Suddenly

For literally thousands of years, humanity made little technical progress at least as it helped to improve the life of millions upon millions of people and then, suddenly, 200 years ago or so our technological capabilities just exploded.

To what do we owe this?

On a first approximation we could say that fossil fuels were the trigger but on second thought, they had already been known for hundreds of years and little was made of them.

No, more important than the fuels themselves were the engines developed:

1. The steam engine.
2. The internal combustion engine.
3. The gas turbine.

These engines allowed coal, oil and natural gas to be converted into movement, into transportation.

Electricity had also been known for a long time but it was not until the electric generator (powered by one of the engines above) provided abundant energy to illuminate and power the world that electricity became overwhelmingly important.

However, electricity was not only power and light, it was also signals, and here the all important developments before 1950 were:

1. The telegraph
2. The telephone
3. Radio and television

Crude implementations of the first two could exist without electronics proper, but radio and television required an amplifier and thus came into being side by side with them the vacuum tube.

Finally, electricity was one more thing: "intelligence." The first fully electronic general purpose computer, ENIAC, came into being in the late 1940s. It used prodigious amounts of vacuum tubes (more than 18,000).

So, by 1950, we had cars, airplanes, trains, air conditioning, elevators, radio, television, telegraph, telephone and even some computers.

Accelerated progress seemed to lay in the past because the vacuum tube required loads of power and was too big and unreliable to be implemented by the thousands in computers and other devices.

Say, a basic cell phone was completely out of the question, let alone a personal computer, tablet or smart phone.

And then came William Shockley and the transistor.

The first transistors were more often than not just (lower power / smaller) replacements for vacuum tubes, but if we wanted hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of transistors in a single device another breakthrough was needed.

And then came Robert Noyce and the integrated circuit. This allowed complex circuits with many transistors to be built into a single crystal of silicon, but if we wanted a full computer to be swallowed in a single integrated circuit, another breakthrough was needed.

And then came Ted Hoff and the microprocessor.

So arguably, our awe inspiring current civilization critically depends on at least the following foundations:

1. Abundant / relatively cheap energy (mainly fossil fuels).
2. Engines that use those fuels to produce useful work.
3. Electricity that, aside from light and power, means signals and "intelligence."
4. The transistor / integrated circuit / microprocessor

The future challenge for our civilization is probably more than anywhere else in point number 1. If fossil fuels won't continue to be forever cheap and abundant, then we'll need other types of energy to replace fossil fuels.

How much time we have is open to discussion, but almost everybody agrees eventually we'll need to massively replace fossil fuels or enter into the twilight of our civilization as we know it.

Are the current alternatives we have today (nuclear and renewables) good enough to massively replace fossil fuels? Probably not.

In the past, technology has always come to our rescue:

Engine technology.
Electricity generation.
Semiconductors

Today, once more we need technological breakthroughs, this time to develop cheap / abundant / low carbon energy.

Let's remember that wide deployment of a technology critically depends on cost. The first transistors Fairchild Semiconductor produced for IBM in the 1950 had a price tag of $150 USD each in bulk amounts (1950's dollars). Today the cost of each transistor in an iPhone is around one millionth of a cent (2014 cents).

Thus, if something is going to replace fossil fuels, the cost of that energy is all important (we have to consider the full system, not only a component).

Will humanity rise to the challenge? Let's stay tuned.


Feel free to add to the conversation in Twitter: @luisbaram

Key World Energy Statistics 2014

The Key World Energy Statistics 2014 has just been published by the International Energy Agency.
A link to the full report is at the bottom of this page.

Total Primary Energy Supply. Fossil fuels still comprise 81.7% of the total (a slight market participation increase from the 2013 report).

Solar + Wind + Geothermal, etc., have finally exceeded 1% of the total.

Let's now see the top producers per energy source.

Oil:

Coal:

Natural Gas:

Nuclear:
Two countries represent almost 50% of the world's production.
Germany is still a nuclear nation.
China is coming from behind, but may eventually overtake the USA.

Hydro:
Nobody touches China.

And finally, here we present total final consumption:

Fell free to add to the conversation in Twitter: @luisbaram

Link to the full IEA report:

http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/key-world-energy-statistics-2014.html

Interview with an Oil Company CEO

This is a fictional (but very feasible) interview to an oil company CEO.

GNWR: Thank you, Mr. Oil for accepting to participate in this interview.

CEO: It is my pleasure.

GNWR: In this day and age of global warming, why do you continue to drill and produce oil.

CEO: I ultimately have two bosses, our millions of customers and the board of directors. Customers demand more and more oil in the form of gasoline, diesel, airplaine fuel and other feed stuff. We have to listen to our customers and provide them with what they want. Even though fuel use in the USA and Europe has shown little growth lately, other areas of the world literally can't get enough of the substance. I'm talking of China, LATAM, Africa and India to name only a few.

GNWR: And your second customer?

CEO: Yes, they are the board of directors together with all stockholders. They are VERY demanding, you don't have an idea how much, and they want higher returns on their investments.

GNWR: But, why don't you move your company toward renewables?

CEO: Are you kidding? Renewables almost fully depend on government subsidies. The minute those subsidies are removed, and I mean the minute, that industry will come crashing down. As a CEO I would never gamble with my multi-billion company that way.

GNWR: But, aren't we eventually running out of oil?

CEO: There is no argument with that, but I have to face the market every quarter, I have no time to waste mulling what will happen in 100 years or so. The market is relentlessly harsh and I have to face it four times a year, at the very least. If the company is not performing financially the CEO is the first one to be blamed and frankly, I don't want to lose my job.

GNWR: Is there anything that would conceivably make you decide to move your company away from oil?

CEO: Certainly. If people massively stopped buying gasoline, diesel, all the other final products of oil then we would have to move to something else or maybe even go bankrupt. But thank goodness this is far from happening. Actually every year the consumption of oil goes up, so we are still safe for a long time to come.

GNWR: But, what about global warming?

CEO: I am a believer in global warming but, what are we going to replace oil with? We have nothing in the pipeline and for the people alive today the consequences of energy scarcity would be worse than the consequences of global warming.

GNWR: Would a carbon tax affect your company?

CEO: Yes, it would tend to increase efficiency and reduce consumption but the energy requirements of the world are still booming. A carbon tax wouldn't be fatal for most private oil companies. Actually it wouldn't even be that harmful to us as we would obviously pass the higher costs to the ultimate consumer.

GNWR: What is your vision for the future of the industry?

CEO: For the next 30 to 50 years, it would continue to operate in an almost business as usual way. Eventually humanity WILL have to move away from oil.

GNWR: What are the alternatives.

CEO: Aside from other fossil fuels which would nonetheless continue to be high carbon emitters, the obvious alternative is nuclear. I don't mean nuclear like the current reactors in operation, I mean more advanced designs.

GNWR: Mr. Oil, thank you very much for your time.

CEO: It is always a pleasure.

The Most Reckless and Greedy CEOs on Earth

The CEOs of several oil companies have decided to drill in the Arctic as if the risks of drilling in the oceans were not enough.  So, we have a question:

Are the oil company's CEOs the most reckless and greedy on planet Earth, willing to destroy the reputation of their companies with a single major accident and even bring them to bankruptcy at the drop of a hat?  

Or, is our hunger for oil so extreme that we have pushed them to those remote, dangerous, and frail locations because that is all that is left?

Whether we like it or not, the correct answer is the second one.  

Greenpeace goes to "heroic" extremes to try to prevent drilling for oil in the Arctic but they, as well as the rest of humanity, are strongly encouraging those projects by our behavior.

So, if we want to see eye to eye the persons really responsible for the drilling of the Arctic we only need to go to a mirror.  

Yes, we may be appalled and indignant by what is now going on in the Arctic but it happens that our money speaks MUCH louder than our feelings or words.

If we do want the drilling of the Arctic to stop then we need to drastically curtail our petroleum products consumption.

Anybody is game?