The Efficiency of Green Energy

We ought not at least to delay dis­pers­ing a set of plau­si­ble fal­lac­i­es about the econ­o­my of fuel, and the dis­cov­ery of sub­sti­tutes [for coal], which at present obscure the crit­i­cal nature of the ques­tion, and are eager­ly passed about among those who like to believe that we have an indef­i­nite peri­od of pros­per­i­ty before us. –William Stan­ley Jevons, The Coal Ques­tion (1865)

There are, at present, many myths about green ener­gy and its effi­cien­cy to address the demands and needs of our bur­geon­ing indus­tri­al soci­ety, the least of which is that a switch to “renew­able” ener­gy will sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce our depen­den­cy on, and con­sump­tion of, fos­sil fuels.

The oppo­site is true. If we study the actu­al pro­duc­tive process­es required for cur­rent “renew­able” ener­gies (solar, wind, bio­fu­el, etc.) we see that fos­sil fuels and their infra­struc­ture are not only cru­cial but are also whol­ly fun­da­men­tal to their devel­op­ment. To con­tin­ue to use the words “renew­able” and “clean” to describe such ener­gy process­es does a great dis­ser­vice for gen­er­at­ing the type of informed and ratio­nal deci­sion-mak­ing required at our cur­rent junc­tion.

To take one exam­ple – the pro­duc­tion of tur­bines and the allo­ca­tion of land nec­es­sary for the devel­op­ment, pro­cess­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion and stor­age of “renew­able” wind ener­gy. From the min­ing of rare met­als, to the pro­duc­tion of the tur­bines, to the trans­porta­tion of var­i­ous parts (weigh­ing thou­sands of tons) to a cen­tral loca­tion, all the way up to the con­tin­ued main­te­nance of the struc­ture after its com­ple­tion – wind ener­gy requires indus­tri­al infra­struc­ture (i.e. fos­sil fuels) in every step of the process.

If the con­cep­tion of wind ener­gy only involves the pris­tine image of wind tur­bines spin­ning, ever so won­der­ful­ly, along a beau­ti­ful coast or grass­land, it’s not too hard to under­stand why so many of us hold green ener­gy so high­ly as an alter­na­tive to fos­sil fuels. Notice­ably absent in this con­cep­tion, though, are the images of every­thing it took to get to that end­point (which aren’t beau­ti­ful images to see at all and is large­ly the rea­son why wind ener­gy isn’t mar­ket­ed that way).

Because of the rapid growth and expan­sion of indus­tri­ali­a­tion in the last two cen­turies, we are long past the days of easy acces­si­ble resources. If you take a look at the type of min­ing oper­a­tions and drilling oper­a­tions cur­rent­ly sus­tain­ing our way of life you will read­i­ly see degra­da­tion and dev­as­ta­tion on uncon­scionable scales. This is our real­i­ty and these process­es will not change no mat­ter what our ends are – these process­es are the degree with which “basic” extrac­tion of all of the fun­da­men­tal met­als, min­er­als, and resources we are famil­iar with cur­rent­ly take place.

In much the same way that the absur­di­ties of tar sands extrac­tion, moun­tain­top removal, and hydraulic frac­tur­ing are plain­ly obvi­ous, so too are the con­tin­ued min­ing oper­a­tions and refin­ing process­es of cop­per, sil­ver, alu­minum, zinc, etc. (all essen­tial to the devel­op­ment of solar pan­els and wind tur­bines).

It is not enough – giv­en our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion and its dire impli­ca­tions – to just look at the pret­ty pic­tures and ignore every­thing else. All this does, as won­der­ful­ly reaf­firm­ing and uplift­ing as it may be, is keep us bound in delu­sions and false hopes. As Jevons affirms, the ques­tions we have before us are of such over­whelm­ing impor­tance that it does no good to con­tin­ue to delay dis­pers­ing plau­si­ble fal­lac­i­es. If we wish to go any­where from here, we absolute­ly need uncom­pro­mis­ing (and often bru­tal) truth.

A com­mon argu­ment among pro­po­nents of sup­posed “green” ener­gy – often preva­lent among those who do under­stand the inher­ent destruc­tive process­es of fuels, min­ing and indus­try – is that by sim­ply putting an end to cap­i­tal­ism and its prof­it motive, we will have the capac­i­ty to plan for the effi­cient and prop­er man­age­ment of remain­ing fos­sil fuels.

How­ev­er, the effi­cient use of a resource does not actu­al­ly result in its decreased con­sump­tion, and we owe evi­dence of that to William Stan­ley Jevons’ work The Coal Ques­tion. Writ­ten in 1865 (dur­ing a time of such great progress that crit­i­cisms were unfath­omable to most), Jevons devot­ed his study to ques­tion­ing Britain’s heavy reliance on coal and how the impli­ca­tion of reach­ing its lim­its could threat­en the empire. Many cov­ered top­ics in this text have influ­enced the way in which many of us today dis­cuss the issues of peak oil and sus­tain­abil­i­ty – he wrote on the lim­its to growth, over­shoot, ener­gy return on ener­gy input, tax­a­tion of resources and resource alter­na­tives.

In the chap­ter, “Of the econ­o­my of fuel,” Jevons address­es the idea of effi­cien­cy direct­ly. Preva­lent at the time was the thought that the fail­ing sup­ply of coal would be met with new modes of using it, there­fore lead­ing to a sta­tion­ary or dimin­ished con­sump­tion. Mak­ing sure to dis­tin­guish between pri­vate con­sump­tion of coal (which account­ed for less than one-third of total coal con­sump­tion) and the econ­o­my of coal in man­u­fac­tures (the remain­ing two-thirds), he explained that we can see how new modes of econ­o­my lead to an increase of con­sump­tion accord­ing to par­al­lel instances. He writes:

The econ­o­my of labor effect­ed by the intro­duc­tion of new machin­ery throws labor­ers out of employ­ment for the moment. But such is the increased demand for the cheap­ened prod­ucts, that even­tu­al­ly the sphere of employ­ment is great­ly widened. Often the very labor­ers whose labor is saved find their more effi­cient labor more demand­ed than before.

The same prin­ci­ple applies to the use of coal (and in our case, the use of fos­sil fuels more gen­er­al­ly) – it is the very econ­o­my of their use that leads to their exten­sive con­sump­tion. This is known as the Jevons Para­dox, and as it can be applied to coal and fos­sil fuels, it so right­ful­ly can be (and should be) applied in our dis­cus­sions of “green” and “renew­able” ener­gies – not­ing again that fos­sil fuels are nev­er com­plete­ly absent in the pro­duc­tive process­es of these ener­gy sources.

We can try to assert, giv­en the gen­er­al care we all wish to take in mov­ing for­ward to avert cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change, that much dili­gence will be tak­en for the effi­cient use of remain­ing resources but with­out the direct ques­tion­ing of con­sump­tion our attempts are mean­ing­less. His­tor­i­cal­ly, in many vary­ing indus­tries and cir­cum­stances, effi­cien­cy does not solve the prob­lem of con­sump­tion – it exas­per­ates it. There is no guar­an­tee that “green” ener­gies will keep con­sump­tion lev­els sta­tion­ary let alone result in a reduc­tion of con­sump­tion (an obvi­ous neces­si­ty if we are plan­ning for a sus­tain­able future).

Jevons con­tin­ues, “Sup­pose our progress to be checked with­in half a cen­tu­ry, yet by that time our con­sump­tion will prob­a­bly be three or four times what it now is; there is noth­ing impos­si­ble or improb­a­ble in this; it is a mod­er­ate sup­po­si­tion, con­sid­er­ing that our con­sump­tion has increased eight-fold in the last six­ty years. But how short­ened and dark­ened will the prospects of the coun­try appear, with mines already deep, fuel dear, and yet a high rate of con­sump­tion to keep up if we are not to ret­ro­grade.”

Writ­ing in 1865, Jevons could not have fath­omed the lev­el of growth that we have attained today but that doesn’t mean his ear­ly warn­ings of Britain’s use of coal should be whol­ly dis­card­ed. If any­thing, the con­tin­ued rise and dom­i­nance of indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion over near­ly all of the earth’s land and peo­ple makes his argu­ments ever more per­ti­nent to our present sit­u­a­tion.

Based on cur­rent emis­sions of car­bon alone (not fac­tor­ing in the reach­ing of tip­ping points and var­i­ous feed­back loops) and the best sci­ence read­i­ly avail­able, our time frame for action to avert cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change is any­where between 15–28 years. How­ev­er, as has been true with every sci­en­tif­ic esti­mate up to this point, it is impos­si­ble to pre­dict that rate at which these var­i­ous process­es will occur and large­ly our esti­mates fall extreme­ly short. It is quite prob­a­ble that we are like­ly to reach the point of irre­versible run­away warm­ing soon­er rather than lat­er.

Sup­pose our progress and indus­tri­al cap­i­tal­ism could be checked with­in the next ten years, yet by that time our con­sump­tion could dou­ble and the state of the cli­mate could be expo­nen­tial­ly more unfa­vor­able than it is now – what would be the capac­i­ty for which we could mean­ing­ful­ly engage in any amount of indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion? Would it even be in the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty to imple­ment large-scale over­hauls towards “green” ener­gy? With­out a mean­ing­ful and dras­tic decrease in con­sump­tion habits (remem­ber­ing most of this occurs in indus­try and not per­son­al lifestyles) and a sub­se­quent decrease in depen­den­cy on indus­tri­al infra­struc­ture, the prospects of our future are severe­ly short­ened and dark­ened.