Snowed In

I think most of us agree that the US would be safer and nicer if we weren’t so dependent on oil imports. As of 2004, we were using 7.3 billion barrels of oil and natural gas per year[1], 4.4 billion of which were imported[1]. All we need to do is find a way to reduce our usage by about 60%. So what are our options?

1) Raise taxes on gas. If the government doubled the price of gas through taxation, people could afford less gas, and we would save between 1 and 1.8 billion barrels per year[1]. That’s a good start, but it’s completely unrealistic in our current political climate, and it’s difficult to tell what the effects would be. A busier carpool lane would just be the beginning. FedEx would have to increase its prices dramatically. The price of plastics would explode. The ripple effect would be enormous and difficult to predict. This, plus the fact that no one in America would stand for it makes this plan pretty much a no-go.

2) Increase domestic oil production by drilling in places like the Artic National Wildlife refuge. The tree-huggers hate this idea. The general public seems vaguely open to the possibility. Native Americans in the region strongly oppose drilling because they’re worried about the Porcupine Caribou herds that they rely on.

The thing is, we’ve been drilling on Alaska’s north slope for 27 years, and the ecosystem is fine. The Porcupine Caribou have increased in numbers. There does seem to be increased danger of oil leaks, like the BP leak this month, the worst ever on the north slope. Time will tell what the ecological effects of such leaks will be, but at this point it looks like the effects are minimal. The roads, pipelines, and production facilities could impact the ecology, but we haven’t let this stop us from developing, say, the entire state of New Jersey. For now, when weighing a vague, unsupported ecological concern with world peace, I vote for world peace.

That said, ANWR may reap as little as 5 billion barrels of oil or as many as 16[2]. Either way, the annual yield will be in the hundreds of millions of barrels at best, enough to knock a few percentage points off of our foreign dependence. I advocate as part of a larger plan, but it won’t solve the problem.

3) Provide a tax credit for hybrid vehicles. This is an easy sell politically, and it’s happening. Theoretically, if hybrids are 25% more efficient (a conservative estimate based off a Google search), and in the US, 3.3 billion barrels of oil (45%) is consumed by cars and light trucks each year, then converting half of these vehicles to hybrids would save about 800 million barrels of oil a year. Not bad, but it’ll be a while before we get there.

4) Get people using ethanol and biodiesel. E85 is a mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% gas. It is roughly 35% cheaper than gas, though it can be up to 30% less efficient as well, which would make it a wash on price, but something like 20% of the fossil fuels. If we converted half of the cars and light trucks in the US to E85-compatible vehicles, we could cut the 3.3 billion barrels they use annually by 40%, allowing us to import 1.3 billion barrels oil oil less per year. If those vehicles, and a quarter of the remaining gas-only vehicles were hybrids, we could save another 500 million barrels.

I’m not sure about biodiesel, but I’d assume it is similar to ethanol, and the math would be the same. One question which I don’t know the answer to is: can we produce enough biomass to make that much ethanol or biodiesel? And if we have to increase farming production to do so, what will be the environment impact of that?

It’s worth noting that the one public E85 station in California is in San Diego, while there are dozens in both Wisconsin and Illinois. In general though, it’s much harder to find E85 than gas, though you can easily use it 100% of the time in many areas. Since E85 compatible cars almost always run fine with gas too, there’s no downside to owning an E85-compatible car, of which there are several.

5) Get people using hydrogen. This is an interesting one because a lot of people talk about making hydrogen by reforming oil or natural gas, which is a little cleaner, but doesn’t do a wit of good for reducing foreign energy dependence. What it does do is decouple the cars from fossil fuels, allowing them to potentially use hydrogen from cleaner sources, like solar or wind. So the hydrogen economy is a good thing for enabling decreased dependence, but it won’t provide it directly.

My vote: increase nuclear power production by 10x, and use the extra power to make enough hydrogen to power all of the fuel cells that will replace the internal combustion engines. Finally, in step 3, build a space elevator and use it to shoot nuclear waste into the sun.

OK, so maybe that’s getting a little sci-fi, but… it could happen!

The bottom line is, significant gains in energy independence are possible without massive taxation or drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. If we make a big push towards hybrids and alternative fuels, we stand to save 2 billion barrels a year. That’s quite an achievement in and of itself. All that stands in the way is some technological hurdles and some good old fashioned economic bootstrapping issues.

Which brings me to the strange conclusion that while energy independence is a political problem, it will not have a political solution. In fact, I believe this is true of most political and social problems as well, though I’ll leave that for another entry.

The best way to protect the environment is to become a scientist. We will not become better stewards of the earth through political force, we will become better stewards of the earth through science. When renewable energy technology surpasses oil in convenience and value, the governments will not be able to stop the shift.

At least, that’s how the world looks to me.

[1] Energy independence may be a pipe dream

[2] Some Shaky Figures on ANWR Drilling