The Myth Of Alternative Energy

By Peter Goodchild

24 September, 2006
Countercurrents.org


Alternative sources of energy will never be very useful, for several reasons, but mainly because of a problem of "net energy": the amount of energy output is not sufficiently greater than the amount of energy input. Alternative sources simply don't have enough "bang" to replace 30 billion annual barrels of oil.

A further problem with alternative sources of energy is that conventional oil is required to extract, process, and transport almost any other form of energy; a coal mine is not operated by coal-powered equipment. It takes "oil energy" to make "alternative energy."

The use of unconventional oil (shale deposits, tar sands, heavy oil) poses several problems besides that of net energy. In the first place, even if we optimistically assume that about 700 billion barrels of unconventional oil could be produced, that amount would equal only about 15 years of global oil demand. Secondly, the pollution problems are considerable, and it is not certain how much environmental damage the human race is willing to endure. Thirdly, since conventional oil is still cheap and profitable, government and industry will not be motivated to begin serious work on the development of unconventional oil until conventional oil is no longer available - at which point any effort will be too little, too late. In fact, at the moment, unconventional oil is only a tiny fraction of the world's petroleum production, and there are no major technological breakthroughs in sight. Even if all these problems could be solved, the human population will continue to increase, and developing nations will be trying to industrialize. With unconventional oil we are, quite literally, scraping the bottom of the barrel.

More-exotic forms of alternative energy are plagued with even greater problems. Fuel cells cannot be made practical, because such devices require hydrogen derived from fossil fuels (coal or natural gas), if we exclude designs that will never escape the realm of science fiction; if fuel cells ever became popular, the fossil fuels they require would then be consumed even faster than they are now. Biomass energy (perhaps from wood, animal dung, peat, corn, or switchgrass) would require impossibly large amounts of land and would still result in insufficient quantities of net energy, perhaps even negative quantities. Hydroelectric dams are reaching their practical limits. Solar, wind, and geothermal power are only effective in certain areas and for certain purposes; such types of power, in any case, are only of significant value when converted into electrical energy, requiring the use of disposable batteries - a practice as ecologically unsound as the use of fossil fuels. Nuclear power will soon be suffering from a lack of fuel and is already creating serious environmental dangers.

Petroleum, unfortunately, is the perfect fuel, and nothing else even comes close. There will never be a solar-powered airplane. The problem with flying pigs (as in "when pigs can fly") is not that we have to wait for scientists to perfect the technology; the problem is that the pig idea is not a good one in the first place. To maintain an industrial civilization, it's either oil or nothing.

Another unrealistically optimistic thought is that we are shifting from an oil-based culture to an information-based one: computers, we are told, will soon replace trucks. To say that high technology reduces mankind's need for petroleum, however, is an act of faith that is not born out by the figures on world consumption of oil.

The quest for alternative sources of energy is not merely illusory; it is actually harmful. By daydreaming of a noiseless and odorless utopia of windmills and solar panels, we are reducing the effectiveness of whatever serious information is now being published. When news articles claim that there are simple painless solutions to the oil crisis, the reader's response is not awareness but drowsiness. We are rapidly heading toward what has been described as the greatest disaster in history, but we are indulging in escapist fantasies. All talk of alternative energy is just a way of evading the real issue: that the Industrial Age is over.


BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Chicago Review Press has published Peter Goodchild's _Survival Skills of the North American Indians_, _Raven Tales_, and _The Spark in the Stone_. He has an M.A. in English from the University of Toronto. For ten years he was a teacher in both English as a second language and computer skills; two of those years were spent in Japan. He now owns and manages a market garden in Irondale, Ontario, where he is involved in issues of self-sufficiency and localized economy. He can be reached at: peter.goodchild@sympatico.ca