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