A New Energy Age

Regardless of whether you believe the planet is headed for a climate change disaster, it makes sense to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. Fossil fuels were a simple technology for a simple age. Humans found it easy to burn things in order to cook and stay warm and illuminate the night. We cut down trees and burned them. We killed whales and burned their blubber. If we had stayed with that technology, we would have exhausted the planet’s supply of whales long ago. But we moved on: from burning trees and whale oil to burning fossil fuels.

Humans learned how to dig coal from the ground and how to use it to power machines and heat buildings. We learned how to get petroleum out of the ground and how to distill it into kerosene, gasoline, diesel, and other products. Fossil fuels were ideal for our ancestors who lived in a less developed world.

However, fossil fuels are not without drawbacks. For one thing, there is a limited supply. Sooner or later, the planet’s fossil fuels will be exhausted. We will have used them up. Then, we will have no choice but to use renewable fuels. The time to begin a transition to renewable fuels is long before the point where we have no choice. The transition will take time and we don’t want to rush the process. Some experimentation will be necessary. There will be surprises. Some technologies that look promising today may turn out to be impractical for reasons we haven’t imagined, while research may reveal new technologies with even greater promise.

A second drawback of fossil fuels lies in their combustion products. These combustion products pollute the air, pollute rivers, and pollute land. There is no EPA in China. There are no pesky environmental regulations there. As a result, we can clearly see the results of burning fossil fuels. We can’t see the CO₂ that may be contributing to the warming of the planet, but we can see that the air is filled with particulates: minute particles of soot and ash that can be inhaled and stick inside the lungs and cause respiratory problems – including death for some individuals. Simply put, the air is not fit to breathe.

There is also water pollution. Recently, a retired coal-fired energy plant dumped 82,000 tons of coal ash and 27 million gallons of water containing metals and chemicals into North Carolina’s Dan River when a storm water pipe ruptured. State officials warned against swimming in the river or eating fish taken from it. Coal ash contains arsenic, mercury, lead, boron and other substances that don’t dissolve in the water. Much of that pollution sinks to the bottom of the river where it poisons aquatic life for years. Coal ash is not regulated.

Pipelines carrying petroleum have ruptured many times, polluting rivers and sensitive environments like aquifers that supply drinking water. Tankers have lost their cargo of crude oil, polluting beaches. The BP oil spill was not just a disaster for pelicans, it was a disaster for the Gulf fisheries and for the people who make a living providing seafood to the rest of us; it was a disaster to people who work in the tourist industry: hotels, motels, restaurants.

Many years ago I went camping in the Adirondack mountains. I camped beside and swam in beautiful lakes with crystal clear water. The local people explained to me the reason the water was so clear: acid rain had killed all the life in those lakes. The cause of the acid rain was sulfur and nitrogen compounds produced by burning fossil fuels in coal-burning power plants and gasoline-burning automobiles. In addition to killing aquatic life, acid rain kills forests and corrodes bronze and marble statues and monuments.

In addition to acid rain, our fossil fuel civilization produces acid snow. Though a little less acidic than acid rain, in some ways it is worse. Snow accumulates on the ground in winter, and when spring arrives the snow melts, seeping into the ground and creating runoff into lakes and streams. This sudden burst of acidic water into the environment is called an “acid pulse” and it damages soil and water. Many life forms are just getting started in the spring: eggs are hatching (salamanders, frogs, trout), seeds are sprouting. The acid pulse decimates these emerging life forms, killing vast numbers of them.

Of course, we need energy and the energy has to come from somewhere. But our need for energy has outstripped our ability to safely manage the fossil fuel chain: getting it from the ground, transporting it, processing it, storing it, burning it, and disposing of its waste products. We’re busily running here and there to stamp out the big and little disasters that constantly arise from the fossil fuel chain. A pipeline leaks and pollutes drinking water. A tanker runs aground and destroys a fishery. Rail cars carrying petroleum catch fire and kill people innocently enjoying the night. A gas pipeline explodes and burns up a neighborhood. And so it goes, on and on and on.

In my lifetime, America’s population has grown from 141 million to 317 million, and the world’s population has grown from 3 billion to over 7 billion. Both are still growing and so our appetite for energy is increasing exponentially. We have to face a fact: if we all want to have reasonably cheap energy, we’re going to have to get rid of the notion that we can have it by burning stuff. Because burning stuff to get energy isn’t going to work on an increasingly crowded planet with dwindling resources (including clean air, clean water, and stuff to burn).

America’s regulated nuclear industry has been a safe industry. There have been incidents, to be sure, but without significant environmental impact or casualties. Yet, ironically, the industry has been stunted by strong environmental opposition, whereas the fossil fuel industry has created disasters time after time and yet continues to thrive. If the nuclear industry had caused a tenth as much damage to the environment and public health, there is little doubt that the outcry would have closed all nuclear plants by now.

Nuclear power is not completely risk free, but it is safe and can be made even safer if we are willing to invest the money required to make it so. But even nuclear is a limited-supply technology; it is a non-renewable fuel. The quantity of fissile material in the earth is finite. The future of affordable, plentiful, non-polluting energy lies in those resources that will not soon be exhausted. Those resources are wind, solar, hydrogen, biofuels, and some day, nuclear fusion. We have taken baby steps toward their use. We are experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t work. Our technological civilization cannot last long being dependent on a dwindling resource, nor can it return to the renewable fuels used by our agrarian ancestors. We are at the beginning of a new energy age. If you want to hasten that age, all you have to do is not get in the way.