Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist (51 page)

The BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico has made matters far worse and will be a major wake-up call for the entire offshore oil industry. And it highlights the extreme conditions oil companies now operate under, drilling in mile-deep waters and then drilling another four or five miles to get to the deposit. In North America, at least, the cheap oil is largely gone and drilling is required in ever more extreme and remote locations to keep up with the demand. And although we know the sea will eventually heal when the leak is stopped, in the meantime thousands of people’s lives and livelihoods have been disrupted and the shoreline has been severely damaged. There is clearly a high price to pay for going further and further afield to drill for black gold.

It’s true the political system needs its horses to flog, but surely oil companies have some cause to be proud that they produce over one-third of the world’s energy. Take that energy away and try to come out of an economic recession. “Sorry, there is no gas for the cars this year.”

We environmentalists need to get real in the sense of recognizing where we are now and not just where we think we should be. Getting from A to B is not a slam-dunk at the best of times. And sometimes idealism is just plain misguided. Sure the oil might run out sooner than later. And yes, we will need a strategy to move beyond oil at some point. So let’s work together on that rather than continually looking for who’s to blame. Again, it comes down to the reality that this debate cuts to the core of human needs. We want to survive and we have satisfied that instinct by continuing to produce what we use each day. Oil is more than one-third of the energy required to meet that need today. Rather than demonizing it we need to pay attention to the choices we have when it becomes scarcer.

At one time a lot of oil was burned to make electricity. This is no longer the case except in the major oil-producing regions. Oil has become the most important fuel for transportation and has nearly achieved a monopoly in this regard. From gasoline to diesel to aviation fuel to bunker oil for ships, oil is the source of fuel for travel by land, sea, and air. That’s because it is a liquid as opposed to a gas like natural gas or a solid like coal. Even though, like liquids, gases can be moved through pipes into tanks, they have a much lower energy content than liquids, so you need a very large tank to travel a long distance. Liquid propane and liquid natural gas under pressure have not been able to compete with gasoline or diesel, which do not need to be pressurized. Solid fuels such as coal and wood are simply impractical for transportation unless they are converted into liquid fuels. As petroleum becomes more expensive due to scarcity and higher cost of production, coal-to-liquid fuel and cellulose-based liquid fuels will gradually play a greater role in transportation.

Advances in the efficiency of internal combustion engines and the use of catalytic converters have reduced air pollution from our cars by more than 90 percent in the past 30 years. But the number of cars has greatly increased and the public is even more concerned about the state of the environment than 30 years ago. We can all agree it would be desirable to reduce or eliminate air pollution from vehicles if it were cost-effective. For many years it was hoped hydrogen fuel cells would provide pollution-free transportation. It now seems there are too many technical obstacles to the production and delivery of hydrogen and that the cost of the fuel cells would be prohibitive. Most bets are now on advanced battery technology, with the plug-in hybrid the most likely successor to the conventional automobile. Initially this will come at an increased cost, but mass production and improvements in battery technology may offset this in the future.

Many analysts believe we are approaching “peak oil” when the ever-increasing rate of production will come to an end and begin to decline.
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This would result in a sharp increase in the price of oil, which in turn would put downward pressure on demand as alternatives are adopted: smaller cars, plug-in hybrids, cellulose-based fuels,
etc.
But we have not yet reached peak oil and there are conflicting opinions about when it will occur. We do know that people in Europe and Japan, where fuel prices are about double North America’s, tend to buy smaller cars with better fuel economy.

Cars produce about one-third of all the CO
₂
emissions in the U.S. and similar but lower percentages in the other industrialized countries. Depending on how quickly plug-in hybrids are taken up, there is the potential for deep cuts in this major cause of both air pollution and CO
₂
emissions.

The Canadian Oil Sands

There is a region about the size of Florida in northern Alberta where the soil is soaked in thick oil. Originally the area was called the tar sands, but it became known as the oil sands when commercial production of oil began in 1967 (there is actually no tar in the sand).
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Today, many activists are working hard to rebrand the region as the tar sands, presumably because tar sounds worse than oil.

There are proven reserves of 1.7 trillion barrels of oil in the region, enough to supply Canada’s needs at the present rate of consumption for 400 years. Most of the 1.4 million barrels of oil produced today is exported to the U.S. Canada supplies more oil to American markets than any other country, and the oil sands production is slated to double or triple in the coming years.

Some of the oil-soaked soil is at the surface, where it is mined in a manner similar to open-caste coal mining. The vegetation is removed, the soil and sand are trucked to a plant where the oil is removed and the sand is returned to the site, eventually to be restored with native trees and shrubs. In some areas the oil lies well below the surface and here it is mined
in situ
(in place) by injecting hot water to release the oil from the sand. In the case of
in situ
mining there is minimal disturbance to the surface environment.

It has lately become fashionable among activists to attack the oil sands operations as an example of unacceptable environmental damage. In one incident, about 1600 ducks were killed when they landed in a settling pond. A great hue and cry went up, which occupied the airwaves for days, and cast the oil sands companies as criminals. While it is unfortunate that the ducks were killed, and certainly corrective action is necessary, it was never mentioned that Alberta produces 50 percent of all the waterfowl in North America or that tens of thousands of ducks are intentionally killed by hunters every year.

Greenpeace contends that the production of oil from the oil sands results in five times the emissions of greenhouse gas when compared to conventional oil.
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But it is not including the burning of the oil in cars and other vehicles after it is produced. When the full lifecycle, or “wells-to-wheels,” is calculated, oil from the oil sands emits between 18 percent higher and 8 percent lower greenhouse gases compared to other sources of crude oil.
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Oil from the oil sands does not deserve to be called “dirty oil” anymore than any other source of oil. And a BP-style blowout like the one in the Gulf of Mexico can’t occur on the land-based oil sands.

To put things into perspective, consider when a gas station spills oil or gasoline from a leaky underground tank. The site is declared “toxic real estate” and must be cleaned up, often at the cost of millions of dollars. The oil sands in Alberta are a massive area of toxic soils, and the companies that operate in the oil sands are removing oil from the soil, on a very grand scale, making a profit selling the oil as transportation fuel. Is it not a fact they are leaving the sand cleaner than when they found it? The oils sands represent a natural “oil spill” over 100,000 times larger than the largest human-caused spill. If it is desirable to clean up an oil spill in the sea or underground, surely it is acceptable to clean up the oil sands.

None of the above is meant to imply there aren’t serious environmental issues involving oil. But I do find a degree of hypocrisy among activists who paint the oil companies as environmental criminals while they go about driving, flying, and otherwise enjoying the benefits of living in a society that depends on oil for over one-third of its energy.

Coal

Known as “King Coal” by its fans and as the dirtiest fuel on earth by its detractors, coal is the most abundant fossil fuel by far. Whereas natural gas and oil were formed mainly in marine sediments, coal was formed in vast forested swamps. Coal is derived from trees, peat moss, and other forms of vegetation that were preserved, then buried over the millennia and converted to coal under heat and pressure, a kind of natural charcoal production on a grand scale. Coal is king in many parts of the world, where it is mined to run electric plants, make steel, power industry, and converted into liquid fuels for transportation.

The United States has the world’s largest reserves of coal, 25 percent of the world total at 247 billion tones. This is more than twice as much as China has, even though China produces two times more coal than the U.S. annually. Russia has the second largest reserves and is also a major exporter along with Australia and Indonesia. Between them China and the U.S., export less than 1 percent of their production, because they need nearly all of it for themselves.
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There have been major advances in reducing the air pollution caused by burning coal for electricity. But coal is still the worst polluter and it causes the most negative impact on human health of any fuel we burn. Presumably all the birds and animals that breathe the air pollution from coal plants are similarly affected. And if it concerns you, coal produces far more greenhouse gas per unit of energy produced than any other fuel. That is why, finally, many in the environmental movement make opposition to coal a higher priority than opposition to nuclear power. Unfortunately many also still remain opposed to both nuclear energy and hydroelectric power. But they may get it straight in the future as the futility of only championing wind and solar energy sinks in.

Coal provides 50 percent of the electricity in the United States. China derives 78 percent of its electricity from coal while India produces 69 percent of its electricity from coal. Australia produces 80 percent of its electricity from coal. At the extreme end, South Africa and Poland each depend on coal for 93 percent of their electricity. Many other countries, including Germany, Britain, Indonesia, and Ukraine depend on coal for a significant percentage of their electricity. In total, more than 40 percent of all the world’s electricity is produced from coal. This cannot be changed overnight.

It is easy to become morally incensed by this and declare that it must end. Greenpeace has taken to blocking coal ships and its members chain themselves to the augers delivering coal to the furnaces of large coal-fired plants. They need to be reminded that there are hundreds of millions of people whose existence depends on those ships and coal plants. A more constructive approach is required—one that recognizes the impossibility of replacing more than 60 percent of global electricity with wind and solar power, one that recognizes the only technologies that can replace coal (and gas) in a big way are hydroelectric and nuclear energy.

The vast deposits of coal on this planet are capable of providing the feedstock for liquid fuels, plastics, chemicals, fertilizers, and other valuable products for thousands of years to come, but not if we burn them all in the next few hundred years. The huge potential for nuclear energy plus the renewable rainfall used for hydroelectric energy, where it is available, will also last for thousands of years. The answer is staring us in the face. Nuclear and hydro are a win-win-win solution for the environment (they eliminate air pollution), the economy (they provide reliable, low-cost electric power), and for society (they offer wealth without damage to health).

“Clean Coal”?

Billions of dollars are now earmarked for “clean coal” technology. The coal industry is spending millions on advertising to convince the public that clean coal is a reality, when in fact it remains a distant hope. The objective is to capture the CO
₂
from the coal plant’s exhaust gasses and to pump it underground into geological formations, where the CO
₂
will be permanently stored. Governments are spending billions of dollars on research and pilot plants to demonstrate the feasibility of carbon capture and storage (CCS).

There are a number of significant obstacles to achieving widespread adoption of CCS technology:

The volume of CO
₂
exhausted for a large coal plant is huge. A 500-megawatt coal plant produces three million tons of CO
₂
per year. There are about 600 coal plants in the U.S., even more in China, where there are plans to build 500 more in the next decade. Global CO
₂
emissions from coal-and gas-fired power generation are about 12 billion tons per year, 25 percent of total CO
₂
emissions. The prospect of pumping this amount of CO
₂
into underground formations is simply not plausible.