Affairs, discussed the “peak oil” theory, or the point at which the maximum production rate for the world’s oil is reached, with Brian Schwartz, MD, professor in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences and co-director of the School’s Program on Global Sustainability and Health. Once the peak is passed, oil production is expected to decline continuously. Schwartz explains how future demand for energy could impact on our society and our health.
Question: What is peak oil?
Answer: Peak oil defines the point in time at which the world has reached the maximum production rate of petroleum. This has been called “Hubbert’s peak” after the Shell Oil geologist, M. King Hubbert, who predicted in 1956 that the United States, then the largest producer of oil in history, would pass its own peak of oil production in 1970. He was scoffed at and widely doubted at that time. However, in 1970, 14 years after Hubbert’s prediction, the U.S. did pass peak production. We peaked at around 9 million barrels per day in 1970 and now, almost 40 years later, we are at approximately half that rate, despite many more wells, more drilling, the addition of Alaskan, Gulf of Mexico, and other deep water oil, and the implementation of new technologies.
Question: When do experts think global oil production will peak?
Answer: Hubbert, using the same rigorous methods he used to predict the U.S. peak, predicted in 1968 that the world would pass peak production in the early 21st century, soon after the year 2000. The world now produces approximately 85 million barrels of oil per day, and this rate has been flat since 2005, despite increasing energy demand growth of 2 to 4 percent per year. This three year plateau is consistent with a peaking of production. Thus, many oil geologists and petroleum industry experts believe we are passing peak now and that we will never be able to produce more oil than 85 million barrels per day. When the peak is passed is only clear in retrospect and may take a few years past peak to be sure. Hubbert explained the bell-shaped curve of oil production increases and declines; what this means is that after peak is passed, despite all efforts, production will start to decline by 3 to 5 percent per year, and this will continue forever. The notion of oil production peaking is not at all controversial among industry experts; the only uncertainty is when, but most think the world will pass peak production sometime between now and 2015.
Question: If this is truly a problem, why did oil drop from its peak of $147 per barrel in July 2008 to less than $50 per barrel by the end of 2008?
Answer: The economic crisis caused tremendous destruction of demand for oil. There was no miraculous increase in production or solution to the geologic reality of Hubbert’s peak. It was simply that the economic crisis has caused such a large decrease in demand for oil. Once the economy recovers, oil prices will undoubtedly rise significantly again.
Question: There are untapped supplies of oil in Alaska and off shore. Could these supplies make up any short fall?
Answer: The world is producing 85 million barrels of oil per day. When peak production is passed, this will decline by at least 2 to 4 million barrels of oil per day, on average, every year thereafter, and data from fields that have already passed peak indicate that production declines may be even more rapid than that. While there are other oil resources in the world, none are expected to be able to replace this declining production. For example, if we were to exploit it, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is expected to provide only a little over 1 million barrels per day starting in about 10 years. By that time, if we are passing peak now, world oil production could be 10 to 15 million barrels less per day than it is now. Adding 1 million barrels per day will do little to solve the challenges that this will pose for us. Furthermore, it is thought that 95 percent or so of all the oil that there is to discover has been discovered. World discovery of oil, in terms of estimated reserves, peaked in the 1960s. We have been using 2 to 4 barrels of oil for every one discovered every year since approximately 1980.
Question: Higher oil prices will make it economical to produce oil from unconventional sources like oil sands and oil shale. Won’t that fill the gap?
Answer: Oil sands in Alberta, Canada and oil shale in the U.S. Rocky Mountains are unlikely to ever produce more than perhaps 5 million barrels of oil per day, so again, it would not be enough to replace the declines in petroleum production, which continue inexorably. The bigger problems with oil sands and oil shale are that they are very environmentally disruptive. Production requires huge quantities of water to get the fossil energy out of solid shale and sand. Massive quantities of energy are needed to mine the shale and sand, and they are more carbon intensive than conventional oil, which means that more carbon dioxide is released for each unit of energy derived compared to oil. Deriving oil from these sources is not an ecologically sane solution and it would accelerate the rate of climate change.
Question: What is net energy and why is it important?
Answer: An important point is that oil sands and oil shale offer very little in terms of net energy compared to oil, which is embodied in the concept of EROEI—energy returned on energy invested. For example, the relatively easy-to-obtain oil of 50 years ago provided 100 units of energy returned for each unit of energy invested to get it out of the ground, or an EROEI of 100. Today, Middle East oil has an EROEI of around 30. Oil sand has an estimated EROEI of 3 and oil shale an EROEI of 1.5. The lower net energy means that even if we use oil sand and shale to replace oil we would have much less energy available in the world. In terms of net energy, we would need to replace one barrel of current Middle East oil with 10 barrels of liquid fossil fuels from oil sands to derive the same net energy. To replace an annual decline of 2 million barrels of oil per day, which is a reasonable estimate, we would need 20 million barrels of oil from oil sands each day to derive the same net energy. That is not ever expected to be achievable, even among advocates for oil sands production.
Question: Can’t other energy sources be used to replace the decline from oil?
Answer: The energy obtained from the oil we use is staggering. The world uses approximately 31 billion barrels of oil per year, with each barrel containing the equivalent of approximately 1.7 megawatt hours [MWh] of energy in terms of electricity. To replace just one year’s worth of energy from oil with other energy sources would require that we build thousands of coal-fired power plants, thousands of nuclear power plants, millions of rooftop solar photovoltaic systems, or millions of wind turbines.
Coal, nuclear, wind and solar energy can each be used to produce electricity. The electricity from these sources could solve some problems, but will not allow airplanes to fly for example, nor can our existing automobile fleet run on electricity. The key challenge is about the scale and the pace at which we can achieve the needed change. The fact is that there are no alternatives that can easily replace the energy from oil, which will soon be declining in supply. However, we must try. We should invest in rapid expansion of renewable energy sources that do not emit carbon dioxide or contribute to climate change, such as solar thermal electricity, solar photovoltaic cells, wind, geothermal and possibly ocean waves. We must also avoid making mistakes. For example, the rapid increase in production of corn-based ethanol is very unfortunate energy policy, because it is bad for climate change and for food prices.
Question: What will be the impact of peak oil on our economy and our daily lives?
Answer: Petroleum and other fossil fuels are essential to all aspects of our daily lives. It is a very unique source of energy that cannot be replaced. Oil does work for us. It moves us around in automobiles and planes and it powers heavy machinery. The transportation sector cannot currently function without it. Oil is heavily used in food production and distribution including everything from fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation to agricultural machinery, transportation and refrigeration.
Oil is the lifeblood of all economies around the world. It is the essential feedstock for chemicals and many consumer products, including pharmaceuticals, plastics, computers, paints and coatings, asphalt, synthetic fabrics, glues, lubricants, solvents—virtually all materials of modern economies. As oil becomes less available, it will become more expensive, which in turn will make the cost of all oil-based products and activities more expensive. The world has always experienced recession when oil prices have temporarily spiked, such as during the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s. The problem now is that this will not be a temporary problem; declining oil production will continue forever. It is expected that after passing peak economies and sociopolitical systems will be dramatically affected.
Question: How will peak oil affect where we live and the types of houses we live in?
Answer: Since World War II many countries, especially the U.S., have invested in large tracts of low density, non-compact, single use developments, which are highly reliant on the automobile and often lack public transit options. This type of housing and transportation system is totally reliant on cheap and plentiful oil. Our suburban way of life will have to change after peak oil, and the value of housing will be dramatically reflected in this new reality. We will have to build higher density, compact, mixed use, and walkable neighborhoods with access to public transit systems. Some current suburban housing will become unusable, much less valuable, or redundant. But let me emphasize that these new neighborhoods will also have many advantages: more social interactions among people, outstanding public spaces, more neighborliness, better physical activity options, and the ability to walk, to shop, work, eat and recreate.
Question: How will peak oil affect nutrition?
Answer: The variety and quantity of food available will decline in many settings, for two reasons. First, there is the problem of transport. If you walk through the supermarket, you can find fruit juice from South Africa, seafood from China and rice from Thailand. As the price of oil rises, it will become too expensive to transport many kinds of food around the world. Second, there is the problem of the dependence of modern food production on the availability of cheap fossil fuels. These fossil fuels are the energy for farm equipment, inputs for production of fertilizers and pesticides, and energy for irrigation and refrigeration. Now, the average foodstuff in the U.S. requires approximately 10 units of fossil fuel energy input for each unit of food energy derived from the food, and this ratio is almost 100 to 1 for many meats. As available energy inputs decline, available food calories will likely decline too, as many kinds of food will become too expensive to produce and too expensive for consumers.
Question: Why will peak oil affect health services?
Answer: As economies are affected, GDP will decline and this will influence what societies can spend on health care, social benefits programs, unemployment programs, infrastructure and other government programs. The current models of health care provision are highly dependent on cheap fossil fuels. Large energy-inefficient health care facilities are staffed by health care workers living in distant suburbs who require large quantities of paper, plastic and electronics to do their work. Systems for provision of care will need to be completely redesigned to adapt to the new reality of more expensive energy. The emergency medical transport system will also have to rethink its business. The fact is that hospitals and the emergency medical transport system are very energy intensive; as energy prices rise, past models of practice and business will change.
Question: The problems posed by peak oil and climate change appear to intertwine. What will less oil in the future mean for climate change?
Answer: Climate change and peak oil are interlinked. It should be emphasized that peak oil is NOT a solution for climate change. There are plenty of fossil fuels still in the ground and if we exploited them all we would emit far more carbon than the Earth’s atmosphere could handle without dramatic changes in climate. Rather, peak oil will make solving climate change much more difficult, because all the solutions to climate change require that we build new infrastructures, new power plants, new solar technologies, new transportation systems, and new buildings that will all be more difficult and more expensive to accomplish after we pass peak. Furthermore, if we tried to address the energy challenges of peak oil by using more coal, oil sands, or oil shale, this could rapidly accelerate climate change. It is critical that we address our coming energy challenges in a way that does not make climate change worse. However, our politicians and policy makers have not begun thinking rigorously about climate change and peak oil as a set of problems that must be addressed together and not independently of one another.
Question: What should governments and communities be doing to prepare for peak oil?
Answer: To maintain industrial society and other aspects of our current way of living, energy must be rapidly scalable to capacity, be transportable and storable, and have a high EROEI (energy return on energy invested). It must be energy–dense and renewable, because if it is not, it only postpones the problem, and it must be ecologically sane and not exacerbate climate change. However, there are probably no alternatives to oil that meet all of these criteria. If we had started planning for peak oil 30 years ago—and we could have because it was predicted even before that—with a transition to other energies, public transit, energy-efficient building, and a different built environment than our current sprawling one, we could have avoided much of the likely disruption that is coming. However, we did not do this. So, once we pass peak and begin removing huge quantities of energy inputs to our current ways of living, we will notice it profoundly.
It is thought that nothing that governments do now can entirely prevent some of the challenges that are coming, because we cannot scale up any new energy regime rapidly enough. Experts on peak oil have argued that communities must start planning for this by enhancing their community resilience, by re-localizing and provisioning food locally, for example. The impacts are wide-ranging and the work that needs to be done is extensive. More can be read about this at http://postcarboncities.net and other sources. Many U.S. cities have begun this planning. For example, Portland, Oregon’s peak oil planning describes the different way of life that is coming and what must be done.
Question: Is there anything individuals can do?
Answer: I believe the U.S. will soon start to seriously address the issues of peak oil and climate change. In the meantime, individuals can begin to learn about energy inputs into their lives and how to reduce them. The more we can learn to rely on less energy, the better off we will be, because energy will soon be much more expensive and then we will have no choice.
Question: What is the Bloomberg School’s Program on Global Sustainability and Health?
Answer: I co-direct the Program on Global Sustainability and Health with Dr. Cindy Parker. The Program is involved in research, education, professional practice and policy change on the converging challenges of climate change, peak oil, our built environment reliant on cheap and plentiful oil, land use, population challenges, and food production and distribution that is very energy intensive. We are involved in the School’s MPH Concentration in Global Environmental Sustainability and Health, along with Dr. Peter Winch and the Department of Environmental Health Science’s MHS Track in Global Environmental Sustainability. There are many knowledge gaps about how climate change and peak oil may affect public health, and we are trying to raise awareness about these issues and develop research programs to help us see the way forward.
