Planning for the end of oil Richard Sears

for the next few minutes we’re going to

talk about energy and it’s going to be a

bit of a varied talk I’ll try to spin a

story about energy and oil is a

convenient starting place the talk will

be broadly about energy but oil is a

good place to start and one of the

reasons is this is remarkable stuff you

take about eight carbon aedra so carbon

atoms about 20 hydrogen atoms you put

them together at exactly the right way

and you get this marvelous liquid very

energy dense and very easy to refine

into a number of very useful products

and fuels it’s great stuff now as far as

it goes there’s a lot of oil out there

in the world right here’s my little

pocket map of where it’s all located a

bigger one for you to look at but this

is it

this is the oil in the world geologists

have a pretty good idea of where the oil

is this is about a hundred trillion

gallons of crude oil still to be

developed and produced in the world

today now that’s one story about oil and

we could end it there and say well oil

is going to last forever because well

there’s just a lot of it but there’s

actually more to the story than that oh

by the way if you think you’re very far

from some of this oil a thousand meters

below where you’re all sitting is one of

the largest producing oil fields in the

world come talk to me about it I’ll fill

in some of the details if you want so

that’s one of the stories of oil there’s

just a lot of it but what about oil

where is it any energy system then

here’s a little snapshot of 150 years of

oil and it’s been a dominant part of our

energy system for most of those 150

years now here’s another little secret

I’m going to tell you about for the last

25 years oil has been playing less and

less of a role in global energy system

there was one kind of peak oil in 1985

when oil represented 50% of global

energy supply now it’s about 35% it’s

been declining and I believe it will

continue to decline gasoline consumption

in the u.s. probably peaked in 2007 and

is declining so oil is playing a less

significant role every year right and

and so 25 years ago there was a peak oil

just like in the 1920s

there was a peak pole and a hundred

years before that there was a peak wood

this is a very important picture of the

evolution of energy systems and what’s

been taking up the slack in the last few

decades well a lot of natural gas and a

little bit of nuclear for starters and

what goes on in the future well I think

out ahead of us a few decades is Pete

gas and beyond that peak renewables now

tell you another little very important

story about this picture now I’m not

pretending that energy use in total

isn’t increasing it is that’s another

part of the story come talk to me about

it we’ll fill in some of the details but

there’s a very important message here

this is 200 years of history and for 200

years we’ve been systematically

decarbonizing our energy system energy

systems of the world becoming

progressively year-on-year decade on

decade century round century becoming

less carbon intense and that continues

into the future with the renewables that

we’re developing today reaching maybe 30

percent of primary energy by mid-century

now that might be the end of the story

okay we just replace it all with

conventional renewables but I think

actually there’s more to the story than

that and to tell the next part of the

story this is looking out say 2100 and

beyond what is the future of truly

sustainable carbon free energy well we

have to take a little excursion and

we’ll start in Central Texas

here’s piece of limestone picked it up

outside of Marble Falls Texas it’s about

400 million years old and it’s just

limestone nothing really special about

it now here’s a piece of chalk I picked

this up at MIT it’s a little younger and

it’s different than this limestone you

can see that you wouldn’t build a

building out of this stuff and you

wouldn’t try to give a lecture and write

on the chalkboard with this we have very

different notes not different it’s not

different it’s the same stuff

calcium carbonate calcium carbonate

what’s different is how the molecules

are put together now if you think that’s

kind of neat the story gets really neat

right now off the coast of California

comes this it’s an abalone shell now

millions of abalone every year make the

shell oh by the way just in case you

weren’t already guessing

calcium carbonate it’s the same stuff as

this and the same stuff as this but it’s

not the same stuff it’s different it’s

it’s thousands of times maybe three

thousand times tougher than this and why

because the lowly abalone is able to lay

down the calcium carbonate crystals in

layers making this beautiful iridescent

mother-of-pearl very specialized

material that the abalone self-assembles

millions of millions of abalone all the

time every day every year this is pretty

incredible stuff all the same what’s

different

how the molecules are put together now

what does this have to do with energy

here’s a piece of coal and I’ll suggest

that this coal is about as exciting is

this chalk now whether we’re talking

about fuels or energy carriers or

perhaps novel materials for batteries or

fuel cells nature hasn’t ever built

those perfect materials yet because

nature didn’t need to nature didn’t need

to because unlike the abalone shell the

survival of a species didn’t depend on

building those materials until maybe now

when it might just matter so when we

think about the future of energy imagine

what would it be like if instead of this

we could build the energy equivalent of

this just by rearranging the molecules

differently and so that is my story the

oil will never run out it’s not because

we have a lot of it it’s not because

we’re going to build a bajillion

windmills it’s because well thousands of

years ago people invented ideas they had

ideas innovations technology and the

Stone Age ended not because we ran out

of stones

it’s ideas it’s innovation it’s

technology that will end the age of oil

long before we run out of oil thank you

very much

you