"Clean Energy Transition" Part 2

Reassessing the global feasibility of decommissioning coal, oil and gas for renewable energy sources.

In part one of this series, I delved into the stunning assessment of Kenneth Schultz regarding the clean/renewable energy infrastructure that must be built in Australia alone to set our island nation on the road to fulfilling its ‘Net Zero’ goals by 2050. The task was a logistical impossibility: 354 wind turbines, 17,842 rooftop solar arrays and 72 solar farms to be constructed every month from January 2022 until December 2050, in addition to no less than 6 nuclear power stations for reliable carbon-zero base load power supply. Of course, neither the Greens, Labor or Liberal have ever released anything close to a road-map of how they intend to build and finance such a gargantuan national project.

This article takes the clean energy transition task global by introducing us to another fascinating individual who has crunched some serious numbers in the clean-green game. In August 2021, Simon Michaux had completed the compilation of a crucial and brutally exhaustive 985 page (!!!) report, “Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil Fuels.” This analysis goes much farther than Schultz, being a global treatment of the transition to non-oil, non-gas and non-coal energy systems. Michaux’s own logic and chapter overview is included:

Michaux, 2021, p. 20, with one blue box edited out.

The six energy-transition scenarios mentioned above can be further detailed as follows:

Figure 1.18 (Michaux, 2021, p.18): The Six Scenarios

I shall deal with this mammoth report in three separate articles out of a desire to do it justice. This article, Part 2, will re-examine the power supply transition problem we were introduced to by Schultz in Part 1, but this time global in scale. Part 3 will assess the transformation of the transport industry and how the transition to EVs or hydrogen fuel cells will inevitably result in the necessity for even more power generation. That conversation is a relevant one, given that the EU very recently abandoned its plans for compulsory electric vehicles (EVs) by 2035. Part 4 shall address the most glaring issue in the clean transition scheme: critical minerals. For now, let us return to the global power grid.

Clean Energy Transition: The Goal

Michaux commences his report with a graphical depiction of the transition goal: fossil fuel energy systems must be phased out, decommissioned and replaced with something else during this the transition phase, which he aligns with the 2050 Net Zero targets many national governments and global entities are tossing about nowadays.

Figure 1.1 (Michaux, 2021, p. 1): Transition from a fossil fuel based industrial system to a renewable power industrial system.

This figure is helpful to encapsulate the whole scale of the clean energy debate. There are three major components of the agenda: power generation infrastructure, transport infrastructure and industrial infrastructure, all of which must be wholly transitioned away from coal, oil and gas energy to the ever elusive renewable ‘something else.’ Michaux’s report details, excruciatingly, what needs to be done to accomplish that, and the varieties of ‘something else’ that can and should be considered. Michaux paid no attention to whether such a transition needs to be done (for reasons of CO2, climate change etc); his sole interest is, “Can it be done?”

Clean Energy Transition: Past Underestimations

What ‘else’ and how much? Michaux noted (pp. 14-19), importantly, that earlier studies of the renewable transition have vastly underestimated the scale of the project, particularly:

• The number of vehicles in the global transport fleet

• The number of lithium ion batteries to be manufactured

• Extra power production capacity that will be required in the future

• The capability for renewable power generations system to replace fossil fuel power generation systems

• The time required to develop, construct and commission a non-fossil fuel industrial ecosystem

• The current industrial and economic dependency on fossil fuels (oil, gas, and coal)

• Long term and medium term reliability of the fossil fuel industry

He also noted that any transition goals for individual nations are unavoidably global in scale because all nations are interdependent on the critical minerals required to effect the clean energy transition (e.g. nickel, copper, cobalt, lithium, vanadium); no one nation, except possibly China, can go it alone as it were. We are all in or we are all fighting one another for the resources to be in.

Clean Energy Transition: The Global Energy Benchmark

Michaux very carefully and meticulously outlines major factors in the energy transition debate in the first 15 chapters of his report to clearly establish the benchmark scale for the transition each of these in turn, based on answering the following questions:

Source: Michaux (2021), p. 17.

I do not want to spend too much time revisiting what we already saw in Schultz, but it is useful to compare the two given that Michaux is operating at the global scale rather than Schultz’s earlier Australia-only anaylsis. Additionally, Michaux is going into much greater detail on the individual elements. Michaux’s numbers are thus even more mind boggling than what we saw in Part 1. The global energy supply is broken down as follows:

Figure 3.2 (Michaux, 2021, p. 33).

Approximately 85.7% of global energy production (as of 2018) came from fossil fuels, and another 11.25% came from hydro and nuclear. Barely over 4% comes from clean renewables like wind and solar. The amount of energy each source produced was also broken down in detail (the final column):

Table 4.4 (Michaux, 2021, p. 60): Efficiency of electric power generation by fuel source.

Totaled together, the 2018 world’s 46,423 electrical power plants produced approximately 26,000 terawatt hours (26,000,000 gigawatt hours) of electrical energy, of which fossil fuels accounted for approximately 17,000 terawatt hours (17,000,000 gigawatt hours), ten times what Australia alone uses (1,700 terawatt hours or 1,700,000 gigawatt hours). That is 17,000 terawatt hours of global energy supply which must be completely replaced by clean, carbon-zero alternatives: wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, biofuels and nuclear. That is the unassailable, minimum benchmark which must be satisfied by clean, CO2-friendly energy in order to transition the global power supply away from coal, oil and gas completely. But that is not the whole picture.

Clean Energy Transition: The Enemy is ERoEI

One of the major issues highlighted so brilliantly by Michaux’s report (chapter 6) is that the clean energy transition agenda demands humanity to shift from high ERoEI energy sources, like coal, oil and gas, to low ERoEI sources of wind, solar and biofuels. This means that more power plants are required to supply the same amount of energy due to renewables generally having much lower energy efficiencies (Michaux dealt with the varying efficiencies of each power plant type in chapter 4, pp. 52-94; see also column 5 in Table 4.4 above).

Figure 6.1 (Michaux, 2021, p. 119): Energy Return on Energy Invested ratio basic form.

It is a fundamental fact of both physics and economics that if it requires more energy to extract, process and transport a fuel source than you would acquire as energy produced from it, it is not worth the effort to use. Modern society as it currently exists requires an estimated 11:1 ERoEI to function properly, which Michaux (p.128) defined as “[t]he minimum to maintain complex technology and information based structures like the internet, credit banking finance transfer system, just in time supply grid, integrated electronics manufacture, regional continuous grid supplied smooth sinusoidal wave quality electrical power supply, tertiary level hospitals, etc.”

A 7:1 ERoEI will allow “[t]he minimum to maintain the bare necessities of public utility services like potable drinking water supply, sewerage sanitation, localized intermittent supply of poor quality rough wave electrical power supply, an intermittent physical goods supply grid with a 6 month lag time, etc.” Societal ERoEIs of less than 7:1 will result in destabilisation, the so-called Net Energy Cliff:

Figure 6.10 (Michaux, 2021, p. 128): The Net Energy Cliff.

By example, at the hey-day ‘gusher’ period of oil in the early 1900s, oil’s ERoEI was between 500 to 100:1. It was easily extracted by surface derricks and early combustion engines did not require as much fuel refining as they do nowadays. This complicates ERoEI calculations for oil and gas in particular as those energies decline in ERoEI value over time as accessible oil and gas deposits become fewer and harder to extract.

Figure 6.16 (Michaux, 2021, p. 133): Global EROI of oil 1860 to 2012.

Figure 6.17 (Michaux, 2021, p. 134): Global EROI of gas 1860 to 2012.

Efficiency increases, particularly in mining processes, can improve a power source’s ERoEI over time, as is particularly the case for coal. This is ironic, given that coal is the central boogeyman in the clean energy transition’s CO2-driven agenda. Coal is virtually the only fuel with an ERoEI which has increased over time.

Figure 6.18 (Michaux, 2021, p. 135): Global EROI of coal 1800 to 2012.

The overall estimates for fossil fuel ERoEI’s were tabulated by Michaux from various sources, varying between 8-65:1 for oil, 20-67:1 for gas, and 27-80:1 for coal:

Table 6.2 (Michaux, 2021, p. 139): Energy Returned on Energy Invested for fossil fuel sources.

Lastly, he included a tabulated form of ERoEI estimates for nuclear and our clean transition renewables. Only hydro, with an average ERoEI ratio of 50:1, stands apart as the only comparable renewable energy source to fossil fuels.

Table 6.3 (Michaux, 2021, p. 139): Energy Returned on Energy Invested for non-fossil fuel sources.

Michaux then remade the Net Energy Cliff so we can have a graphical idea of where our various power sources sit in their ability to sustain modern civilisation at the 11:1 ERoEI benchmark:

Figure 6.20 (Michaux, 2021, p. 140): The net energy cliff with published numbers of ERoEI from Tables 6.[2] and 6.[3].

The ERoEI requirements of modern, industrialised civilisation paints a grim picture for the clean energy transition. At the same time that most high-energy, moderate efficiency fossil fuels are becoming more expensive to extract and deliver (especially oil and gas), we are expected to transition to less efficient, intermittent, low-energy power sources like wind and solar. Hydro power stands alone as the only major renewable with an ERoEI suitable to sustain modern civilisation moving away from coal, oil and gas, but hydro has its own limitations, namely, suitable damming sites.

Two more tables illustrate the problem. On the one hand is annual power produced by power plant types:

Figure 6.4 (Michaux, 2021, p. 122): Annual Power Produced by a Single Average Plant in 2018.

On the other hand is the number of those same power plant types required to deliver 1,000 terawatt-hours of energy:

Figure 6.5 (Michaux, 2021, p. 122): Number of Average Power Plants (using 2018 data) to deliver 1000 TWh per year.

Recalling the world required (as of 2018) a transition of at least 17,000 annual terawatt hours of fossil fuel power to those clean renewables, the global task becomes comical. Michaux’s final calculations of the number of CO2-free power plants required to transition are included in the “Extra Capacity” section below.

Clean Energy Transition: No Development Allowed

The final death knell in this analysis is to the UN agenda to industrially develop poorer nations (chapter 7). For Michaux (p. 149), this meant developing the world’s poorer economies to the industrial standard of Germany:

If just the BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) were successful in becoming as industrially developed as Germany in 2018, an extra 63 460 thousand barrels of oil a day (63.5 million barrels a day) would have to be brought to the market. India in particular would expand consumption significantly. To put this in perspective, an extra 16.7 new oil fields, the size of the Saudi Arabian Ghawar elephant field (producing 3.8 million barrels a day, would need to be discovered, developed and extra refining capacity commissioned) (Michaux 2019).

If the entire global system was successful in developing industrially similar capacity to Germany in 2018, extra 116 683 thousand barrels of oil a day (116.7 million barrels a day) would have to be brought to the market. This would need an extra 30.1 new oil fields, the size of the Saudi Arabia Ghawar elephant field. This represents a 117% expansion of oil consumption on top of global 2018 demand.

At a time when it is becoming harder to locate and recover oil and gas resources, equitable future development of poorer nations has no reasonable prospect of success due to their inherent increased demand for petroleum and gas products. Michaux held nothing back when his analysis concluded, “This means that it is highly unlikely that all nation states will develop to the same industrial, economic, and technological profile [as Germany].” Oops! Sorry, 3rd world! No development for you. Only the collective ‘West’ is permitted to live in 11:1 ERoEI civilisation.

Clean Energy Transition: Extra Capacity Required

We will revisit this point when we get to Part 3, but what many governments and clean energy pundits fail to realise is that the complete abolition of coal, oil and gas necessarily implies increased grid capacity, over and beyond the current 26,000 terawatt hours of global energy. Why? Because industries and sectors that rely on coal, oil and gas for purposes other than electricity generation (e.g. steel manufacturing, heating, chemical fertiliser production, plastics, etc), need to acquire that energy or resource from the grid or a renewable. A world without gas, coal or oil heating must use another source for it: electrical. It is like using a toaster’s electric wires to melt steel for industry instead of using a coal furnace to melt it. Some industries, such as plastics and chemical fertilisers, have few alternative options other than oil (biofuel or biomass plastics is one possibility).

Two more figures supplied by Michaux put the final nail in the clean transition coffin. For those who struggle with the tiny font (apologies, see p. 491 of the report for a better image), transitioning the world’s coal, oil and gas in every affected industry, including converting all transportation modes (car, truck, train, ship, plane) to EVs, will require an additional 30,853.9 terawatt hours of electricity generation per annum, all of which must come from renewables:

• 9,722.7 terawatt hours to charge EV road vehicles;

• 226.6 terawatt hours to charge EV rail;

• 945.9 terawatt hours to charge EV shipping;

• 802.8 terawatt hours to replace oil-based power plants;

• 6,182.8 terawatt hours to replace gas-based power plants;

• 2,816 terawatt hours to replace gas-based heating;

• 10,100.5 terawatt hours to replace coal-based power plants;

• 56 terawatt hours to replace coal-based steel manufacturing.

Table 23.10 (Michaux, 2021, p. 491): Estimated kilowatt hours needed to phase out fossil fuels entirely in the GLOBAL SYSTEM with the same scope of activity as in 2018.

So the goalposts have now been moved, from 17,000 TWh of energy to be transitioned, to 47,850 TWh (17,000 of existing energy plus 30,850 new electrical loads due to industry and transportation transitions).

In terms of actual clean, CO2-free power plants, this will require, in Michaux’s estimation:

• 60,763 solar farms (33 gigawatt-hours each, a much larger figure than Schultz);

• 6,523 geothermal, tidal and biowaste plants (80 gigawatt hours each);

• 55,412 wind farms (81 gigawatt-hours each, again a larger capacity than Schultz);

• 10,921 new hydroelectric dams (1325 gigawatt-hours each); and

• 729 new nuclear power plants (12,800 gigawatt hours each).

Figure 23.15 (Michaux, 2021, p. 492): Extra capacity in the electrical power system to phase out fossil fuels in the Global System – Part 1.

Not included by Michaux, but taking the lead from Schultz, is the Rate of Deployment with Net Zero 2050 as our same end goal. By December, 2050, the entire world must construct:

• 181 (33 GWh) solar farms per month;

• 20 (80 GWh) geothermal, tidal or biowaste plants per month;

• 164 (81 GWh) wind farms per month;

• 32 (1325 GWh) hydroelectric dams per month;

• 2 (12,800 GWh) nuclear power plants per month.

This is to say nothing about the task of converting all of the world’s industry, heating and transportation over to various forms of pure electrical, rather than coal, oil or gas, energy. It is, as we saw in Part 1, a logistical absurdity, even assuming all the materials for such mass construction projects are ready to go right now (and they are not). We will return to the transportation transition in Part 3, and the mineral/mining problem in Part 4.

Conclusions

My own personal views on energy transition were actually fundamentally altered by reading Michaux's report, especially chapter 6 on the ERoEI needs of modern developed society. It dawned on me as I read that chapter that there is indeed a looming energy crisis for our advanced civilisation. As time passes, the high-yield energies of coal, oil and gas become harder to find and more difficult to extract and refine. It is inevitable that, at some point in the (distant) future, the ERoEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) to keep industrialised civilisation moving will drop below the ideal 11:1 ratio. New sources of energy production that can maintain at least that ratio must be found. The energy crisis, however distant, is real. This was a fundamental finding of Michaux’s report. Something does need to be done, but the when and how are still very much up for debate. We must be engaged, as individuals, communities and countries, in that debate. Further, we must not allow globalist billionaires and their government and mainstream media propagandist lackeys to be the only influencers in the conversation. Sharing (and translating) this free-for-the-world article is one first step in bringing awareness to this issue.

It should be abundantly clear by now that the idea that the world can simply switch over to wind, solar, hydro, biofuels and nuclear within the next 28 years utterly absurd. It is not possible to construct new, clean power infrastructure to satisfy an increased-capacity, 47,850 TWh global grid by 2050, assuming industry and transportation likewise transition to wholly electric or hydrogen fuel cell power. It cannot be done and will not be done. The onus is on anyone suggesting otherwise, like the recent Green advertising “Ban coal, oil and gas by 2030” for the New South Wales State election, to present their radical new manufacturing and civil engineering methods for effecting a Net Zero future for closer scrutiny. Tell us how you will build 181 (33 GWh) solar farms, 20 (80 GWh) geothermal, tidal or biowaste plants, 164 (81 GWh) wind farms, 32 (1325 GWh) hydroelectric dams and 2 (12,800 GWh) nuclear power plants per month, or else stop your polarising, empty tokenistic political sloganism. A more realistic timeframe for clean transition, I submit, would be by year 2150, or perhaps 2200. We should be talking about the legacy we wish to leave for our great-great-great-great grandchildren. This is not a task which can be accomplished by a single generation, let alone our generation!

Thirdly, Michaux’s report had very little to say about emerging nuclear fusion technologies (chapter 24.17). Eric Lerner’s Boron-hydrogen fusion reactor is producing some promising results, over and above the US$80 billion waste of taxpayer dollars that is ITER tokamak fusion. Its major drawback is fuel contamination: so much as 1 atom that is neither Boron nor hydrogen will result in dangerous alpha radiation emanating from the reactor chamber. Lerner and his team are still working on ways to ensure fuel and reactor atmosphere purity. Another promising and untapped possibility is Aureon Energy’s SAFIRE reactor. Besides being a medium-temperature (12,000-30,000 K) plasma reactor, this technology also holds a potential key to spent nuclear fuel remediation as the depleted uranium fuel rods used in any clean transition future (and they must be) can be used as fuel in a SAFIRE reactor with the side effect of complete nuclear decontamination. Suddenly the nuclear waste nightmare that has ever haunted that clean power source might disappear forever. Other renewables that never got a mention by Michaux are century-old gravity-fed generators (see also here) and Stirling engines, two power sources with unlimited potential albeit with low energy and efficiency ratings. These technologies, old and new, need to be included in the wider conversation.

Neither can I say much about Nikolai Tesla’s 20th century discoveries [PDF download] that electricity can be drawn directly from sky and earth, harvesting our planet’s own unlimited supply of natural telluric and atmospheric/ionospheric electrical fields and currents. I am not surprised the oil and mining magnates kept that secret hidden for the last century until they made their billions from them. Another individual who has theorised similar principles was the late geophysicist Michael Csuzdi who hypothesised a theoretical thunderstorm geopower plant with unlimited clean energy potential. In any case, there remain promising alternatives to solar, wind and hydro that must become part of the discussion. Funneling humanity into one, pre-ordained agenda which only heaps dollar rewards on the billionaires investing and propagandising those options is not a suitable way forward.

Michaux’s own conclusion (in the abstract, p. iv) is a fitting end for this assessment:

[T]his report suggests that replacing the existing fossil fuel powered system (oil, gas, and coal), using renewable technologies, such as solar panels or wind turbines, will not be possible for the entire global human population. There is simply just not enough time, nor resources to do this by the current target set by the World’s most influential nations. What may be required, therefore, is a significant reduction of societal demand for all resources, of all kinds. This implies a very different social contract and a radically different system of governance to what is in place today. Inevitably, this leads to the conclusion that the existing renewable energy sectors and the EV technology systems are merely steppingstones to something else, rather than the final solution. It is recommended that some thought be given to this and what that something else might be.

Two final thoughts emerge here. What is wrong with the old, traditional ways, the ways still lived in large parts of South America, Africa and Asia, enlightened with modern sanitation, medicine, and renewable, regenerative, self-sufficient methods of agriculture? Humanity survived well enough with wood and seed oils; why is there no discussion of the creation of renewable, regenerative enclaves where someone like me could gladly live out the rest of my days, sacrificing modern society and all its rank consumerism, endless consumption and ludicrous infinite growth delusions? Why cannot I and whatever other community wishes to join me, live in the arid, ‘lifeless’ Australian interior, applying acquired knowledge of Australian bush foods and traditional aboriginal life to eke out our own existence undisturbed by taxes, wars, or feuding governments? Why is partial or total de-industrialisation never an option for the willing? I am a borderline Luddite as it is and I would jump at the chance to free myself from the usury-(interest)-based, debt-slavery banking system if there was any such option. Sadly, I think there’s a group of narcissists conspiring somewhere that think the sole meaning of human existence is to control and oppress others, and live a comfortable life at other’s expense (and taxation). They do not want us to be free, “every man under his vine and under his fig tree.”

The only other option I can see is that advocated by Planned Parenthood and other diabolical population-control entities. While I am certain there is more than enough land and resources for 8 billion of us to co-exist comfortably utilising modern, integrated techniques of regenerative and self-sustainable agriculture, if incompetent propagandists were not telling us what we can and cannot do, where we can and cannot grow our food, I cannot help the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that it will not end well for humanity. A energy crisis looms in the distant horizon, yes, but artificially contrived political crises may very well extinguish all hope of a clean energy transition before the conversation has even begun.

[Continue to Part 3 - The Transportation Transition]