Amazon.com
The End of Oil is a "geologic cautionary tale for a complacent world accustomed to reliable infusions of cheap energy." The book centers around one irrefutable fact: the global supply of oil is being depleted at an alarming rate. Precisely how much accessible (not to mention theoretical) oil remains is debatable, but even conservative estimates mark the peak of production in decades rather than centuries. Which energy sources will replace oil, who will control them, and how disruptive to the current world order the transition from one system to the next will be are just a few of the big questions that Paul Roberts attempts to answer in this timely book.
As Roberts makes abundantly clear, the major oil players in the world wield their enormous economic and political power in order to maintain the status quo. Of course, they get plenty of help from the tens of millions of consumers, particularly in the U.S. and Europe, who guzzle oil as if there is an unlimited supply. And this demand shows no sign of abating--nearly half of the world's population lives without the benefits of fossil fuels and they desperately want to be among the haves. In countries such as China and India, where energy systems are already breaking down, Roberts discusses how they are looking to oil to fuel their race for development, in many cases ignoring environmental considerations altogether.
Though there is much to be pessimistic about, Roberts does uncover some positive developments, such as the race for alternative energy sources, notably hydrogen fuel cells, which could help to ease us off of our oil dependence before a full-blown energy crisis occurs. No one book could cover every aspect of what Roberts calls "arguably the most serious crisis ever to face industrial society," but The End of Oil is a remarkably informative and balanced introduction to this pressing subject. --Shawn Carkonen
From Publishers Weekly
All economic activity is rooted in the energy economy, which means a substantial portion of the current world economy is linked to the production and distribution of oil. But what will happen, Roberts asks, when the well starts to run dry? Walking readers through the modern energy economy, he suggests that grim prospect may not be as far off as we'd like to think and points out how political unrest could disrupt the world's oil supply with disastrous results. But that could be the least of our worries; some of Roberts's most persuasive passages describe an almost inevitable future shaped by global warming, especially as rapidly industrializing countries like China begin to replicate the pollution history of the U.S. Some signs of hope are visible, he believes, especially in Europe, but the stumbling progress of potential alternatives such as hydrogen power or fuel cells is additional cause for concern. And though the current administration's energy policy gets plenty of criticism, Roberts (a regular contributor to Harper's) saves some of his harshest barbs for American consumers, described as "the least energy-conscious people on the planet." If the government won't create stricter fuel efficiency standards, he argues, blame must be placed equally on our eagerness to drive around in gas-guzzling SUVs and on corporate lobbying. Stressing the dire need to act now to create any meaningful long-term effect, this measured snapshot of our oil-dependent economy forces readers to confront unsettling truths without sinking into stridency. This book may very well become for fossil fuels what Fast Food Nation was to food or High and Mighty to SUVs.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
After terrorists killed Western oil executives in the heart of Saudi Arabia's oil region over the Memorial Day weekend, the price of oil rose to $42 a barrel, its highest level in history. Headlines warn that Americans may soon be paying $3 a gallon for gasoline. But rising prices at the pump only hint at our true energy dilemma. Imagine what would happen if the world's supply of oil were magically to vanish overnight. Life as we know it would shudder to a halt. Without oil to transport it, food could not get to market -- nor could it be grown and processed by our oil-dependent agricultural system. Most Americans could not get to work, take their kids to school or do any other of the countless tasks cars help us perform. Air travel would stop. Hospitals would be crippled as supplies of blood, medications and other vital materials became unattainable. There would be no more plastics, no more videotapes. You wouldn't be reading this newspaper, at least in a print edition, because trucks would be unable to deliver copies to doorsteps and vendors. Paul Roberts predicts nothing so dramatic in this timely, important but uneven book. By "the end of oil," he means not the absolute exhaustion of the planet's petroleum deposits but a subtler, though scarcely less disruptive transformation. The world's supply of oil, he argues, is soon destined to "peak," after which our civilization will somehow have to manage with ever-declining supplies. With long-term global demand for oil meanwhile climbing relentlessly, sustained shortages could unleash punishing price spikes, worldwide inflation, recession and even armed conflict as nations use force to secure the black gold they cannot live without. According to Roberts, a contributor to Harper's who visited Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan and interviewed a range of industry, government and private experts for this book, there is little dispute among insiders that an oil peak is inevitable someday; oil is, after all, a finite resource. But there is considerable disagreement about when that will occur. Optimists, such as those in the U.S. Geological Survey and the Energy Information Agency, foresee no peak before 2035. "Pessimists, by contrast," Roberts writes, "a group whose members include geologists, industry analysts, and a surprising number of oil industry and government officials, believe that a peak may come much sooner -- perhaps as soon as 2005." That 30-year difference is crucial. To avoid the disaster scenario outlined above, the world must put in place substitute sources of energy, and a system for delivering them, before the peak occurs. Otherwise, shortages are certain and chaos likely. Establishing an alternative system will be no small challenge, however, for it must displace the 40 percent of global energy demand that is currently met by oil. Historically, human societies have needed about 50 years to shift from one energy foundation to another. Wood, for example, gave way to coal during the early 19th century and coal to oil in the mid-20th. Given how little the United States in particular has done so far to develop successful alternatives, one must hope the optimists are right in saying that we have decades, not months or years, to leave oil behind. Yet paradoxically, the looming danger of climate change argues for quitting petroleum as soon as possible. This book had already gone to press by the time an elite Pentagon planning unit's report appeared in Fortune in February, warning that climate change was a national security threat of the greatest urgency that could cause mega-droughts, mass starvation and even nuclear war by 2020. But Roberts's treatment of the subject confirms a crucial point: Even if the Earth contained enough oil to fuel civilization for 500 years, humans would be foolish to burn it all, for the carbon released in the process would extinguish whatever chance we have of avoiding catastrophic warming. In the meantime, control of the world's dwindling oil supply will continue to confer immense power on its owners. Here, Roberts's reporting offers valuable background to the American-led war in Iraq, for he demonstrates that whoever rules the Middle East -- especially Iran, Iraq and above all Saudi Arabia -- is certain to dominate world oil decisions for the rest of the petroleum era. True, new suppliers have entered the market over the past 20 years, but the geological fact remains that the largest and cheapest deposits of oil on earth are located beneath the Middle East. Even optimists, reports Roberts, concede that non-OPEC, non-Middle East oil will peak between 2015 and 2020. After that point, the Middle East's control will become irresistible. Roberts thus dismisses as "patently absurd" the Bush administration's denials that the invasion of Iraq was about oil. He even argues that the undeclared aim of the war was not simply to capture Iraq's oil but to permanently break OPEC's power over global supply. It's a plausible, provocative thesis. The problem is, the only sources he cites for it are two unnamed former government officials and two outside analysts, none of whom offers anything approaching documentary proof. It's a shortcoming that unfortunately pervades this book. Too often, Roberts provides no sourcing for statements that are either debatable (e.g., implementing the Kyoto protocol on climate change would cost the United States 2 percent of its gross national product per year) or arresting (urban air pollution kills 4 million people a year in China). Especially odd is how many sources go unnamed even when they offer the blandest of quotes. Finally, some "facts" cited here are simply wrong. Climate change did not raise sea levels 10 inches in the 20th century (though it may well do so in the 21st). And the World Bank has, alas, by no means grown reluctant to finance large energy projects in the Third World. Roberts finds firmer ground in his final chapter about how to escape this conundrum. Contrary both to the Bush-Cheney stress on boosting fossil fuel production and environmentalists' calls for a quick shift to a solar-hydrogen economy, it is energy efficiency that could save the day. Sexy? No. But improving the efficiency with which we use oil and other forms of energy is by far the fastest, cheapest and most far-reaching way to begin kicking the carbon habit -- and to buy us time to get real alternatives up and running. One big obstacle is that government subsidies, especially but not only in the United States, still favor carbon-based fuels, so the market sees them as a good buy. But just as Washington, through taxes, has forced the price of cigarettes to reflect the health costs that smoking imposed on society, Roberts argues, so could government make the market reflect the social costs of continued reliance on carbon fuels. Such a shift is unthinkable under the Bush administration, but if the environmentally minded John Kerry wins in November, the outlook could brighten. In any case, the longer we wait to wean ourselves off oil, the more costly, in all respects, our withdrawal will be. Reviewed by Mark HertsgaardCopyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.
From Booklist
Out of Gas [BKL D 1 03], by scientist David Goodstein, has strong appeal for those with a general interest in energy. Roberts' disquisition tilts decisively toward the curiosity level of activists who populate public-interest groups and government as well as those who are more business-oriented and trying to make non-oil energy technologies profitable. Thus the author's style is sober, systematic, and studded with statistics, such as his favorable quotation of an analyst that atmospheric carbon dioxide must be restrained to 550 parts per million, about two-thirds above today's level. Numbers also back up his surveys of COsources that threaten that threshold (China's coal, America's SUV drivers). Roberts will diverge into an anecdote, but he consistently returns to adducing facts and drawing conclusions for all subtopics related to the prospective, decades-long transition from oil to--what? Decarbonized coal, liquefied natural gas, wind, sunlight, and hydrogen-- Roberts handicaps their profitability and advocates policies to market them, including international policies. Severely caustic about the energy policies of the Bush administration, Roberts will certainly gratify its opponents; yet policy-oriented readers willing to set aside Roberts' politics will understand him to be exceedingly well informed about the energy issue. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"An extraordinarily clear and powerful analysis of what is arguably the most serious crisis our industrial society has ever faced."
Book Description
Petroleum is now so deeply entrenched in our economy, our politics, and our personal expectations that even modest efforts to phase it out are fought tooth and nail by the most powerful forces in the world: companies and governments that depend on oil revenues; the developing nations that see oil as the only means to industrial success; and a Western middle class that refuses to modify its energy-dependent lifestyle. But within thirty years, by even conservative estimates, we will have burned our way through most of the oil that is easily accessible. And well before then, the side effects of an oil-based society -- economic volatility, geopolitical conflict, and the climate-changing impact of hydrocarbon pollution -- will render fossil fuels an all but unacceptable solution. How will we break our addiction to oil? And what will we use in its place to maintain a global economy and political system that are entirely reliant on cheap, readily available energy? Brilliantly reported from around the globe, The End of Oil brings the world situation into fresh and dramatic focus for business and general readers alike. Roberts talks to both oil optimists and oil pessimists, delves deep into the economics and politics of oil, considers the promises and pitfalls of alternatives, and shows that, although the world energy system has begun its epoch-defining transition, disruption and violent dislocation are almost assured if we do not take a more proactive stance. With the topicality and readability of Fast Food Nation and the scope and trenchant analysis of Guns, Germs, and Steel, this is a vitally important book for the new century.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
PrologueI was standing on a sand dune in Saudi Arabia"s "Empty Quarter," thevast, rust-red desert where one-quarter of the world"s oil is found, when Ilost my faith in the modern energy economy. It was after sundown and thesky was dark blue and the sand still warm to the touch. My Saudi hosts hadjust finished showing me around the colossal oil city they"d built atop an oilfield called Shayba. Engineers and technicians, they were rattling off production statistics with all the bravado of proud parents, telling me howmany hundreds of thousands of barrels Shayba produced every day, andhow light and sweet and sought-after the oil was. Saudi oilmen are usually ataciturn bunch, guarding their data like state secrets. But this was post 9/11and Riyadh, in full glasnost mode, was wooing Western journalists and tryingto restore the Saudis" image as dependable long-term suppliers of energy—not suicidal fanatics or terrorist financiers. And it was working. I"darrived in the kingdom filled with doubts about a global energy orderbased on a finite and problematic substance—oil. As we"d toured Shaybain a spotless white GMC Yukon, though, my hosts plying me with facts andfigures on the world"s most powerful oil enterprise, my worries faded. I"dbegun to feel giddy and smug, as if I had been allowed to peek into the gardenof the energy gods and found it overflowing with bounty.Then the illusion slipped. On a whim, I asked my hosts about another,older oil field, some three hundred miles to the northwest, called Ghawar.Ghawar is the largest field ever discovered. Tapped by American engineersin 1953, its deep sandstone reservoirs at one time had held perhaps a seventhof the world"s known oil reserves, and its wells produced six millionbarrels of oil a day—or roughly one of every twelve barrels of crude consumedon earth. In the iconography of oil, Ghawar is the eternal mother,the mythical giant that makes most other fields look puny and mortal. Myhosts smiled politely, yet looked faintly annoyed—not, it seemed, becauseI was asking inappropriate questions, but because, probably for the thousandth time, Ghawar had stolen the limelight. Like engineers anywhere,these men took an intense pride in their own work and could not resist afew jabs at a rival operation. Pointing to the sand at our feet, one engineerboasted that Shayba was "self-pressurized"—its subterranean reservoirswere under such great natural pressure that, once they were pierced by thedrill, the oil simply flowed out like a black fountain. "At Ghawar," he said,"they have to inject water into the field to force the oil out." By contrast, hecontinued, Shayba"s oil contained only trace amounts of water. At Ghawar,the engineer said, the "water cut" was 30 percent.The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Ghawar"s water injectionswere hardly news, but a 30 percent water cut, if true, was startling. Mostnew oil fields produce almost pure oil, or oil mixed with natural gas—with little water. Over time, however, as the oil is drawn out, operators mustreplace it with water, to keep the oil flowing—until eventually what flowsfrom the well is almost pure water and the field is no longer worth operating.Ghawar wouldn"t run dry overnight: depletion takes years and evendecades; however, daily production would continue to fall steadily, and theSaudis would be forced to tap new fields, like Shayba, to maintain their statusas the world"s preeminent oil power. While such expansions were nevera problem during the heyday of Arab oil wealth in the 1970s and early "80s,times are much tighter today for Saudi Arabia and for most other petrostates.As we drove back toward the airstrip for my flight home, my hostsbombarding me with more facts and figures, I couldn"t shake the feelingthat the gods of energy might not be as powerful and eternal and confidentas I had imagined.To me, Ghawar is the perfect metaphor for what is happening to the largerenergy economy, a geologic cautionary tale for a complacent world accustomed to reliable infusions of cheap energy. On the face of it, our energy economy is humming along like a perpetual-motion machine. Today, billions of people enjoy an unprecedented standard of living and nations floatin rivers of wealth, in large part because, around the world, the energy industryhas built an enormous network of oil wells, supertankers, pipelines,coal mines, power plants, transmission lines, cars, trucks, trains, and ships—a gigantic, marvelously intricate system that almost magically convertsoil and its hydrocarbon cousins, natural gas and coal, into the heat, power,and mobility that animate modern civilization. For three hundred years,this man-made wonder has performed nearly flawlessly, transforming coal,oil, and natural gas (and in much of the world, a vast volume of wood, peat,and even animal dung) into economic and political power—and nurturingthe belief that the surest way to still greater prosperity and stability wassimple: find more oil, coal, and natural gas.Yet, like Ghawar, our energy economy has hit a kind of peak of itsown. Each year, the world demands more and more energy, with no endpoint in sight. And each year, it is more and more evident that the extraordinary machine we have built to supply that demand cannot sustain itself in its present form. Not a day goes by without some new disclosure, some new bit of headline evidence that our brilliant energy success comes atgreat cost—air pollution and toxic waste sites, blackouts and price spikes,fraud and corruption, and even war. The industrial-strength confidencethat was a by-product of our global energy economy for most of the twentiethcentury has slowly been replaced by anxiety.Although, like most consumers, I"ve been a casual student of this energyanxiety since it began—circa 1974, with the Arab oil embargo—Ibegan exploring the question in earnest during the boom years of the late1990s. I was writing about America"s bizarre and growing infatuation withthat modern warhorse, the "sport-utility vehicle," or SUV, and its closecousin, the pickup truck. At first, the story seemed to be mainly about conspicuous consumption and automotive vanity and sheer stupidity, sincevery few of their owners actually took their hugely expensive SUVs off-roador loaded their pickup trucks with anything heavier than groceries or soccerballs. But the more I looked into it, the more I realized that the realstory lay less in the vehicles themselves than in the oceans of oil they wereburning.As is well known by now, SUVs and pickup trucks (known collectively,and somewhat deceptively, as "light trucks") consume a great deal of gasoline:the house-sized Ford Excursion I test-drove gets something like 4.6miles per gallon in the city, and even the more sensible models rarely dobetter than 18. The cumulative effect of so much unnecessary internal combustionis staggering: since the SUV craze began in 1990, the twenty-year-old trend in the United States toward improving automotive fuel efficiencynot only has halted but is now sliding backward, dramatically increasingU.S. demand for oil. And here is the rub: the United States doesn"t haveenough of its own oil to meet that surging SUV-driven demand. After acentury of full-bore drilling, oil companies are finding precious little newoil in the Lower Forty-eight, and production—the number of barrelspumped per day—is falling steadily each year. What this means is that theUnited States, despite being the third-largest oil-producing nation in theworld, now must import even more oil from the much-maligned "foreign"producers—including many, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, whose populationsregard the United States as an enemy. In one of many energy ironies,during the months leading up to the second war with Iraq (charter memberof the Axis of Evil, greatest threat to the American way of life since thefall of the Soviet Union, etc.), the United States was getting more than 10percent of its imported oil from Iraqi fields.The United States isn"t the only nation with oil issues. Europe has longbeen import-dependent, as has Japan. China, a rapidly industrializing giantwith more than a billion people and plans to build an economy as powerfuland energy-intensive as anything in the West, now uses more oil than itsown fields can produce and has begun courting the same foreign producersUncle Sam now spends so much money and time and political capital tryingto control. As I charted all this rising demand for oil, I wondered whereit was going to come from, and what new contradictions and hypocrisieswould result.I was certainly not the only one asking. In interviews with oil industryofficials—men and a few women who are, generally, quite optimisticabout their business—I heard repeatedly how oil companies were havinga harder and harder time finding new oil. I learned that most of the world"soil reserves are controlled by a small number of countries whose governmentsare unstable and corrupt and whose dependability as suppliers is increasinglyin doubt. I began to wonder whether the glorious golden age ofoil might be over. How long would the supplies of oil last? What wouldhappen to our phenomenal wealth and splendid lifestyle if oil productionpeaked, supplies grew scarce, and prices rose? Did world governments andenergy companies have a plan to ensure a smooth, gradual shift to a newfuel or a new energy technology? Or would the end of oil catch us unpreparedand send shockwaves through the global economy, touching off adangerous race for whatever oil supplies remained?As my research took me to places like Houston, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan,and other outposts of the oil empire, the more I realized the storythat needed telling wasn"t simply about oil, but about all energy. Oil may bethe brightest star in the energy firmament, the glamorous, storied shaper oftwentieth-century politics and economics, and the owner of 40 percent ofthe world energy market. Yet oil is only one of a triad of geological siblingsknown as hydrocarbons that have dominated the global energy economy forcenturies and whose histories and destinies are hopelessly intertwined withour own. Twenty-six percent of our energy still comes from coal, a cheap,abundant mineral used to power industrial processes and generate most ofthe world"s electricity. Twenty-four percent comes from natural gas, a versatileenergy source that will soon surpass coal as the preferred fuel forheating and power generation—and quite possibly become the "bridgefuel" to some future energy system. And yet, although coal and gas are, in asense, alternatives to oil, both impose many of the same environmental,political, and financial costs. Coal is fatally dirty. Gas is extremely hard totransport and comes with its own thicket of geopolitical snarls; a global energy economy based on either would be just as problematic as the one wehave, if not more so. In other words, when I began to ask about the end ofoil, I was really asking about a transformation of the entire hydrocarboneconomy and the end, perhaps, of a story that is almost as old as civilization.For most of the past six thousand years, human history has been characterized by a constant struggle to harness ever-larger quantities of energy in ever more useful ways. From the earliest experiments with animal-drawn plows in what is now Iraq, the march of material progress has been accompanied by—and, one could argue, driven by—increasingly sophisticated mastery of fuels and energy systems. Animal power made agriculture possible. Firewood let us cook our food, heat our homes, brew barley intobeer, and smelt metal ores into plowshares and spearheads. The wide-scaleuse of coal in England set the conditions for the Industrial Revolution. Acentury later, oil and natural gas, followed by a plethora of "advanced"technologies ranging from nuclear to solar, completed the transformation,dragging the industrializing world into modernity and in the process fundamentally and irrevocably reordering life at every level.We live today in a world completely dominated by energy. It is thebedrock of our wealth, our comfort, and our largely unquestioned faith inthe inexorability of progress, implicit in every act and artifact of modernexistence. We produce and consume energy not simply to heat and feedourselves, to move ourselves, or to defend ourselves, but to educate and entertain ourselves, to expand our knowledge, change our destiny, constructand reconstruct our world, and fill it with stuff. Everything we buy, from ahamburger at McDonalds to a duck at a Beijing market, from plastic lawnchairs and opera tickets to computers and garbage service, from medicalservices and cancer drugs to farm fertilizers and Humvees, represents ameasure of energy produced and then consumed.Energy has become the currency of political and economic power, thedeterminant of the hierarchy of nations, a new marker, even, for successand material advancement. Access to energy has thus emerged as the overriding imperative of the twenty-first century. It is a guiding geopoliticalprinciple for all governments, and a largely unchallenged heuristic for aglobal energy industry whose success is based entirely on its ability to find,produce, and distribute ever-larger volumes of coal, oil, and natural gas,and their most common by-product, electricity.Yet even a cursory look reveals that, for all its great successes, our energyeconomy is fatally flawed, in nearly every respect. The oil industryis among the least stable of all business sectors, tremendously vulnerableto destructive price swings and utterly dependent on corrupt, despotic"petrostates" with uncertain futures. Natural gas, though cleaner than oil, ishugely expensive to transport, while coal, though abundant and easy to getat, produces so much pollution that it is killing millions of people everyyear.Worse, it is now clear to all but a handful of ideologues and ignoramusesthat our steadily increasing reliance on fossil fuels is connected insome way to subtle but significant changes in our climate. Burning hydrocarbons releases not only energy, but carbon dioxide, a compound that,when it reaches the atmosphere, acts like a planet-sized greenhouse window,trapping the sun"s heat and pushing up global temperatures. If left unchecked,this so-called greenhouse effect will keep warming the earth untilpolar icecaps melt, oceans rise, and life as we know it becomes impossible.The only way to slow global warming (for at this late date, the process cannotbe stopped) is to cease emitting carbon dioxide—a monumental andexpensive task that will require us to reengineer completely the way we produce and consume energy.Climate change is in fact widely regarded as one of the main factorsdriving change in the energy economy—but it is not the only one. Whileclimatologists and environmentalists fret about the quality of the energy weproduce, most other experts worry far more about the quantity of energywe can make and, more specifically, whether we can produce enough energyof any kind or quality to satisfy the world"s present and future needs.By 2035, the world will use more than twice as much energy as it does today.Demand for oil will jump from the current 80 million barrels a day to asmuch as 140 million barrels. Use of natural gas will climb by over 120 percent,coal use by nearly 60 percent. Demand will be especially acute in"emerging" economies, like those of China and India, whose leaders see voracious energy consumption as the key to industrial success.Yet while the future energy demand seems certain, no one is clearwhere all this energy will come from. Consider oil. Quite aside from questionsof how much is left (we"ll get to that matter very shortly), there is simplythe matter of finding and producing enough oil, and moving it viapipeline and supertanker to the places it needs to go. The sheer scale of thetask is mind-boggling: when we say that by 2035 oil demand will be 140 million barrels a day, what we mean is that by then oil companies and oil states will need to discover, produce, refine, and bring to market 140 million new barrels of oil every twenty-four hours, day after day, year after year, without fail. Simply building that much new production capacity (to say nothing of maintaining it or defending it) will mean spending perhaps a trillion dollars in additional capital and will require oil companies to venture intoplaces, like the Arctic, that are extremely expensive to exploit. Repeat theexercise for gas and coal, and you begin to understand why even optimisticenergy experts go gray in the face when you ask them what we will use tofill up our tanks thirty years from now.To make matters more complicated, it is not merely a question of procuringenough, as our growing appetite for electricity shows. Today"s boomin technology and information has made electricity the fastest-growingsegment of the energy market, and a crucial resource for emerging economies.By 2020, demand for electricity could be 70 percent higher than today.Yet because most electric power is generated in gas- and coal-firedpower plants, making all that new power would mean putting an evengreater strain on the hydrocarbon energy economy. At the same time, movingall this new electric load will completely overwhelm the existing electricalsystem—from power plants and transmission lines to the emergingand problematic network of energy traders. The great blackout of 2003 andthe California power crisis of 2000 (due as much to dishonest energy speculators like Enron as to any shortage of power plants) are only the mostcolorful examples of what we may expect to see as the need for electricitycontinues to outpace supply.It is in the third world, however, where we see the energy economybreaking down entirely. In Asia today, electrical demand is growing so fastthat governments in China and India have essentially declared a state ofemergency, sidelining environmental concerns to build hundreds of cheapcoal-fired power plants, whose emissions may make it impossible even toslow climate change. And China and India are by no means the worst cases.Around the world, more than one and a half billion people—roughlyone-quarter of the world—lack access to electricity or fossil fuels and thushave virtually no chance to move from a brutally poor, preindustrial existenceto the kind of modern, energy-intensive life many of us in the Westtake for granted. Energy poverty is in fact emerging as the new killer in developing nations, the root cause of a vast number of other problems, andperhaps the deepest divide between the haves and have-nots.My point here is not simply that the modern energy economy should bechanged but that we no longer have a choice in the matter: the system is already changing, and not always for the better. Everywhere we look, we cansee signs of an exhausted system giving way messily to something new: oilcompanies quietly reengineering themselves to sell natural gas; governmentsscrambling to develop, or least understand, the "hydrogen economy";a desperate search for new oil fields; rising tensions between energyproducers and importers; diplomatic skirmishes over climate policy; andthe frightening energy race between countries such as Japan and China tosecure access to the last "big oil" and gas in Siberia, Kazakhstan, and theMiddle East.Yet if it is obvious that the current energy economy is on its way out,no clear consensus has taken shape on what happens next, what the "next"energy economy will look like. Can existing hydrocarbon technologies beadapted to new realities, or does the world require a radical new energytechnology? If so, which technology? Newspapers and magazines and political speeches are filled with descriptions of brave new energy technologies—hydrogen fuel cells and wind farms and solar buildings and tidal generation and fantastic processes that turn grass into diesel and manure into gasoline. But are any of these truly viable? How much will they cost? Can they be brought to bear in time?More to the point, even if some miracle technology is developed, thisin itself is no assurance of an orderly or peaceful transition. Historically,shifts from one energy technology to another have proved wrenching. Theleaps from wood to coal and from coal to oil caused economic disruptionand political uncertainty (sixteenth-century Englishmen nearly revolted athaving to burn sooty coal instead of wood). And these were fairly slow motiontransitions, occurring over several decades. Given that today"s energyinfrastructure is even more intertwined with global economies andpolitics and culture, would a fundamental change in our energy technologybe even more disruptive? How long would a transition take—a decade,fifty years? And what would a new energy order look like? Will it be betterthan the one we have, or a hastily arranged, stopgap arrangement? Will webe richer or poorer, more powerful or more hampered, happier with ouradvanced energy technologies, or bitter over our memories of a bygonegolden age? And who will be in control? Are the current world powers—most of whom are the biggest consumers of oil—still likely to be the leadersin this brave new world? Or might a new energy order breed a newpolitical order as well? This book is an effort to answer these questions.It is hard to imagine a more appropriate moment to be talking about a newenergy economy. Electrical blackouts and gasoline price spikes have reminded us of the vulnerability of our energy system and our precarious dependence on foreign producers. Europe and the United States have partedways over climate change and energy policy generally, with Europeansmaking modest efforts to develop a post-oil economy, while Americanleaders, beginning with the president, have adopted an aggressive policy ofdomestic oil drilling that wishes away environmental, geopolitical, andeven geological realities. Meanwhile, OPEC, the Organization of PetroleumExporting Countries, the bogeyman of yesteryear, is regaining much of itsold power and is vying with an oil-rich Russia and, increasingly, the UnitedStates for control over the world oil markets. Perhaps most tellingly, theUnited States and Britain are struggling to extricate themselves from a sec-ond oil war in Iraq that, whether openly acknowledged or not, was clearlymeant to restore Middle Eastern stability and maintain Western access to asteady supply of oil.Moreover, if recent events are any indication, we may be entering a periodof payback for a century of petro-diplomacy. Unstinting efforts by theUnited States, Europe, and other industrialized powers to ensure access toMiddle Eastern oil—by any means necessary, and often with the help ofIsrael—have helped foster a perpetual state of political instability, ethnicconflict, and virulent nationalism in that oil-rich region. Even beforeAmerican tanks rolled into Baghdad to secure the Iraqi Ministry of Petroleum,leaving the rest of the ancient city to burn, anti-Western resentmentin the Middle East had become so intense that it was hard not to see a connection between the incessant drive for oil and the violence that has shattered Jerusalem, the West Bank, Riyadh, Jakarta, and even New York and Washington. Only days after September 11, in fact, commentators were suggesting that the attacks were not only motivated by decades of oil politicsbut had been financed by oil revenues from the United States.By nearly any sane measure, then, the quest for less problematic formsof energy and more energy-efficient technologies should be a top priorityfor all players in the energy world. Even now, a veritable army of energyoptimists—scientists, engineers, policymakers, economists, activists, andeven energy company executives—is working on the next energy economy,piece by piece, each participant confident that it can be built. I haveseen energy technologies that are frankly miraculous: wind farms that generate enough electricity to power a city; ultraefficient office buildings requiring no outside power; cars that get a hundred miles per gallon of gasoline or run on clean hydrogen fuel cells; refineries that turn coal into aclean-burning gasoline.I"ve seen how much energy can be saved through absurdly simple ef-ficiency measures—and how much cheaper it is to save oil or electricitythan it is to go out and produce more. I have watched the world"s biggestenergy companies slowly emerge from a policy of flat denial and begin acautious, calculated, yet measurable shift toward a new energy economy. Ihave had politicians, economists, and energy executives lay out the Realpolitik of the energy economy by showing me the money we"ll need to spend, the sacrifices we"ll need to make, and the political deals we will need to cut in order to launch a new, sustainable energy economy.Yet I have also encountered phenomenal resistance. The path toward anew energy economy is fraught with political and economic risk. No oneknows when or if the new technologies will be ready, or how much they willcost, or what kinds of hardships they will impose—and few countries andcompanies are eager to be the first to take the leap. The current energyeconomy, with its oil wells and pipelines, its tankers and refiners, its powerplants and transmission lines, is an enormous asset, worth an estimated tentrillion dollars. No company, nor any nation, not even America, can affordto write that off—even if many of the gloomier commentators believethat doing so is the only way to slow climate change. Instead, energy companies are looking to minimize their losses, waiting till the last minute toadopt some technology so that they can squeeze the last drop of revenuefrom their existing hydrocarbon assets. Governments, too, fearing economicdislocation and political disadvantage, are steadily delaying any signi-ficant move away from the existing energy economy—thereby ensuringthat change, when it occurs, will be all the more sudden and disruptive.Consumers, meanwhile, seem almost oblivious. In industrialized nations,energy is so cheap and incomes are so great that consumers thinknothing of buying ever larger houses, more powerful cars, more toys andappliances—increasing their energy use without even knowing it. And ifpeople in developing nations use far less energy today, this is not by choice:they, too, want the cars, the large homes, the entertainment systems, theconditioned air, and other features of the energy-rich lifestyle enjoyed inthe West. The trend seems clear: barring some economic collapse, worldenergy demand can do nothing but rise—and the energy industry notonly intends to meet that demand but, for all its talk of novel technologiesand approaches, will do so almost entirely with existing methods, fuels, andtechnologies—at least, for the time being.Thus, even as it becomes more and more possible to imagine a newenergy economy, the old one is switching into high gear. In places like Borneo, Kamchatka, and Nigeria, off the coast of Florida and in the SouthChina Sea, in Alaska and Chad, multinational energy companies comb theearth and ocean beds in search for the next big oil and gas plays. Andaround the world, the diplomatic, economic, and military strategies ofnearly every nation continue to be shaped by one overriding objective—to maintain uninterrupted access to a steady supply of energy. The goal issacrosanct, to be pursued at all costs, regardless of the way it perverts theculture and politics of entire regions or props up corrupt governments anddictators or, ultimately, fosters the instability and resentments that havealready spawned such malignant figures as Muammar Qaddafi, SaddamHussein, and Osama bin Laden.Yet despite the staying power of the status quo, each year that energyconsumption continues unabated, the end of the current energy system notonly becomes more inevitable but appears more likely to occur as a traumaticevent. As energy supplies become harder to transport, as environmentaleffects worsen, and as energy diplomacy sows even greater geopoliticaldiscord, the weight of the existing energy order becomes less andless bearable—and the possibility of a disruption more undeniable.In the end, this question of disruption may be the most critical one ofall—not simply for policymakers and oil sheiks, but for anyone accustomedto filling up at the gas station or switching on an air conditioner; forit is not simply change that affects us, but the rate of change—how quicklyand cleanly one way of life is exchanged for another. A swift, chaotic shift inour energy economy almost guarantees disruption, uncertainty, economicloss, even violence. By contrast, were we somehow to manage a gradual,smooth change, phased in over time, we might be able to adapt, minimizingour losses and even allowing the more clever of our species to profitfrom new opportunities.In fact, while the precise shape of our energy future remains veiled, wecan already discern two distinct paths for getting there. On the one hand,we can imagine the transition as a kind of a proactive endeavor, driven byglobal consensus over some perceived threat, based on scientific analysis,and managed to minimize disruption and maximize economic gain. Onthe other, we can picture a change that is less a transition than a reaction, apatchwork of defensive programs triggered by some political or natural disaster. Suppose, for example, that worldwide oil production hits a kind ofpeak and that, as at Ghawar, the amount of oil that oil companies and oilstates can pull out of the ground plateaus or even begins to decline—a notaltogether inconceivable scenario. Oil is finite, and although vast oceans ofit remain underground, waiting to be pumped out and refined into gasolinefor your Winnebago, this is old oil, in fields that have been knownabout for years or even decades. By contrast, the amount of new oil that isbeing discovered each year is declining; the peak year was 1960, and it hasbeen downhill ever since. Given that oil cannot be produced without firstbeing discovered, it is inevitable that, at some point, worldwide oil productionmust peak and begin declining as well—less than ideal circumstancesfor a global economy that depends on cheap oil for about 40 percent of itsenergy needs (not to mention 90 percent of its transportation fuel) and isnowhere even close to having alternative energy sources.The last three times oil production dropped off a cliff—the Arab oilembargo of 1974, the Iranian revolution in 1979, and the 1991 Persian GulfWar—the resulting price spikes pushed the world into recession. Andthese disruptions were temporary. Presumably, the effects of a long-termpermanent disruption would be far more gruesome. As prices rose, consumers would quickly shift to other fuels, such as natural gas or coal,but soon enough, those supplies would also tighten and their prices wouldrise. An inflationary ripple effect would set in. As energy became moreexpensive, so would such energy-dependent activities as manufacturingand transportation. Commercial activity would slow, and segments of theglobal economy especially dependent on rapid growth—which is to say,pretty much everything these days—would tip into recession. The cost ofgoods and services would rise, ultimately depressing economic demandand throwing the entire economy into an enduring depression that wouldmake 1929 look like a dress rehearsal and could touch off a desperate andprobably violent contest for whatever oil supplies remained.When such a production peak will occur is, as we shall see, a Very BigQuestion. Optimists like the U.S. government believe that a peak in oil production cannot occur before 2035 or so and that would give the worldplenty of time to find something else to burn. Pessimists, by contrast, agroup whose members include geologists, industry analysts, and a surprisingnumber of oil industry and government officials, believe that a peakmay come much sooner—perhaps as soon as 2005. (Indeed, a small butvocal minority believes that the peak has already occurred and that thisis why oil companies like Shell and BP are struggling to find untappedsources of oil to replace all the barrels they produce.)Granted, such a wide range of dates is not particularly helpful for anyonewanting to know when to start hoarding diesel, light out for the hills,or invest in oil company stocks. But lest you think it"s about time to buy alarger SUV, it is worth noting that even the oil optimists concede, usuallyprivately, that the important oil—that is, the oil that exists outside thecontrol of the eleven-country OPEC oil cartel—will in all likelihood peakbetween 2015 and 2020.We call this "important oil" because, once it peaks,the free world will have to rely more each year on oil controlled by thelikes of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Iran—governments that cannot becounted on to bear the best interests of the West in mind in setting pricingpolicy.That brings us back to the question of smooth or sudden change. Admittedly,even if the world knew exactly when non-OPEC oil was going topeak, only so much could be done to prepare, given the size of the existingoil infrastructure and the complacency of the average consumer. Yet it"salso true that were Western governments to begin taking steps to reduce oildemand, or at least to slow the rate at which it is growing (by, say, raisingfuel efficiency standards for cars), the impact of such a peak would be lessened dramatically—and the world would gain all the benefits of usingsomething other than oil.At the same time, if the consuming world instead continues in its currentmode—known by energy economists and other worriers as "businessas usual"—oil demand will be so high by 2015 that a peak (or any big disruption, such as a civil war in Saudi Arabia or a massive climate-relateddisaster that kills thousands and forces politicians to cut the use of oil andother hydrocarbons in a hurry) could be an unmitigated disaster. Thus, thereal question, for anyone truly concerned about our future, is not whetherchange is going to come, but whether the shift will be peaceful and orderlyor chaotic and violent because we waited too long to begin planning for it.In writing this book, I have focused on all aspects of the energy economy—the past and present of energy, the technology and business of energy,and the major players. I"ve studied the big energy producers, like SaudiArabia and Russia, who control most of the world"s oil reserves and whowill play a critical role in the transition to a post-oil economy. I"ve lookedin depth at China and India, two energy paupers whose enormous populationsand growing economies will nonetheless make them the biggest energyplayers of the twenty-first century. I have examined Japan and Germany,countries that, lacking their own domestic oil supplies, have adoptedenergy-efficient policies and have fostered a culture that accepts if not embraces a low-energy way of life.But by necessity, much of this book will focus on the United States.For all that the new energy economy is an international issue, no nationwill play a greater role in the evolution of that economy than ours. Americansare the most profligate users of energy in the history of the world: acountry with less than 5 percent of the world"s population burns through25 percent of the world"s total energy. Some of this discrepancy is owing tothe American economy, which is bigger than anyone else"s and thereforeuses more energy. But it is also true that the American lifestyle is twice asenergy-intensive as that in Europe and Japan, and about ten times theglobal average. The United States is thus the most important of all energyplayers: its enormous demand makes it an essential customer for the bigenergy states like Saudi Arabia and Russia. Its large imports hold the globalenergy market in thrall. (Indeed, the tiniest change in the U.S. energyeconomy—a colder winter, an increase in driving, a change in tax law—can send world markets into a tailspin.) And because American powerflows from its dominance over a global economy that in turn dependsmainly on oil and other fossil fuels, the United States sees itself as having nochoice but to defend the global energy infrastructure from any threat andby nearly any means available—economic, diplomatic, even military.The result of this simultaneous might and dependency is that theUnited States is, and will be, the preeminent force in the shaping of thenew energy economy. The United States is the only country with the economic muscle, the technological expertise, and the international standingtruly to mold the next energy system. If the U.S. government and its citizensdecided to launch a new energy system and have it in place withintwenty years, not only would the energy system be built, but the rest of theworld would be forced to follow along. Instead, American policymakers aretoo paralyzed to act, terrified that to change U.S. energy patterns wouldthreaten the nation"s economy and geopolitical status—not to mentionoutrage tens of millions of American voters. Where Europe has taken smallbut important steps toward regulating carbon dioxide (steps modeled, paradoxically, on an American pollution law), the United States has made only theatrical gestures over alternative fuels, improved efficiency, or policiesthat would harness the markets to reduce carbon. As a result, the energy superpower has not only surrendered its once-awesome edge in such energytechnologies as solar and wind to competitors in Europe and Japan butmade it less and less likely that an effective solution for climate change willbe deployed in time to make a difference.Critics place much of the blame on a political system corrupted by bigenergy interests—companies desperate to protect billions of dollars in existing energy technologies and infrastructure. An equal measure of blame,however, must fall on the "average" American consumer, who each yearseems to know less, and care less, about how much energy he or she uses,where it comes from, or what its true costs are. Americans, it seems, sufferprofoundly from what may soon be known as energy illiteracy: most of usunderstand so little about our energy economy that we have no idea that ithas begun falling apart.The End of Oil is a dramatic narrative in three parts. In the first five chapters,I set the stage for the current crisis, by explaining how and why energyhas become so vital a part of our existence. Chapter 1 offers a short historyof energy, describing the long, slow rise from muscle power and sweat to asprawling, hydrocarbon-powered economy. In Chapter 2, we tackle thequestion of how much oil is left and see firsthand how difficult the searchfor oil has become. Chapter 3 takes a sharp look at one of oil"s most talked about challengers—the hydrogen fuel cell—highlighting that technology"sawesome potential, yet showing just how far it has to go. Chapter 4discusses the connections between energy and power and outlines the roleenergy plays in domestic and international politics, trade, and even war.This first part closes with a chapter on global climate change—a complexphenomenon that is both the consequence of our current energy economyand, perhaps, the most important impetus for building a new one.In Part Two, we look at the mechanics of the energy order. In Chapter6, we examine energy consumption and see how our evolving use of oil,electricity, and other forms of energy has become one of the most powerfuleconomic and political forces on the planet. In Chapter 7, we meet the producers of oil and gas, and learn how the energy business is undergoing aradical and potentially disastrous transformation. Chapter 8 takes us on atour of the options for that new system—the alternative fuels and systems,their potential for changing the world, and the many obstacles they face.Chapter 9 introduces the important yet often-neglected concept of energyconservation and shows how a radical improvement in energy efficiencywill be essential to any new and sustainable energy economy.In Part Three, we chart the promise and the peril of our energy future.Chapter 10 describes how the existing energy system is already failing tomeet even current needs—and shows how the race to develop "clean" energymust compete with the more basic need to produce enough energy ofany kind. Chapter 11 describes the colossal inertia of the current energy order, and the way it has influenced, shaped, and, too often, corrupted economies and entire nations. Chapter 12 lays out the terms of the coming struggle, as defenders of the energy status quo go up against a new generation of players. Chapter 13 offers a speculative account of the transition to a new energy economy, in extrapolating current trends to show how a new system might actually emerge.I am under no illusions that this book addresses all the important aspectsof the evolving energy economy, or even most of them. Energy is avast topic, with millions of components interwoven in a complex and everchanging pattern that defies quick answers or simple truths. Instead, myhope is to provide an introduction, a way for nonexperts to begin to thinkabout what experts have long known: that energy is the single most importantresource, that our current energy system is failing, and that the shapeof the next energy economy is being decided right now—with or withoutour input. Ideally, readers of this book will acquire a better understandingof what is coming, and perhaps a better chance of making a difference inthat future.Copyright © 2004 by Paul Roberts. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.
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