The Towler Principle

There are many forms of energy that can be converted into other forms of energy according to our needs and requirements. By examining the various forms and sources of energy, you will see that each of them has an impact on the environment as we extract them and use them; however the undesirable effects can be changed or minimized according to our needs. For example, the carbon dioxide problem may be reduced or eliminated by switching to wind power, solar power, ethanol, and biomass. Unfortunately, the end result is that these actions may have other intolerable effects that will be discussed later in this book.

What can we do to ensure minimal effect to the environment regardless of the energy sources chosen? How do we protect our environment and sustain it for future generations? An alternative solution to the carbon dioxide problem could be carbon capture and sequestration. The technology for this already exists and can be further improved. This technology only applies to point sources of carbon such as coal and gas-fired power plants. There is also a need to develop greener and more efficient building technologies and add cleaner renewable energy sources into the mix. In order to reduce the carbon effect of automobiles, there may be a greater need to move toward electric vehicles so that any carbon dioxide generated in the process can be captured at the point where the electricity is generated. The future is bright; there is plenty of energy available, but much change is afoot. This is the preeminent technical challenge of our time, one that will require significant political will and technical drive.

The History of Energy Use

According to physicists, the universe began with a “big bang.” About 14 billion years ago, all the mass and energy of the universe was concentrated at a single point. This mass exploded, commenced expanding from that point and is still expanding today. Physicists have identified four fundamental forces of nature: gravity, electromagnetic force, strong nuclear force, and weak nuclear force. They also identified the physical principles that govern all the processes in the universe. Two of these physical principles are that mass and energy are always conserved. According to Albert Einstein, there is an equivalence between mass and energy and, under certain processes and circumstances, these two entities can be converted into one another. When he discovered this equivalence and published his famous equation (E = mc²), Einstein was demonstrating that the very fabric of the universe is energy. If we extract energy from a source and use it, something will be left behind as a result of that action.

When homo sapiens first evolved in Africa, their great advantages were their large brains and their ability to outwit the fierce creatures that considered them prey. This large brain required increased energy resources to fuel itself, energy resources that came from an omnivorous diet of meat, grain, fruits, vegetables, and nuts. As civilizations developed about 15,000 years ago, in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, the successful civilizations were the ones that learned how to perform their tasks efficiently. To do this, they had to maximize the energy throughput of their society.

In his book The Evolution of Culture (1959), anthropologist Leslie White acknowledges the key role played by the harnessing of energy in the development of civilizations. Initially, energy fueled the human bodies that provided the labor to hunt and gather and then to work the fields as mankind turned to agriculture. The next step in energy utilization was the domestication of animals such as horses and oxen that could be trained to do most of the heavy lifting and pulling that was required. This relieved some of the labor required of humans and also increased the energy throughput in the society. The animals required their own energy input in order to get them to do useful work; however, these animals generally ate foods that were inedible for humans, thus increasing rather than decreasing the efficiency of society.

Energy can be used for many different purposes and comes from many different sources. The principle uses of energy are for: doing work, heating buildings, cooking (a special use of heat), transportation, and communications. For early civilization, work and heat were separate functions of energy. The work was provided by human and animal labor and heat was provided by burning biomass. This heat was used to warm the living space and to cook food. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that mankind started to understand that heat and work were both forms of energy and that engines could be developed that converted heat into work.

As civilization further developed, some societies captured slaves to provide some of the labor. These slaves also required energy in order to do work, but they were able to perform tasks that animals could not. It took a long time before the immorality of slavery was recognized and bans on slavery were instituted; however, slavery is a significant part of human history that played a role in the rise of civilization.

The strength of a society is very dependent on its energy sources. The more human and animal labor that was conducted by a society, and the more fuel that could be gathered to provide heat, the more successful the society became. These societies knew they had to provide a source of energy to make the civilization work. Usually, this consisted of human labor (both free and slave), animal labor (usually horses and oxen) and biomass (usually wood). The human and animal labor had to be fed and efficient agriculture lay at the heart of its success. This was the fuel for the primary energy sources. The wood had to be cut and gathered and the energy for this process came from human and animal labor.

Some great societies collapsed when their energy sources failed. The Romans, Mayans, and Mesopotamians are examples of civilizations that failed in this manner. The Mayans were an extremely successful society that ruled around Central America and the Yucatan Peninsula from about 100 to 900 AD. They built many large cities with elaborate temples, surrounded by a network of buildings for living, agriculture, art, and manufacturing. They had the only well-developed written language of pre-Columbian America. They had a highly advanced mathematical system and very advanced astronomical knowledge. Their society was fueled primarily by the lush forests surrounding their cities and by their fields devoted to agriculture. Around 900 AD, the forests became severely depleted. Deprived of a fuel source, the Mayan civilization collapsed. The people dispersed in all directions seeking alternative energy sources. Their elaborate cities were abandoned, never again to be occupied.

Throughout history, some societies also found that coal, oil, and other hydrocarbons could be burned to provide heat. When heat engines were developed—particularly by Savery, Newcomen, and Watt in the eighteenth century—the hydrocarbon age was born. In China, for example, oil had been harvested from seeps and other locations for thousands of years and used for heating and lighting. Significant quantities for use in heat engines were not harvested, however, until “Colonel” Edwin Drake drilled a well on an island in Oil Creek near Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1860. This event ushered in the oil era, even though oil did not become the dominant energy source in the world until much later. In 1910, coal replaced wood as the dominant energy source. In 1962, coal was overtaken by oil which continues to maintain its worldwide dominance.

In The Evolution of Culture (1959) and a 1943 paper in the American Anthropologist, Leslie White argues that cultures evolve as the amount of energy harvested per capita per year is increased. If the parameter remains constant, the society stagnates; if it decreases, the society either moves backward or collapses. White puts this in a context of the efficiency of the technology used. Provided that societal technology is efficient in harvesting and deploying energy throughput, increased energy usage per capita per year is what will be necessary to move society forward. Alternatively, if the amount of energy used per capita remains constant, the culture can still move forward if the efficiency of energy use is increased.

White identifies five factors in the development of culture: the human organism, the habitat, the amount of energy controlled and expended by man, the ways and means in which energy is expended, and the human-need-serving product which accrues from the expenditure of energy. Analyzing these factors led White to identify two laws of cultural development. First, other things being equal, the degree of cultural development varies directly as the amount of energy per capita per year is harnessed and put to work. Second, if the amount of energy expended per capita per unit of time remains constant, the degree of cultural development varies directly with the efficiency of the technological means with which the harnessed energy is put to work. He uses the following example to illustrate the two points of his thesis:

In this context, increased energy usage is a good thing. The United States is frequently criticized for using too much energy. According to White, if the United States is to advance and other nations are to aspire to a similar standard of living, energy use should be encouraged as long as it is not wasted. To ensure this high standard of living is maintained or increased, however, sufficient energy sources have to be identified. Where will the energy come from? Who or what will provide us with the energy required? Who are our biggest energy users? Who are our biggest energy wasters?

Some people believe that technology has a detrimental effect on the well-being of society. In the early part of the nineteenth century, the Luddites were a group of people who went around smashing up textile machinery because they saw it as a detriment to their skills and way of living. In today’s modern society, those who resist technological advances are sometimes referred to as Luddites.

More recently, a former math professor turned sociopath by the name of Ted Kaczynski became known as the “Unabomber” because he sent out homemade bombs that killed three people and wounded 23 others. He did this because he became disillusioned with the technology of modern society. Kaczynski wanted to get attention and support for his view that technology was at the heart of society’s problems and that we needed to eschew all technology. He wrote a manifesto that he demanded be published by leading newspapers, setting out these views. Many newspapers published his manifesto, which ultimately led to his capture. He was found living in a small shed in the backwoods of Montana without heat, electricity or running water and completely devoid of any useful technology. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

There are many others with less extreme and less violent views who believe that we need to simplify our society and voluntarily use less energy. There is nothing wrong with choosing a simpler lifestyle, but White’s analysis of historical civilization suggests that to sustain and maintain our way of life and to move our society forward, society must use and develop the technology to provide sufficient energy to sustain and improve societal functions.

The Movement to Oil

As noted earlier, throughout history the most successful civilizations were the ones that maximized their energy throughput. The source of energy used has changed over time from human labor to animal labor to biomass to coal to oil and gas to nuclear energy. In today’s civilization, hydrocarbon energy is the ruler. This type of energy is so cheap that it has profoundly raised the standard of living for the vast majority of people and has had a profound impact on the world.

Before oil was discovered and produced by Drake, the vast majority of people did not have access to cheap energy and consequently could not afford to move around or communicate effectively with one another. They had less food and less variety of food to eat. Rich people could afford to move around principally using horses for transportation, but if poor people wanted to move from one place to another, they usually had to walk. Consequently, people moved very little.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, artificial lighting was principally provided by whale oil. Whales were almost hunted to extinction in the nineteenth century because the whale blubber could be rendered into a fuel that could be burned in lamps and used as a light source. When Drake discovered oil, its first use was to make kerosene to replace the whale oil in lamps. This single event saved the whales from extinction. Kerosene was cheaper and better than whale oil for this purpose.

While the kerosene fraction was being widely used for lighting, there were no uses for the rest of the crude oil fractions. As automobiles were developed, gasoline and diesel fuel distilled from crude oil were made the principal transportation fuels. There were two principal internal combustion engines developed in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The first was the Otto cycle engine, developed by Nicholas Otto in 1862, which incorporated a spark plug to ignite the fuel mixture. Otto initially intended his engine to run on coal gas (or syngas), but his engine worked well on the gasoline (or petrol) fraction of crude oil. The second engine was a compression ignition engine developed by Rudolf Diesel in 1893. Diesel’s initial intention was that his engine would run on vegetable oil, and he used peanut oil when he first demonstrated the engine to the public. When it was discovered that it would operate effectively on the diesel fraction in crude oil, this became the fuel of choice for Diesel’s engines.

In the twentieth century, when jet engines were developed to drive airplanes and electric lights proved to be more effective than kerosene lamps, kerosene was found to be a useful fuel for jet engines. Oil has fueled a revolution in lighting, transportation, and communications that has profoundly raised the standard of living for the vast majority of people throughout the world.

Figure 1.1 is a graph that shows the primary sources of energy for the past 210 years. In 1800, the primary source of energy was biomass—mostly trees that were cut down and burned to provide heat for homes and factory furnaces. Some coal was also being burned in steam engines and in the few existing factory furnaces. This was a small and insignificant energy source compared to burning wood. During this time, and in the centuries prior, many of the forests of Europe were cleared and burned for fuel. The ash from the burning of trees was also an important resource for the manufacture of glass for windows and the making of soap for washing. It should be noted that human and animal labor does not appear on this graph, even though these energy sources were probably higher than all the others in 1800. The units on the Y-axis of this chart are exajoules, abbreviated EJ. This unit will be explained more fully in Chapter 2, where you will see that 1 EJ = 10¹⁸ joules (J).

This figure also shows that around 1910 coal overtook biomass as the primary source of energy in the world. By this time coal was being widely used to generate electricity, to make steel and as the primary transportation fuel to drive locomotive engines. Biomass was still being used to heat homes. While biomass use has been relatively flat, it has not diminished. In fact, in the past 50 years, its use has increased again. In many developing countries in Asia and Africa, wood is the primary energy source.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, coal use began to take off. It was finally being crowned “King Coal” around 1910. Oil had been discovered in the United States in 1860 and initially was used only to make kerosene for kerosene lamps. With the invention of the automobile, its use increased, both as gasoline in the spark ignition engines based on the Otto cycle and as heavier diesel fuel in the compression ignition engines developed by Diesel. It was not until the 1960s that oil overtook “Old King Coal” as the primary energy source in the world. It has not relinquished that title.

Natural gas was always seen as a by-product of oil production and often it was simply burned at the field unless a market for it could be found. Commencing around 1940, it became marketed as a fuel in industry and to generate electricity in gas turbines. Its use has expanded rapidly since then, and today it is the third leading energy source in the world, just behind coal. It is often seen as a more environmentally friendly alternative to coal because it produces less carbon dioxide and other pollutants than coal per unit of energy produced.

Hydroelectric power plants generate electricity from the release of water trapped in dams. This form of energy was first developed to drive grinding mills to grind grain. With the development of large hydroelectric generating plants around 1900, its use expanded greatly and it has now become the fifth leading source of energy. While hydroelectric power is clearly the cleanest and cheapest source of electricity, it can only be developed where dams are possible, limiting its usage. It should be noted, though, that there is still a lot of further potential for hydroelectricity.

Nuclear power, which results from the splitting of a particular isotope of uranium, was made possible by the theory of relativity developed by Einstein. Nuclear power plants that generate electricity were developed in the 1950s and, since then, nuclear power has increased rapidly to become the sixth largest source of energy behind oil, coal, natural gas, biomass, and hydroelectricity.

Wind, solar, and other sources of energy barely register on the graph because of their cost and unreliability. There is a great deal of interest in further developing these sources of energy because they are clean and renewable, but so far their use has been limited by their cost and reliability issues.

Table 1.1 compares the different energy sources that are used and shows the annual energy use per person per year in the United States. Note the variety of units that are used there, which are the customary units for each energy source. To compare the sources properly, they would need to be converted to the same energy unit, the joule, which is the most appropriate universal energy unit. The total energy figure is given in gigajoules (GJ) or 10⁹ joules. If and when you are able to convert these different energy sources to equivalent units, you will find that the five listed in the table do not add up to the total. There are two reasons for this: partly because the renewable energy sources are not listed and partly because coal, natural gas, and uranium fuels are used to make the majority of the electricity shown.

How does the U.S. per capita energy use compare with other countries? Table 1.2 shows this comparison for the top 66 countries in the world. Very few African countries appear on this list because their energy use per capita is so low and also more difficult to measure. They do not even appear in the statistical data prepared for the BP Statistical Review, the main data source used here.

It is interesting to note that the United States is not the top energy user in the world and comes in ninth. Four of the top eight are Middle Eastern countries, and one might argue that they use a lot of energy because they have a lot of oil and gas and can afford to use a lot. They are also hot countries that generate a lot of electricity to run air conditioners. Qatar’s number might be affected by a low and inaccurate population count due to a lot of expatriate workers in the country that are not part of the official population statistics. Three of the top 10 countries on the list (Norway, Canada, and the United States) are cold countries that spend a lot of energy on heating in the winter time. All of the top 10 are highly industrialized countries that use a lot of energy through the manufacturing of energy intensive products. The energy use per capita for each country is a combination of these factors; it represents their economic activity, their standard of living and their efficiency of energy utilization.

China is only number 46 on the list at only 76 GJ per person per year (GJ/p/year), well below most of the western countries. This is a large increase from relatively recent times. In 1968, China was using < 6 GJ/p/year and, as recently as the year 2000, China’s energy use was still below 30 GJ/p/year. It has since risen rapidly as its society and technology have modernized and expanded. China is now an economic superpower with massive and unprecedented growth rates. In 2010, it surpassed the United States as the largest energy consumer in the world and, as a consequence of that, it also emits the most carbon dioxide in the world. On a per capita basis its energy use is still below countries such as Portugal, Greece, and Argentina, even though it is now well ahead of its Asian neighbors such as India, Pakistan, and Thailand. Not only is China’s economic activity increasing rapidly but its citizens aspire to a standard of living that is vastly higher than they have been used to, commensurate with other successful world economies. This means that its per capita energy use, as well as its total energy use, will continue to rise rapidly.

Figure 1.2 shows the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of the countries in Table 1.2 as a function of the annual energy use per capita. A general trend appears: the higher the energy use, the higher the GDP. The data labels shown on the plot are the per capita energy use numbers shown in Table 1.2, rounded to zero decimal places. This helps link each country to its data point. The countries lying above the trend line are the more efficient ones, producing a higher than average GDP for a particular energy use. Conversely, the countries below the trend line are the less-efficient countries. The United States, at 306 GJ/p/year, is slightly above the trend line. The Chinese territory of Hong Kong is the highest above the trend line, producing a GDP of $45,900 per person while expending a per capita energy of 152 GJ/p/year. This may be because Hong Kong is a relatively focused industrial and commercial center with a large productive population living in a small area. It has a warm climate that has virtually no need for winter heat and, even though they have hot summers, they do not rely on much air conditioning for summer cooling. Most of their energy goes into producing goods for sale. The countries that are the lowest below the trend line are Turkmenistan and the United Arab Emirates. Two of the countries in Table 1.2 have been omitted from the plot in Figure 1.2 because they were outliers. These are Qatar and Trinidad and Tobago. Qatar’s data point does fall close to the trend line but is a long way removed from the other data points possibly because their population numbers are artificially low. Trinidad and Tobago fall substantially below the trend line because of high energy use in its industries coupled with low wages and low productivity.

Figure 1.3 shows the total energy reserves for the top 20 countries in the world. Only the big four nonrenewable fuels (oil, coal, natural gas, and uranium) are included in this bar chart. By examining this chart, you can see that there are very few energy reserves in the form of uranium. These reserves are primarily located in Australia, Canada, and Kazakhstan. The uranium reserves shown in the figure only refer to the currently deployed nuclear power technology, which totally relies on the easily fissile U-235 isotope and represents only 0.7% of the uranium reserves in the world. The far more abundant U-238 and Th-232 isotopes can be used in fast breeder reactors, which have been tested but have not been built on a commercial scale yet. When breeder reactors are perfected and deployed, a much larger amount of nuclear fuel will appear in these charts. Despite this, there is still over 100 years of supply in the world, based on current usage, and this supply can be increased at a reasonable cost.

Natural gas is also underrepresented in Figure 1.3, particularly for the United States. In the past 5 years, the United States has identified and started to produce a large amount of shale gas. The U.S. gas reserves have started to increase again because of this gas, and when it is fully proved it will represent a large addition to the energy reserves of the United States. Shale gas also exists in many other countries around the world. When the fracture stimulation technology used to unlock these reserves is exported to other countries, they too will see a similar increase in their energy reserves.

The largest energy reserves appearing in Figure 1.3 are in the form of coal. Coal reserves at the current usage rate represent more than 120 years of supply, and this does not include the unproved coal reserves which are far more extensive. Looking at this chart, it is easy to see that coal has a very bright future. Some people may be horrified at that thought because coal is perceived as a dirty fuel. When it is burned without any environmental controls, it emits large amounts of carbon dioxide. In addition, it produces oxides of sulfur and nitrogen, mercury, coal ash, and a range of lesser known pollutants. In the past it has been responsible for acid rain, coal tars, and coal soot. It is also one of the carbon-based fuels primarily responsible for the rising CO₂ levels in the atmosphere.

Coal, however, can be burned without emitting any pollutants at all. The technology currently exists to do this, and it is known collectively as clean coal technology. While it is highly likely that all of the coal appearing in Figure 1.3 will get burned, it will have a minimal impact on the environment as long as clean coal technologies are used.

This figure shows that the United States has the largest coal reserves and the second largest coal production in the world. Most of this production is used domestically to generate electricity, and at least 45% of the U.S. electricity supply is generated from coal. China and Russia, the first- and third-largest coal producers, also use all of their production domestically. Australia is the largest exporter of coal even though they have a large domestic market for their coal in terms of both electricity generation and steel making. In terms of energy reserves, Australia has the fourth-largest reserves in the world, but the majority of this is tied up in coal. Australia also has the largest per capita energy reserves in the world.

Summary

Energy use is a good thing as long as the usage is efficient. The higher the energy use, the higher the standard of living and the more the society progresses culturally. In order to produce enough food, water, clothing, and shelter for the world’s current and future population, a large per capita energy use is required. The United States does not have the highest per capita energy use in the world, but a robust economy and a high standard of living demands adequate energy supplies at an economic price. There are adequate supplies of energy available, and the world does not need to be fighting wars over perceived energy shortages. Moreover, according to the Towler Principle espoused in this chapter, all energy sources have some effect on the environment. This cannot be avoided, but it can be mitigated. The current focus on renewable energy supplies eschews the real requirements needed in energy, which are reliability, cost and security of supply. While environmental effects are important considerations, the focus needs to be on how they can be mitigated.