Michael Daw has written a blog post that criticises my arguments concerning the energetic implausibility of manufactured food (or ‘precision fermentation’ to use the biotech industry’s preferred term). I don’t think his arguments stack up, as I’ll explain below, but this seems like a good opportunity to run through the relevant issues, which is the aim of this post. It will be followed by a few more posts on various issues relating to my book Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future and some of the criticisms of it, before I turn to other issues.
One thing I must do at the outset is thank Michael for the polite and good-natured tone of his post, which alas I’ve found all too rare in this debate. If only other major contributors identified points of intellectual difference with the same measured language that Michael uses.
Michael addresses (1) my analysis of the energy costs of protein production by hydrogen-oxidising bacteria in Saying NO…, and also discusses (2) the production of a dairy substitute whey protein from a genetically modified fungus by a company called Perfect Day, putting these techniques (3) into the wider context of the case for veganism as a way to safeguard nature.
I’ll follow that three-part structure in my response. But some of the details of my case in relation to point (1) may be too nerdy for the casual reader, so I’ve put these in an appendix at the end. I’ll try to cut to the chase in the main body of the post.
1. Hydrogen-oxidising bacteria
How much energy does it take to manufacture edible protein with hydrogen-oxidising bacteria? George Monbiot says 16.7 kWh of electricity per kilo of bacterial protein, but this is demonstrably wrong (see Appendix). A paper by Natasha Järviö et al says 18 kWh/kg bacterial biomass, which translates to 27 kWh/kg bacterial protein (it’s important to note the difference between biomass and protein – see Appendix). The figure I suggest in Saying NO… is at least 65 kWh/kg bacterial protein, which I calculated from a paper by Dorian Leger et al (Dorian Leger confirmed in a personal communication that my derivation was a reasonable low-end figure).
It’s worth adding that an application for EU regulatory authorisation for a bacterial protein product from Solar Foods – a pioneering industry player in this area – appears to suggest that the digestibility of their bacterial protein powder is much less than agricultural-origin alternatives like soy powder. On the face of it, that suggests my 65 kWh/kg protein figure might effectively be a considerable underestimate in relative terms.
Michael thinks I shouldn’t dismiss the Järviö figure, which he says is an actual measurement of small-scale production and not an assumption. But the provenance of this figure is unclear. Järviö et al say that “this study assumed an electricity requirement of 18 kWh per 1 kg product produced” (emphasis added) and states that data were gathered from current pilot-scale production performed by Solar Foods, as well as “expert interviews, and the literature”, but it doesn’t clearly specify the exact derivation of the 18 kWh figure and what’s included and excluded in it (see Appendix).
By contrast, the Leger et al study that I used is much clearer about the sources of its data, the parameters of its analysis and the mathematical basis of its energy derivation. It still omits some significant energy costs, but it was the clearest, most rigorous and most comprehensive study I could find, and that’s why I chose it.
Here, I think I have to bounce Michael’s query back to him. If my figure is wrong, I think that implies the Leger study is wrong, and my question to Michael would be where exactly has it erred? Until somebody can explain satisfactorily to me why the Järviö figure is correct and the Leger data are incorrect, I see no reason to recant my 65 kWh/kg derivation. The Järviö analysis addressed a wider set of questions than the Leger analysis and I think it probably just didn’t probe the energy input aspects as thoroughly as Leger, because it was doing a lot of other things. Fair enough, but energy input is important. In the Appendix, I mention other studies that suggest energy costs in a similar ballpark to mine. On balance, the Järviö figure looks like it’s too low.
Michael says he finds it odd that I draw my conclusions from two papers that seem broadly sympathetic to precision fermentation. I’d argue on the contrary that this is a strength of my analysis and methodologically appropriate. Even with the best will in the world it’s easy to introduce biases into an analysis that slant it toward one’s preferred approach, so using research that favours a different approach is a good defence against cherry-picking. I’ve drawn on studies that indeed are broadly sympathetic to precision fermentation, and yet they still show the high energy costs involved.
Stepping back from the details of this or that figure, it’s worth just considering what’s involved in bacterial protein manufacture. At a time when we desperately need to decarbonise the global energy system, and are largely failing to do so, manufactured food proponents are suggesting that we stop using a free, zero-carbon source of energy (the sun) to provide our dietary protein, and use costly generated electricity instead. Even Monbiot’s incorrectly low figure implies that we’d need to use the world’s entire current solar energy consumption more than twice over to produce sufficient protein globally, when it’s sorely needed for other things. I believe this technology is a clear non-starter as a mass food source.
As an aside, I should mention that promoters of bacterial food often stress its superiority to farmed plants on the grounds that its underlying chemical pathway for carbon fixation is more efficient than the photosynthetic pathway of plants. There are various problems with this line of argument. Not the least of them is the fatal muddling of efficiency and cost, given that sunlight costs nothing – which is not the case with generated electricity. I plan to look at this in more detail in my next post.
Anyway, getting back to my main theme, Michael wisely says that he doesn’t think manufacturing processes should be used to produce all the world’s protein: “I for one like my lentils, beans, nuts, and soya”. I’m with him there. My critique isn’t really directed at the odd bit of microbial protein manufacture here and there (though see section 3 below). It’s directed at people who profess manufactured food as a disruptive Counter-Agricultural Revolution that’s going to spell the end of most agriculture and challenge the place of plants in the human diet. Quite simply, it won’t. The cheerleading for it strikes me as just another bit of ecomodernist hopium which allows us to imagine we can lower our ecological impact sufficiently to avoid earth systems breakdown without fundamentally changing the present high-energy, high-capital, growth-oriented global economy and our place within it. I don’t think that’s an option, and we need to get real.
Non-dairy whey protein
The process used by Perfect Day to produce non-dairy whey protein is different to the bacterial one just described. In this case, sugars derived from crops like maize or beet are used (along with other inputs like ammonia) to nourish a fungus that’s been genetically modified to excrete the whey protein. This protein constitutes only 22% of the biomass produced in the process, the remaining 78% being unsuitable as a human food source, albeit with other potential uses.
I don’t have a problem with the use of these agricultural feedstocks as such (I mean, I do have a problem with the industrial production of commodity crops like maize, but I’ll save that for another time). But inasmuch as the case for manufactured food rests on a land-sparing argument about eliminating the agricultural footprint, the non-dairy whey technique looks weaker than the hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria approach, because it’s agriculturally based.
Drawing on a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of their process commissioned by Perfect Day, Michael states that the process consumes 13 kWh of electricity to produce a kilo of protein, and notes how favourably this compares with my figure of 65 kWh/kg for hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria. But this isn’t comparing like with like, for various reasons. For one thing, there are other energetic inputs besides electricity, for example in producing the ammonia. The LCA Michael links reports a primary energy use of 56.3 MJ/kg protein, which converts to 15.6 kWh/kg. Granted, this isn’t much higher than the electricity figure, but it only refers to the non-renewable energy used in the process (from which it excludes nuclear energy, which is surprising since nuclear isn’t conventionally counted as ‘renewable’).
Further, this figure is based on allocating the energy between the whey and the biomass byproduct in their 22/78 mass proportions. If you allocate it wholly to the whey – as you probably should, since getting this product is the whole point of the process – the non-renewable energy input as defined by Perfect Day’s LCA comes to around 72 kWh/kg. That’s a lot of precious primary energy to throw at substituting for milk. And, as with almost all the studies in this field, this excludes the considerable energy costs of building, maintaining, decommissioning and rebuilding the industrial and electricity generating plant needed in the process.
I haven’t looked at this genetically engineered fungus to whey protein technique in as much detail as I have the hydrogen-oxidising bacteria to protein powder one, but if my analysis is correct I think there are grounds to be equally or more sceptical about its energetic implications. As I said above, the LCA that Michael links was commissioned by Perfect Day, and arguably this shows in the way it defined its terms – exactly the problem I mentioned of relying on studies supportive of one’s favoured approach.
There has in fact been a more recent LCA which is explicitly critical of LCAs done by Perfect Day on their technique, and finds claims about the environmental benefits of the technique made by Tony Seba, who Michael enthuses about in his post, to be “extremely unlikely”. This study found that the environmental footprint of the Perfect Day technique may be no better than and possibly even worse than animal-based dairy systems:
For many dairy products such as fluid milk, yoghurts and cheeses, it is reasonable to use raw milk as a raw material instead of extracted milk proteins. For these products and in countries with developed dairy chains, dairy proteins within the raw milk are likely to create a smaller footprint than the use of rBLG would create.
(rBLG refers to the recombinant whey protein excreted by the genetically modified fungus).
The lower energy costs of animal-based dairy appear to be corroborated in a master’s thesis co-supervised by the aforementioned Natasha Järviö, which calculated that the total energy cost of protein from fresh milk is 37 kWh/kg as compared to 220 KWh/kg from the genetically-modified fungal approach, and 90 kWh/kg for hydrogen-oxidising bacteria (when the electricity comes from the average Finnish grid). That result of 90 kWh/kg for bacterial protein powder is notably higher than the 65 kWh/kg minimum which I derived.
I should probably mention that the LCA critiquing the Perfect Day finding had some co-authors associated with the dairy industry. I can’t comment on the implications, although that LCA was at least published in a peer-reviewed journal, unlike the Perfect Day one Michael linked. But there does seem to be an emerging agreement in the literature that real dairy products require less total energy than analogous non-animal manufactured products. With the current state of knowledge in this area, I’d suggest it’s probably unwise to assume that dairy-type food produced with cellular biotech approaches necessarily has a lower total environmental impact than food from dairy animals.
Veganism and the defence of nature
Turning now to bigger picture stuff, I don’t – just in case there’s any doubt – have a problem with veganism. People opt for veganism for many reasons, but inasmuch as reducing the human impact on nature is one of them, there are some wider contexts I think it’s good to be aware of that can help clarify personal dietary and wider food system choices.
Michael references the inefficiency of meat and dairy production, and it’s certainly true that you can meet most human nutritional needs from a smaller land footprint and with low primary energy costs if you eat an exclusively plant-based diet (for several reasons discussed in my book it doesn’t follow that the land thereby ‘saved’ will actually benefit nature, which is one of the problems with couching the issue in terms of individual consumption rather than structural politics, but that’s another issue).
But the lesson from the energetics of manufactured food outlined above is that if you move away from eating wholefood plants and vegetables towards manufactured fungal or bacterial products, this efficiency argument weakens in terms of energy costs – possibly to the point of comparing unfavourably with animal-agriculture analogues. This parallels the efficiency arguments against animal agriculture. If instead of following the direct plant-to-human-stomach route you introduce intermediary processes for which plants are at most feedstocks, it’s hard to avoid increasing the costs in terms of energy and/or land footprint – and this is true whether the intermediary bioreactor is a cow’s stomach or a stainless steel fermenting vessel in a factory. Either way, you risk losing the efficiencies of the direct plant-to-human-stomach route. So if you’re opting for manufactured protein on environmental impact grounds, it’s worth being aware that it may not be low impact just because it’s livestock-free.
The flipside of this argument is that when livestock are used to cycle nutrients and deliver ‘ecological services’, as in most traditional mixed agricultures, and don’t compete with humans for their food sources, this doesn’t detract from system efficiency, but adds to it – an argument I outline in more detail in my book. The fact is that not much of the animal-based food in modern supply chains derives from such efficiency-augmenting mixed agricultures, at least in rich countries like the UK, so this argument in itself isn’t currently a strong one against veganism.
Still, those modern supply chains have emerged as a result of and largely depend on cheap fossil energy. In that sense, I disagree with Michael when he says “Changing our diets to eat less meat and dairy is the most impactful action anyone can take to tackle our most pressing environmental crises”. The most impactful action we can take collectively is cutting our use of abundant cheap energy in general, and fossil fuels in particular. If we did that, it would inevitably and drastically cut livestock impacts, because we’d have to meet needs for food, fibre, energy and fertility from local bioregions, and any livestock component could only serve that larger need. That’s basically the argument that I outline in my book – not high-energy farm-free food, but low-energy local mixed-farming food.
The issue is no longer our individual consumption choices within an existing global commodity food system, if it ever was. Like it or not, that system is unravelling, and I think the result is going to be the widespread adoption of low-energy local food systems. Those systems will be many and varied, but in general they’ll produce a lot less meat and dairy than people in the rich countries are accustomed to eating. They will not, however, involve no meat and dairy, except possibly in the most densely populated areas. I seriously doubt many of these systems will involve much in the way of high-energy biotech manufacturing of bacterial or fungal protein. That kind of energy and material profligacy will scarcely be affordable in the world to come.
And that, in a nutshell, is why Michael’s blog post hasn’t convinced me that my arguments in Saying NO… are wrong.
Current reading
I mentioned in my last post that I’d start listing my current reading. I’ve got into the habit of reading multiple books simultaneously, some of which take me months to finish. So I think I’m just going to mention any new books that I’ve started reading since my previous post – which will probably give a misleading impression of my actual reading rate. Another biased methodology!
New reading:
Peter Heather Empires and Barbarians
Naomi Klein Doppelganger
Régine Pernoud Those Terrible Middle Ages
A better gender balance, but still no fiction!
Appendix
If you read around the literature on manufacturing edible protein from hydrogen-oxidising bacteria, you’ll come across various figures for the energy cost of the process. Here are a few:
- 9.86 and 10.96 kWh of electrical energy input per kilo of bacterial biomass reported by Sillman et al in two papers here and here
- 16.7 kWh/kg bacterial protein reported by George Monbiot in his book Regenesis (p.190)
- 18 kWh/kg bacterial biomass reported by Järviö et al
- 17.8 kWh/kg bacterial protein as the lowest theoretically achievable energy input required by the chemical reactions involved in producing the protein reported by Wise et al
- 65.3 kWh/kg bacterial protein reported by me in my Saying NO… book, calculated from a paper by Leger et al on the basis of a methodology I explain here
I’ll now try to make sense of these figures, and specifically why they differ.
One thing to note: some of these figures specify total bacterial biomass, while others specify only the protein component, which is typically 60-65% of the biomass.
Monbiot (eventually) revealed that his 16.7 figure was derived from Sillman et al’s 9.86 figure (9.86 rounded up to 10 and then divided by the 60% protein component = 16.7). Note that this 9.86 kWh figure refers only to the electrical energy input into the bioreactor and not to other electrical and other energy costs that Sillman et al report. It’s demonstrably not the total energy cost of the process and isn’t even theoretically possible in view of the 17.8 kWh minimum established by Wise et al. The Wise study suggests that this minimum figure could only be achieved by genetically modified bacteria (not the strain used by Solar Foods) and only then momentarily during the production process – not as the full energy cost of the manufactured protein, which will inevitably be higher.
Even Sillman et al’s 10.96 kWh/kg figure appears not to be a real-world one. They describe their analysis as a “quantitative literature review”. In the words of Järviö et al, Sillman’s figure was “based on theoretical assumption using currently available but limited literature values”.
Now, Michael argues that I should have used the figure from Järviö et al (they report 18 kWh/kg bacterial biomass, so at 65% protein content that would be 27.7 kWh/kg protein). The trouble is, the study is vague about which energy costs (beyond electricity) it considers for the various processes involved. Michael says the paper makes it clear that the 18 kWh/kg is an actual measurement and not an assumption. What the paper actually says is this:
Whereas this study assumed an electricity requirement of 18 kWh per 1 kg product produced, Sillman et al. (2020) estimated 10.96 kWh per 1 kg product produced. This difference could mostly be explained by the fact that the estimate of Sillman et al. (2020) was based on literature values whereas this study was based on empirical data.
So the Järviö study ‘assumes’ a requirement of 18 kWh per 1 kg of biomass (or 28 kWh per 1 kg of protein), which is ‘based’ on empirical data, with some of the data apparently from the pilot-scale production of Solar Foods. The paper briefly mentions the assumed electricity requirement while leaving out other energy requirements. The supplemental information document gives some details which add up to 17.83 kWh of electricity for the fermentation step, before the separation and drying steps, without including all the energy required for the ammonia, carbon dioxide, steam, and mineral inputs. The 18 kWh figure seems to leave out or underestimate some energy costs which the Leger et al. study includes and substantiates. The Leger study devoted much more detailed consideration to the total energy costs.
Another study that looked at hydrogen-oxidising bacteria as human food shows an energy requirement of 37.8 kWh/kg for bacterial biomass with 65% protein content, equivalent to 58 kWh/kg of protein, which is pretty close to the 65 kWh/kg I derived from the Leger et al. study.
In fairness, the Järviö study has a wider focus than the energy input into the process and it seems to me that the authors didn’t probe the issue all that thoroughly. By contrast the Leger et al study I used does clearly specify the energy inputs it considers (it omits some things which could be pretty important, such as the energy costs of manufacturing, installing, maintaining, decommissioning and replacing the PV generation and other facilities). I concluded that the Leger paper was more reliable in relation to energy costs than the Järviö one. Unlike the latter, it provided a clear mathematical rationale for its energy derivation. So for my purposes, it was unquestionably the stronger paper to use.
The thesis mentioned earlier took a closer look at the Järviö study and calculated that the resulting total energy cost for hydrogen-oxygenating bacterial protein is at least 55.5 kWh/kg protein, when using electricity from renewable sources only. When using the average Finnish electricity grid, which has some additional energy requirements due to generation losses from non-renewable sources, the data from the Järviö study resulted in a total energy requirement of 108 kWh/kg of protein.
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Please tell me I’m wrong and too cynical.
You are not wrong, and you are not cynical enough. It’s not just the rich who are driving industrial civilization off a cliff and taking the biosphere with it. Just about everyone wants a better (more affluent) life for themselves and their children, not just the rich. I suspect this has always been true. Even our paleo-ancestors traipsed all over the earth looking for better circumstances and a better life. I wouldn’t expect much to change now.
You’re assuming things will break down to justify your outcome. It’s circular reasoning. Hey – Trump could get reelected or the war in Ukraine could escalate and before you know it 400 million people die in a nuclear war, with 5 BILLION starving in the dark of a nuclear winter in the following years.
OR NOT! We don’t know that this is inevitable – and at the moment renewables are on an exponential S curve until the whole human race has all the energy it needs. It’s unstoppable – except for the scenario above.
Aww, it’s so cute when you try! But you have still failed to point out why this is ANY different to the thousands of prior technology and product S-curves in history.
To understand where the oil sector is going, we need to look at the world’s best data on EV sales – the International Energy Agency. Look at the growth rate! 2020: 5% 2021: 9% 2022: 14% https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2023/executive-summary This trend will offset oil demand, giving mining and industry more fuel availability while they start their own electrification processes.
Solid reason they can’t continue to grow and replace oil cars? Minerals running out? Rare earth’s? Go on – it will be hilarious – say rare earths!
Punchline? The IEA says there will be an oil GLUT of 3.8 mb/d by 2028!
https://www.iea.org/news/growth-in-global-oil-demand-is-set-to-slow-significantly-by-2028
BIG OIL KNOWS THIS IS COMING AND ARE ALREADY PREPARING!
As demand for the petroleum and diesel declines, it’s not like each refinery geared to these exact production ratios will be refitted. Rather, as the market for gasoline and diesel shrinks, so will big oil. Big players will close their oldest refineries. Small players will go bankrupt. Everyone is starting to plan a sudden scramble to “Nimble” refineries that are more about jet fuel and petrochemicals than gasoline and diesel.
The RMI has a report on how refineries can adapt.
https://rmi.org/how-to-slash-refinery-emissions-quickly-washington-state/
New refineries are coming.
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/chemicals/our-insights/from-crude-oil-to-chemicals-how-refineries-can-adapt-to-shifting-demand
The IEA, EIA and oil producers are all talking about it.
https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2498500-us-is-at-peak-gasoline-demand-phillips-66
EV’s are replacing oil. There’s no solid reason they cannot. Oil is panicking. I say good! It gives us time to have the longer cultural change necessary to get everyone loving Ecocities and New Urbanism.
It looks like you are projecting future availability of nuclear energy will be somewhere around 0%. Is that right? If so, is that projection based on anything more substantial than an assumption?
Yes.
Nuclear energy does electricity, and maybe local heat. It doesn’t do mining, transport, or feedstock to replace bitumen. So without fossil energy/feedstock, there is no nuclear.
Methinks the assumption/belief is on your part.
REPLACING A BARREL OF OIL
A barrel of oil is roughly 70% gasoline and diesel, 12% petrochemicals and cooking gases, 6% Jet Fuel, 5% Shipping heavy fuel, 4% asphalt, and 3% light fuels for domestic heating. Some pretend oil suffers from the “Butcher’s Dilemma” and that once you kill the cow, you must process the whole cow and sell the whole cow or you’re making a loss. They think oil refineries work the same way and we’ll have to continue to mine ALL the oil to get the niche products. This is just wrong!
FIRST – we replace the 70% with EV’s and cooking gas with electric stoves. BOOM! Now we’re down to under a third of the oil! What about the rest?
PETRO-CHEMICALS & COOKING GASES 12% – we replacing cooking gases with electric cooking. The petrochemical industry will be a competition between big oil’s new refineries that focus on that (see below) and new agri-waste and seaweed alternatives to petrochemical feedstocks.
JET FUEL 6% = more expensive E-fuels (so there might be less flying – not the end of the world!),
SHIPPING 5% = except 40% of ships move fossil fuels which will end – so that’s down to 2% – and they could be replaced by putting 3 “Last Energy” micro-nukes in. This will make them a third faster, reducing the need for ships by a third again – so now we’re talking 1.333% of heavy oil ships now powered by nukes. (OR not! They could be e-fuel – depending on economics.)
ASPHALT 4% = Concrete which is 30-40% more expensive, lasts 2 to 4 times as long and is 100% recyclable. Also – New Urbanism and Ecocity movements can house us on 10% the land – so we’ll use less. And they are playing with turning harder to recycle plastics into “Fossilised” building materials https://youtu.be/_DOssohdBi0 . “Biobitumen” can come from “broken-down organic parts of household waste, such as food waste, plastic, paper and textiles, that can form a liquid with similar properties to the bio-bitumen made now.” https://teccontainersolutions.com/2023/05/what-is-bio-bitumen/ Some of our tens of BILLIONS of tons of annual agriwaste could also possibly feed this product.
LAST – HEATING? Heat pumps and electric arc furnaces for smelting and Rondo Heat bricks for industrial heating – boosted only the last few percent by hydrogen. Done!
BIG OIL KNOWS THIS IS COMING AND ARE ALREADY PREPARING!
As demand for the big 70% of petroleum and diesel declines, it’s not like each refinery geared to these exact production ratios will be refitted. Rather, as the market for gasoline and diesel shrinks, so will big oil. Big players will close their oldest refineries. Small players will go bankrupt. Everyone is starting to plan a sudden scramble to “Nimble” refineries that are more about jet fuel and petrochemicals than gasoline and diesel.
The RMI has a report on how refineries can adapt.
https://rmi.org/how-to-slash-refinery-emissions-quickly-washington-state/
New refineries coming.
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/chemicals/our-insights/from-crude-oil-to-chemicals-how-refineries-can-adapt-to-shifting-demand
The IEA, EIA and oil producers are all talking about it.
https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2498500-us-is-at-peak-gasoline-demand-phillips-66
Bitumen. You mean that stuff that is so abundant we use it to make road surfacing materials, and roofing compounds. The only uses of bitumen in connection to nuclear power that I know of were that it was the material they covered the reactor building roofs with at Chernobyl–and which caught on fire during the Unit 4 disaster. And it was briefly considered for radionuclide encapsulation before the idea was abandoned, when it turned out to be a poor material for that job. I have never heard how nuclear cannot exist without bitumen. But anyway, the remaining supply of bitumen is huge, so I’m not seeing the problem here. Also, electric uranium mining is already happening, and the Chinese recently demonstrated how a trickle of electricity can be used to extract uranium from seawater.
Think 🙂
Have you ever heard of a reactor without road access, or which was built/maintained ex fossil-energy support?
No, you haven’t. No more than you’ve heard of a city of over 1 million, running without fossil energy. Never been done. Nor have the attempts to build solar using solar, fared very well. The EROEI is just too low.
When are all the roads vanishing Pokiwi? Please tell us, give us a date.
Will you promise that the peak oil will never be late?
Not this time, not next time, not the time after time?
Or Nyer Nyer is something I’ll have to fit in this rhyme.
I mean – Pokiwi – can you try to be rational?
Have YOU ever heard of a reactor in the middle of ancient Egypt? Hang on – I think they had the Nile which acted like a super-highway of the ancient world. I know – ROME! Oh – hang on – they had roads. Basically – I’m trying to point out that your pedantic little demand is utterly irrational. We have a great big complex civilisation out there – and we still have all the oil we need to build more solar farms and wind turbines and nuclear reactors. BUT it will gradually diminish as electrification comes in.
In fact – it might not be that gradual. I know it sucks having your worldview cave in – but read below. The IEA predicts an oil GLUT in a few years!
Incorrect. One of the co-founders of the EROEI concept shows it’s double that of your precious oil. You’d know that if you bothered to read outside your echo chambers. Consider that 20 years ago solar needed 3 times the silicon and yet delivered less sunlight over a shorter lifespan. Now they’re at 22% efficiency with a THIRD the silicon. Do the maths!
It also makes no ECONOMIC sense because we KNOW how much electricity they produce over their 30 year lifespans – and to pretend (like Doomers are want to) that they somehow incorporate SO MUCH MORE POWER into their construction would require the panels to cost 3 or 4 TIMES as much – especially in today’s post-Ukraine war energy prices!
Dr David Murphy now categorically puts solar at 10 and oil down at 4.6! That’s one of the FOUNDERS of the very concept of EROEI saying solar is now higher than oil. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513003856
But what you are demanding happen RIGHT NOW as some sort of instant evidence is unreasonable and defies the history of previous energy transitions.
FACT CHECK: THE ENERGY TRANSITION ISN’T EVEN REPLACING FOSSIL FUELS!
This is a skewed way of seeing the world I call the “Selective Static Snapshot fallacy”. For example, a doomer might point out that as of 2023 only 1% of all cars in America are electric. Rather than video around at the broad landscape of new car sales trends towards EV’s, take a close up shot of a rusty old oil truck, frame your shot like something from Mad Max – and then broadcast the “fact” that THIS is the norm! “Only 1% of existing cars right now are EV’s!” Ignore the immense economies of scale it took to get EV’s to the point where the middle class could even buy one. Ignore the scaling that will soon make them cheaper than oil cars to buy outright – let alone saving a lifetime of servicing an internal combustion engine and getting free fuel from solar panels on your roof! Make sure to frame your shot to ignore the approaching hoard of EV’s just on the horizon!
But zoom out a bit and guess what you see? Another exponential S-curve starting. EV’s were 7.2% of all new American car sales in 2022. They were 9% in 2023. https://www.utilitydive.com/news/electric-vehicles-EVs-new-car-sales-2023/700799/ Who knows how fast Biden’s IRA will accelerate this trend? For example, IRA has stimulated some crazy stuff. America’s battery factory capacity will go up 15 TIMES by 2030 – an equivalent value to run ALL America’s new cars each year (although these batteries will be spread across all sectors). https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/05/map-which-states-will-build-the-most-ev-batteries-in-2030.html
Right now only 1% of cars in America might be EV’s. But the S-curve is coming.
EV’s WILL CAUSE OIL GLUT by 2028!
To understand where the oil sector is going, we need to look at the world’s best data on EV sales – the International Energy Agency. Look at the growth rate! 2020: 5% 2021: 9% 2022: 14% https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2023/executive-summary This trend will offset oil demand, giving mining and industry more fuel availability while they start their own electrification processes.
The IEA says there will be an oil GLUT of 3.8 mb/d by 2028!
https://www.iea.org/news/growth-in-global-oil-demand-is-set-to-slow-significantly-by-2028
Hi Pokiwi,
what an interesting little homily – so full of ad hominems.
But this is not about me and your opinion about me, or my arguments at all! After all – I have a Social Sciences background. I’m nothing. What matters are the arguments and agencies and scientific authors I quote. I’m not justifying me – but disproving you. I’m not proffering subjective nightmares from my own unconscious, but verifiable facts from the real world of history, of existing example, and of scientific papers. Look at the abundance of data I quote – and the dearth of yours.
Yes – it takes energy to make energy. It’s a good thing Australia’s electricity grid is 32% renewable and shows how successful renewables are. https://www.energy.gov.au/energy-data/australian-energy-statistics/renewables
They are even starting to bring the price down!
https://reneweconomy.com.au/greening-grid-muscles-out-fossil-fuels-pushes-down-power-prices/
The relationship between Electrifying Everything and the Second Law is my point – not yours. Once we have Electrified industry with electric mining trucks that go twice as fast WHILE CHARGING as old diesel trucks https://youtu.be/6TxMeHRq1mk?t=213 we will not be FIGHTING that Second Law to mine with renewables. We will be in sync with it – finally doing the rational thing! We will not burn stuff like cavemen – throwing out 60% of the energy! https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-energy-efficiency Instead the big miners will use Rondo heat bricks to store industrial heat at 1500 degrees C – only losing 1% per day. They’ll store heat in those as the bricks are 10 times cheaper than batteries. For electricity they can easily use local sodium batteries and pumped hydro storage to manage their own energy supply. They WANT to divorce from the world’s high energy prices of the last few years. Local micro-PHES is quick to build. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-01/renewable-energy-fix-walpole-power-problems/100579700
They’ll be energy barons as well as mineral miners. As I keep saying – Australia’s mining giants have a plan to build 3 TIMES our electricity grid by 2050! PDF page 45: https://energytransitionsinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Pathways-to-Industrial-Decarbonisation-report-Updated-August-2023-Australian-Industry-ETI.pdf
To do that – they’re going to have to grow their renewables base exponentially and their electrification exponentially. That means as this broad Energy Transition adoption curve goes up, the broad oil gas and coal curve finally goes down. The IEA no less predicts the oil demand curve to peak and go down and there to be an OIL GLUT of nearly 4mbd by 2028. https://www.iea.org/news/growth-in-global-oil-demand-is-set-to-slow-significantly-by-2028
The oil GLUT will give miners far more time for their electification. The EROEI of renewables is fine as all the latest papers show. EG: Solar uses 1/3 the silicon it did back in Mackay’s day – and yet gives 22% efficiency and therefore more power over its lifetime.
Yes we live on a finite planet – but solar and wind are so abundant 0.1% of the land could supply all our energy needs. You’ll need to sing a new song for once and find a new argument against the energy transition soon – otherwise you just look like Dorothy saying “Finite Planet! Finite Planet! Finite Planet” as you tap your ruby slippers together 3 times!
Also – if you care about the biomass on this planet – why are you spreading old data against the Energy Transition? Surely doing so spreads anti-renewables memes – and can backfire giving the alt-right climate deniers like Tump’s MAGA army more evidence against bothering to clean up our energy and save life on this earth? That’s where I really can’t stand the likes of Simon Michaux. He loves the sound of his own voice SO MUCH he doesn’t care where he shares his anti-renewables lies – like Sky News Australian TV.
“One other thing to watch for, is commentators with the need to scream at length, and who insist that EVERYTHING will be one-way.” Um, dude – I’m using data and humour. You’re the one saying you’re old and therefore YOUR OPINION trumps physics – because you don’t bother to quote any to justify any of your fears about renewables.
“Self-justification, if an obvious driver of comment, means that comment should be viewed with extra skepticism.”
Except I’ve said I have a Social Sciences background and am nothing. I’ve said don’t look at me – I’m just a mirror reflecting what’s happening out there. Have you seen what’s out there? Have you clicked on ONE link to – um – maybe learning something about the world outside your own opinions?
CLAIM: IT WILL USE TOO MUCH ENERGY – TWICE THE SOLAR WE USE TODAY!
FACT: Solar is on a 4 year doubling curve and could be at 3 TW annual deployment by 2030.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/12/25/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-one-terawatt-of-solar-deployed-annually/ 3 TW a year – from solar alone!
Professor Andrew Blakers – recipient of the Queen Elizabeth prize for engineering for inveting the PERC solar cell now in 90% of all solar panels worldwide – predicts solar will be HALF the cost by 2030. He has also shown the world has 100 TIMES the off-river pumped hydro storage we could need when we correctly Overbuild the wind and solar across super-grids. He has also shown that despite weak COP agreements, the MARKET is going exponential on renewables and will replace fossil energy well before 2050. Short of a nuclear war – it’s now unstoppable. https://theconversation.com/theres-a-huge-surge-in-solar-production-under-way-and-australia-could-show-the-world-how-to-use-it-190241
Forget about your ‘shorter lines of supply’ argument – it’s a pipe dream. Even if the higher energy PF study you quoted is correct – raising energy concerns (of all things!) is like trying to hold back the tide with your toe!
MANY LCA STUDIES SHOW VAST DECREASES IN GHG – WHICH OF COURSE INCLUDES ENERGY METRICS
Have you debunked all these? See the table and the studies to the right. There are MANY studies into alternative meat products that are -80 or 90% less GHG than livestock – are you saying they’ve ALL faked their data around energy use?
https://gfi.org/resource/environmental-impacts-of-alternative-proteins/
The REAL impact is it divorces WHERE we collect that sunlight! Farming relies on arable land. Solar cells can be on our rooftops, or floating on water reservoirs, or even some calm tropical seas, or our deserts. IF Precision Fermentation can come down in cost as claimed – it may just let us rewild natural ecosystems and forests across 30% of the non-ice land on earth. This is about 3 TRILLION trees and ALL our historical carbon locked up in permanent forests! How can an environmentalist ignore this potential?
I’m not sure that’s the movement at all! They’re mainly hoping it attacks the LIVESTOCK industry that ruins 30% of our land. Rather than go down the 6% efficient photosynthetic efficiency of grass into the super-inefficient COW – they want us to use 22% efficient solar to feed the ‘microbial cow’ directly. Compared to livestocks 30% of the non-ice land on earth – crops are just 12%. But 4% of that is animal feed so it’s really only 8%! If we can RETURN the 30% back to nature – I’m fine with crops increasing proportionate to the next few billion people joining us by 2050 (before the population peaks and declines to 8 – 6 billion by 2100 – but that’s a whole other subject.)
I COMPLETELY AGREE! Except in the conclusions of the critical study you quote, it does say…
You forgot to mention this?
“The cheerleading for it strikes me as just another bit of ecomodernist hopium”
The cheerleading for peak oil collapse over the years has struck me as just another bit of doomium. At least Tony Seba correctly predicted the price of wind and solar and EV’s today way back in 2014. Other than the great Hubbert himself, has any peaknik doomer ever predicted ANYTHING right?
Real-time solar capture, minus entropy minus other biodiversity/physics demands, is all we will have to work with. Leaving aside nonsense (pointing to the growth-rate of a 2-year-old child then extrapolating similar growth at 70, is nonsense; I leave it to others to grasp what/who I’m referencing) that, along with resource-availability and factoring in entropy, is the all of the problem.
And it works out that once we have burned our way through the stockpile of stored solar energy – the fossil fuels – we will be doing about 15% of the work we do with them. How we share that around – both between nations/cultures and activities, is yet to be determined – but one thing is certain; we won’t be maintaining our consumption-levels. Nor anywhere near that.
Those commenting on threads like this one, need to keep EROEI firmly in mind. It takes energy to sieve thorium from seawater, energy to mine mineral stocks. Yes, electricity is a vector of energy (not a source, the same way hydrogen is a vector, not a source). There is the Second Law to take into account, whenever there is work done, energy will have been degraded in the direction of low-grade heat (useless use-wise). And there is the storage/infrastructure problem.
One of the best reads – dated but still true – is: https://www.withouthotair.com/ I urge folk to read, and understand it.
A flawed approach, intellectually, is back-casting-to-project-forward; on the basis of our baby-progress charts, we’d all be as tall as the Eiffel Tower. The lesson is stark and simple; all growth within finite boundaries (planet-earth, or the radius a life-form can scavenge for food) must cease. Reproduction of a species requires its members not to grow beyond a point where mates can feed (access solar acreage) and in reality, enough members can feed so that ecological diversity can enhance fitness of the species.
Pre fossil energy, homo sapiens (self-named; it appears we aren’t all that sapient) got to 1 billion. The idea that 8 billion of one species – which has already commandeered 40% of the land area for itself and attendant livestock (between them now accounting for 97% of animal biomass; wild is down to 3%, and tellingly, there is MORE biomass now that natural capacity-loading; we’re forcing the carry by applying fossil energy to agriculture) – can consume/grow more than its currently grossly-overshot consumption-rates – is nuts. We levered fossil energy; we did what all species do, and the repercussions are inevitable.
One other thing to watch for, is commentators with the need to scream at length, and who insist that EVERYTHING will be one-way. This points – in my late-life observation – to a fear-driven crusader, often the type captured by intense religion. Life – and facts about physics – is/are not one-way self-justification, nor even anything to do with optimism. Nor can they be changed by application of emotions; optimists and pessimists from the Titanic drowned in equal measure because of temperature; physics trumps all, entirely dispassionately. Self-justification, if an obvious driver of comment, means that comment should be viewed with extra skepticism.
On nutrition Chris Smaje asserts:
So I looked up the application – and this is what Solar Foods say about Solein. Unless Chris is quoting something else – I’m confused where it is less digestible? They’re just not recommending that we migrate to it and it alone. Yet.
Remember that there are competitor brands that will have different protein combinations. This technology can be digitalised to program the various micro-organisms and edit their DNA to produce a near infinite combination of proteins and flavours. And solein already has the 9 essential amino acids that the body needs.
The body can manufacture other amino acids if it has these basic 9.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/22243-amino-acids