Rays of Hope Transition To A Post Petroleum World
Rays of Hope Transition To A Post Petroleum World
Rays of Hope Transition To A Post Petroleum World
AT REFERENCE
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project of Volunteers in Asia
e Transition to a
ost-PetroleL&?Jl World
by: Denis Hayes
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DEN-ISHAYES
FIRST EDITION
r”oreword 9
Acknowledgments 11
i. Introduction: Twilight of an Era 1s
I. Fading Dreams 29
2. The Future of Fossil Fuels 31
3. Nuclear Power: The Fifth Horseman 49
II. An Energy-EfficientWorld 75
4. The Case for Conservation 77
5. Watts for Dinner: Food and Fuel 89
6. Energy and Transportation 105
7. Btu’s and Buildings: Energy and Shelter 128
8. Energy and Economic Growth 140
III. SafeSustainableSources 153
9. Turning toward the Sun 155
lo. Wind and Water Power 174
11. Plant Power: Biological Sources of Energy 187
IV. Prospectsand Consequences 205
12. Dawn of a New Era 207
Notes 219
Index 235
Foreword
David Orr assessedthe final draft through the lenses of political scien-
tists.
During a trip around the world to gather material for this book, I
received invaluable assistance from a large number of people. Among
the most helpful were Paul0 Krahe, Charles Watson-Munro, John Price,
Neal Barrett, J. J. Kowalczewski, Prince Saud al-Faisal, Prince Mo-
hammed al-Faisal, Prince Turki al-F&al, Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani,
Farouk Akdar, Masao Kunihiro, Jean Robert, R. C. Bhargava, Arjun
Makhijani, H. R. Srinivasan, M. C. Cupta, R. B. Ajgaonkar, C. R. Das,
M. K. Gopalakrishnan, Tom Mathew, Mans Lonnroth, and Lars Joseph-
son.
The general orientation and thrust of the book owes much to search-
ing conversations over the years with Bruce Hannon, Amory Lovins,
John Holdren, Grant Thompson, Jeremy Stone, and Sam Love. Every
section of the manuscript profited from the detailed and thoughtful
comments of my wife, Gail Boyer Hayes. Any remaining errors of fact
or judgment are my responsibility alone.
D. H.
Worldwatch Institute
I 776 Massachusetts Ave., N. l.Y
Washington, D. C. ~0036
LEA.
Rays of Hope
In both the Third World ar.d the industrial world, various physical
limits on energy growth have begun to assertthemselves. Mountains are
denuded by scavengers in a desperate quest for firewood, and ever-
hungry draft animals have little surplus energy for tilling the fields. The
growing demands of an expanding population push traditional energy
systemspast their carrying capacities-leading in some casesto ecologi-
cal collapse. !a the developed nations, a lack of water in the American
West, a scarcity of suitable land in the Netherlands, and a lack of
healthful air over much of Japan have all acted as brakes on energy
growth.
In addition to such physical limits, energy supplies are also in-
fluenced by social factors. Despite the best efforts of powerful supporters
in all quarters, energy growth is already pressing against social limits in
much of the industrial world. Farmers are opposing strip mines; environ-
mentalists are fighting petroleum refineries; and skyrocketing construc-
tion costshave led to the cancellation of plans for many nuclear reactors.
Every energy source is under the heels of both physical and social
constraints. Some such limits are absolute-when natural gas runs out,
natural gas consumption must stop-but more often they manifest
themselves as increasingly severe hindrances on growth. Depending
upon the mix of technologies employed, different types of constraints
will come into play, but at some point accumulated constraints will halt
further energy growth completely.
Heat: The Ultimate Limit
The earth has passedthrough many climatic epochs, ranging from
ice ages to ice-free ages. The global climatic system appears to be
delicately balanced; rather small alterations can trigger vast changes
because certain basic physical processescan accelerate the effects of a
periurbation. For example, ice and snow tend to reflect sunlight instead
of absorbing it as heat. When an outside heat source melts the ice and
snow on the ground, both the runoff and the bare ground itself absorb
additional heat from the sun, melting still more ice and snow. Because
small events appear capable of causing large climatic changes-some of
which may be irreversible on any time scale of interest-even small
changes must be executed with utmost caution.1
Twilight of an Era 17
The constant flow of power from the sun, averaged over the surface
of the rotating earth, amounts to about 340 watts per square meter.
More than half this sunlight is reflected and scattered by clouds and
airborne particles, so the earth’s surface finally absorbs about 160 watts
per square meter. Energy use by human beings now totals less than one
ten-thousandth of the solar influx, and the global heat impact of this
level of use seems to be negligible. The local effects of human energy
use are sometimes quite significant, however.
Electrical power plants, industrialized cities, and various other ener-
gy-intensive sites each radiate several times more heat than they receive
from the sun. Such “hot spots” affect local weather; they can help
determine the frequency of snow, hail, thunderstorms, and even small
tornadoes. Consequently, the number of energy facilities that can be
built in any one area must be limited. However, the direct thermal
effects of human energy use do not appear to be a cause for global
concern unless such use increases severalfold above its current level.
Carbon dioxide (COZ), a by-product of all fossil fuel combustion,
posesa greater problem. Adding CO2 to the air raises the earth’s tem-
perature by retarding the radiation of heat into space-a phenomenon
known as the “greenhouse” effect. Since CO2 can linger in the atmo-
sphere for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years, the impact of CO2
emissions is cumulative. Total atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased
at least 10 percent in the last three-quarters of a century. Quite probably,
future fossil fuel consumption will be limited by atmospheric tolerance
for carbon dioxide long before the world fossil resource base has been
exhausted. Between 1900 and 1975, CO2 emissions grew from 2,000
million to 18,000 million tons per year. In late 1976, the Scientific
Committee on Problems of the Environment, a leading independent
group of international environmental experts, reported that it eonsid-
ered atmospheric CO2 to be the world’s foremost environmental prob-
lem.
Particulates, bits of matter so small that they can remain suspended
in the air for lengthy periods, present another environmental problem.
Though many natural processesproduce particulates, fuel combustion
is thought to account for about one-third of the total created annually.
Particulates are believed to counteract the warming effects of carbon
dioxide by reflecting incoming sunlight back out to space, and by in-
18 Rays of Hope
creasing the density of cloud cover. But calculations about the net effect
of such phenomena are rife with uncertainty.
In the popular media, it is often asserted that the cooling effect of
particulates and the warming effect of CO2 are balancing one another
out. The implication is that we therefore have no cause for worry. But
even if some such balance exists, it will almost certainly be upset eventu-
ally by the fundamental differences in the distribution and longevity of
the two substances.
Any balance between the effects of carbon dioxide and those of
particulates is delicate indeed. Carbon dioxide is circulated around the
world’s atmospheric system, while particulates blanket only the North-
ern Hemisphere. The global north is experiencing a cooling trend, while
the Southern Hemisphere is simuhaneously warming up-bearing out
the “greenhouse” hypothesis.2 Moreover, CO2 will remain in the atmo-
sphere much longer than particulates; to the extent that particulates
temporarily hide the long-term warming effects of COZ, they may
prompt us to allow fuel use to exceed a level that informed prudence
might dictate.
Climatic problems are incredibly cbmplex. Before all the variables
are entirely understood, human energy use could trigger far-reaching
consequences. A decision to retard the rate of energy growth would
reduce the chance of making 3 dreadful mistake. Such a decision would
have to be made in the face of much uncertainty, but the consequences
of not doing so could prove irreversible.
Pollution-Troubled Waters
All conventional energy sources-even the so-called “clean” ones
like natural gas and geothermal power-generate pollution. As the use
of such sources increases,the problems of pollution control grow more
formidable. While a 90 percent effective control might be sufficient for
a small source of pollution, a 99 percent effective control may become
necessarywhen that source grows tenfold. But the incremental costs of
each additional degree of control increase disproportionately: co capture
the last few percent often costs many times as much as to capture the
first 90 percent.
The world’s experience with oceanic oil illustrates some of the risks
and costs pollution entails. About 6oqwo metric tons of oil enter the
Oceanevery year from natural seeps,all of which the ocean has success-
fully assimilated through the ages.But as oil came to play an increasing
role in human affiirs, the volume of oil entering the ocean multiplied
manyfold. Two-thirds of all the oil produced in the world is now shipped
by sea.Although transportation practices have been improving over the
years, these improvements have not kept pace with the growth in the
volume of oil shipped. More than 6 million metric tons now flow into
the seasannually, more than one-third of which comes from such rou-
tine tanker operations as spilling while loading and unloading, discharg-
ing ballast, and cleaning tanks. The floating lumps of tar that can be
found on all the oceans and on many beaches bear witness to this
calamitous trend. 3
Lessapparent, but in the long rtin perhaps more dangerous, are those
portions of the petroleum that disappear into the sea. No one knows
what all this oil will ultimately do to marine fisheries or to the complex
ocean ecosystem. A UN report has noted that “the fact remains that
once the recovery capacity of an environment is exceeded, deterioration
can be rapid and catastrophic; and we do not know how much oil
pollution the ocean can accept and still recover.“4 Yet many standard
projections show the volume of ocean oil traffic expanding up to six times
before world petroleum production peaks and begins to decline.
In addition to the general threat to the oceans,a more specific threat
already plagues narrower stretches of water. Although tanker accidents
account for lessthan 5 percent of all marine oil, a large spill concentrated
in a single area can be more devastating than a multitude of smaller
dispersed discharges. At the end of World War II, the world’s largest
oil tanker could carry about 18,ooo tons. About a decade ago, a race of
giant tankers emerged; the capacity of a single oil carrier grew to 100,ooo
tons and even 250,ooo tons and larger. The Globtic Tobo carries
483,664 metric tons-some 3.6 million barrels of oil. Requiring twenty
minutes and three miles to stop, these unwieldy supcrtankers invite
accidents, and severalhave broken up in heavy storms. As Eugene Coar~
of the Sierra Club observes,“If you have an accident with a very large
ship, you’re likely to have a very large accident.”
Similar phenomena beleaguer other forms of energy growth. To be
sure, increasingly stringent controls can be applied, but the costs of
20 Rays of Hope
enforcing and complying with such controls eventually operate as a
capital constraint. Pollution controls now commonly cons?itute more
than one-third of the total cost of a new energy facility, and in many
xxs it is far from clear that such controls are adequate. Moreover, some
kinds of pollution, such as carbon dioxide, simply cannot be controlled
except by burning less fossil fuel.
Material Constraints
Scant attention has been paid to the material requirements of vari-
ous energy technologies. While we now have a reasonably clear idea of
the energy requirements of steel production, we have no similarly de-
tailed accounting of the steel requirements of energy production. Yet
various types of steel will be absolutely necessaryfor the construction of
oil wells in the Middle East, pipelines across the Soviet Union, power
plants in Europe, transmission facilities in Brazil, and virtually every
other energy-related device.
Different energy technologies demand different materials. Gallium
arsenide photovoltaic cells, used to generate electricity from sunlight,
require gallium; ultra-efficient cryogenic electrical transmission systems
need helium. The most efficient fuel cells yet developed use platinum
as a catalyst; the amount of platinum that such cells would require
annually if half of all U.S. electricity were produced with fuel cells would
exceed the present yearly world production. Titanium may prove to be
the limiting factor on ocean thermal electrical plants, and even copper
production seemsunlikely to keep pace with the extra demands of new
energy technologies.5
Politics as well as general scarcity may lead to material shortages.
Scattered unevenly through the earth’s crust, some crucial minerals are
concentrated in relatively few lands, many of them Third World na-
tions. Such countries have for yearsbeen selling in a competitive market,
but buying from what they perceive as multinational cartels. In the wake
of the OPEC success,and in the midst of calls for a new international
economic order, the mineral-rich nations may well decide to turn the
tables.
Various material shortages may hinder energy growth in different
ways. For example, although water is obviously in great global abun-
Twilight uf m Era 21
Financial Constraints
Capital represents the “seed corn” of all economies, the capacity for
sustained production. A society that eats its seed corn-in this case,by
spending too much of its income on goods and services, and saving too
little for investments in future production-has a bleak future. The
argument over whether the world faces a capital crisis has generated
almost enough heat to solve the energy crisis. The issue is complex, and
contrary opinions are rooted in different assumptions about economic
growth, government spending, inflation, business cycles, and a host of
other variables.7
Capital, by its very nature, is limited. Within a finite capital budget,
tough choices must be made. Such choices are usually evaluated in terms
of cost per unit of productive capacity. One automobile plant, for
example, is compared with another in terms of how much investment
each requires per car per day. nor energy investments, an analogous
figure is the investment needed to produce-or to save-the energy
equivalent of one barrel of oil per day. When the capital cost of produc-
ing one barrel of oil exceedsthe capital cost of conserving it, the most
productive inve&ments will be those made to heighten efficiency.
From the end of World War II until quite recently, the capital cost
of producing fuel remained low. For example, the investment needed
(in wells and pipelines) to produce Middle Eastern oil at the rate of one
barrel per day ranges from $50 to $250. Amortizing these investments
over the lifetime of the field reduces the cost of oil to just a few cents
per barrel. In contrast, oil from the North Sea is expected to require an
22 Rays of Ho#e
investment of $10,000 per daily barrel; Arctic oil and gas will require
between $ro,ooo and $25,000 per daily barrel; and synthetic fuels from
coal will demand an investment of from $20,000 to $5o,ooo per daily
bzrrel.8 To obtain the thermal equivalent of a daily barrel in the form
of electricity from a new power plant requires an investment in excess
of $loo,ooo.
The capital costs of fuel production, which include the costs of
extraction and of combustion, increase greatly as higher environmental
standards and tighter health and safety regulations are put into effect.
Generally, however, this merely means that prices are being adjusted to
“internalize” costs that were previously inflicted on society but were not
explicitly accounted for. The higher prices reflect the cost of preventing
black lung diseaseamong coal miners or of decreasing the likelihood that
a catastrophic accident will take place at a nuclear power plant.
The costs of oil, coal, and shale-derived oil can only rise. When the
Alaskan oil pipeline was proposed in 1969, the estimated cost of the
project was $900 million; before it was completed in 1977, total costs
had soared to nearly $8 billion. The cost per ton of underground coal
mining capacity has doubled over the last five years. Atlantic Richfield
bowed out of an oil shale complex when its projected costs tripled in
three years.
The electrical utility industry is the most capital-intensive of all
industries-requiring, for example, four times as much investment per
dollar of revenues as the steel industry.9 And recent escalations in
construction costs have dealt the industry a staggering blow. Construc-
tion costs for nuclear power plants have more than quadrupled in recent
years. During the thirteen years that the Kaiparowits coal-fired plant in
the American Southwest was under consideration, its projected size was
cut in half while its projected costs soared sevenfold. A recent report to
the U.S. Federal Power Commission concluded that a 6 percent electri-
cal growth rate would require at least $650 billion for new facilities over
the next fifteen years, compared with $145 billion over the last fifteen.
As long as conventional sourcessupply most of the energy the world
uses, upward cost trends are here to stay. Fuels will not become more
plentiful and accessible; on the contrary, the best deposits will be ex-
hausted. And as the biosphere becomes more saturated with pollutants,
even more rigorous and expensive environmental controls will have to
be imposed.
23
It is sometimes argued that renewable energy sourceswill provide an
escape from the rising costs associated with the depletion of finite
resources.The sun is expected to provide the earth with a rather steady,
free flow of energy for billions of years. However, such reasoning is a
little too simplistic. Only a limited number of choice solar sites exist:
areaswith three hundred days a year of unclouded sunlight, with steady
winds of 30 mph or more, or with large volumes of falling water. Most
such sites lie far from the areas that currently demand energy, and as
more remote sites are employed, costs will rise.
Renewable energy sourcesalso tend to be expensive to tap. Just how
much the new equipment will cost when it is manufactured by mature
industries enjoying the economies of massproduction is hard to say. But
it is unlikely to be cheap. Today, photovoltaic cells are several times as
expensive per peak watt as nuclear power plants. The cost of wind power
appears to be roughly comparable to the cost of nuclear power. The
expenses entailed by different bioconversion options vary, but most
appear to be at least as costly as processesusing coal.
Enormous sums of capital would be required to build enough new
energy facilities to meet all projected demands. Two trillion dollars is
considered by some to be a conservative estimate of the combined
energy-related capital needs through 1985 of Europe, Japan, and the
United States if conventional options are pursued. On the other hand,
much of this capital could better be used to refashion our living environ-
ments, redesign our transportation systems, and reshape our industries
to obviate the need for much of this energy. Becausecapital is limited,
huge investments in energy supplies may be taking money away from
far more productive investments in increased efficiency?O
Political Limits
Every unit of energy, regardlessof its source, entails costs, and the
true costs are often not borne by the beneficiaries. The losers in the
trade-off have grown restive in recent years, and energy battles are now
being fought in every comer of the political landscape. Nuclear power
plants, strip mines, oil refineries, deepwater ports, hydroelectric facili-
ties, and high-voltage power lines are both the issuesand the plunder
of a struggle that transcends traditional ideological boundaries.
The opposition is both private and public. Carolyn Anderson, a
24 Rdys of Hope
Wyoming rancher whose land lies over a rich coal vein, draws the line
clearly. “Don’t underestimate us,” she says. “We are descendants of
those who fought for this land, and we are prepared to do it again.” The
governor of Colorado, a state rich in coal and oil shale, was elected on
a platform that promised Coloradans that their state wouldn’t “become
the nation’s slag heap.”
Fuel use harms the environment more than any other human activ-
ity does; it scarsthe landscape, heats the atmosphere, generates tons of
pollutants, and creates dangerous radioactive by-products. When energy
is used for necessarypurposes,some such costs can certainly be justified.
But to increasing numbers of people, the costs of continued energy
growth now seem to outweigh any perceptible benefits.
Opposition to the expansion of fuel facilities is most pronounced in
the industrial countries. Building a centralized energy facility anywhere
in Europe, Japan, or North America has become difficult indeed. Al-
though a majority of the citizens in those regions would probably not
ask for zero energy growth, very few want a new power plant in their
neighborhood, and every possible site is in somebody’s neighborhood.
In effect, the developed world has run out of space: geographical
space,environmental space,and psychological space.Where once many
activities could grow independently, now each one can grow only by
impinging on the others. Illinois provides a telling case study of the
competition among different kinds of spatial needs.11With more bitu-
minous coal than any other state in the United States, Illinois also has
much of the country’s best agricultural land. But land cannot simulta-
neously be a strip mine and a cornfield, and the same water cannot be
used by a coal gasification plant and by farmers to irrigate fields. Some
evidence suggeststhat effluents from energy facilities may already be
affecting the state’s agricultural production negatively; with continued
growth, production shortfalls are an eventual certainty. Illinois agricul-
ture is as energy-intensive as any farming system in the world, and
farmers have traditionally favored energy growth. But many have now
begun to draw the line, fighting strip mines, dams, nuclear power plants,
and any other developments that will take additional fertile land out of
production.
While energy forecasters plot their demand curves toward infinity,
people throughout much of the industrialized world are demanding an
I
Twilight of an Era 25
end to open-ended growth. Few would phrase it like that. They do not
oppose the useof gasoline; they just oppose this particular refinery. They
do not oppose nuclear power; they merely feel that this particular reactor
is poorly sited and unnecessary.But when such attitudes are widespread,
every refinery and every reactor will be opposed. Whereas civic boosters
used to talk of luring new power plants to an area to “capture the
benefits of growth,” they now increasingly must beseech residents to
“responsibly shoulder the burdens of growth.” But most people are less
enthusiastic about shouldering burdens than about receiving benefits.
The resulting political self-adjustment, which includes weighing total
costs against total benefits and rejecting further growth, may well prove
to be among the most important limiting factors in energy development.
Twilight of an Era 27
gen-boron reaction requires temperatures of 3 billion degrees Centi-
grade, whereas the deuterium-tritium reaction can take place at 100
million degrees.When scientists speak of building a commercial nuclear
fusion reactor within twenty-five years, they are referring to a deuterium-
tritium reactor, a reactor that does not share all the idealized zharacteris-
tics associatedwith nuclear fusion. The D-T reactor’s fuel supply would
not be limitless; tritium is derived from lithium, an element not much
more abundant than uranium. The D-T fusion power plant might well
be even larger (and hence more centralized) than current conventional
facilities, and the energy produced could be much more expensive than
that derived from current sources. The reactor would certainly require
maintenance, but the intense radioactivity of the equipment would
make maintenance almost impossible. Although cieaner than nuclear
fission, a large fusion reactor might nonetheless produce as much as 250
tons of radioactive :vaste annually.
Even though a deuterium-tritium fusion reactor would be much
“easier” to build than a device employing a more advanced fuel cycle,
the pursuit of D-T fusion still represents the most ambitious engineering
undertaking In human history. Current experimental fusion devices are
enormous energy “sinks” that consume far more energy than they pro-
duce. Becauseof the exceptional difficulties involved in achieving a net
energy gain from fusion, the first generation of fusion reactors may not
be designed to optimize power production. Rather, they may be hybrid
fusion-fission devices designed to convert non-fissionable uranium into
plutonium fuel fcl fission reactors. This hybrid technology, now being
pursued by the Soviet Union and under active consideration in the
United States, would combine the most unattractive features of nuclear
fission with the incredible complexities of nuclear fusion. It would be
tragic if the resulting mix were marketed as “safe, clean nuclear fusion.”
Renewable energy sources- wind, water, biomass, and direct sun-
light-hold substantial advantages over the alternatives. They add no
heat to the global environment and produce no radioactive or weapons-
grade materials. The carbon dioxide emitted by biomass systems in
equilibrium will make no net contribution to atmospheric concentra-
tions, since green plants wil! capture CO2 at the same rate that it is
being produced. Renewable energy sources can provide energy as heat,
liquid or gaseousfuels, or electricity. And they lend themselves well to
28 Raysof ffc$e
production and use in decentralized, autonomous facilities. However,
such sources are not the indefatigable genies sought by advocates of
limitless energy growth. While renewable sources do expand the limits
to energy growth, especially the physical limits, the fact that energy
development has a ceiling cannot ultimately be denied.
The highest energy priority in all lands today should be conservation.
Investments in saving energy, whether to double the efficiency of an
Indian villager’s cookstove or to eliminate energy waste in a steel mill,
will often save far more energy than similar investments in new power
facilities can produce. The cheapest and best energy option for the
entire world today is to harness the major portion of all commercial
energy that is currently being wasted.
A transition to an efficient, sustainable energy system is both techni-
cally possible and socially desirable. But 150 countries of widely different
physical and social circumstances are unlikely to undergo such a transi-
tion smoothly and painlessly. Every potential energy source will be
championed by vested interests and fought by diehard opponents.
Bureaucratic inertia, political timidity, conflicting corporate designs,
and the simple, understandable reluctance of people to face up to far-
. reaching change will all discourage a transition from taking place spon-
taneously. Even when clear goals are widely shared, they are not easily
pursued. Policies tend to provohe opposition; unanticipated side effects
almost always occur.
If the path is not easy, it is nonetheless the only road worth taking.
For twenty years, global energy policy has been headed down a blind
alley. It is not too late to retrace our steps before we collide with
inevitable boundaries. But the longer we wait, the more tumultuous the
eventual turnaround will be.
2, TheFntwe ofFossil
.
36 Ruysof Hope
increase by 1985. Indeed, their prophecy might even be fulfilled if
enough money is poured into the single-minded goal of increasing the
rate of oil extraction. But such a policy would provide precious little
energy per dollar of investment and would only make the post-1985
decline that much more precipitate.
The total quantity of undiscovered oil will not be known until it has
all been discovered. But nobody is down there brewing more oil. And
the more that is learned about the size of the ultimate U.S. oil resource
base, the smaller that base appears to be.
The United States houses most of the international oil industry, as
well as many of the world’s most distinguished schools of petroleum
geology. No other large land masshas been as extensively probed as has
the United States, where oil-together with natural gas-comprises
fully three-fourths of all commercial fuel used. With about 10 percent
of the world’s potential oil-bearing areas,the United States has a drilling
density about seven times higher than the world average.Thus, examin-
ing the U.S. experience can provide a basis of comparison for analyzing
world oil resources.Even rough agreement on the extent of the remain-
ing U.S. oil supply was not achieved until a full five years after oil
production had peaked. Yet, compared with what is known about U.S.
oil deposits, information about the fossil fuels in the rest of the world
is downright sketchy.
World Oil and Gas
Most estimates of the world petroleum resources, like the U.S.
estimates discussed above, are based on a combination of historical
discovery patterns and geological analogies. The score of published esti-
mates, and additional unpublished estimates that have been produced
since 1950, mostly range between 1.2 trillion barrels and 2.5 trillion
barrels. Most relatively recent estimates have tended to cluster between
I .8 trillion and 2.0 trillion barrels.7
Though disagreementsarise over the ultimate volume of recoverable
oil, a general consensus exists about how the oil is distributed. The
Middle East has roughly 30 percent of the world’s oil, of which one-
tenth has been consumed. The Soviet Union has about 25 percent, of
which one-twelfth has been consumed. The United States and Africa
The Future of Fossil Fuels 37
each have about 10 percent; one-half of the U.S. oil has already been
consumed, while all but one-twentieth of Africa’s remains in the ground.
Latin America is generally believed to have 8 percent of the world total,
of which about one-fifth has been consumed.8 Western Europe, includ-
ing the North Sea, has less than 4 percent of the expected world total,
of which an almost negligible amount has been consumed. (The enor-
mous attention focused on North Sea oil is more a consequence of the
resource’s location than of its size.)
The United States, Western Europe, and Japan face an immediate
oil squeeze. Most other areas have ample oil to meet their domestic
requirements for some time yet. But the oil-short areasencompassmost
of the world’s industrial base, and they all expect to import prodigious
amounts of oil from the oil-rich regions.
In 1973, the growth of petroleum consumption was interrupted by
the Arab boycott. Such growth is unlikely to resume. A fivefold increase
in oil prices has already cut deeply into the growth rate, and further price
increases are certain.
Oil price rises have political causesand economic effects. Much of
the remaining supply of easily obtained oil is in single-resource nations
that intend to stretch their income from this source of wealth as long
as possible. Moreover, at least some oil-producing countries understand
that oil has more value as a petrochemical feedstock than as a fuel, and
these countries can be counted upon to saveas much of their petroleum
as possible for non-energy purposes.9 With effective monopoly control
held by a few major producing countries, global oil use will probably not
be allowed to grow exponentially to logo-when, if past rates of produc-
tion increase were to conti!nre, world oil production would probably
peak-and then plummet as more and more wells run dry. World oil
output is more likely to rise for three or four more years, and then to
stabilize at that level for severaldecades.The Middle East might tempo-
rarily slow down production to buffer any brief surges (of rather high-
priced oil) from the North Sea and elsewhere.
The problems of estimating recoverable oil resources reflect the
difficulties surrounding the extraction of oil from reservoirs. Natural gas
exhibits no such problems. Once tapped, it surfaces. Gas estimates do,
however, entail many other problems.
A fixed quantifiable relationship between gas and oil is presumed to
38 Raysof Hope
exist, and gas resource estimates are generally derived from oil resource
estimates. But the historic gas/oil ratio may be changing. Further, more
gas fields that are unassociatedwith oil fields are now being discovered,
and, as drilling rigs capable of probing deeper and deeper have revealed,
the ratio of gas to oil seems to increase at the lower depths.
Even though the magnitude of total oil resources remains in ques-
tion, gas resourcesare predicted by using this controversial estimate in
conjunction with a dubious gas/oil ratio. The resulting estimates obvi-
ously vary tremendously. The world total for natural gas is commonly
hypothesized to be about 12 quadrillion cubic feet, although the most
recent authoritative study-done for the Ninth World Petroleum Con-
ference--claims that the resource base may be only half this large.10
(Current world consumption of natural gasis about 15 trillion cubic feet
a year.)
Another much smaller source of fuels and petrochemical feedstocks
is to be found in the natural gas liquids. If presumed ratios of natural
gas liquids to natural gas (the reader no doubt recognizes that we are
beginning to presume ourselves uncomfortably far out on a limb) prove
to be accurate, the world resource base totals about 400 billion barrels
of natural gas liquids, or roughly 2 percent of the estimated volume of
oil.
Coal: A Transitional Fuel
Coal, the world’s most plentiful fossil fuel, has been used for at least
two thousand years. The Chinese burned coal, and evidence suggests
that the classical Romans did as well. Coal consumption increased
steadily in Europe from the fourteenth century on, as the brick, glass,
and iron industries became coal burners. By the mid-sixteenth century,
England was mining about 200900 metric tons of coal a year, and with
the advent of the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century, coal-
fired operations increased dramatically. By 1925, the world was produc-
ing 1.3 billion metric tons of coal a year. By 1975, the figure reached
3.25 billion metric tons, of which Europe accounted for about 36 per-
cent, the Soviet Union for about 23 percent, the United States for
approximately 17 percent, and the People’s Republic of China for about
14 percent.
TheFuture of Fossil Fuels 39
Because solids are easier to measure than liqui& or gases,coal re-
source estimates are probably more reliable than oil and gas estimates.
Total world coal resources most likely amount to between 7 and 10
trillion metric tons. If all that coal were potentially available-which it
certainly is not-the world fuel resource base would be bountiful. Even
if our current rapid rate of growth continued, coal extraction could not
peak until some time after 2200 A.D. Annual production would then be
about 24 billion tons a year--eight times higher than the present output.
All this coal will never be mined, however. Much of it rests in beds
too thin or too deep to be mined. Moreover, at some point more energy
is used to extract the last bit of coal from deep in the earth than the
coal itself contains. Long before this point is reached, the economics of
coal production will prove impossible.
A reasonable estimate of the recoverable coal resources-yet one
that still takes major advances in extraction technology and substantial
price increasesinto consideration- is about 2 trillion metric tons. This
amount of coal could support the world’s current level of coal use for
almost a thousand years, or it could sustain current world levels of
consumption of all fossil fuels for over two hundred more years. But
environmental alarms are likely to halt coal combustion long before
then. In particular, the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will
almost certainly prove intolerable long before all the world’s recoverable
coal is consumed.
Although no worldwide coal shortage threatens, some geographical
areasare in comparatively poor shape. Europe faceswhat could be a coal
crisis. European coal extraction, for example, now constitutes 36 percent
of the world total, but Europe has only 6 percent of the world’s remain-
ing coal. In contrast, both Latin America and Africa face another kind
of resource pinch. Together, they have less than 1 percent of the world’s
total coal. Since both areas have low coal consumption rates, their
present problem is that of limited potential rather than of impending
crisis.
Three countries contain more than 80 percent of the world’s es-
timated coal supply. The Soviet Union’s share, 56 percent, is enormous,
while the United States owns a hefty 19 percent and the People’s
Republic of China has about 8 percent. As production of other fossil
fuels peaks and declines, this skewed distribution of coal may prove
40 Raysof Hope
politically significant. The Soviet Union, for example, has a much higher
percentage of the world’s coal than the Middle East has of the world’s
All analysts agree that the amount of energy used and lost at a coal
conversion facility should be subtracted from the gross energy total.
Most would further concur that the energy invested in building the
facility-in refining its metals, and fashioning them into the end struc-
#true-should also be subtracted. 3ut some argue that the energy needed
to train and support the plant’s workerb, Tnd even their families, should
be subtracted as well. The drawing of such boundary lines is largely
judgmental, though several conventions have been proposed.
A more difficult problem arises from the fact that energy has a
qualitative as well as a quantitative dimension. Two-thirds of the energy
in coal is lost in the processof producing electricity, but that electricity
can provide more and better illumination than can a simple lump of
burning coal. A warm lake contains far more energy than a small battery,
but it is difficult to power a pocket calculator with a warm lake. Such
realizations have led energy analysts to consider enthalpy and entropy,
the qualitative dimensions of energy, as they make their calculations.
Nuclear Economics
Global nuclear development was initially spurred by the belief that
fission would provide a cheap, clean, safe source of power for rich and
poor alike. However, the dream of “electricity too cheap to meter” has
foundered.
Nuclear power is not cheap. Donald Cook, chairman of American
Electric Power-the largest privately owned utility system in the United
States-believes that “an erroneous conception of the economics of
nuclear power” sent U.S. utilities “down the wrong road. The econom-
ics that were projected but never materialized-and never will material-
ize-looked so good that the companies couldn’t resist it.”
The costs of nuclear power are mostly at the front end-in research
and development and capital construction. Consequently, such power
facilities will necessarilybe at a severedisadvantage in a time of general
capital scarcity. And while all capital costs have been increasing dramati-
cally in recent years, the cost increases of nuclear construction have
outpaced the risesin the construction costsof other power facilities. The
per ki1ow;iI.t price of U.S. nuclear facilities rose two-and-one-half times
as much between 1969 and 1975 as did that for coal-fired power
plants.ll
The true cost of nuclear power has been confused by the quasi-public
nature of much nuclear research and development. The costs of decom-
missioning radioactive facilities, the costs of regulation (including effec-
56 Raysof Hope
tive safeguards),and the cost of safe disposal of wastes are all generally
ignored. Moreover, the typical reactor produces power at just over one-
half of its designed capacity, owing to shutdowns and slowdowns for
safety reasons. A study of nuclear costs by physicist Amory Lovins
revealed that nuclear power requires a total investment of $3,000 per
kilowatt of net, usable delivered electric power. In other words, lighting
a single loo-watt bulb by nuclear power requires a $300 investment.12
Projected nuclear growth in the United States through the year zoo0
could require more than one-fourth of the nation’s entire net capital
investment. In some developing countries, the cost of a single reactor
may exceed the amount of the nation’s total annual available capital.
Such investments represent grievously injudicious use of scarce capital.
Uranium Availability
Uranium is not a plentiful substitute for scarce oil and gas. Total
non-Communist uranium resources available at $60 per kilogram have
been estimated in a 1975 study by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency
and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at about 3.5
million tons-about half of which was reasonably assured.Three coun-
tries control 80 percent of current non-Communist production: the
United States, with 9,mo tons per year; Canada, with 4,700 tons; and
South Africa, with 2,600 tons. Eighteen other countries have discovered
small uranium deposits, but the total from these countries represents
only 15 percent of the non-Communist resource base. (Public informa-
tion is not available on the uranium resourcesof the Soviet bloc or of
the People’s Republic of China.)13
The 236 reactors currently operating or planned for construction in
the United States will consume at least 1 million tons of uranium oxide
over their lifetime. The 800 U.S. reactors sometimes projected to be in
operation by the year 2000 will cumulatively demand over 2 million tons
through that year, and will demand 4 million tons altogether during
their operating span. These fuel demands-projected by the U.S. En-
ergy Research and Development Administration, and challenged as far
too low by others-outstrip the economically recoverable reservesof all
known non-Communist uranium suppliers.
What holds true for the United States is, in this instance, even more
NuclemPower 57
emphatically true for the world. While cumulative demand for uranium
oxide in the United States could total 2 million tons by the year 2000,
cumulative non-U.S. demand is expected to exceed that amount. Pro-
posed non-U.S. reactors will themselves have a lifetime demand far in
excessof the world’s known deposits of economical uranium. Low-cost
ores over and beyond those now postulated may well be unearthed; on
the other hand, most of the estimated resource base is hypothetical, and
actual deposits could easily fall short of the estimates.
Without breeder reactors, known uranium reserves obtainable at
reasonable prices will not long support nuclear development. Of course,
as prices rise, the amount of uranium recoverable will also rise. But
exploiting low-grade ore incurs heavy noneconomic costs. In the United
States, uranium is now mined from westerr%sandstone, in which it
comprises 1,000 parts per million. In the lower-grade Chattanooga shale,
uranium constitutes only 63 to 80 parts per million-less uranium than
the tailings currently being discarded from uranium milling operations.
Of that minuscule amount of uranium, less than I. percent is fissionable
U 235; the rest of the uranium cannot be split to release energy.
The energy cost of extracting so little fissile fuel from so much ore
may topple the nuclear industry. Although one preliminary study sug-
gests that a net energy gain is still possible, such a gain may not be worth
the effort and may not represent a judicious investment of manpower
and capital. Ton for ton, Chattanooga shale contains less energy than
does bituminous coal, and the environmental costs of uranium extrac-
tion from such ore will be high.
Reactor Safety14
A 1,~megawatt reactor, after sustained operations, has about 15
billion curies of radioactive material in its core. The heat of decay from
this material constitutes about.7 percent of the reactor’s thermal output
(the other 93 percent coming from the fission reaction).15 While the
fission processcan be regulated, radioactive decay cannot. The decaying
core can only be cooled. Uncooled, the core would grow so hot that it
could melt through its containment vessel,and would then continue to
melt its way down into the earth. This “loss of coolant accident”
(LOCA) has been the focus of most of the reactor safety controversy.
58 Rqs of Hope
There is no question but that such accidents can occur. The questions,
rather, are how dangerous a meltdown would be and how frequently a
meltdown would be likely to occur.
A once secret 1957 report prepared by the Brookhaven National
Laboratory for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission concluded that the
worst possible reactor meltdown could kill 3,4oc1people, injure 43,ooo,
and cause$7 billion damage. By 1964, larger reactors were on the market
and an updated Brookhaven report upped the estimated toll, claiming
that 27,000 people could die, that $17 billion worth of damage could
be done, and that an area the size of Pennsylvania could be con-
taminated. A study conducted by the Engineering Research Institute of
the University of Michigan for the owners of the Enrico Fermi reactor
outside Detroit found that the worst accident likely to occur with this
relatively small breeder reactor could cost 133,000 lives.
None of these studies dealt with the odds of such an accident
occurring. In 1972, the United States AEC sponsored yet another reac-
tor safety study. 16 Known by the name of its principal author, the
Rasmussen study traced the sequences of events that could-as the
analysts saw it-lead to a LOCA, and assigned a probability to each
event and then to the sequences.The Rasmussenreport claims that a
core meltdown will occur a’bout once every 17,cm reactor years for
pressurizedwater reactors, and about once .,ca’ery33,000 yearsfor boiling
water reactors. These calculations reflect the presumption that neither
God nor terrorists will intervene with unscheduled events and the belief
that Rasmussen’sthousands of assumptions about reactor components
are all correct. For example, the report maintains that the emergency
core cooling system (ECCS) will work successfully unless some pump,
valve, or other component fails. However, many experts doubt if the
ECCS can prevent a meltdown eYen when working perfectZy, and the
system has never been tested. 17
Doubtless, the most publicized result of the Rasmussenstudy was
a chart comparing the relative odds of a person dying from a nuclear
accident, being struck by lightning, being struck by a meteor, and so on.
Nuclear power, unsurprisingly, was found to be wondrously safe. The
catch, however, is that these charts consider immediate deaths only.
Professor Frank von Hippel of Princeton University points out that an
accident that causesonly 10 early fatalities by Rasmussen’scalculations
would subsequently cause 7,ooo cancer deaths, 4,000 genetic defects,
Nuclear Power 59
and 60,000 thyroid tumor cases.It would also contaminate 3,000 square
miles of land.
Most of the immediate danger to human life posed by a serious
reactor accident arisesfrom the cloud of radioactive material that would
be released if the reactor containment vesselwere breached. The num-
ber of people exposedwould depend upon the population density in the
surrounding area, upon climatic conditions, and upon the effectiveness
of evacuation procedures. Sixteen million people live within a forty-mile
radius of the three reactors at Indian Point, New York. In February,
1976, Robert Pollard, the safety official directing regulatory activities at
Indian Point, resigned and announced on national television that Indian
Point Number Two was “almost an accident waiting to happen.”
The likelihood of a successful rapid evacuation of a congested area
containing several million people is equal to that of an apple falling
upward, and this is frankly admitted by the state officials. ‘What’s my
plan to evacuate Chicago?” asks the nuclear chief of the Illinois Office
of Civil Defense. “I don’t have one. There’s no way you can evacuate
Chicago.” In few reactor accidents has the public even been informed
that a potential danger existed until after the critical period had passed.
The head of civil defense in the Browns Ferry area didn’t hear about
a $100 million fire that incapacitated two r,zoo-megawatt reactors until
two days after the fire was put out.18
In November of 1973, a Swedish radio program describing a fictional
reactor accident in southern Sweden was broadcast. The resulting public
panic recalled the s’hock created by Orson Welles’ The War of the
Worlds some four decadesearlier. The phone system broke down under
the stress of calls, within ten minutes an enormous traffic jam had tied
up the countryside, and frantic citizens were reluctant to believe official
assurancesthat no accident had taken place.
The nuclear safety debate has been a source of great confusion to
the layman. One team of experts is lined up against an equally expert
opposing team, each armed with computer printouts and technical
jargon. Each tries to “prove” its case. But most nuclear issuesare not
amenable to proof; they are matters of judgment. It is impossible to
eliminate all risk, and determining the level of acceptable risk is an
ethicaI rather than a technical exercise.Consequently, the final decisions
are not scientific, but are, rather, social, political, and philosophical.19
60 Raysof Hope
Breeder Reactors
Rhapsodie Fortissimo, Phoenix, and SNEAK are some of the names
given to prototypes of an exotic new technology that would produce
more fuel than it consumes.Breeder reactors perform a certain alchemy,
transforming atoms with no potential as fuels into entirely different
elements whose energy can be exploited. The leading breeder candidate
is the liquid metal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR), designed to transform
uranium 238 (the non-chain-reacting isotope that constitutes more than
99 percent of all uranium) into plutonium 239, a reactor fuel. Other
proposed breeders would convert thorium into fissionable uranium
233.20
The “doubling time”- the amount of time needed for a breeder
reactor to accumulate twice as much fissionable fuel as its initial inven-
tory contained-is a critically important aspect of breeder development.
-~--~
-----~ The more rapid the doubling time, the larger the amount of useless
U 238 the breeder will convert into valuable plutonium 239 during a
given operating period. Becausethe breeder converts otherwise valueless
material into fuel, it in effect increasesthe size of the uranium resource
base: more energy is obtained per unit of fuel mined, and lower grades
of fuel can be economically mined. If nuclear fission is viewed simply
as a stopgap or supplementary power source, the meager known resource
base of fissile fuels may be adequate, and the breeder may be justifiably
characterized as an expensive extravagance. If, on the other hand, nu-
clear fission were to become a major long-term energy option, breeder
reactors-with all their attendant problems-would be indispensable.
Fast neutrons causea vast atomic stir inside a LMFBR. This neutron
bombardment creates voids in the crystalline structure of metallic fuel
rods, swelling both the metal cladding and the fuel itself as a conse-
quence. If fuel pins bow and touch as a result of this swelling, tempera-
tures increase greatly at the contact points. Under some circumstances,
this heat could spread to other parts of the core and initiate melting.
The current breeder safety debate centers on whether or not the fuel
could become arranged in an explosive configuration during a core melt
(a condition known as “recriticality”) and blow the reactor apart (or, in
technical jargon, cause a “rapid disassembly”). Just how much energy
such an explosion would release is not known.21
Nuclear Power 61
The easiest “solution” to the swelling problem is to design more
space (filled with sodium) between the fuel pins so that, even if they
bend, they won’t touch. However, the sodium flowing between the pins
slows down the neutrons and reduces the breeding rate. The contribu-
tion of the breeder to fuel supplies will be marginal unless the breeding
time is brought down substantially from the present forty-to-sixty-year
range. Thus, safety and speed are at loggerheads, for a cut in the
breeding time will require a closer fitting of fuel pins unless there is a
breakthrough in fuel technology.
In October of 1966, instruments on the Enrico Fermi reactor in
Lagoona Beach, Michigan, began to behave erratically. An LMFBR,
Fermi was the world’s first commercial breeder reactor. Suddenly, the
reactor’s radiation warning device registered an emergency. It was im-
possible to tell what was occurring in the reactor core, but the instru-
ment readings supported the hypothesis that at least one fuel subassem-
bly had melted. Safety was of special concern at Fermi because4 million
people resided within thirty miles of the reactor.
The Fermi reactor was successfully shut down. During the next
several days, experts were flown in from all over the world to speculate
upon what might be happening in the reactor’s core. The greatest fear
was that a damaged subassemblymight collapse into other parts of the
core, causing a secondary nuclear accident of catastrophic dimension.
Slowly, the deIicate operations were begun. More than a year and a half
of careful work was required before the cause of the accident could be
discovered: a triangular piece of metal installed as a safety measure had
worked loose, clogging the flow of coolant and causing four fuel subas-
semblies to melt. Tragedy was only narrowly averted.
Perhaps the greatest fear that breeder reactors inspire is that nothing
will go wrong, that the plants might be commercialized in a timely
manner and in an economical form, and that they might operate without
mishap. In this case, the world could come rapidly to depend upon
plutonium as a principal fuel. Some consequences of such an unholy
addiction will be explored in the next three sections.
Weapons Proliferation
In August, 1939, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Franklin
D. Roosevelt of the United States. “Some recent work by E. Fermi and
62 Rqs of Hope
L. Szilard which has been communicated to me in manuscriptform
leads me to expect that the element Uranium may be turned into a new
and important source of energy in the immediate future.”
The letter led to the Manhattan Proiect-a multinational undertak-
ing that gave birth to the first atom bomb. Some idealistic supporters
of the project dared to believe that their efforts would lead to world
peace. With the threat of nuclear weaponry looming grotesquely in the
background, war would become unthinkable.
Since the explosion of the first nuclear device, the world has ex-
perienced scores of regional wars, and has twice set foot on the brink
of nuclear holocaust. During this period, the international nuclear arse-
nal grew to absurd proportions, desecrating the hope that our future will
be less war-tom than our past.
Today all five permanent members of the UN Security Council have
exploded nuclear bombs. So has India. Approximately fifteen more
countries are in what could be termed “near nuclear” status; they could,
no doubt, quickly produce nuclear weapons if they chose to do so.22
Virtually all nations agree that the widespread dissemination of
nuclear armaments would gravely jeopardize not only global stability but
perhaps even the survival of the human species. In the event of an
accidental or intentional nuclear war, the incredible impact of the initial
conflagration (the world’s nuclear arsenalstoday contain the equivalent
of 20 billion tons of TNT) would be followed by long-term radiation
damage, ozone depletion, and, possibly, major climatic shifts. Our igno-
rance of the effects of such a massiveassault on the global environment
is nearly total.23
After the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the United States and the
USSR became more acutely aware of the fragility of the nuclear age.
The following year, the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed.
In 1967, the Treaty of Tlatelolco prohibited the development of nuclear
weapons in Latin America. And on March 5, 1970, the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) went into effect.
Written by the United States and the Soviet Union, the NPT treaty
makes a good deal of sense from a superpower perspective. Both coun-
tries retain their vast arsenals,and each continues to manufacture about
three hydrogen bombs a day. Non-weapons states, however, are prohib-
ited by the treaty from developing or acquiring nuclear weapons. Non-
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Terrorism
Three materials with weapons potential play prominent roles in
nuclear power fuel cycles. Plutonium 239, made inside all existing com-
mercial reactors, is highly toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic, and expiosive.
Uranium 235 is the fuel of most existing commercial reactors, and
uranium 233 is prodllfier’
ub u m’ reactors containing thori-um. Spheres of
Pu 239, U 235, and U 233, encased in a beryllium neutron reflector,
have critical massesof 4 kilograms (under 9 pounds), 11 kilograms, and
4.5 kilograms, respectively.27 Sophisticated implosion techniques can
lower the critical massrequirements considerably; for plutonium used in
implosion bombs, the official “trigger quantity” is about 2 kilograms. A
skilled bombmaker would require slightly less than these official figures
suggest.An amateur bombmaker could make a lesssophisticated weapon
employing correspondingly larger amounts of fissile material. A recent
report by the “watchdog” agency of the U.S. Congress, the General
Accounting Office, found that “even minimal and basic security precau-
tions had not been taken” to protect plutonium. The report cited,
among other examples, “an unlocked and unalarmed building contain-
ing plutonium scrap . . . within 15 feet of an unalarmed fence.“28
Until ~970, the United States government purchased all the
plutonium produced in U.S. reactors. In 1970, the government got out
of the business, and private companies began stockpiling the material.
If reliance on nuclear power grows at the rate commonly projected, far
more plutonium will be produced in commercial reactors in the next
couple of decadesthan is now contained in all the nuciear bombs in the
world. Theodore Taylor, a nuclear safeguards expert, estimates that by
the year 2000 enough fissile material will be in circulation to manufac-
ture 250,ooo bombs. If U.S. Atomic Energy Commission growth projec-
tions for nuclear power through 2020 were to be met, Arthur Tamplin
68 Raysof Hope
and Thomas Cochran have calculated, the cumulative flow of plutonium
in the United States alone would amount to 200 million kilograms (MO
million pounds).
Once assembled,nuclear weapons could be rather convenient to use.
The dimensions of the Davy Crockett, a small fission bomb in the U.S.
arsenal, are 2 feet by r foot (0.6 meters by 0.3). The smallest U.S. bomb
is under 6 inches (0.15 meters) in diameter. Such bomb miniaturization
is well beyond the technical skill of any terrorist group, but no wizardry
is required to build an atom bomb that would fit comfortably in the
trunk of an automobile. Left in a car just outside the exclusion zone
around the U.S. Capitol during the State of the Union address,such a
device could eliminate the Congress, the Supreme Court, and the entire
line of successionto the presidency.
With careful planning and tight discipline, armed groups could
interrupt the fuel cycle at several vulnerable points and escape with
fissile material. The high price likely to be charged for black market
plutonium also makes it attractive to organized crime: sophisticated yet
ruthless, modern criminals have close links with transport industries in
many parts of the world. Perhaps most frightening is the inside thief-
the terrorist sympathizer or the person with gambling debts or the
victim of blackmail. A high official of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commis-
sion had, it was discovered in 1973, borrowed almost a quarter of a
million dollars and spent much of it on racing wagers.
Quiet diversion of bomb-grade material may have taken place al-
ready. Plutonium has often been found where it should not have been,
and, worse, not been found where it should have been. Determining
whether or not weapons-gradematerial has already fallen into the wrong
hands is impossible. Charles Thornton, former director of Nuclear
Materials Safeguards for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, claims
that “the aggregate MUF [materials unaccounted for] from the three
U.S. diffusion plants alone is expressible in tons. No one knows where
it is. None of it may have been stolen, but the balances don’t close. You
could divert from any plant in the world, in substantial amounts, and
never be detected. . . . The statistical thief learns the sensitivity of the
system and operates within it and is never detected.”
It was long and incorrectly believed in the United States, as it is still
believed elsewhere, that building a bomb from stolen materials would
iuicleaT Power 69
require “a small Manhattan project.” But Theodore Tay or, formerly the
leading American atom bomb designer, has described at length where
the detailed instructions for building atomic bombs can be found in
unclassified literature and how the necessary equipment can be mail-
ordered. An undergraduate at MIT, working alone and using only public
information, produced a plausible bomb design in only five weeks.
Even if fissile materials could not be diverted, the operation of a
nuclear fuel cycle affords terrorists exceptional opportunities.29 In No-
vember of 1972, three men with guns and grenadeshijacked a Southern
Airlines DC9 and threatened to crash it into a reactor at the Oak Ridge
NationaI Laboratory if their ransom demands were not met. In March
of 1973, Argentinian guerrillas seized control of a reactor under con-
struction, painted its walls with political slogans, and departed carrying
the guards’ weapons.
A former official in the U.S. Navy underwater demolition program
testified before Congress that he “. . . could pick three to five ex-
underwater demolition Marine reconnaissance or Green Beret men at
random and sabotage virtually any nuclear reactor in the country.
. . . The amount of radioactivity released could be of catastrophic
proportions.”
One visitor to the San Onofre reactor in California recently pulled
a knife marked “lethal weapon” and a bottle of vitamin pills marked
“nitroglycerine” from his pocket when his tour was next to the control
room, to demonstrate how easily the reactor could be penetrated. Vari-
ous magazine articles have described how a saboteur might initiate a core
meltdown in a reactor.
Werner Twardzik, a parliamentary representative in West Ger-
many, joined a tour of the ~~megawatt Bilbis-A reactor carrying a
6a-centimeter (z-foot) bazooka under his jacket. He toured the world’s
largest operating reactor with the weapon undetected and presented the
bazooka to the power plant’s director when the tour e
Threats to destroy a reactor in such a way as to release much of the
radiation in its core numb the mind. Yet two French reactors were
bombed by terrorists in 1975, and several other facilities were bombed
in 1976. Between 1969 and 1976, ninety-nine separate incidents of
threatened or attempted violence against licensed nuclear facilities were
reported in the United States alone. A nearly completed nuclear plant
70 Rays of Ho@e
in New York was damaged by arson. A pipe bomb was found in the
reactor building of the Illinois Institute of Technology. The fuel storage
building of the Duke Power facility at Ocone was broken into. Seventy-
six additional incidents took place at government atomic facilities.
If the radioactive iodine in a single light water reactor (LWR) were
uniformly distributed, it could contaminate the atmosphere over the
lower forty-eight United States at eight times the maximum permissible
concentration to an altitude of about ten kilometers (six miles). The
same reactor contains enough strontium 90 to contaminate all the
streams and rivers in the United States to twelve times the maximum
permissible concentration. These materials could not be distributed so
uniformly, but the figures serve to indicate that every reactor holds the
perils of Pandora’s box.30
A large fuel reprocessing plant, in addition to being a handy source
of plutonium, would contain up to 500 times as much radioactive stron-
tium as a reactor holds. If such concentrated and vulnerable sourcesof
radioactive material became the target of a nuclear explosive+delivered
by either a terrorist group or a hostile power-the deadliness of the
resulting hybrid would be formidable.
In addition to the perils inherent in the physically discrete stagesof
the nuclear fuel cycle, problems surround the transport of potentially
dangerous materials from stage to stage. Today such transportation is
frequently global in scope-witness the British agreement to reprocess
4,cmo metric tons of Japanesefuel. In 1974, in the United States alone,
1,532 shipments involving about 50,000 pounds of enriched uranium
and 372 shipments totaling about 1,600 pounds of plutonium were
made. The record of transportation foul-ups is legendary, and the future
danger from either accidental or willful mishaps is commensurate. More-
over, the security accorded even plutonium and highly enriched uranium
has been unpardonably lax.
In the general transport of non-nuclear goods, a loss rate of about
1 percent is common. A 1 percent loss of bomb-grade materials could
jeopardize world stability; 1 percent of the cumulative expected
plutonium flow through the year 2020 would be enough for 4oo,ooo
small bombs. Improvements are being made-including blast-off wheels
to incapacitate trucks in case of hijackings, and heavy containers that
are difficult both to steal intact and to break open. To prevent diversion
NU&QT Power 71
by skyjacking, some nations have decreed that no airplane may carry
enough fissile materials to create a bomb. Even today, however, intema-
tional shipments of bomb-grade materials and nuclear wastes generally
travel unguarded and are subject to accidents or sabotage.
In time, the volume of transportation may be reduced thorough
greater regionalization. The constmction of huge self-contained nuclear
parks, each housing twenty or more reactors, has even been suggested.
In such parks, the entire nuclear fuel cycle could be contained within
well-guarded boundaries. Although this setup would reduce transporta-
tion problems, it would do so at a high price in terms of both the
vulnerability of such centralized facilities and their environmental im-
pact.
Guarding against terrorism requires impossible foresight. Who in
1975 expected a group of South Moluccan extremists to hijack a train
in the Netherlands in order to bargain for the independence of the’
Moluccan Islands from Indonesia? Protecting ourselves against future
terrorism means nothing less than building a nuclear system able to
withstand the tactics of future terrorists fighting for a causethat has not
yet been born.
Nuclear Power and Society
The increased deployment of nuclear power facilities must lead
society toward authoritarianism. Indeed, safe reliance upon nuclear
power as the principal source of energy may be possible only in a
totalitarian state. Nobel Prizewinning physicist Hannes Alfven has
described the requirements of a stable nuclear state in striking terms:
Fissionenergyis safeonly if a number of critical deviceswork as they should,
if a number of peoplein key positionsfollow all oJftheir instructions,if there
is no sabotage,no hijacking of transports,if no reactor fuel pro&sing plant or
wasterepositoryanywherein the world is situatedin a regionof riots or guerrilla
activity, and no revolutionor war--even a “conventional” one-takes place in
these regions.The enormous quantities of extremelydangerousmaterial must
not get into the handsof ignorant peopleor desperados.No acts of Cod can
he permitted.
The existence of highly centralized facilities and their frail transmis-
sion tendrils will foster a garrison mentality in those responsible for their
72 Raysof Hope
security. Such systems are vulnerable to sabotage, and a coordinated
attack on a !arge facility could immobilize even a large country, since
storing substantial amounts of “reserve” electricity is so difficult.
The peacetime risks would be multiplied in times of war. With the
proliferation of nuclear power facilities, risks that were previously re-
stricted to atomic arms accrue to conventional weapons. Dr. Sigvard
Eklund, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency,
described the situation to the Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1973:
I emphasizethat the maintenanceof peaceis a condition sine qua non for the
widespreaduse of nuclear power which is foreseen.A situation where power
reiMors abzveground wou!dbe the object of warfarefrom the air would have
unthinkable con&quences,as would, for that matter, fighting action among
someof the loo-odd warshipspropelled by nuclearpower.
Nuclear power is viable only under conditions of absolute stability.
The nuclear option requires guaranteed quiescence-internationally and
in perpetuity. Widespread surveillance and police infiltration of all dissi-
dent organizations will become social imperatives, as will deployment of
a paramilitary nuclear police force to safeguardevery facet of the massive
and labyrinthine fissile fuel cycle.
Widespread nuclear development could, of course, be attempted
with precautions no more elaborate or oppressive than tbse thai k-.-,Q
characterized nuclear efforts to date. But such a courr;e would assurean
eventual nuclear tragedy, after which public oF;nion would demand
authoritarian measuresof great severity. OrweiIian abrogations of civil
liberties might be imposed if they were deemed necessary to prevent
nuclear terrorism.
The capital-intensive nature of nuclear development will foreclose
other options. 31 As governments channel streams of capital into direc-
tions in which they would not naturally flow, investment opportunities
in industry, agriculture, transportation, and housing-not to mention
those investments in more energy-efficient technologies and alternative
energy sources-will be bypassed.
With much of its capital tied up in nuclear investments, a naticn
wil!l have no option but to continue to use this power source, come what
may. Already, it has become extremely difficult for many countries to
turn away from their nuclear commitments. If current nuclear projec-
Nuclear Power 73
tions hold true for the next few years, it will be too late. Falsified reports
have been filed by nuclear-powered utilities seeking to avoid expensive
shutdowns. When vast sums are tied up in initial capital investments,
every idle moment is extremely costly. After some level of investment,
the abandonment of a technology becomes unthinkable.
In a world where money equals power, large investments in nuclear
technology will cause inordinate power to accrue to the managers of
nuclear energy. These managerswill be a highly trained, remote techno-
cratic elite who make decisions for an alienated society on technical
grounds beyond the public ken. They will test C. S. Lewis’s contention
that “what we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power
exercised by some men over others with nature as its instrument.” As
nations grow increasingly reliant upon exotic technologies, the authority
of the technological bureaucracies will necessarily become more com-
plete. Some energy planners now project that by the year 2oaa most
countries will be building the equivalent of their total 1975 energy
facilities eyery f/rree Yeats. Although central planners may have no diffi-
culty locating such a mass of energy facilities on their maps, they will
face tremendous difficulties siting them in the actual countryside of a
democratic state.
A nuclear world would lead to increased technological dependence
among nations, especially as the nuclear superpowers conspire to keep
secret the details of the fuel cycle. Worldwide dependence upon nuclear
power could lead to a new form of technological colonialism, with most
key nuclear personnel being drawn from the technically advanced coun-
tries. The enormous costsof reactors will result in a major flow of maney
from poor countries to rich ones.
As the finite remaining supply of petroleum fuels continues to
shrink, the need for a fundamental transition grows ever more urgent.
The nuclear Siren is at present attracting much interest, but it is to be
hoped that her appeal will prove short-lived. Vigorous conservation
efforts aeezompaniedby a heroic commitment to the development of
benign, renewable resources would be a more judicious course.
It is already too late to avoid widespread dissemination of the engi-
neering details underlying nuclear power. What can still be sought,
however, is the international renunciation of this technology and all the
grave threats it entails. Although the nuclear debate has been dominated
74 Raysof Hope
by technical issues, the real points of controversy fall in the realms of
values and ethics. And the heart of the issue is the threat of ho?ocaust.
Commercial nuclear power was viewed by many of its key developers
as a way of atoning for the sin of nuclear weaponry. For two decades,
peaceful nuclear power enjoyed almost entirely favorable media cover-
age. Only in the last few years has it become clear that reactors and
bombs are inextricably linked. As Jacques Cousteau has written,
“Human society is too diverse, national passions too strong, human
aggressivenesstoo deep-seated,for the peaceful and warlike atom to stay
divorced for long. We cannot embrace one while abhorring the other;
we must learn, if we want to live at all, to live without both.”
Even today, many optimists view nuclear power as an obvious, neces-
sary, and desirable step forward. But when civilization stands at the edge
of a cliff, a step forward doesn’t make much sense.
II
An Enemy-EficientWorld
D OLLAR FOR DOLLAR, investments in increasing the en-
ergy efficiency of buildings, industries, and the transportation system
will save more energy than expenditures on new energy facilities will
produce. This applies to both rich lands and poor. Continued growth
in per capita fuel consumption can only imperil the developed world,
and “anticipatory conservation” should be a keystone of Third World
development. Ironically, the fossil fuels we now devour at an astonishing
rate are composed of the leftover food of that prime example of immod-
erate growth-the dincaur. Rather than learning from history’s mis-
takes, we are burning the evidence.
Most countries assumethat their fuel requirements will continue to
grow for the foreseeable future.1 If the need for an eventual energy
ceiling is admitted, the day of reckoning is always thought to lie beyond
the horizons of official projections. In chart form, the expected growth
in fuel requirements is frequently depicted as an expanding wedge, still
winging exponentially skyward in the last year of the forecast.
Such studies, and there have been scores, do not cap an in-depth
examination of a spectrum of alternative policies. They make no attempt
to grapple with the question “What can be?” They ask only “Where
do we seem to be heading?“2 Projections are judgments made today
about tomorrow using data generated yesterday. If the smooth flow from
yesterday to tomorrow is disrupted, the projection will prove erroneous.
Economist Thomas Schelling has identified this problem as “a tendency
in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable.” Schell-
ing says that “the contingency we have not considered looks strange;
78 Rvs of Ho#e
what looks strange is thought improbable; what is improbable need not
be considered seriously.” An Arab oil boycott, for example, was consid-
ered too unlikely to warrant a place in anyone’s calculations until history
made it a fact.
Because fuel supplies have been fairly flexible, past predictions
tended to be self-fulfilling. A high level of demand was forecast; the
necessary power plants and refineries were built to meet the posited
demand; the fuel and electricity were consequently made available; and
the forecast was borne out. Current forecasts, however, have cantile-
vered such enormous projections of future usage off such small factual
basesthat the ceilings must eventually topple. To meet these projected
levels of demand, thousands of nuclear reactors, countless miles of strip
mines, and a large fraction of all available capital would be required. The
inevitability of such projections coming true has, therefore, been met
with increasing skepticism. Most official forecastscontinue to claim that
twice as much fuel will be “needed” fifteen years hence as is used today.
But more and more people are beginning to ask: Needed for what?
Energy consumption and human well-being do not go hand in hand
like Jack and Jill.3 This common misconception is based upon a pre-
sumed relationship between fuel consumption and Gross National Prod-
uct, and it suffers from three faults. First, the GNP has been largely
discredited as a measure of social welfare; second, fuel consumption is
a woefully inadequate index of energy use; and, finally, the relationship
between GNP and fuel use is remarkably variable among countries and
over time.
The GNP-the quantity of goods and services produced and ex-
changed in the marketplace-is widely accepted as an economic indica-
tor. It is the measure of national economic growth in Nepal as well as
in West Germany. However, it provides only partial insight into the
well-being of a society. The GNP is a strange agglomerate of goods and
evils, of servicesand disservices-all of which have nothing in common
except that they causemoney to change hands. The GNP measureswith
the same inhuman eye the costs of school systems and the costs of
prisons for those the schools fail, the costs of nuclear weapons and the
costsof diplomatic efforts to persuadepeople not to use them. The GNP
is not reduced by the terrorist bombing of a crowded airport, but it grows
as the bodies are buried or mended and the bricks reassembled. It does
7?ieCasefor Conservation 79
not shrink along with unique ecological habitats or non-renewable re-
sources,or pale as pollutant wastesare disgorged into the public air and
water. The GNP provides no indication of how goods and servicesare
distributed-probably the single most important dimension of social
welfare. Nor can a GNP reflect the vital signs of a nation: the pulse of
its institutions, the wisdom of its public servants, the strength of its
families, the freedom and happiness of its people. In Herman Daly’s
phrase, the GNP measures “only what can be counted, not what
counts.“4
Just asGNP ignores the qualitative dimensions of life, fuel consump-
tion statistics exclude important qualitative aspects of energy transac-
tions. Discussions of energy requirements in terms such as “barrels of
oil-equivalent” can be misleading because, while fuel is consumed, en-
ergy-so the First Law of Thermodynamics says-is not. Energy is
merely used to perform work. After being used, it still exists. After a unit
of fuel has been consumed, the energy it contained takes another form
(e.g., electricity, light, motion, or heat). However, use itself does render
energy somewhat less useful.*
As energy is used, it degenerates into lower-grade heat. Television
sets get hot; light bulbs get hot; automobile engines and tires get hot.
Heat flows from warmer to cooler objects in a relentless pursuit of
equilibrium, becoming ever more dilute and disorganized. As physicists
say, its entropy increases.This inexorable increase in entropy is the crux
of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Second Law thus explains
why a given quantity of concentrated, highquality (low-entropy) energy
is more useful for some types of work than is an equal amount of
law-quality energy.
Most studies of energy use deal only with its quantitative dimension.
They consider the flow of Btu’s (or calories or joules) used in a given
process,but they do not distinguish among relative entropy levels. They
thus ignore the most important aspect of the energy flows they analyze.
Even if one valued the purely quantitative notions of fuel eonsump-
tion and GNP as analytical tools, the relationship between the two is
too ambiguous to be used in policymaking. The amount of fuel needed
to produce one dollar’s worth of GNP varies by a factor of more than
loo, depending upon what good or service is being produced.6 Energy
itself--electricity, oil, and gas-is obviously the most energy-intensive
80 Raysof Hope
of goods, followed by products such as cement, aluminum, and miscella-
neous chemicals. Medical servicesand mechanical repairs, on the other
hand, require relatively little energy for each dollar spent. Energy-inten-
sivenessvaries with both the mix of goods and services in a country’s
GNP and the efficiency with which that mix is produced. Sweden and
West Germany, with about the same GNP per capita as the United
States and Canada, use about half as much fuel per capita.7
From the end of World War II until 1974, the amount of fuel
consumed per unit of GNP has generally decreasedin the industrialized
world, even though the real cost of fuel declined. Technological innova-
tions and shifts in the kind of outputs comprising the GNP account in
large part for this trend. In 1920, fully 141,000 Btu’s were needed per
dollar of GNP in the United States. But by 1973 only 89,000 Btu’s were
associatedwith each dollar of GNP. The ratio of fuel use to GNP could,
concludes -nomist John Meyer in a study for the Conference Board,
continue to fall by 2 percent per year without injuring the economy.8
The Energy Policy Project of the Ford Foundation contends that if U.S.
fuel consumption were to level off in 1985, the GNP in the year 2000
could still be within 4 percent of what it would be if fuel use grew at
its historic rate.
Energy is just one of many largely interchangeable factors that
contribute to economic production. Much of the recent exponential rise
in fuel consumption was causedby cheap fuel being substituted for labor
or materials. Fuel use can be cut substantially, without affecting the
GNP, if only this substitution is reversed.
#Like certain vitamins, energy is invaluable to a point, sometimes
neutral in its effects after that point has been reached, and actually
harmful in large quantities. Eventually, such hidden costs as environ-
mental deterioration, resource exhaustion, and structural unemploy-
ment begin to heavily outweigh the marginal benefits.
Energy and Equity
In 193 1, John Maynard Keynes followed a long tradition among
economists-a tradition that encompassed both Mill and Marx-of
distinguishing between those economic products that are truly needed
and those that are merely desired:
The Casefor Conservation 81
Now it is true that the needs of human beings may seem to be insatiable. But
they fall into two classes--thoseneeds which are absolute in the sensethat we
feel them whatever the situation of our fellow human beings may be, and those
which are relative in the sensethat we feel them only if their satisfaction lifts
us above, makesus feel superior to, our fellows. Needs of the second class,those
which satisfy the desire for superiority, may indeed be insatiable; for the higher
the general level, the higher still are they. But this is not so true of the absolute
needs-a point may soon be reached, much sooner perhaps than we are all of
usawareof, when those needsare satisfied in the sensethat we prefer to devote
our further energies to noneconomic purposes.
Perhaps two billion people around the world are still striving to meet
Keynes’ first category of needs.Satisfying the absolute needsof all should
be the first order of business in a humane and just world. Fortunately,
to the extent that these absolute needs require energy, it can be readily
provided from easily tapped natural flows.
Above this level, poverty is a matter of wants rather than needs, of
spirit rather than body. This is not to say that this kind is less legitimate
or less important to people-merely that it is distinguishable. Persons
suffering a poverty of wants are “poor” only in comparison with others
who are “rich.” If someone earns !$5,ooo and everybody else on the
street earns $so,ooo, that person is poor. But if someone earns $5,000
and everybody else in the neighborhood (or city or nation) earns only
$500, that person is rich. Thus, any legitimate “cure” for poverty will
have to alter the relative distribution of income and wealth.
It is often held that growth will make redistribution painless. During
his Great Society days, President Lyndon Johnson once told his cabinet,
“Boys, there’s going to be enough for everybody, and that means the
folks we have to take a little from won’t miss it so much.” Yet during
this period when fuel consumption and almost any other material indica-
tor signaled enormous growth, precious little income or wealth changed
hands in the United States. Consequently, the absolute gap between
rich and poor-measured in deflated dollars-grew larger.
A handful of countries, chiefly European, have used the fruits of
growth to advance the relative well-being of the disadvantaged. How-
ever, none has had the distributional successof China, which had little
or no per capita growth during its period of leveling. In most countries,
the wealthy prosper most during periods of growth. In agrarian countries
82 Raysof Hobe
the poor often find themselvesworse off in absolute terms during periods
of rapid national economic growth. If poverty is the enemy, only politi-
cal weapons can fell it: confiscatory inheritance taxes, universal floors
and ceilings on income, and other social and economic levelers.
Growth as an Institutional Force
Within some limits, a commercial enterprise can be adjusted to
achieve any or several different goals: it can maximize profits, employ-
ment, output, or security. The energy industries have largely sought to
maximize growth, often at the expenseof other objectives. To encourage
growth, rates and prices have been structured in ways that reward high
consumption. They have conveniently ignored most environmental and
health costs.
From the viewpoint of the energy producer, investments in growth
have a substantial advantage over investments in conservation: new
facilities produce a tangible, salable product. Although the sameamount
of money invested in conserving energy would often save more energy
than can be produced by investments in new facilities, this conserved
energy (which would otherwise be wasted) is energy that has already
been counted by the producer as sold. The energy company and its
stockholders, for whom a dollar burned is a dollar earned, are generally
unenthusiastic about “returned merchandise.”
The understandable drive to sell increasing amounts of energy has
unfortunate consequences.For example, electric utilities have no incen-
tive to match energy types with appropriate uses.Becausethey sell only
electricity, electricity is hawked for all uses. Utilities first encouraged
extravagant consumption for appropriate usesof electricity (e.g., light-
ing). Later, as the “live better electrically” campaign took hold, they
couldn’t resist pushing inappropriate uses (e.g., space heating) as well.
For most artificial lighting, no better energy source than electricity
exists. But artificial lighting itself often becomes too much of a good
thing. Lighting requirements were minimal until the industry lobbied
tirelessly to shed more and more light on things. William Lam, a Massa-
chusetts architect and lighting consultant, has described how lighting
standards for U.S. schools rose from three foot-candles in 1910, to
eighteen by 1930, to thirty by 1950, to between seventy and 150 today.
7fie Casefor Conservation 83
Similar increases took place in office buildings, hospitals, and other
public buildings.
Lights give ofi more heat than illumination. The most efficient
fluorescent lamps convert only about 20 percent of the electricity they
use into light, casting off the remainder directly as heat. And incandes-
cent bulbs are only about one-third as efficient as fluorescent ones. By
the late 195os, so much heat was being generated by the lights in some
commercial buildings that air conditioning was needed even in winter.
The sales manager of the Georgia Power Company has explained why
this phenomenon warms his heart along with buildings:
_. . if we can get the heating, the other loads come rather easily. If we sell high
level lighting, we’ve got the heating. We also have a much bigger air condition-
ing load than we otherwise would have had. We also have a high load factor
heating system that operates all year long! The air conditioning will operate all
year long! me current lighting standards] will get you the totally electric job.
. . . It is the inside track, the sure thing we have been looking for.
Fuel shortages, enviror\mental constraints, political opposition, and
a growing unwillingness to commit most of their discretionary capital
to the construction of new energy facilities have forced many nations
to question whether burgeoning Btu consumption is in their best inter-
est. In virtually every country the search has begun for comprehensive
energy-conservation strategies.
A society intent upon reducing its fuel consumption can turn to both
technical solutions and social solutions. Technical solutions require es-
sentially no behavioral alterations-merely changes in the types of ma-
chinery we utilize, or in the way we use it. Social solutions, on the other
hand, require changes in the way people live and act.
Technical Approaches9
Two basic kinds of technical approaches are leak plugging and ma-
chine switching. Leak plugging eliminates the waste in existing tech-
nologies, while machine switching involves the replacement of existing
devices with more efficient ones. To insulate a house is to plug a leak;
to replace an electrical resistance furnace with a heat pump is to switch
machines. To tune up a car is to plug a leak; to trade it in for a more
fuel-efficient model is to switch machines.
84 Raysof Hope
A lessobvious kind of technical solution involves the careful thermo-
dynamic matching of the task at hand with the energy sourcesbest able
to perform it &hout generating waste. Initial “compatibility” studies
in several countries have uncovered enormous inefficiencies; high-grade
useful energy is habitually treated 3s a waste product and discharged into
the environment. A group of physf+ts who scrutinized the efficiency
of U.S. energy use in terms of the Second Law of Thermodynamics for
the American Physical Society pesged the country’s over-all thermody-
namic efficiency at between 10 and 15 percent.‘c Cars were found to
be 10 percent efficient, home heating 6 percent, air conditioning 5
percent, and water heating only 3 percent efficient.
A thermodynamic eiiiciency of 100 percent is an idealized and
impossible standard. Moreover, decisions cannot be made on the basis
of thermodynamic efficiency alone; economic costs, environmental
costs, and the costs of human time must a9 be balanced in a wise
strategy. Nonetheless, an efficiency as low as 10 to 15 percent should
raise eyebrows. Doubling it to a mere 20 or 30 percent would cut the
U.S. energy budget in half without changing anything other than the
usefulness of machines and processes,and recent studies confirm that
such a move is practical.”
Every country uses most of its energy as heat. In many, heat com-
prises ever 90 percent of energy demand, while in the United States the
figure ranges closer to 60 percent. In industrialized countries, much of
this heat is obtained by burning fossil fuels at moTe than 1,000 degrees
Centigrade+ften to heat water or air to lessthan 100 degreesC. Even
worse, these fuels are often converted at 40 percent efficiency or lessinto
electricity, which, after transmission and distribution losses,is used in
domestic hot-water heaters. Using electricity to heat water is akin to
killing houseflies with a cannon; it can be done, but only with a lot of
messy,expensive, and unnecessaryside effects. It would be much more
thermodynamically efficient to reserve the high-temperature heat and
electricity for tasks that require them, and to use residual heat for
lower-grade purposes, like heating water. Alternatively, low-grade heat
could be pumped from another source and upgraded just the last few
degrees by burning fossil fuels.
Finally, finite fuels can be replaced by sustainable energy sources,
drawing upon the natural flows of energy that will circulate through the
The Casefor Conservation 85
biosphere whether or not they are tapped by human beings. At present,
we tend to ignore the sun and the wind as power sources,or to use our
fossil fuels to resist their effects. Instead, we could harnessthem to meet
human energy requirements.
Probably the strongest single impetus for technical approaches to
conservation has been economic. In both industrialized and rural soci-
eties, a dollar invested in energy conservation can make more net energy
available than a dollar invested in developing new energy sources. Eric
Hirst calculates, for example, that investments in improving air condi-
tioner efficiency can save ten times as much electricity as similar invest-
ments in new power plants can produce. Arjun Makhijani has shown
how a $10 investment in improved stove e6ciency can cut an Indian
family’s wood consumption in half-saving $10 to $25 per year. Neither
example entails a loss of benefit or comfort. Both save far more energy
per dollar than investments in new energy sources could produce, and
the energy saved is just as valuable as new energy produced.r2
The economic advantage of such conservation speaksfor itself, espe-
cially in a period of general capital shortages. Roger Sant, former assis-
tant administrator of the U.S. Federal Energy Administration, has ar-
gued that a $500 billion investment in energy conservation would save
the United States twice as much energy as a comparable investment in
new supplies could produce. Of course, every society has large invest-
ments sunk in existing buildings and machialery, and sizable savingscan
be achieved through conservation only gradually, as existing capital is
replaced by newer, more efficient items. But such investments should
not blind us to the ad*ran+
.,,.,ages of beginning the gradual changeover to
wise energy management now.
Social Approaches
The most elementary of the “social” approaches to energy conserva-
tion might be thought of as belt tightening. This conservation tactic
generally refers to minor changes in life style that are mostly neutral in
their effect on people but that are occasionally inconvenient or irritating.
Belt tightening involves, for example, such things as turning off unneces-
sary lights, driving cars more slowly, and using commercial or residential
herting and cooling systems more sparingly.
86 Raysof Hope
Social approaches might also include cooperative endeavors: car
pools, public transit systems, apartment buildings, joint ownership or
rental of infrequently used items, and so on. A four-person car pool uses
only about one-fourth as much gasoline as do four cars driving the same
distance, and most apartment house walls, since they are shared, retard
heat loss to the outdoors.
The final social approach to energy conservation involves exchanging
energy-intensive devices for those that require lessenergy. The evolution
of living habits is already evident in the general shift of most industrial
societies from an emphasis on goods to an emphasis on services.It could
lead to the substitution of low-energy activities like gardening or educa-
tion for high-energy activities like skydiving. Their proponents fre-
quently call low-energy life styles ways of “living lightly on the earth.”
Undertaken by entire societies, such social changes could cut fuel con-
sumption down to size by reshuffling the components of the GNP.
The Politics of Conservation
The case for conservation is compelling. This does not, however,
mean that effective programs will inevitably or even probably take
shape.13 In fact, in a report entitled “Energy to the Year 1985,” the
Chase Manhattan Bank claims that there is no scope for conservation
whatsoever, even in the United States.
It hasbeenrecommendedin somequartersthat the United Statesshouldcurb
its useof energyas a meansof alleviatingthe shortageof supply.However,an
analysisof the usesof energyrevealslittle scopefor major reductions without
harm to the nation’s economy and its standard of living. The great bulk of the
energy is utilized for essential purposes-as much as two-thirds is for business
related reasons.And mostof the remainingthird servesessentialprivate needs.
Conceivably,the useof energyfor suchrecreationalpurposesasvacationtravel
and the viewing of televisionmight be reduced-but not without widespread
economic and political repercussions.There are some minor usesof energy that
could be regarded as strictly non-essential-but their elimination would not
permit any significant savings.
This statement, and others like it made by the energy industry and
its financial backers, simply ignores the physical and technical
phenomena of the world around us. Because those who draft such
_’
,/’
i
/,
Farm Energy
Two twentieth-century phenomena greatly expanded world food
demand: population growth and rising prosperity. Of the so-million-ton
annual increment in world grain consumption in recent years, 22 million
tons is swallowed up by population growth, while 8 million tons reflects
rising affluence. Roughly one-third of the world grain harvest is now
channeled into feedlots to fatten cattle, even though feedlot beef has
more saturated fats and less protein than grass-fed beef.3
Coping with outbreaks of starvation in the developing world has
become a principal focus of global humanitarian efforts; in 1966 and
1967, for example, more than one-fifth of the entire U.S. wheat crop was
82 Raysof Hope
shipped to India to ward off famine. Such efforts-necessary in a crisis,
but unsatisfactory in the long run -seem particularly superficial since
virtually every country in the world has the physical resourcesto provide
its present population with an adequate diet. Serving the goal of a
hunger-free world, in part by initiating necessary land reforms, would
seem a natural and popular course for governments to pursue. However,
the record is dismal. Although every continent except Western Europe
produced a net food surplus in the 193os, continent after continent fell
into food deficit over the next forty years. Only North America and
Australia have surpluses today.4
Grain farmers in North America and Australia produce as much as
they do in part because they use so much fuel. North America and
Australia both use severaltimes more energy to produce, process,retail,
and prepare the food they grow than the food itself contains. Yet none
of the energy in the fuel is actually transferred to the food. Fuels used
in the food system merely substitute for labor, land, capital, rain, and
so forth-not for the sunshine from which food energy issues. If the
entire world ate food grown, processed,and distributed in the American
style, the global food system would consume most of the world’s total
fuel production, leaving little for industry, transportation, or even home
heating. Yet most of the world aspires to the American diet, and the
techniques used to produce the world’s food are becoming ever more
energy-intensive.
The problem of feeding the wodd’s hungry - _ has sometimes been
misperceived as a technical problem, for which a technical solution is
nicely in hand. The last decade has seen a rapid global proliferation of
high-yielding varieties of grains (HYVs) and the energy-intensive culti-
vation methods these varieties require. This agricultural phenomenon-
originating in the industrial world, but widely applied in the Third
World-is commonly referred to as the Green Revolution.
Taking full advantage of the new miracle grains requires large
amounts of energy. High yields can demand chemical fertilizers and
pesticides, irrigation equipment, and farm machinery-all energy-inten-
sive to make and use. Transforming traditional agriculture also demands
considerable up-front capital, so the primary benefits of increased pro-
ductivity tend to flow to those with land, money, or political influence.
The Green Revolution originally appeared to many to be a timely
Watts for Dinner 93
answer to widespread hunger in an age of cheap, abundant fuel. Undeni-
ably, it staved off certain starvation for millions of people. But in recent
years fuel has been neither cheap nor abundant. Instead, energy short-
ageshave constrained agricultural productivity increasingly. For interna-
tional agriculture, fhe implications of this change can scarcely be exag-
gerated.
Rising demand for food in a world with limited naturally watered
fertile cropland is leading farmers everywhere toward energy-intensive
changes in their traditional practices. Chemical fertilizers are sub-
stituted for land, and irrigation is substituted for rainfall. While energy-
efficient practices must be encouraged, and the use of sustainable energy
sources promoted, all is futile unless population growth and rising meat
consumption can be con trolled.
Fertilizer
As virgin agricultural land has grown scarce, farmers have begun to
use more and more chemical fertilizers to boost production on existing
farmss Since chemical fertilizers-and nitrogen fertilizers in particular
-are highly energy-intensive, energy consumption has risen with fertil-
izer use. U.S. corn farmers, for example, now use more energy per acre
in fertilizer (940,800 kilocalories) than in tractor fuel (797,ooo kilocalo-
ries). Fertilizer prices, unfortunately, have escalated steeply, since they
bear the imprint of oil and gas price hikes.
Natural gas, which is used in the manufacture of most nitrogen
fertilizer, is plentiful enough at the moment. In fact, the amount of gas
flared-that is, wasted-worldwide each year is twice the amount
needed to maintain the current world output of nitrogen fertilizer.
However, gas production in the continental United States peaked in
1974, and world gasproduction is expected to peak before the year 2000.
The price of natural gas has already begun to climb, reflecting this
long-term sc-ircity.
Responsi penessto large dosageso[chemical fertilizers is the premier
advantage of hrgh-yielding varieties; without such fertilizers, HYVs yield
little more per acre than do traditional crops. Hence, with the spread
of high-yielding ‘varieties has come the rapid expansion of chemical
fertilizer use. Fertilizer increments would bring the greatest returns in
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poor countries where little is now used. However, most poor nations
cannot easily afford to increase their use of fertilizer at the new high
prices. In 1975, American agriculture used about 20 million tons of
chemical fertilizer. By comparison, India, with about the same amount
of farmland and with two and a half times as many people to feed, used
only 3 million tons.
Substitutes for and complements to chemical fertilizers abound.
Traditional agricultural practices that were abandoned during the era of
cheap energy could, for example, be revived. Some are today making a
comeback deep in the U.S. breadbasket. Richard Thompson, who oper-
ates a 285-acre midwestern farm without using chemical fertilizers, uses
manure from his cows, and sewagesludge from nearby Boone, Iowa, to
enrich his land. He also plants and then plows under “green manure”
-legumes such as soybeans,alfalfa, and clover, which have nitrogen-
fixing bacteria in their root nodules. He carefully rotates his crops in a
regular cycle of corn, soybeans,corn again, then oats and hay-a practice
that also helps control insects and diseases.
When a team of scientists from Washington University studied
fourteen pairs of crop-livestock farms in the U.S. corn belt, it found that
over-all production on fourteen organic farms was lo percent lower than
production on fourteen farms that used chemical fertilizers and pesti-
cides. The organic farms required about I 2 percent more labor per unit
of market value, but only half as much energy as their counterparts. The
financial returns were about the same for both groups of farms, largely
because of the savings on fertilizers.6 Many of Richard Thompson’s
neighbors, for example, invest as much as $80 per acre in chemicals, an
annual extra expense of $23,000 for farms the size of Thompson’s.
Seemingly newfangled, Richard Thompson’s farming practices have
two hundred years of “field tests” behind them. By the mid-eighteenth
century, Edinburgh, Scotland, was operating a sewage farm, and by
mid-nineteenth century extensive sewage farming had begun in Paris
and Berlin.7 In Wassmannsdorf, Germany, a system was devised in 1920
to pipe sewage sludge to farms, using pumps powered by methane
produced by the anaerobic digestion of the sewage. Today, Tel Aviv’s
sewage helps support fruit and vegetable production on the Negev
desert. Sewage has long been valued as a fertilizer in several Asian
countries, and in China nutrient recycling now approaches maximum
efficiency. (In an effort to furthe: boost yields, China has become the
Watts for Dinner 95
world’s largest importer of nitrogen fertilizer, and is currently building
ten giant fertilizer plants. However,’ chemical fertilizers always comple-
ment-rather than replace-organic fertilizers in China.)
Since nitrogen constitutes 80 percent of the earth’s atmosphere,
nitrogen shortagespose no threat. The trick is to remove nitrogen from
the air in a form that plants can use and that farmers can afford. In
natural systems, microorganisms that grow on the roots of some major
food plants, including soybeansand alfalfa, perform this task. A Brazil-
ian scientist, Johanna Doebereiner, succeeded in cultivating these or-
ganisms on corn roots, a feat recently duplicated at the University of
Wisconsin. Such laboratory breakthroughs lead to speculation that corn
and other crops might someday satisfy much of their craving for nitro-
gen without using chemical fertilizer. While not without costs and risks,
such an approach could yield iarge energy savings if it proved successful.
Irrigation
In 18oq20 million acres of the world were irrigated. Over the next
century, the total swelled to about loo million acres. By 1950, about 260
million acres were irrigated, and by 1970 the total had increased to 470
million acres. The rate of expansion of irrigated land thus actually
outpaced the rate of human population growth.
The appeal of irrigation is obvious. Pumped water can allow parched
land to be cultivated, can parry the risk of drought, and can boost crop
yields. Virtually all crops benefit from a bountiful predictable supply of
water, and some of the more productive new crops need water at specific
times, making irrigation a necessity.
Where agricultural lands have underground water of reasonable
quality, tube wells should replace or complement streams and reservoirs.
Tapping the local water table directly, tube wells are not subject to
siltation, a processthat limits the life spans of dams and reservoirs and
that is kept under control in irrigation canals only through extensive
maintenance. However, tube wells can be abused. When water is with-
drawn from a water table more rapidly than it collects, the table ceases
to be a renewable resource. In central Arizona, where industrial and
residential users meet farmers at the wellhead, the water table is falling
ten to twenty feet a year.
Water is heavy, and lifting it can require prodigious amounts of
96 Rays of Hope
energy. Electricity use on U.S. farms rose from 15 billion kilowatt-hours
in 1950 to 39 billion kilowatt-hours in 1975. About three-fourths of the
1975 total was used for irrigation. Although modem irrigation systems
rely mostly upon non-renewable fuel sourcesfor power, they can also be
powered with renewable sources.The oldest of these faithful and ever-
lasting sources is gravity, which captures rain at higher elevations and
tirelessly channels It downhill. Some two-thousand-year-old Roman
aqueducts still function admirably without ever having consumed a drop
of oil.
China, .with about 40 percent of the world’s total irrigated land, has
also put gravity to work. Four-fifths of its irrigated land depends upon
gravity-fed or animal-powered systems. These systems, usually con-
structed by agricultural laborers during the winter off-season,often lack
the capacity to sustain intensive cultivation, but they do protect the land
from moderate droughts.
A wide variety of renewable sources can be harnessed to lift water.
Simple wind power was the technology of choice until the advent of
cheap fuel and electricity. Today, windmills are enjoying a revival in
many countries. Traditional windmills are being modified to take advan-
tage of modem aerodynamic theory and to utilize local materials.
Two other power options can be used in conjunction with irrigation
systems. Solar pumps, productive on hot days when water demand is
highest, are now being used in Mexico, Brazil, and Senegal, though
current designs remain economically uncompetitive except for areas
exceedingly remote from other power sources. Biogas, a mixture of
methane and other gasesproduced from animal excrement and crop
residues, may be a significant new fuel; already some conventional
pumps in India use this fuel.
Much more water is delivered to most irrigated fields than is needed
to sustain crops. As fresh water becomes scarce in more and more parts
of the world, irrigation techniques that use water more efficiently must
be devised. One possibility is trickle irrigation, a method in which 3 small
amount of water is delivered in a measured amount to each plant.
Trickling is costly, but it saveswater and energy and it offers an altema-
tive to the profligate technologies that could well leave the world high
and dry.
Watts forDinner 97
Farm Machinery
U.S. agriculture prides itself on its enormous productivity per
worker. Today, each American farmer feeds fifty of his fellow citizens
and, in addition, produces a surplus for export. Only one-tenth of one
percent of the world’s population works on U.S. farms, but they produce
almost one-fifth of the world’s grain.
If we consider agricultural labor as the amount of time spent to
produce a unit of output. a New York farmer spent 150 minutes produc-
ing a bushel of corn in the early twentieth century. In 1955, it took him
just 16 minutes. Today, he spends less than 3 minutes per bushel.
Worker productivity grew largely because fossil fuels were sub
stituted for human labor. In the United States, this development-at
least in its early stages- was fortuitous. Mechanized Farming reduced
the need for agricultural labor at the same time that industry required
an expanded work force. Between 1920 and 1950, the proportion of the
population involved in agriculture decreasedby half. In 1962, it halved
again. Now it has shrunk by almost half again, and more than 50 percent
of the remaining farmers hold second jobs off the farm.8
When Great Plains farmers traded in their draft animals for tractors,
they no doubt made a wise move. But the introduction of large-scale
mechanized farming in poor countries today can be economically inefh-
cient and socially disruptive. When the peculiar needs and conditions
of the recipients are ignored in a technology transfer, the “solutions” the
new technology produces may prove more troublesome than the prob-
lems it was supposed to solve. In those many countries in which 80
percent of the work force is engaged in agricultur 2, the objective must
not be to make every employed laborer as productive as possible, but
rather to make the most productive possible use of the entire labor pool.
The substitution of fuels and machines for labor in poor countries
has been frequently and understandably condemned. However, the situ-
ation is more complex than many critics have acknowledged. Because
: agriculture is a cyclical activity, the demand for labor ebbs and flows
throughout the year. Rice transplantation and grain harvesting, as just
two examples, demand an enormous labor pool, but demand it for only
relatively brief periods. The wide fluctuations in labor demand can be
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smoothed out with multiple cropping, which often requires irrigation.
But even a seriesof regular employment peakswill leave the bulk of the
labor force underemployed for much of the work year. Even as electrical
generating facilities in developed countries build the capacity to meet
brief peak periods of demand for electricity, so farmers throughout
much of the world raise families large enough to meet their peak labor
needs. The careful employment of appropriate technologies to shave
some of the labor demands from these peak periods would help to
smooth out the employment peaks, increase average labor productivity,
and reduce one major impetus to continued population growth. In many
cases,such technologies would also increase over-all food output.9
The suitability of a particular technology can be measured by its
impact on a culture. Accordingly, the purchase of sophisticated equip-
ment may represent a misuse of scarce capital in developing countries,
However, use of such devices as the “walking tractors” or two-wheel
power tillers common in Japan and Taiwan, and a new Chinese inven-
tion for mechanically transplanting rice, may benefit an entire society.
As we approach the end of the petroleum era, the designersand users
of farm equipment must accord fuel efficiency a high priority, even as
they begin the transition to the use of alternative energy sources.Farm-
ing, more than any other commercial activity, has the capacity to be-
come largely energy self-sufficient. The sooner the groundwork is laid for
agricultural fuel conservation, the more oil and gas will remain for other
PUrposes-
Crop Drying
A final mafor use of energy on the farm is grain drying, a technique
that permits farmers to minimize field lossesby harvesting their crops
before they are dry enough to be placed in long-term storage. High-
speed grain drying can sometimes use more fuel than tilling, cultivating,
and harvesting the grain. Fuel consumption for U.S. tractors and com-
bines generally ranges between five and fifteen gallons per acre. By
comparison, reducing the moisture content of 100 bushels of corn from
25 to 15 percent moisture content (from the harvesting stage to the
safe-storagestage) in high-speed dryers can require up to twenty gallons
of propane fuel. Solar energy can usually be employed for such grain
Watts for Dinner 99
drying, and suitable solar techniques are being developed in many parts
of the world.
Dying posesa particular problem in countries attempting to harvest
two rice crops during one monsoon. The first crop must be harvested
during the heavy rains. Since there is little sun during the monsoon
season, grain-drying equipment may have to be powered by methane
generated through anaerobic digestion of field residues and other or-
ganic matter.
Home Gardens
Home gardenshave proliferated throughout Europe and America in
recent years. City planners in many parts of the world are now incor-
porating garden-sized tracts in their designs. In New Bombay, for exam-
ple, planners hope that each family will raise some fraction of the food
they eat. Two Indian journalists reported from China in mid-1976 that
wherever they went, they “did not spot even a tiny piece of earth which
was not put to use. Gardens attached to houses, even land between
telegraph poles and beside the railway track, all of which lie waste in
India, were cdtivated.”
As energy prices, and consequently food prices, soar, more back yards
and vacant lots in the industrial world are also being converted into
gardens. &ManyAmerican companies, churches, and schools have set
aside plots for private gp &s; half of all Americans now grow some of
their own vegetables.10The English tradition of public land allotments
has been revitalized; over half a million gardeners each have a 3oo-
sqtnre-yard allotment in Britain, and each plot produces around $300
worth of vegetablesa year. Personal greenhousesare also making a rapid
comeback in the temperate zone as a means of lengthening the growing
season.
A home vegetable garden saves energy in three important ways.
First, the gardener’s labor (called “recreation”) is substituted for gaso-
line. Second, compost piles provide rich fertilizer while simultaneously
reducing the amount of organic residential garbage to be hauled away.
Third, growing food at home eliminates much of the need for fuel for
processing, packaging, retailing, and transporting the farm-grown com-
modities. In addition, home gardens require fewer pesticides, partly
100 Rays of Hope
because crops can be mixed to provide a less attractive target for pests.
Home gardens also cut down food waste; people who would not buy a
blemished tomato will eat one out of their own garden.
Non-Farm Energy Use
What happens to food after it leaves the farm affords the best
opportunities for saving energy in the food system. In the industrial
world, the food passesthrough an elaborate infrastructure in which it
is inefficiently processed,transported, stored before being prepared and
eaten by the consumer.11 In the Third World, the storage and prepara-
tion cf food by the consumer entail the greatest inefficiencies.12
The food processing industry, like other industries, grew up in an era
of cheap fue! prices. As a consequence, it usesenergy inefficiently. Most
of the energy it consumes is used in the form of low-grade heat, much
of which could be provided by elementary solar technologies.
One of the oldest of the food processing technologies is refining.
White flour was once universally considered superior to whole wheat
flour, as was refined sugar to unrefined sugar. When it was discovered
that white flour lacked basic nutrients contained in whole wheat flour,
the industry restored some of the lost nutrients to “enriched” flour.
Now, however, the evidence is mounting that this enriched flour is still
inferior, becausethe missing fiber content performs a vital health func-
tion. Energy is expended refining and then enriching white flour, yet the
final ?rJuct remains in many ways inferior to whole wheat flour.
The food processing industry must also take responsibility for the
“fast toad” concept. Once food was purchased at a store, taken home,
and cooked. Fast foods, however, are cooked at a factory, placed in
aluminum trays, sealedwith foil, quickly frozen, folded into a paper box,
shipped by freezer cars to supermarkets, stored in frozen food bins,
driven home, placed in the consumer’s freezer, and then eventually
cooked again in an oversized, under-insulated oven. The energy used on
the food after it leaves the farm is several times greater than that used
on the farm.
Food processors must shoulder blame for an explosive growth in
unnecessarypackaging too, a waste even more pointless than the circular
flour “enrichment” process.According to the U.S. Environmental Pro-
Wdtts for Dinner 101
I car for every six persons, has about the same car-people ratio as New
York City.
The car cult has reached its zenith in the United States. Today the
United States has more licensed drivers than registered voters, and two
cars are delivered for every baby born. Motor vehicle and allied indus-
tries account for one out of every six jobs. In one way or another, the
automobile absorbs more than one-fifth of the total U.S. energy budget.
Detroit’s enthusiasm for big, powerful, full-optioned cars is easy to
understand.4 Car manufacturers do not sell transportation; they sell
vehicles: the more expensive the vehicle, the greater their financial
return. Price has traditionally been correlated with size, and no effort
has been spared to persuade Americans to trade up to larger, more
impressive machines. No particular rationale supports this pricing pat-
tern. The principal costs of manufacturing-labor and overhead-are
almost the same for all cars, large and small. But a tradition developed
of selling large cars at high profits, and until recently much of the public
had been confused into equating size with quality.
For the last t,,.vo decades, the American automobile industry has
steadfastly bred behemoths. Consequently, when the Arab oil embargo
was announced, Detroit had no new small cars on its drawing boards.
General Motors borrowed a mini-car already in production in Europe
and South America and rushed it into the 1976 domestic lineup as the
Chevette. The thrifty Chevette soon became the modern equivalent of
an earlier American fue!-saver,the Tennessee Walking Horse. Bred for
an efficient gait, the animal was sold with the slogan: “A Walker goes
further, faster, and savesenough oats to get back again.”
The ; ltomobile has changed little in the past half century, even
though the world through which it travels has changed + .drmously.
Compare, for example, that new Chevette with a pre.iecessor.A typical
moderately priced 1915 car weighed a ton or less, ?nd had a four-
cylinder, four-stroke, water-cooled, front-mounted engil-e that powered
the rear wheels through a drive shaft. It had a manual transmission with
three forward gears and reverse.All these were standard features on the
1975 Chevette. With the exception of the automatic transmission,
introduced on London buses in 1926, the automobile industry has not
come up with a major innovation in the last sixty years. The Chevette’s
engine is larger, of course, but the 1915 car could exceed all of today’s
Energy and Transportation 111
speed limits. Indeed, an automobile race held in 1908 was won by a car
averaging 128 miles per hour.
The evolution of the automobile, considered from the viewpoint of
energy efficiency, has been almost entirely maladaptive. Cars tend to be
oversized, overpowered, and encumbered with a multitude of accesso-
ries, most of which consume lots of fuel to help the driver avoid trifling
muscular or mental exertions. For example, to avoid occasionally moving
their feet and hands a few inches, many drivers pay extra for automatic
transmissions that decrease gasoline mileage by 10 percent or more.
The car facilitated modem metropolitan sprawl, but it is not always
beloved in the world it helped to make. As the urban environment has
gradually changed, hostility to the traditional automobile has mounted.
The respected French opinion poll SOFRES found that 62 percent of
the French favored banning cars from central cities. More than a hun-
dred European cities have created auto-free downtown shopping areas.
Yet, what would we do without cars? It is hard to imagine Turin
without Fiat, Wolfsburg without Volkswagen. Ninety percent of the
families of Coventry, England, rely upon the manufacture of cars and
car parts for a livelihood. Closely linked to such other industrial giants
as the oil and steel industries-with change in one rippling through all
-the automobile industry has become one of the strongest conservative
forces in modem society.
Dramatic change is in the wind; faltering oil resourcesguarantee it.
Yet to date the automobile industry does not appear to recognize its
altered circumstances or to be preparing seriously for the post-petroleum
age. Some legislatures, on the other hand, are mandating minimum
levels of fuel economy, and a political debate over how far the shift
toward increased mileage can be pushed has begun in several countries.
I
118 Rays of Hope
cause cold engines are relatively inefficient. Some studies suggest that
fuel mileage on four-mile trips is lessthan two-thirds that obtained when
the engine is warm. For such short trips, bicycles and mopeds would
hold a substantial advantage, if only our cities were designed so that they
could be safely and comfortably used.
Although the energy ei&iency of individual vehicles is undeniably
important, vehicle occupancy may deserve even more attention. In the
United States, intercity cars contain an averageof 2.4 persons, intracity
cars hold an average of 1.4 persons at a time, and rush hour commuter
vehicles carry an average of only 1.2 passengerseach. Fifty-six percent
of all American commuters currently drive to work alone, while 26
percent sharecars with others; 14 percent use public transportation; and
4 percent walk, bicycle, or use other means. Automobile passengerlists
have persistently shrunk. Former U.S. Environmental Administrator
William Ruckelshaus once iokingly predicted that “at existing rates of
automobile passengerdecline, by 1980 one out of three operating vehi-
cles will not have a driver.”
Meaningful statements about comparative modes of transportation
cannot be made without first making some assumptions about vehicle
occupancy, known among transportation planners as the “load factor.”
Almost overnight, conservation-minded, automobile-dependent coun-
tries could double or triple the average load factor of automobiles.
Commuting lends itself particularly well to such car pooling.7
If other modes of transport replace the automobile, considerable
savingscan accrue. A switch can be made to twelve-passengercommuter
vans or mini-buses that operate as car pools or group taxis but that carry
more passengersper mile than either. Such vehicles are widely and
successfully used in Peru. Scores of U.S. companies provide commuter
vans for their employees, and these ;re proving economical and popular.
The companies find that it is cheaper to buy a van than to maintain
parking spacesfor a dozen individual vehicles; the commuters find that
the operating expensesthey assume are much lower than the expenses
car ownership entails.
Demand-responsive transportation systems are also being tried in
many cities. Dial-a-Ride, Dial-a-Bus, Telebus, and others are all similar
in operation. Riders telephone a control center, giving their location and
destination. They are then grouped with other riders with similar origins
Energy and Transportation 119
and destinations. A radio-dispatched vehicle picks them all up and takes
them from doorstep to doorstep mare cheaply and efficiently than could
a taxi carrying only one passenger.Such systemsare being used in forty
American and Canadian cities.
The U.S. Department of Transportation encourages the develop-
ment of “people movers,” or personal urban rapid transit systems. Peo-
ple movers consist of many small automatically controlled vehicles that
carry passengersalong a fixed track. Now used widely to carry passengers
between airline terminals and sightseersaround zoos, the people mover
is a sort of horizontal elevator. The passengerclimbs aboard the vehicle,
punches a button to indicate his destination, and a central computer
sends the car on its way. For short runs along fixed routes, personal rapid
transit systemsare probably inferior to rail transit lines that can haul ten
times as many passengersduring peak hours, and can adjust to non-peak
demand by shortening the train and running less frequently. A demon-
stration unit built at Morgantown, West Virginia, has been plagued
with operating difficulties and expensive cost overruns.
In Europe, the trolley is a traditional and long popular form of
transportation. In the United States, home of the world’s most famous
streetcar, the trolley has just about disappeared. In 1932, the General
Motors Corporation formed a subsidiary for the purpose of purchasing
streetcar companies, tearing up their tracks, dismantling their power
lines, and replacing streetcars with GM buses that do their polluting
downtown. Over the subsequent two decades,GM, with help from the
oil and tire industries, “motorized” electric rail-trolley bus lines in forty-
five cities, includi:?g New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, and
Los Angeles.8 To&y, the trolley, reincarnated as the light rail vehicle,
is staging a comeback. With a much lower carrying capacity than rail-
roads and subways,trolleys are best suited to cities of one million or less.
Vienna’s superb trolley system is serving as a model for Milan and
other Italian cities. Mexico City’s 250 streetcars and 550 trolley buses
carry 250 million passengersa year. Boston and San Francisco recently
placed orders for modern trolleys, and Dayton, Ohio, is planning a
comprehensive new trolley system.
The comparative merits of different public transit systems are a
matter of continuing controversy. A number of glittering generalizations
can be made, but, even when true, they can be wildly misleading. For
120 Rays of Hope
example, buses are about twice as energy-efficient per seat-mile as au-
tomobiles, but not, as one might suspect, becauseof their weight. A bus
with the same luggage capacity per passengeras an automobile weighs
more per passenger seat than do small automobiles; a commuter bus
with no luggage compartment weighs only slightly less. The principal
advantagesof a bus are its high-pressure tires and its small diesel engine.
But automobiles could, of course, be equipped with harder tires and
smaller engines, as many now are.
Rail systems might be expected to be much more efficient than
either busesor cars. The rolling resistanceof a steel wheel on a steel track
is many times less than rubber on asphalt, and the aerodynamic drag on
a train is less than for cars. However, these theoretical advantages are
generally lost in practice. Rail systems tend to achieve much higher
speedsthan busesand cars, and to lose the energy spent on acceleration
in braking. Speed also increasesaerodynamic drag (which is proportional
to the square of the velocity, so doubling the speed quadruples the
resistance). Drag is also much greater in subway tunnels than on the
surface. Moreover, the heating, cooling, and lighting requirements for
rail systems are substantial. About half of all energy used in the San
Francisco BART system is for heating, air conditioning, and station
lighting. indeed, BART consumes about as much energy per seat-mile
as a typical automobile.
Public systems might be expected to have higher load factors than
automobiles. During peak periods, they do. The Tokyo subway system
pays uniformed men to shove rush hour commuters into jammed cars
so that the doors can close; in winter, jackets and overcoats worsen the
crunch but provide the small comfort of a cushion. In Bombay, the load
factors of rush hour commuter trains have been estimated at about 500
percent of designed capacity. However, calculating load factors is tricky.
Automobiles leave one area with all their passengersand arrive at a
destination with their passengersaboard. Public vehicles start out empty
and gradually fill up during the course of their route. The “average” load
factor may be only 50 percent. After they arrive downtown during the
morning rush and discharge their passengers,they often have to return
to the outlying area nearly empty. Public systems must operate during
non-peak hours, and averageload factors are.much lower then. Although
data are somewhat sketchy, several U.S. studies indicate that public
Energy and Transport&ion 121
Freight Transport
In addition to moving people, the transportation system also hauls
goods. The energy efficiency of freight transport varies widely among
modes-hovercraft and helicopters rank lowest, while supertankers,
barges, and pipelines are several times more energy-efficient than
trucks.9 In the United States, trucks haul lessthan one-fifth of all freight
but consume about one-half of all fuel expended on freight transport.
Pipelines, waterways, and railroads carry more than 80 percent of all
freight but consume less fuel combined than do trucks alone.
Of course, waterways and railroad tracks do not extend to most
neighborho department stores, or even to many regional warehouses.
But an ideal freight-hauling system would assign each task to the mode
that performs it most efficiently. Packing cargo in containers allows such
intermodal transfer to be accomplished rather easily, and in other cases
the “piggybacking” of truck trailers on railroad flatcars is an efficient
aitemative. Unfortunately, in much of the industrialized world, trucks
have been replacing trains even for long-distance hauls, for which they
are poorly suited. Between 1950 and 1970, the percentage of total
ton-miles hauled by U.S. railroads declined from 47 to 35 percent, while
the equivalent figure for trucks rose from 13 to 19 percent. The fastest-
growing sector (although still a comparatively minor one) has been air
freight. While air transport has no equal when speed is essential, its
increasing use for shipments having no time constraints is inexcusably
wasteful.r”
Creative freight transport experts have suggested resurrecting old
technologies. For certain transport tasks, airships (dirigibles) appear to
have significant energy advantages. Because they expend no energy
keeping themselvesand their cargo aloft, airships require a small fraction
of the energy needed by airplanes. A study by the Southern California
Aviation Council indicated that airships could haul freight for 2,000
miles at loo mph at a cost of 4.4 cents per ton-mile: cheaper than air
or truck, but more expensive than railroads. Ghana is currently experi-
menting with a German-built zeppelin devised to haul freight to inacces-
sible locations. Airships can deliver directly to any destination, hovering
overhead as their cargo is unloaded. However, world supplies of helium
124 Rays of Hope
are limited, and the i-lindenburg disaster dramatized the danger of
replacing helium with large volumes of combustible hydrogen.11
For ocean freight, modem sailing vesselsmight be quite competitive
with conventional boats. During the last two decades, international
seaborne trade has increased about sixfold, and shipping now consumes
more than 100 million tons of petroleum each year. Future volumes will
almost certainly shrink as petroleum reservesdwindle and as nations or
groups of nations necessarily become relatively more self-sufficient in
both energy and food. Nonetheless, oceangoing vesselswill be the most
energy-efficient means of conducting essential international trade.
Hence, we must find a replacement for petroleum as a source of power
for seagoing vessels.
Most of the writing on petroleum substitutes has focused on nuclear
power. However, a nuclear-powered merchant marine would have tech-
nical and political difficulties. The Japanesehave had wavesof recurrent
difficulties with their first nuclear-powered ship, the Mutsu, leaving
many other countries leery of such vessels.With anti-nuclear sentiment
seemingly on the rise around the world, nuclear ships would also run the
risk of being banned from certain ports and waterways. Finally, the
nature and costs of nuclear reactors make them attractive possibilities
only for mammoth vessels,and they thus have little potential for use in
small and intermediate ships.
Marine history may well repeat itself. Coal was once the marine fuel
of choice, and it could again become significant. But in the long run coal
supplies will also be exhausted. Fuels derived from biomass, such as
methanol, may offer some promise. But the most fascinating suggestion
is doubtless the return of the sailing vessel.The wind carried wayfarers
acrossthe oceans for millennia before steamships displaced sailboats in
the early twentieth century. Although the most rapid development of
sailing vesselsoccurred in the nineteenth century, under competitive
threat from steamships, they were eventually doomed by a lack of reli-
ability. But now, incorporating the knowledge of commercial sailing
acquired during the last century, recent developments from recreational
sailing, and advances in the fields of meteorology, aerodynamics, and
control engineering, a modem commercial sailing vessel(with auxiliary
power for calm periods and for maneuvering in harbors) could compete
well against oil-powered ships. Studies at the University of Hamburg,
Energy and Transportation 125
the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and the University of Michigan
found that large modem sailing ships, driven by vertical aerofoils and
taking full advantage of modem weather- and wave-forecasting capabili-
ties, could transport freight speedily and reliably while consuming only
5 to 10 percent as much fuel as a conventional vess,!.l2
Transportation is an exceptionally difficult held in which to imple-
ment new ideas.13 A free marketplace often leads individuals to gratify
their immediate self-interest, at group expense,thereby creating a situa-
tion in which all suffer. Governmental subsidies, incentives, and regula-
tions--each with its supportive private vested interest-so thoroughly
riddle most transportation networks that bureaucratic reform requires
great political muscle. The problems of different modes are generally
approached in a piecemeal fashion, and comprehensive transportation
plans thus fail to take shape.
Often transportation innovations fall short of their objectives, and
sometimes they fall flat on their faces. For example, the rationale most
frequently given for the construction of masstransit systemsis to reduce
the volume of automobile traffic. Yet experience indicates that most
mass transit riders are not former automobile drivers but former bus
passengers,walkers, automobile passengers,and homebodies. Two years
after the Mexico City subway opened, it was overloaded. Yet street
congestion was not improved, becausemost transfers came from buses.
In addition, new businesseslocated along the subway line greatly in-
creased over-all travel demand along that corridor.
The central goal of an ef5cient urban transportation system should
be to eliminate, or at least control, the one-person-to-a-car system. A
variety of cures have been suggested.An increase in the price of fuel will
probbly be slow to make itself felt. Prices will rise automatically as
petroleum supplies decline, or they can be raised through taxation. In
Sweden, a 6a-cents-per-gallon gasoline tax has been rather successfulat
reducing one-person vehicles to a minimum.
Gas rationing accomplishes the same result with a somewhat heavier
hand. If a central authority reduces the amount of gasoline available by
one-third, car drivers will consume one-third less. Rationing does cost
money to administer, unlike taxes which raise revenue. But neither
gasoline taxes nor gasoline rationing discriminate against a particular
time of day, type of vehicle, or number of passengers(although both
126 Raysof Hope
measurescould reasonablybe expected to lead to smaller cars and higher
load factors).
Congestion pricing has been tried successfully in some situations.
When all traffic must passthrough a specific corridor, such as a bridge
or a tunnel, it is possible to collect a toll and to vary the charge with
the time of day and/or the number of passengers.In San Francisco and
New York, variable bridge tolls have proven viable. In Singapore, a
different kind of congestion pricing is used. A limited number of rather
expensive stickers, which allow automobiles free access to otherwise
restricted sections of the city, are sold. Any vehicle in those areas not
displaying a sticker is fined. This effectively places a ceiling on vehicle
use in congested sections of town.
Designated lanes limited to use by car pools and buses have also
effectively encouraged higher load factors. They motivate drivers grind-
ing their teeth in traffic jams to switch to one of the multiple-passenger
vehicles whizzing past in exclusive adjoining lanes.
Parking controls are still another means of restraining automobile
use. Some businesses have banned the use of their parking lots to
employees not using car pools, and many have arranged their lots so that
single-driver vehicles must park far afield. Some cities have imposed stiff
parking lot taxes-San Francisco’s is 10 percent and Pittsburgh’s is 20
percent-in an effort to reduce the number of commuter automobiles
entering the downtown area. Parking taxes also allow cities to recover
some of the indirect costs of commuter automobiles that otherwise fall
on urban taxpayers.
A final resort is to ban automobiles altogether from certain streets
or sections. Nagoya, Japan, a city of two million, uses this approach (in
combination with preferential treatment for public transportation vehi-
cles) with great success.Many smaller cities and towns around the world,
including many of the medieval towns of Italy, have enacted limited
bans on automobiles. Travel in the car-free areas is limited to pedestri-
ans, bicyclists, and public transportation vehicles, all of which flow
smoothly and rapidly instead of inching their way through snarled traffic.
While discouraging use of the automobile in which the driver is the
sole passenger,the transportation system must provide alternatives for
those who have abandoned their cars. Transit systems should be attrac-
tive, reasonably priced, and intermeshed in terms of both physical hook-
Energy and Transfiortation 127
ups and timetables. Controls over land use must also be vigorously
exercised in order to make living near work a practical possibility.
An integrated approach to transportation is needed-one that elimi-
nates unnecessarytravel while using a multitude of incentives and penal-
ties to make necessarytravel efficient. This will not be easyto accomplish
as we simultaneously begin to wean ourselvesfrom oil. The processmust
be begun, and quickly, unless the world is to grind to a standstill at the
end of the petroleum era.
%Btzl’snndBzrildidingx
Energymd Sheher
Recycling
If we continue to expand the use of raw materials at present rates,
the extraction and processing of minerals and other natural resources
would exert ever-increasing pressure upon our energy supplies. In the
past, high-grade deposits could be exploited using relatively little energy,
but now we are *being forced to use lower-grade reserves.Copper, for
example, is mined today from ore containing only two-tenths of a per-
cent of the metal, which means that 500 tons of rock must be processed
to obtain one ton of copper. The extraction and processing of raw
materials, Harvey Brooks estimates, now account for about two-thirds
of all U.S. industrial energy use, or about 25 percent of all U.S. energy
use.
At present, resourcesare commonly used once and then discarded.
In the wealthier countries, these one-way streams have swollen into
veritable floods. The American trash heap grows annually by more than
r I million tons of iron and steel, 8o0,ooo tons of aluminum, ~OO,OOO
tons of other metals, 13 million tons of glass, and 60 million tons of
paper; some 17 billion cans, 38 billion bottles and jars, 7.6 million
discarded television sets,and 7 million junked cars and trucks contribute
to the totals.
We thus have the option of turning to our garbage dumps for an
increasing amount of raw material.11 The advantages of doing so are
manifest. The energy required to produce a ton of steel from urban
waste-including separation, transportation, and processing-is only 14
percent of that needed to produce a ton of steel from raw ore. For
copper, the figure is about 9 percent; for aluminum, only 5 percent as
much energy is needed to recycle the metal as to refine the ore initially.
Energy arid Economic Growth 149
Even greater savingscan generally be realized by repairs and reuse than
by recycling.
The XCyCling 0f :r.nn, copper, and aluminum in the United States
at levels that are nc~v economically practical would save the energy
equivalent of 3.3 billion gallons of gasoline each year. Complete recy-
cling would save roughly twice as much Recycling all steel cans would
save the Ur+d States as much energy as eight soo-megawatt power
plants pro&T: rer;+ciing all paper could, in principle, saveenergy equal
to the a!rr?.rra!production of sixteen goo-megawatt plants. If ail glass
containers were reusedsix times, the need for nine s-megawatt power
plants would be eliminated.;”
Using materials again and again reduces environmental wear and
tear in many ways. Recycling just one ton of steel, for example, has
far-reaching effects. The 200 pounds of air pollutants and 102 pounds
of water pollutants associated with refining 2,cmo pounds of steel are
never released.In addition, the 2.7 tons of mining wastesassociatedwith
each ton are never generated and the 6,700 gallons of water needed to
refine each ton are never sullied.13
Some countries have begun to take advantage of the promise inher-
ent in recycling technology. Leningrad recycles 580,000 tons of garbage
each year, producing metal, chemicals, and compost. The Russiansplan
to expand the facility sixfold by 1~2.;. &e deposits must be paid on
glass containers in the Soviet Union; and bottles ard iais are reused
several times. In Denmark, 80,000 tons of oil and &m;A wastes are
processedannually at a huge, centralized wasie treatcjclrt plant. Marc
than 45 percent of paper production in Britain and West Germany now
entails use of recycled fibers.
The greatest energy savings occur when unneeded products arc
taken out of production. For example, a large fraction of all urban
trash in industrialized countries consists of packaging that served no
useful function before being discarded. Eliminating unnecessary bags
and boxes makes far more sense than merely recycling their tattered
remains. A cabinet-level report released by the French Minister of
Commerce in July, 1975, notes, “It is preferable to incorporate en-
ergy and raw materials in an object that lasts a long time rather
than manufacture a dozen things to be thrown away almost immedi-
a ately.” The report calls for high taxes on goods with short life spans,
150 Rqs of Hope
including ail packaging, and would require manufacturers to supply
spare parts for their products.
Solar Heating
Solar energy is most easily captured as low-grade heat. Development
of the flat-plate collector that is used to catch such heat is generally
160 Rays of Hope
credited to the eighteenth-century Swiss scientist Nicolas de Saussure,
who obtained temperatures over 87 degreesCentigrade using a simple
wooden box with a black bottom and a glasstop. The principle used by
Saussureis simple: glass is transparent to sunlight but not to the radia-
tion of longer wave lengths given off by the hot coliector itself. Sunlight
flows easily through the glasstop into the collector, where it is trapped
as heat. The modern flat-plate collector operates on this same basic
principle, although improved materials achieve much higher tempera-
tures and are more durable. Simple and easy-to-make solar collectors
could supply heat now provided by high-quality fuels. More than one-
third of the energy budget of all nations is spent to produce heat at
temperatures that flat-plate solar collectors can achieve.11
The simplest task to accomplish directly with solar power is heating
water, and solar water heaters are being utilized in many countries. More
than two million have been sold in Japan, and tens of thousands are in
use in Israel. In the remote reaches of northern Australia, where fuels
are expensive, solar water heaters are required by law on all new build-
ings. Until replaced by cheap natural gas,solar water heaters were much
used in California and in Florida; Miami alone had about 50,ooo in the
early 1950s. Since 1973, interest in solar water heaters has rekindled in
many parts of the world. In poorer countries, cheap hot water can make
a significant contribution to public well-being: hot water for dishwashing
and bathing can reduce the burden of infectious diseases,and clothes
washed with hot water and soap outlast clothes beaten clean on rocks
at a river’s edge.
Sunlight can also be used to heat buildings. All buildings receive and
trap radiant energy from the sun. For warming a home on a winter day,
this heat may be desirable; but it can constitute indecent exposure,
broiling and embroiling the occupants of an all-glass office building, in
midsummer. Solar buildings, designed to anticipate the amount of solar
energy available in each season,put sunlight to work. To harnessdiffuse
solar energy to meet a building’s needs, options that vary in efficiency,
elegance, and expense can be employed. 12
Solar collectors are being used in diverse locations to heat buildings.
The town of Mejannes-le-Clap in southern France has announced plans
to obtain most of its heat from the sun. Several U.S. solar-heated com-
munities, as well as individual schools, meeting halls, office buildings,
Turning toward the Sun 161
and even hamburger stands, are now under construction. Saudi Arabia
plans to build a new town at Jubail, using sunlight for heating, cooling,
and for running water pumps; the Saudis are now also building the
world’s largest solar-heated building-a 325,oo~square-foot athletic
field house-in Tabuk.
In addition to warming buildings, low-grade heat from simple solar
devices can also be used to dry crops-a task that now often consumes
prodigious amounts of propane and methane gas. Solar dryers are now
being used to remove moisture from lumber and textiles, as well as from
corn, soybeans,alfalfa, raisins, and prunes. The sun has alwaysbeen used
to dry most of the world’s laundry.
For more than a century, solar advocates have gathered crowds by
cooking food with devices that use mirrors to intensify sunlight. Now
that firewood supplies are growing scarce in many parts of the Third
World, solar cooking is being taken more seriously. Although solar
cookers proved popular in some village experiments in the 196os, their
high cost, as much as $25 each, prohibited widespread use. Today,
however, cheap new reflecting materials like aluminized mylar can be
stretched over inexpensive locally made frames. In poor countries, solar
cookers will be only supplementary devices for now, since these mech-
anisms cannot function at night or in cloudy weather and since storing
high-temperature heat is expensive. But if heat-storage technology ad-
vances, solar stoves and ovens may play an increasingly important role
in rich and poor countries alike.
Solar technology now also encompasses desalination devices that
evaporate water to separate it from salt. In the late nineteenth century,
a huge solar desalination plant near Salinas, Chile, provided up to 6,000
gallons of fresh water per day for a nitrate mine. Recent research has
led to major improvements in the technology of solar desalination,
especially to improvements in “multiple-effect” solar stills. Today this
sundriven process holds great promise, especially in the Middle East
and other arid regions. A small Soviet solar desalination plant in the
Kyzyl-Kum Desert in central Asia now produces four tons of fresh water
a day.r3
Relatively low temperature sources of heat can also be used to
operate pumps and engines. In the 186os,Augustin Mouchot, a French
physicist, developed a one-half-horsepower solar steam engine. In the
162 Rays of Mope
early twentieth century, more efficient engines were built using ammo-
nia and ether instead of water as the working fluid. In 1912, Frank
Shuman constructed a so-horsepower solar engine near Cairo to pump
irrigation water from the Nile.
Scores of solar devices were built around the world in the early
decadesof this century, but none withstood the economic competition
of low-cost fossil fuels. In recent years, with fuel prices soaring, solar
pumps have begun to attract attention again. In 1975, a 4o-horsepower
solar pump of French design was installed in San Luis de la Paz to meet
this Mexican town’s irrigation and drinking needs. Mexico has ordered
ten more such pumps; and Senegal,Niger, and Mauritania have installed
similar devices. At present, solar pumps make economic sense only in
remote areaswhere fuel and maintenance costs for conventional systems
are extremely high. But, many authorities believe, the costs of solar
pumps could be dramatically reduced by taking advantage of the
findings of further research and the economies of mass production.14
Solar energy can be used directly in various industrial processes.A
study of the Australian food-processing industry found, for example, that
heat comprised 90 percent of the industry’s energy needs; almost all this
heat was at under 150 degrees Centigrade, and 80 percent was below
100 degrees. Such low-temperature heat can be easily produced and
stored using elementary solar technologies. Similarly, a study of an
Australian soft-drink plant found that enough collectors could be re-
trofitted onto the factory’s roof to provide 70 percent-of all the plant’s
heat requirements.15
A recent study of U.S. industrial heating demands concludes that
about 7.5 percent is used at temperatures below 100 degreesCentigrade
and 28 percent below 288 degrees. However, direct solar power can be
used to preheat materials from ambient temperatures to intermediate
temperatures before another energy source is employed to achieve the
still higher temperature demanded for an industrial process. Such solar
preheating can play a role in virtually every industrial heat application.
If preheating is used, 27 percent of all energy for U.S. industrial heat
can be delivered under loo degrees Centigrade and about 52 percent
under 288 degrees.16
Much of the energy used in the residential, commercial, agricultural,
and industrial sectors is employed as low-temperature heat. In the recent
Turning toward the Sun 163
past, this demand has been filled by burning fossil fuels at thousands dt
degrees or nuclear fuels at millions of degrees. Because such energy
sources were comparatively cheap, little thought was given to the obvi-
ous thermodynamic inefficiency of using them for low-grade heat. Now
that fuel costs are mounting rapidly, however, demands for heat will be
increasingly met directly from the sun.
Wastes as Fuels
Agricultural residues-the inedible, unharvested portions of food
crops-represent the largest potential source of energy from waste. But
most plant residuesare sparselydistibuted, and some cannot be spared:
they are needed to feed livestock, retard erosion, and enrich the soil. Yet,
wisely used, field residues can guard the soil, provide animal fodder, and
serve as a fuel source.
’ Agricultural energy demands are highly seasonal,and usagepeaksdo
not always coincide with the periods during which residue-derived en-
ergy is most plentiful. In agricultural systems still largely dependent
upon draft animals, this problem is minimized: silage and hay can easily
be stored until needed. On mechanized farms, energy storage poses a
somewhat more difficult problem.
Animal excrement is another potentially valuable source of energy.
Much undigested energy remains bound in animal excrement; and cattle
feedlots, chicken coops, and pigsties could easily become energy farms.
Indeed, animal dung has been burned in some parts of the world for
centuries: in the United States, buffalo chips once provided cooking fuel
to frontiersmen on the treeless Great Plains. In India today, about 68
million tons of dry cow dung are burned as fuel each year, mostly in rural
areas,although more than CJJpercent of the potential heat and virtually
aI1the nutrients in excrement are lost in inefficient burning.3 Far more
work could be obtained from dung if it were first digested to produce
methane gas; moreover, all the nutrients originally in the dung could
then be returned to the soil as fertilizer.4
In May, 1976, Calorific Recovery Anaerobic Process(CRAP), Inc.,
of Oklahoma City received Federal Power Commission authorization to
provide the Natural Gas Pipeline Company annually with 820 million
cubic feet of methane derived from feedlot wastes.Other similar propos-
als are being advanced. Although most commercial biogas plants
planned in the United States are associatedwith giant feedlots, a more
sensible long-term strategy might be to range-feed cattle as long as
possible and then to fatten them up, a thousand at a time, on farms in
the midwestem grain belt. Cow dung could power the farm and provide
surplus methane, and the residue could be used as fertilizer. In addition,
Rays of Hope
methane generation has been found to be economically attractive in
most dairies-an important point, since more than half of all U.S. cows
are used for milk production.5
Collectible crop residues and feedlot wastes in the United States
contain 4.6 quadrillion Btu’s (quads)-more energy than all the nation’s
farmers use.6Generating methane from such residues is often economi-
cal. However, developing a farm that is totally energy self-sufficient may
require a broader goal than maximizing short-term food output.
Human sewage,too, contains a large store of energy. In some rural
areas, particularly in China and India, ambitious programs to produce
gaseousfuel from human and animal wastes are under way. Unfortu-
nately, toxic industrial effluents are now mixed with human waste in
many of the industrialized world’s sewagesystems,and these pollutants
make clean energy recovery vastly more difficult. If these pollutants were
kept separate, a large new energy source would become available.
The residues of the lumber and paper industries also contain usable
energy. A study conducted for the Ford Foundation’s Energy Policy
Project found that if the U.S. paper industry were to adopt the most
energy-efficient technologies now available and were to use its wood
wastes as fuel, fossil fuel consumption could be reduced by a staggering
75 percent. The Weyerhaeuser Company recently announced a
$75 million program to expand the use of wood waste as fuel for its paper
miIIs; “We’re getting out of oil and gas wherever we can,” commented
George Weyerhaeuser, the company’s president. Sweden already ob-
tains 7 percent of its total energy budget by exploiting wastesof its huge
forest-products industry.
Eventually, most paper becomes urban trash. Ideally, much of it
should instead be recycled-a processthat would savetrees, energy, and
money. But unrecycled paper, along with rotten vegetables,cotton rags,
and other organic garbage, contains energy that can be economically
recaptured. Milan, Italy, runs its trolleys and electric buses partly on
power produced from trash. Baltimore, Maryland, expects to heat much
of its downtown business district soon with fuel obtained by distilling
1,000 tons of garbage a day.
American waste streams alone could, after conversion losses are
subtracted, produce nearly five quads per year of methane and “char oil”
-about 7 percent of the current U.S. energy budget. Decentralized
Pht Power
agrarian societies could derive a far higher percentage of their commer-
cial energy needs from agricultural, forest, and urban wastes.
Energy Crops
The second plant-energy option, the production of “energy crops,”
will probably be limited to marginal lands, since worldwide population
pressures are already relentlessly pushing food producers onto lands
ill-suited to conventional agriculture. Yet much potential energy crop-
land does exist in areas where food production cannot be sustained.
Some prime agricultural land could also be employed during the off-
season to grow energy crops. For example, winter rye (which has little
forage value) could be planted in the American Midwest after the fall
corn harvest and harvested for energy in the spring before maize is
SOWed.
Factors other than scarce land can limit biomass growth. The un-
availability of nutrients and of an adequate water supply are two. Much
marginal land is exceedingly dry, and lumber and paper industries will
make large demands on areaswet enough to support trees. The e-ergy
costs of irrigating arid lands can be enormous, reducing the net energy
output dramatically.
Yields from energy crops will reflect the amount of sunlight such
crops receive, the acreage devoted to collecting energy, and the effi-
ciency with which sunlight is captured, stored, harvested, transported,
and put to work. Ultimately, they will also depend upon our ability to
produce crops that do not sap the land’s productivity and that can resist
common diseases,pests, fire, and harsh weather.
The most familiar energy crop, of course, is firewood. A good fuel
tree has a high annual yield when densely planted, resprouts from cut
stumps (coppices), thrives with only short rotation periods, and is gener-
ally hardy. Favored species for fuel trees are eucalyptus, sycamore, and
poplar--an intelligently planned tree plantation would probably grow a
mixture of species.
Forests canopy about one-tenth of the planet’s surface and represent
about half the earth’s captured biomass energy.’ A century ago, the
United States obtained three-fourths of its commercial energy from
wood. In the industrialized world today, only a small number of the rural
192 Rays of Hope
poor and a handful of self-styled rustics rely upon fuel wood. However,
the case is emphatically different in the Third World. Thirty percent
of India’s energy and 96 percent of Tanzania’s comes from wood.8 In
all, about half the trees cut down around the world are burned to cook
food and to warm homes.
In many lands, unfortunately, human beings are propagating faster
than trees. Although much attention has been paid to the population-
food equation, scant notice has been given to the question of how the
growing numbers will cook their food. As desperate people clear the land
of mature trees and saplingsalike, landscapesbecome barren, and, where
watersheds are stripped, increasingly severe flooding occurs. In the
parched wastelands of north central Africa and the fragile mountain
environments of the Andes and the Himalayas, the worsening shortage
of firewood is today’s most pressing energy crisis.9
A variety of partial solutions have been suggested for the “firewood
crisis.” In southern Saudi Arabia, some tribes impose the same penalty
for the unauthorized cutting of a tree as for the taking of a human life.
China has embarked upon an ambitious reforestation program, and
many other nations are following suit. Some forestry experts advocate
substituting fast-growing trees for native varieties as a means of keeping
up with demand. 10 However, the vulnerability of a forest of genetically
similar trees to diseasesand pests calls the application of such agricul-
tural techniques to silviculture into question.
Improving the efficiency with which wood is used would also help
alleviate the firewood shortage. In India, using firewood for cooking is
typically less than 9 percent efficient. The widespread use of downdraft
wood-burning stoves made of cast iron could, S. B. Richardson esti-
mates, cut northern China’s fuel requirements for heating and cooking
by half. 11 0th er efficient wood-burning devices can be made by local
labor with local materials.
Wood can be put to more sophisticated usesthan cooking and space
heating. It can fuel boilers to produce electricity, industrial process
steam, or both. The size of many prospective tree-harvesting operations
(about 800 tons per day) is well tailored to many industrial energy needs.
Decentralized co-generation using wood would also fit in well with
current worldwide efforts to move major industries away from urban
areas. In particular, the creation of forest “plantations” to produce fuel
Plant Power ‘93
for large power plants at a cost comparable to that of coal has been
recommended .l* However, some researchers argue that the cost of
transporting bulk biomass should lead us to think in terms of energy
“farms” of a few thousand hectares or less.13
Trees are not the only energy crops worth considering. A number
of other land and water crops have their advocatesamong bioconversion
specialists. Land plants with potential as energy sources include sugar-
cane, cassava(maniac), and sunflowers, as well as some sorghums, kenaf,
and forage grasses.Among the more intriguing plants under considera-
tion are Euphorbia &!znrs and Euphorbia timcalli, shrubs whose sap
contains an emulsion of hydrocarbons in water. While other plants also
produce hydrocarbons directly, those produced by Euphorbia resemble
the constituents in petroleum. Such plants might, Nobel laureate Mel-
vin Calvin estimates, produce the equivalent of 10 to 50 barrels of oil
per acre per year at a cost of $10 or lessper barrel. Moreover, Euphorbia
thrives on dry, marginal land.14
Several different crops could be cultivated simultaneously, a report
by the Stanford Research Institute suggests,and side-by-side cropping
could allow year-round harvesting in many parts of the world. Such
mixed cropping would also increase ecological diversity, minimize soil
depletion, and lower the vulnerability of energy crops to natural and
human threats.15
Enthusiastic reports by NASA National Space Technology
Laboratories have focused attention on the energy potential in water
hyacinths. Thought to have originated in Brazil, the fast-growing water
hyacinth now thrives in more than fifty countries; it flourishes in the
Mississippi, Ganges, Zambezi, Congo, and Mekong rivers, as well as in
remote irrigation canals and drainage ditches around the world. The
government of Sudan is experimenting with the anaerobic digestion of
thousands of tons of hyacinths mechanically harvested from the White
Nile. However, a recent Batelle Laboratory report discounts the poten-
tial commercial importance of water hyacinths in the United States, in
part because of their winter dormancy.16
Algae are another potential fuel. Some common types of this
scummy, nonvascular plant have phenomenal growth rates. However,
current harvesting techniques require large inputs of energy, the use of
which lowers the net energy output of algae farming. Although solar
194 Rqs of Hope
drying would improve the energy balance, engineering breakthroughs
are needed before impressive net energy yields can be obtained.
One of the more fascinating proposals for raising energy crops calls
for the cultivation of giant seaweedin the ocean. As Dr. Howard Wil-
cox, manager of the Ocean Farm Project of the U.S. Naval Undersea
Center in San Diego, points out, “Most of the earth’s solar energy falls
at sea, becausethe oceans cover some 71 percent of the surface area of
the globe.” The Ocean Farm Project, an effort to cultivate giant Califor-
nia kelp to capture some of this energy through photosynthesis, at
present covers a quarter acre. But the experimental operation will, Wil-
cox hopes, eventually be replaced by an ocean farm 470 miles square.
Such a sea field could theoretically produce as much natural gas as the
United States currently consumes.17
BiomassTechnologies
Biomass can be transformed into useful fuels in many ways, some of
which were developed by the Germans during the petroleum shortages
of World War II. Although one-third to two-thirds of the energy in
biomass is lost in most conversion processes,the converted fuels can be
used much more efficiently than raw biomass. The principal technolo-
gies now being explored are direct combustion, anaerobic digestion,
pyrolysis, hydrolysis, hydrogasification, and hydrogenation.
In the industrialized world, organic energy is often recovered by
burning urban refuse. To produce industrial processsteam or electricity
or both, several combustion technologies can be employed: waterwall
incinerators, slagging incinerators, and incinerator turbines. Biomasscan
also be mixed with fossil fuels in conventional boilers, while fluidized-
bed boilers can be used to burn such diverse substancesas lumber-mill
wastes, straw, corncobs, nutshells, and municipal wastes.
Since trash piles up menacingly in much of the urban world, cities
can afford to pay a premium for energy-generating processesthat reduce
the volume of such waste. Urban trash lacks the consistency of coal, but
its low sulfur content makes it an attractive energy source environmen-
tally. Following the lead set by Paris and Copenhagen fifty years ago,
several cities now mix garbage with other kinds of power-plant fuel to
reduce their solid waste volume, to recover useful energy, and to lower
195
the average sulfur content of their fuel. A $35 million plant in Saugus,
Massachusetts,bums garbage from twelve towns, producing steam that
is then sold to a nearby General Electric factory that hopes to save
73,ooc1 gallons of fuel oil per day o,n its new fuel diet.
The next easiest method of energy recovery is anaerobic digestion
-a fermenting process performed by a mixture of microorganisms ‘in
the absence of oxygen. In anaerobic digestion, acid-forming bacteria
convert wastes into fatty acids, alcohols, and aldehydes; then methane-
forming bacteria convert the acids to biogas. All biomass except wood
can be anaerobically digested, and the process has been recommended
for use in breaking down agricultural residues and urban refuse.18 An-
aerobic digestion takes place in a water slurry, and the process requires
neither great quantities of energy nor exotic ingredients. Anaerobically
digested, the dung from one cow will produce an average of 10 cubic
feet of biogas per day-about enough to meet the daily cooking require-
ments of a typical Indian villager.
Many developing and some industrial nations are returning to this
old technology, anaerobic digestion, for a new source of energy. Biogas
generators convert cow dung, human excreta, and inedible agricultural
residues into a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide that also contains
traces of nitrogen, hydrogen, and hydrogen sulfide. Thirty thousand
small biogas plants dot the Republic of Korea; and the People’s Republic
of China claims to have about two million biogas plants in operation.19
India has pioneered efForts to tailor biogas conversion to small-scale
operations. After the OPEC price increasesof 1973, annual gobar (the
Hindi word for cow dung) gas plant salesshot up first to 6,560 and then
to 13,000. In 1976, sales numbered 25,000. “We’ve reached takeoff ,”
says H. R. Srinivasan, the program’s director. “There’s no stopping us
now.”
In addition to methane, other products can be derived from the
biogasification of animal wastesand sewage.The residue of combustion
is a rich fertilizer that retains all the original nutrients of the biomass
and that also helps the soil retain water in dry periods. At Aurobindo
Ashram in Pondicherry, India, wastesfrom cows, pigs, goats, and chick-
ens will be gasified; the residue will be piped in to ponds supporting algae,
aquatic plants, and fish grown for use as animal fodder; and treated
effluents from the ponds will be used to irrigate and fertilize vegetable
196 Rays of Hope
gardens. Experience with biogas plants in “integrated farming systems”
in Papua New Guinea suggeststhat the by-products of such controlled
processescan be even more valuable than the methane.20
In developing countries, decentralized biological energy systemslike
that planned in Pondicherry could trigger positive social change. For
small, remote villages with no prospects of getting electricity from cen-
tral power plants, biogas can provide relatively inexpensive, high-grade
energy and fertilizer. Ram Bux Singh, a prominent Indian developer and
proponent of gobar gas plants, estimates that a small five-cow plant will
repay its investment in just four years.21 Larger plants serving whole
villages are even more economically enticing. However, where capital is
scarce, the initial investment is often difficult to obtain. In India, the
Khadi and Village Industries Commission promotes gobar plant con-
struction by granting subsidies and low-interest loans. The Commission
underwrites one-fifth of the cost of individual plants and one-third of the
cost of community plants. In the poorer areas,the Commission pays up
to loo percent of the cost of cooperative plants.
In efforts to hold down the cost of gobar plants and to conserveboth
scarce steel and cement in developing lands, researchersare producing
new materials for use in digester construction. For example, a large
cylindrical bag reinforced with nylon and equipped with a plastic inlet
and outlet can be installed in a hole in the ground and weighted down
in about one hour. The total cost can be as little as 15 percent of that
of conventional digesters. Other experimental models are now being
made out of natural rubber, mud bricks, bamboo pipes, and various
indigenous hardwoods. In general, the ideal biogas plant for poor rural
communities would be labor-intensive to build and operate and would
be constructed of local materials.
The principal problem plaguing Third World biogas plants is tem-
perature shifts, which can slow down or halt digestion. Low tempera-
tures are particularly troublesome in Korea and China, where gas pro-
duction slumps in winter when energy demands are highest. Possible
remedies include improving insulation, burying future facilities to take
advantage of subterranean heat, and erecting vinyl or glassgreen houses
over the digesters to trap solar energy for heating. Alternatively, some
of the gas produced in the digester could be used to heat the apparatus
itself.
197
Alan Poole, a bioconversion specialist with the Institute for Energy
Analysis at Oak Ridge, estimates that methane produced at the rate of
100 tons per day in a U.S. biogas plant would cost less than $~.CXI per
million Btu’s, which approximates the expected cost of deriving com-
mercial methane from coal.22 In industrial countries, however, the re-
cent trend has been away from anaerobic digestion. In 1963, this process
was utilized in 70 percent of the U.S. wastewater treatment plants, but
today it is being replaced-especially in smaller cities and towns-by
processesthat use more energy than they produce. The switch, which
is now taking place at a capital cost in excessof $4 billion annually, was
prompted largely by digester failures. Although poor design and operator
error can both lead to pH imbalances or temperature fluctuations, the
principal cause of unreliability appears to be the presence of inhibitory
materials-especially heavy metals, synthetic detergents, and other in-
dustrial effluents.
These same industrial contaminants can also cause serious problems
if the digested residuesare used as fertilizer in agriculture. Some oJ these
inhibitory substancescan be separated routinely, but some will have to
be cut off at the source and fed into a different treatment process if the
excrement is to be anaerobically digested.
Anaerobic digestion produces a mixture of gases,only one of which
-methane-is of value. For many purposes,the gas mixture can be used
without cleansing. But even relatively pure methane is %a:‘:;,f(~ obtain.
Hydrogen sulfide can be removed from biogas by passing it over iron
filings. Carbon dioxide can be scrubbed out with lime water (calcium
hydroxide). Water vapor can be removed through absorption. The re-
maining methane has high energy content.
Biogas plants have few detractors, but some of their proponents fear
that things are moving too fast and that large sums of money may be
invested in inferior facilities when significant improvements may wait
just around the comer. A recent report to the Economic Social Commis-
sion for Asia and the Pacific said of the Indian biogas program that “the
cost should be drastically reduced, the digester temperature controlled
during the winter months through the use of solar energy and the
greenhouse effect, and the quality of the effluent improved,” before
huge amounts of scarcecapital are sunk in biogas technology. To these
misgivings must be added those of many in the Third World who are
198 Rqs of Hope
afraid that the benefits of biogas plants may fall exclusively or primarily
to those who own cattle and land-accentuating the gap between prop-
erty-owners and the true rural poor.23
To quell the fears of those with reservations about biogas develop-
ment, most government programs stresscommunity plants and coopera-
tive facilities; and many countries are holding off on major commitments
of resourcesto the current generation of digesters. But, whether small
or large, sophisticated or crude, fully automated or labor-intensive, pri-
vately owned or public, biogas plants appear destined for an increasingly
important role in the years ahead.
While hundreds of thousands of successfulanaerobic digesters are
already in operation, many other energy conversion technologies are also
attracting increased interest. Hydrolysis, for example, can be used to
obtain ethanol from plants and wastes with a high cellulose content at
an apparent over-all conversion efficiency of about 25 percent. The
cellulose is hydrolyzed into sugars, using either enzymes or chemicals;
the sugar, in turn, is fermented by yeast into ethanol. Though most
research on hydrolysis has thus far been small in scale, Australians have
advanced proposals for producing prodigious quantities of ethanol using
eucalyptus wood as the base and concentrated hydrochloric acid as the
hydrolyzing agent. Ethanol so produced could substitute for a large share
of Australia’s rising oil imports.24
Pyrolysis is the destructive distillation of organic matter in the ab-
stnce of oxygen. At temperatures above 5~x1degrees Centigrade, pyrol-
ysis requires only atmospheric pressure to produce a mixture of gases,
light oil, and a flaky char-the proportions of each being a function of
operating conditions. In particular, this process recommends itself for
use with woody biomass that cannot be digested anaerobically.
True pyrolysis is endothermic, requiring an external heat source.
Many systemsloosely termed “pyrolysis” are actually hybrids, employing
combustion at some stage to produce heat. Three of the dozen or so
systems now under development are far enough along to warrant com-
ment. The Garrett “Flash Pyrolysis” process involves no combustion,
but its end product (a corrosive and highly viscous oil) has a low energy
content. The Monsanto “Langard” gas-pyrolysisprocesscan be used to
produce steam with an over-all efficiency of 54 percent. The Union
Carbide “Purox” system, a high-temperature operation with a claimed
Phlt Power I99
efficiency of 64 percent, uses pure oxygen in its combustion stage and
produces a low-Btu gas.25
Hydrogasification, a processin which a carbon source is treated with
hydrogen to produce a high-Btu gas, has been well studied for use with
coi& But further research is needed on its potential use with biomass,
since, for example, the high moisture content of biomass may alter the
reaction. Similarly, fluidized-bed techniques, which work well with coal,
may require a more uniform size, shape, density, and chemical composi-
tion than biomassoften provides. Experimental work on the application
of fluidized-bed technologies to biomass fuels is now being conducted
by the U.S. Bureau of Mines in Brucetown, Pennsylvania.
Hydrogenation, the chemical reduction of organic matter with car-
bon monoxide and steam to produce a heavy oil, requires pressures
greater than loo atmospheres. The U.S. Energy Researchand Develop-
ment Administration is paying for a $3.7 million pilot plant at Albany,
Oregon; at the Albany plant, hydrogenation will be used to tap the
energy in wood wastes, urban refuse, and agricultural residues.
Choice Fuels and Fuel Choices
The selection of energy systemswill be partially dictated by the type
of fuel desired: the ends will specify the means. In a sense,the develop-
ment of biological energy sources is a conservative strategy, since the
products resemble the fossil fuels that currently comprise most of the
world’s commercial energy use. Some fuels derived from green plants
could be pumped through existing natural gas pipelines, and others
could power existing automobiles. Nuclear power, in contrast, produces
only electricity, and converting to an energy system that is mostly
electric would entail major cultural changesand enormous capital expen-
ditures.
Biomass processescan be designed to produce solids (wood and
charcoal), liquids (oils and alcohols), gases (methane, hydrogen), or
electricity. Charcoal, made through the destructive distillation of wood,
has been used for at least ten thousand years. It has a higher energy
content per unit of weight than does wood; its combustion temperature
is hotter, and it llci 1G:: -more slowly. However, four tons of wood are
required to produc,: :.r;e‘?‘tn of charcoal, and this charcoal has the energy
200 Rays of Hope
content of only two tons of wood. For many purposes-including firing
boilers for electrical generation- the direct use of wood is preferable.
Charcoal, on the other hand, is better suited to some specialized applica-
tions, such as steelmaking.
Methanol and ethanol are particularly useful biomass fuels. They are
octane-rich, and they can be easily mixed with gasoline and used in
existing internal-combustion engines. Both were commonly blended
with gasoline, at up to 15 to 25 percent, respectively, in Europe between
1930 and 1950. Brazil recently embarked upon a $50~1million program
to dilute all gasoline by 20 percent with ethanol made from sugarcane
and cassava.Meanwhile, several major U.S. corporations are showing
keen interest in methanol. These alcohols could also fuel low-polluting
external-combustion engines.26
The gaseousfuels produced from biomass can be burned directly to
cook food or to provide industrial process heat. They can also be used
to power pumps or generate electricity. Moreover, high-quality gases
such as methane or hydrogen can be economically moved long distances
via pipeline. A “synthesis gas” consisting of hydrogen and carbon
monoxide was manufactured from coke in most U.S. towns at the turn
of the century; known popularly as “town gas,” it was piped to homes
for lighting and cooking. A similar “local brew” might make sensetoday
for areas rich in trees but poor in the biomass needed for anaerobic
digestion. Synthesis gas can be further processed into methane, meth-
anol, ammonia, or even gasoline.
The price in constant dollars for oil-based fuels declined during the
1950s and 194os, partly becauseuseswere found for more and more of
the by-products of the refining process. Similarly, as the residues of
biological energy processes find users, the production of fuels from
biomass will grow more economically attractive.
Many biomass schemesreflect the assumption that er.c;gi crops can
supply food aswell as fuel. Even the plans to cul+ivate islands G! deep-sea
kelp include schemes for harvesting abalone in the kelp beds. Many
energy crops, including water hyacinths, have proven palatable to cattle
and other animals, once solar dryers have reduced moisture to appropri-
ate levels.
More sophisticated by-product development has also been planned
by students of chemurgy, the branch of applied chemistry concerned
Plant Power 201
with the industrial use of organic raw materials. In the 193cs, George
Washington Carver produced a multitude of industrial products from
peanuts, while Percy Julian derived new chemicals from vegetable oils.
And, for the record, the plastic trim on the 1936 Ford V-8 was made
from soybeans.
Organic fuels can bear many different relationships to other prod-
ucts. Sometimes the fuels themselves are the by-product of efforts to
produce food (e.g., sugar), natural fibers (e.g., paper), and lumber or
wood chemicals (e.g., turpentine). Sometimes the residues of fuel-pro-
ducing processesmay be turned into plastics, synthetic fibers, deter-
gents, lubricating oils, greases,and various chemicals.
Biological energy systemsare free of the more frightening drawbacks
associated with current energy sources- They will produce no bomb
grade materials or radimctive wastes. In equilibrium, biological energy
sourceswill contribute no more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than
they will remove through photosynthesis; and switching to biomass
conversion will reduce the cost of air pollution control, since the raw
materials contain lesssulfur and ash than many other fuels do. Indeed,
some biological energy systems would have positive environmental im-
pacts. Reforestation projects will control soil erosion, retard siltation of
dams, and improve air quality. One type of biomass, water hyacinths,
can control certain farms of water pollution, while others remove many
air pollutants.
Without wise management, however, biological energy systems
could engender major environmental menaces. The most elementary
danger associated with biomass production is robbing the soil of its
essential nutrients. If critical chemicals in the soil are not recycled, this
“renewable” energy resource will produce barren wastelands.
Recycling nutrients can, alas, bring its own problems. First, if indus-
trial wastes are included in the recycled material, toxic residues may
build up in the soil. Some evidence suggeststhat certain contaminants
-especially such heavy metals as cadmium and mercury-are taken up
by some crops. !3econd,some disease-causingagents, especially viruses,
may survive sewagetreatment processes.Many of these potential infec-
tants found in wastescan be controlled simply by aging the sludge before
returning it to the soil. But during outbreaks of particularly virulent
diseases,human excrement will have to be treated by other means, such
202 Rays of Hope
lo. Norma Turner, “Nuclear Waste Drop in the Ocean,” New Scientist, Oct. 30,
1975; Weekly Envimnment Report, June 23, 1975.
II. Irwin C. Bupp et al., “The Economics of Nuclear Power,” Technology Review,
Feb., 1975.
12. Amory B. L,ovins, Scale, Centralization, and Electriftcution in Energy Systems,
paper prepared for a Symposium on Future Strategies of Energy Development, at Oak
Ridge Associated Universities, Tenn., Oct. 20-21, 1976.
1 . The Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Devef opment, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, Uranium: Resources, Pro-
duction, and LIemand (x975); similar estimates are provided by cha . 7, “Nuclear Re-
sources,” in World Enet Conference Surveyof Energy Resources PNew York: World
Energy Conference, 1974$ ; Robert D. Nininger, “Uranium Resources,”ERDA statement
to the House Subcommittee 01; Energy and Environment, June 5,197~; and Committee
on Mineral Resourcesand the Environment, National Academy of Sciences,Supplemen-
bqv Re@rb Reservesand Resources of umnium in the United States, ISBN o-3o9-20423
(Washington, D.C.: NAS/NAC, 1976).
14 For a lirst-rate summarv of the principal nuclear accidents to date by a thoughtful
and knowledgeable nuclear c&ic, see Walter C. Patterson, Nuclear Power (Harmonds-
worth, En nd: Penguin Books, 1976 .
wt en the U 235 nucleus is sp1it, its components (92 Dr&ms and 143 neutrons)
die rearranged in two smaller atoms and severalsubatom’ic particles. Less “bindin
energy” is needed to hold together the nuclei of the severalsmall atoms than was neede!
to bind the subatomic particles in the one la e atom. When the lar e atom is s lit, the
excessbinding energy is released,captured asP eat in the reactor, an%used to boi4 water.
When a U 23 atom is split into smaller atoms, neutrons not incorporated in the new
elements ily off. &Jme of the free neutrons strike and split other U 235 atoms, Musing
a self-sustainingchain reaction. Many of the neutrons, however, do not encounter U z
atoms. Some are absorbedby the modemtor in the reactor core; some bombard the wafi5s
and other parts of the reactor vessel,causing them to weaken and become radioactive; and
some neutrons encounter atoms of non-fissionable U 238.
Under certain circumstances, a U 238 atom will “capture” a stray neutron. This
addition changes the stable U 238 atom into an unstable uranium isotope that quickly
decays into plutonium 23 . Plutonium 23 is itself a fissile fuel, which can be split to
power a reactor, giving 0rp Lee neutrons tIa t serve to continue the chain reaction. All
uranium-fueled reactors transform some U 238 into plutonium. As soon as plutonium is
formed, it begins contributing to the reactor’s fissions.By the time fuel is removed from
a light water reactor (LWR) about half the fissionsare of plutonium. A I,CXX-megawatt
Lv, operating at full power, will produce about 375 pounds of fissionable plutonium
each
1t!=. 6.S. Atomic Energy Commission ” Reactor Safety Stud : A.n Assessmentof
Accident Risks in U.S. Commercial Nucle& Power Plants,’ WAS k -1 ilt;n19gv&‘;
critique of the techniques employed by the Rasmussenstudy, see 114”
R+bi& Review of the Reactor Safety Study (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corporatan,
1975).
17. Daniel F. Ford and Henry W. Kendall, An Assessment of the Em ency Core
Cboh Sptems R&making Hearings (San Francisco: Union of Concern3 Scientists
and Friends of the Earth, 1974).
18. The cost of repairing actual tire damage was about $7 million. The cost of idle
investment in the two shutdown reactors,according to the TVA public information office
(ApriJ 9, ld), was about $10 million per month.
19. Amory 8. Lovins and John H. Price, Non-Nucleur Futures: The Case for an Ethical
Energy Sfrutegv (Cambri e, Mass.: Ballinger, 1975).
20. An exceptionally2 oughtful and provocative assessmentof the breeder can be
found in the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution’s sixth report, Nuclear Power
and the Environment (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery O&e, Sept., 19 6). Another
excellent, somewhat more technical reference ti Tbws I3 Cnrhnn, ?Bs 3,iquid Metdl
224 Notes (pages 60-80)
Fast Breeder Reactor: An Environmental and Economic Critique (Baltimore: Johns Hop-
kins Press for Resources for the Future, 1974).
21. Richard Webb, in 73e Accident Hazards of Nuclear Power Plants (Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1976), calculates that the explosive force would be
more than ample to destroy any plausible containment structure.
22. Leonard Ross, “How ‘Atoms for Peace’ Became Bombs for Sale,” New York Times
Magazine, Dec. 5, 1976. George H. Quester, “Can Proliferation Now Be Stopped?,”
Foreign Affairs, Oct., 1974; Lincoln P. Bloomfield, “Nuclear Spread and World Order,”
Foreign Affairs, July, 1 75; Frank Bamaby for the Stockholm International Peace Insti-
tute, 711eNuclear Age PCambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1975); Mason Willrich, ed., Civil
Nuciear Power and Intemutionrrl Security (New York: Praeger. 1971). An especially pro-
vocative paper on recent international changes is “What’s New on Nuclear Prolifera-
tion?,” prepared by George H. Quester for the 1975 Aspen Worksho on Arms Control.
23. Committee to Study the Long-Term Worldwide Effects o1! Multi le Nuclear
Weapons Detonation, National Academy of Sciences, Long-Term Worldwi Be Effects of
Multiple Nuclear Weapons Detonations (Washington, D.C : NAS/NAC, 1975).
24. Barry Schneider, “Big Bangs from Little Bombs,” Bulletin of the .4tomic Scientists,
Sept., 1975; William Epstein, Retrospective on the NPT Review Conference: Proposals
for the Future (Muscatine, Iowa: Stanley Foundation, 1975).
25. William Epstein, “Failure at the NPT Review Conference,” Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists, Sept., I 75; E stein, Retrospective on the .VPT Review Conference.
26. A tort critique opthis “! ack-door” approach to nuclear weapons can be found
in Alva Myr al, “ ‘Peaceful’ Nuclear Explosions,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May,
1975.
27 Mason Willrich and Theodore B. Taylor, Nuclear Theft: Risks and Safeguards
(Cambridge, Mass: Ballinger, 1974).
28. Report to Congress by the General Accounting Office, “Improvements Needed
in the Program for the Protection of Special Nuclear Material” (1973).
29. An excellent international survey of the potential for nuclear terrorism is by the
Mitre Corporation, “The Threat to Licensed Nuclear Facilities,” MTR-7022 (1975).
30. John P. Holdren, “Hazards of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle,” Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, Oct., 1974.
31. This theme is carefully developed by Amory B. Lovins in “Energy Strategy: The
Road Not Taken?,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 55, no. I (Oct., 1976).
5:David Pimental et al., “Land Degradation: Effects on Food and Energy Resources,”
Science, vol. rp4, no. 4261 (Oct. 8, 1976).
6. William Lockeretz et al., ‘Organic and Conventional Crop Production in the Corn
Belt” (St. Louis: Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Washington University,
June,19763.
Jonathan Allen, “Sewage Farming,” Environment, vol. 15, no. 3 (April, 1 73).
ii : Carol and Jchn Steinhart, Energy: Sources, Use, and Role in Human Afairs sNorth
Scituate, Mass : Duxbury Press, 1974).
9- Aqiun Makhijani, in collaboration with AJan Poole, Energy and Agriculture in the
7Xrd World (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballin er, 1975).
lo. New York 7?mes, Aug. 2 , 197 d .
I 1. Gerald Leach, Energy ORl? Food I’roducfion (London: International Institute for
Environment and Development, 1975).
12. Roger Revelle, “Ener Use in Rural India,” Science, June 4, 19 6.
13. Aiun Makhijaru,’ 50~ r E nergy and Rural Development for the A ird World,”
BuZfetin of the Atomic Scientists, June, 1976.
14. Keith Griffin, Lund Concentrution und Rural Poverty (New York: Holmes &
Meier, 1976). Edgar Owens and Robert Shaw, kvelopment Reconsidered (Lexington,
Mass.: C&ngton Books, 1972).
Energy,” Bulletin of the Atomic scientists, May, 1976; Arjun Makhiiani and Alan Poole,
Energy and Agriculture in the Third World (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1975).
3. P. E. Henderson, India. ?i%eEnergy Sector (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1975).
4. Roger Revelle, “Energy Use in Rural India,” Science, June 4, 1976.
5. W. J. Jewel], H. R. Davis, et al., Bioconversionof Agricultural Wustesfor P&g~n
Control und Energy Conservation (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1976).
6. Poole and Williams, “Flower Power.”
7. R. Ii. Whittaker and C. M. Woodwell, prodar~tivi?, of Forest Ecosystems(Paris:
UNESCO, 1971).
8. D. F. Earl, Forest Energy und Economic Develqbment
9. ErikEckholm, 77re other Energy Crisis: Firewood (Washington, D.C.: World-
watch Institute, 1975).
10. J. S. Bethel and G. F. Schreuder, “Forests Resources:An Overview,” Science,Feb.
20, 1976.
1I. S. B. Richardson, Forestry in Communist Chinu (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press,
1966).
12. G. C. !&ego and C. C. Kemp, “The Energy Plantation,” U.S. House of Repre-
sentatives, Subcommittee on Energy of the Committee on Science and Astronautics,
Hearings, June 13. 1974.
13. J. B. Grantham and T. H. ElIis, “Potentials of Wood for Producing Energy,”
/.untal of Forestry, vol. 72. no. 9, 1974.
14 Melvin Calvin, “Hydrocarbons via Phot thesis,” presented to the 110th Rub
her Division Meeting of the American ChemicalYL iety, San Francisco: Oct. s-8, 1976.
Available from the American Chemical Society.
15. J- A. Alich and R. E. Inman, Effective Utilization of Solar Energy to Produce Cfeun
Fuel (Menlo Park: Stanford Research Institute, 1974).
16. B. C. Wolverton, R. M. Barlow, and R. C. McDonald, A@cation of Vascular
&uuti~? Phnts for Pollution Removal, Energy and Food Production in a Biofo icuf system
(Bay St. Louis, Miss.: NASA, 1975); B. C. Wolverton, R. C. McDonald, and J. Gordon,
&conversion of W&r fiucinths into Methune Gus: Puti I (Bay St. Louis, Miss.: NASA,
1975). The “p” rt voicinf skepticism about the U.S. potential is A. C. Robinson, J. H. ,,
&rman, et a ., An Ana ysis of MmRet Potential of Water Hyacinth-Bused Systemsfor 1
Municipcll Wustewater Treutment (Columbus, Ohio: Batelle Laboratories, 1976).
17. H. A. Wilcox, “Ocean Farming,” in Copturing the Sun through Bioconversion.
For a lesssanguine appr%al of the large ocean-farm concept, see John Ryther’s remarks
in the same volume.
18. J- T. Pfeffer, “Reclamation of Ene from Organic Refuse: Anaerobic Digestion
m,” presented to the Third Nationas Congress on Waste Management and Re-
source Recovery, San Francisco, r . Alan Poole, “The Potential for Energy Recovery
from Organic Wastes,” in R. H. irt i iams, rd., The Energy Conservution Pu#ets (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1975). A good annotated bibliography of do-it-yourself books on
biogasplants appearsin Ken Darrow and Rick Pam, Appropriate Technology Sourcebook
(Stanford, Calif.: Volunteers in Asia Press, 1976).
19. VacIav Smil, “Intermediate Technology in China,” Bulletin of the Atomic S&n-
t&s, -Feb.. 1977.
20. Report to the Pre#ratory Mission on Bio-gas Technology and Uifi&on.
21. Ram Bux Singh, Bio-Gus Pfunt (Ajitmal, Etawah, India: Gobar ResearchStation
Publication, 1971).
22. Poole and Williams, “Flower Power.”
C. R. Prasad, K. K. Prasad, and A. K. N. Reddy, “Biogas Plants: Proswts,
Pro2 ems, and Tasks,” Economic und Politicul Weekly, vol. 9, no. 32-3
24. R. N. Morse and J. R. Siemon, Solat Energy for Austruliu: The Ro4l ~f9~~~fogi~af
Conversion, presented to the Institution of Engineers, Australia, 1975.
25. G. C. Floueke and P. H. McGauhey, “Waste Materials,” in Jack M. Hollander,
d., Annuuf Review of Energy, vol. 1 (Palo Alto, Calif.: Annual Reviews, Inc., 1976).
234 Nofes(page 200)
26. For a good overview of the Brazilian ethanol program, see Allen L. Hammond,
“Alcohol: A Brazilian Answer to the Energy Crisis,” Science, Feb. 11, 1977. American
interest in methanol is surveyed in Edward Faltermayer, “The Clean Synthetic Fuel
That’s Already Here,” Fortune, Sept., 1975.
Abalone hawsting. 200 engines, 112-14
Acid rains, 41 evolution of, 110-I 1
Actinides. 53 one-person-per-car, I 25-27
Actinium, 53
Agricdture. &g-log Baer, Steve, 134
crop drying. W Bagasse. 188
alergy use, 89-93. lcm-102 BART May Area Rapid Transit) system, 120,
farm machinery, 97-98 121
fertilizers, 93-95 Batelle Laboratory, 193
food processing, 89-9o, 91, 100-102 Bateson, Gregory. 146
home gardens, gp-100 Beef! U.S. per capita intake, 90
irrigation, 95-96 Beklum, 49, 50
meat consumption, po Berg, Charles, ‘43
problem of distribution, 102-4 Beryllium, 6
Air conditioners, 128.132:. 138 B+to, Zul i kar Ali. 65
$iys 135-36 &~ycles, 116-17, 118
pdg<’ -24 99. 102. 195+
iim .l~ B!oPogLa1 energy sources, 159, 187-203
AIas+ oil pipeline, 22, 35 biomass technologies, 194-99
enertv cro , 1 1-94
~I?iLncr. 71 fuels and R:R
el c oices, 199-203
.Qw biag, 193 wastes as fuels, I 1
Aluminum Ikearch -75 onxxation. 1~ Ehitui$; sann, oi&p from, 43-44
Arnerjcan Electric Power-Company, ‘5;s
Arncman Federation of labor, 146 Bonneville &we, Administration, 172
American Institute of Architects, 128- Brae Research Institute (Canada), 177
Brayton cycle (gas turbine) engine, 113
Am& Motors Corporation, 114 Braatil, 20, 43, 51, 63, 64, 66, 67, w, l+lo,
Amer$an Pet$eum I?stitute. 32 181, 193, 212
;z$fig-l *ety. 84 Breeder reactors. 57, 6c-61
. Bridge tolls, 126
Anaerobic &&ion, 194, 195-98 Bromine, 41
Andefson. Caroh 2f-25 Brookhaven National Laboratory. 58
Anipd &cr&t.~ l&-lji Brooks. I-Iarvey, 148
Btu’s. 79. 116
iiizzik;&tt, 37.78, 110 CNP and, 80
Arctie pii and gas, 22 Bulgark 49
~~~j49d,51b$. 64.66-67, 185
Cadmium, 41
Aswan f-hi D&. &J, 182-83 California Institute of Technology, I I , 16b
Atlantic Rich&Id Corporation. 22 Calorific Recovery Anaerobic Process t CRAP),
Austdia, 54 51.91, 135. 160, 162.
185 Calvin, Melvin, 193
Automobii. x08, 1orp18. 120.125-26 Cambridge University, 170
automatic transmission, 110, 112 Canada, 49, 158, 181, 185
236
Index
Canadian deuterium uranium reactor Deuterium-tritium (D-T) fusion power, 26
- (CANDU), 51.66
Car pools, 126 Dial-&de transportation, 118-19
Carbon dioxide, 15, 17-18. 20. 27.40, 202 Direct combustion technologies, 194
See also “Greenhouse” effect Doebereiner, Johanna, 95
Carter, Jimmy. 53 Dow Chemical Company, 143
ChsIh;; C$xge Washington. 201 Drake, Col. E. L., 31
Drees. William, 116
Chalk River nuclear reactor, 53 Dubos, Reni, 87, 143
Charcoal, 199-200 Duke Power facility, 70
Chase Manhattan Bank, 86,87, 147
Chattanooga shale, 57 Economic growth, industrial efficiency and,
China, 81.98. 109. 139, 185, 196 14651
bio s plants, 19 conservation, 142-46
coar resour~, 33, 39 decentralization, 15o-5 I
fuel from wastes, 190 electricity in power plants, 145
Great Leap Forward, 151 employment, 146-48
hydroelectric capacity, 182 recycling, 148-50
nuclar -#wer. 49.63.65 self-interest, 141-42
nutrient recycling, 94-5 Economic Social Commission for Asia and the
oil shale uses, 43 Pacific, 197
per capita food available in, 102 Egypt. 51.63, 135, 180. 182-83
reforest&ion program, 192 Einste$ Albert, 6 142
Chrysler Corporation, 113 Einsteinium, 53
Claude, Ceorges. 165 Eklund, Sigv=rd, 72
Coal, 15, 142 Electric ars, 114. 119
consumption (U.S.), 38 ElectrGty:
European resources, 39 in buildin s. 1 8-39
fhridixcd-bed combustion, 42-43 on farms rU.S.3,96
fuels from, 42 hat and electrical power plants, 17
low-sulfur. 41-42 industrial power plants, 145
toxic emissions, O-41 institutional growth and, 82-83
as a transitional tu cl. 38-43 solar, 163-69
Coan, Eugene, 19 Energy crops, 191-94, 200
i2z21141~ornas 68 :n P$$93
Cole, Gnont, 89& watei plants, 193-94
Columbus, Christopher, 46 Energy efficiency. 75-15 1
Concorde jet plane, 122 agriculture, 89- 10
Congestion pricing, 126 conservation, 77-88
Conservation, 7748
economic advantages of, 85 industry, 14-5 1
shelters, 128-39
equity, 80-82 tGU’ISPOrt;ltiOn, 105-27
GNP and, 78-80.86
industry and. 142-46 Energy industries, 82-8
institutional investment growth, 82-83 Energy Policy Project t Ford Foundation), 80.
politics of, 86-88
social approaches to, 85-86 Ener~technologies:
technical ap roaches to, 83-85 efficiency in, 75-151
Consolidated Bdison, 53 fossil fuels, 31-48
Cook, Donald, 55 hat impact, 16-18
cornstaks, 188
limits and constraints, z-25
Coustau, Jaques. 74 nuclear power, 4*74
Crop drying technique, 98-99 pollution, 18-20
Crop rotation, 94 prospect for, 205-18
Cuban missile crisis (1962). 62 safe sustainable sources of. 153-203
Czechoslovakia, 49 transition, 25-28
Engineering Research institute (Ur.:v. of Michi-
lhms and reservoirs, I pan). 58
Dmieus wind generator, 7 17 England. See Grat Britain
Davy Crockett (fission bomb), 68 Enrico Fermi reactor, 58, 61
Decentralization. industrial, 150-51, 217-18 Estonia, 43
z-$-g2 ;:‘d 149. 171. 175 Ethanol, zoo
* . Euphorbia, 193
Index 237