The End of Cheap Energy
G & G TGIF Seminar
August 27, 2010
Fred Duennebier
Emeritus Prof. Geology & Geophysics
UH Manoa
fred@soest.hawaii.edu
Special Thanks
To every one for their input and
frank discussions.
To all those who are seriously
dedicated to finding solutions
before its too late. Good luck.
To my family for their patient
support.
• The END of cheap ENERGY?
• Why is this important?
• What makes Oil so important?
•What about alternatives?
• The Future
- Sustainability
- When might transition start?
ONE VIEW: "The technology at
hand to tap the planet's vast energy
resources is … improving faster than
ever. We can economically dig, dam,
pump, and purify all the energy we
like."
January, 2006, Preface, The Bottomless Well, Huber and Mills
ANOTHER VIEW:"Petroleum geologists
have known for 50 years that global oil
production would "peak" and begin its
inevitable decline within a decade of the
year 2000. Moreover, no renewable
energy systems have the potential to
generate more than a tiny fraction of
the power now being generated by fossil
fuels."
Dieoff.com
Peak Oil
Hubbert’s Peak
Since I was born, the rate of oil production has increased ten-fold.
Will production drop soon? Has enough new oil been
discovered to keep up the supply?
When production begins to decline we will be at
“peak oil”.
Why is oil so important?
• FACT: Oil supplies about 90% of the
energy we use in Hawaii, and about 97%
of the USA’s transportation energy.
• CLAIM: Survival of civilization, except
for the most primitive societies, now
depends on the availability of cheap
energy for our support systems.
Every American uses the energy equivalent
of about 150 "servants" working 24-7.
Everything is cheap today because oil is
cheap.
Human muscle supplies less than 0.2% of
the energy used in the economy.
We can't support ourselves without cheap
energy.
What makes me say that energy is cheap?
One person can perform useful work at
a rate of about 1 KWh per day - about
what’s required to keep a 100 W light bulb
going for 10 hours.
We pay about 25¢ per KWh for electricity
on Oahu - so we get the equivalent
energy of a hard-working person for
25¢ per day.
Energy and Power
Power = energy per unit time
1 Watt= 1 kg m /s3 = 1 Joule/s
Energy = kW h (kiloWatt hour)
1 KWh/day is a good reference - one person
People Power has been
replaced by fossil power
Big deal!
We can ride bikes instead of cars,
change our lights to CFLs, turn
down the air conditioner, use
electric cars…..
Not so fast… Doing lots of little
things might end up doing very
little to solve the problem.
“Soil is the catalyst used to
turn oil into food.”
Modern agriculture requires more than ten units of fossil
fuel energy for every unit of energy eaten. Take away
fossil fuels, and productivity will decrease greatly.
About 85% of our food and staples come to Hawaii on
ships that burn oil. The average North American meal
travels 1,500 miles before it gets to your plate.
Without oil, Hawaii
has no electricity
NO LIGHTS
NO COMMUNICATION
NO GASOLINE
NO REFRIGERATION
NO ELEVATORS
NO FOOD
NO WATER
NO HOSPITALS
NO MONEY
NO SEWERS
Maintenance of
Infrastructure requires
energy
About 80% of Hawaii’s electricty is generated from oil.
A basic premise of this talk is that
petroleum will not be able to meet
our energy needs for long after we hit
peak oil.
After that time the supply will
DECREASE and will no longer be
able to meet the demand for energy.
Hawaii imports the energy equivalent
of about 1 million barrels of oil per
week.
At 1,700 kWh/ barrel of oil, that's the
equivalent energy supplied by about
250,000,000 people working HARD.
AND we pay more than $5 BILLION/YR
for fossil fuels, about the cost of rail…
CAN WE REPLACE OIL?
Without oil or a large supply of
other cheap fuels, we will have
serious difficulties finding (or
affording) enough energy to
maintain our current lifestyle!
What alternatives are
there?
What are the qualities of a
“GOOD” energy resource?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Lots of it, widespread - solar
Renewable - like trees, OTEC
High energy density - like nuclear
Low price - like natural gas
Low cost-of-use - like oil
High net energy - ??
Easy to transport - like oil
Easy to store - like oil
Always available - like oil
Safe - like OTEC
Environmentally friendly - like geothermal
Secure - like solar
Can “unconventional” sources
of fossil fuels satisfy our liquid
fuel needs?
•
•
•
•
Tar sands
Oil shale
Natural Gas Liquids
Oil from Coal
Mountain Topping to get at coal
Over 700 miles of Appalachian streams
have been ruined already in coal mining.
Do we have enough coal?
Peak Coal: 2023
DOE Estimate
of Global
COAL
Production
(2009)
Peak in
2011
What about non-fossil
alternative sources of Energy?
• At LEAST one "good" energy
resource is needed that has a large
NET ENERGY.
• Do any alternatives have the
energy density, portability,
storability, convenience, and
profit margin of oil?
What is Net Energy??
Every living thing must find more energy
than it consumes or perish. Excess energy
is used for growth or is stored.
Net energy is the energy available minus the
energy invested to get it.
Some people use ERoEI instead:
ERoEI=Energy obtained/Energy invested
Net Energy = EO - EI
= (EROEI - 1), if EI=1
What?….
Consider Your Budget:
Gross Income
Net Income= Gross - taxes
Fixed Costs
Luxuries
If your net income is greater than your
fixed costs, you can take that vacation to
Hawaii.
Consider the Energy
Budget
Gross Income: Total energy in the fuel supply
Taxes: Energy needed to produce and deliver
Net Income= Net Energy: what’s left to be used
Fixed Costs: Energy necessary to sustain civilization
Luxuries: Energy needed for economic growth
If energy net <= Fixed costs, NO GROWTH
BASIC sources of energy:
SOLAR
all fossil fuels, PV, wind, passive solar, OTEC,
hydro, wave, ….
GEOTHERMAL - heat in the earth
NUCLEAR - [solar], fission, fusion
PLANETARY MOTION - tides
Let's look at various sources and see how they
might satisfy the demand.
HYDROGEN
George W. Bush in his State of the Union
Address: "A simple chemical reaction between
hydrogen and oxygen generates energy which
can be used to power a car, producing only
water, not exhaust fumes…
"The first car driven by a child born today could
be powered by hydrogen and pollution-free."
but… let's dig a bit deeper.
Hydrogen fuel does not exist in nature.
All the hydrogen is tightly bound to other
elements - like oxygen (H2O).
Making hydrogen FUEL requires energy to
pull the hydrogen away from whatever it is
attached to.
About 80% of hydrogen fuel is generated
from natural gas by heating it.
Hydrogen fuel can be generated directly
from water by hydrolysis.
ENERGY
Invest ed
elect rolysis
combust ion
EROEI~0 .6
ENERGY
Ret urned
Hydrogen fuel may be an excellent way
to store energy. It's equivalent to a
charged battery.
But, hydrogen is NOT an energy
source. The energy to produce
hydrogen - or any fuel - MUST come
from a source that has a net energy
much greater than 0.
Other alternatives?
Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative
Target: using energy efficiency and
renewable resources to supply 70%
or more of Hawai’i’s energy needs by
2030.
In THEORY, there is a large enough
renewable energy resource in
Hawaii to satisfy all of our electrical
needs.
The Sopogy Thermal Solar Array at Keahole generates 2 mW on 3.8
acres in the Mohave desert. It would take more than 800 of these to
generate Oahu's current electricity capacity on 3,200 acres, BUT the
sun doesn't always shine…
STORAGE, EQUALIZATION
Hot Oil Energy Storage
This PV array on
Kauai can generate
700,000 KWh anually.
Photovoltaic (PV)
Less than 2
KWh/panel /day
Can advances in direct solar energy devices make
them contenders in the energy picture?
Recent thin-film technology is very promising
and production could double today's total
generation capacity within two years.
50@ 1.5 MW Wind Turbines are located on
the slopes of west Maui
Optimistic numbers suggest ~0.5
KWh/day /KW installed
Puna Geothermal produces 30 MegaWatts,
or 720 MWh/day, and its ALWAYS available.
Can "biomass" schemes for using
plants to create liquid fuels be scaled
up to the level needed to make a
difference? These schemes use oil and
gas "inputs" (fertilizers, weed-killers,
machines) to grow the biomass crops
to be converted into ethanol or biodiesel fuels. Is there a net energy
"profit"?
Biomass
for ethanol production
corn requires 29 percent more fossil
energy than the fuel produced;
switch grass requires 45 percent
more fossil energy than the fuel
produced;
wood biomass requires 57 percent
more fossil energy than the fuel
produced.
for biodiesel production,
soybean plants requires 27
percent more fossil energy
than the fuel produced
sunflower plants requires 118
percent more fossil energy
than the fuel produced.
Algae?
Oil Palm Plantation
10 MW
OTEC
Pilot Plant
To be
installed
2013
NUCLEAR ?
• Using current
technology
(fission) we would
need 2 new 1
GWatt plants to
satisfy Hawaii’s
current electrical
and heating (oil
and gas) needs.
• Nuclear may be
the only way to
keep the lights
on.
FUSION?
Chuck Helsley, a former Director of
HIGP, is working hard on fusion.
IF they can get funding, and IF all
goes well, he thinks they can have
their first plant in 10 years.
But - not likely in the USA…
Pelamis 750 KW
Do Energy Conservation
and Improved Efficiency
Help?
Certainly they don't hurt, but they
can't solve the problem.
Jevons Paradox
In his 1865 book The
Coal Question. In it, William
Stanley Jevons argued that
increases in efficiency in the
use of coal would tend to
increase the use of coal.
Hence, it would tend to
increase, rather than reduce,
the rate at which England’s
deposits of coal were being
depleted.
Mass
Transportation
can help, but it
requires a large
user base and
change in
mindset.
Examples of energy use How much energy do our
major users require?
To supply Oahu's current electricity needs
(1,700 MW capacity) would take:
• 2,100 acres of PV cells + storage
• almost twice the perimeter of Oahu in wave
energy + storage
• OTEC: 17 @ 100 mW plants
• Geothermal: 68 @ 30 mW Geothermal plants
• Nuclear: 2 @ 1 GW plant
• 1,133 @ 1.50 mW wind generators + storage
• 1,556,656 acres of sugar cane
There are more than 700,000 vehicles registered in Hawaii.
Each uses about 40 KWh/day, that comes to a total of ~20M
KWh/day.
Electric cars??
To switch from using gasoline to grid electricity
in our vehicles would demand that the
generating capacity on Oahu would need to
increase by ~50%. Batteries cost ~$30,000
To fly a 747 to Hawaii from
California would require the energy
equivalent of:
1 gallon/sec; (13,000 kWhr)/5.5 hr flight
• 5 1/2 days of one Maui wind
generator energy at full capacity
• 25 minutes of an OTEC plant
energy
• 44 acres of sugar cane (ethanol)
• 468 acres of corn (ethanol)
• 25 acres of soy (biodiesel)
BUT
Airplanes can't fly on electricity
(yet).
To store the energy needed to fly
a 747 for one hour in lithium ion
batteries would require batteries
weighing 5
the plane.
times the weight of
To fuel a container ship
from California to Hawaii
requires:
•
•
•
•
•
•
1 day of OTEC plant
71 days of Maui wind generator time
247 acres of sugar cane
468 acres of corn
157 acres of soy
4 days of geothermal energy
Development of alternatives to oil will
require (among other things)
• energy storage systems
- batteries
- fuel cells
• distribution systems
• infrastructure transition
• new energy sources and technologies
• construction of large plants
• carbon sequestration if coal or natural gas used
This is a GLOBAL PROBLEM
World Population and Oil Production
Millions of People, 10,000's of Barrels/day
8000
7000
6000
5000
4000
World Population,
millions
Oil Production, 10,000
barrels/day
3000
2000
1000
0
1750
1800
1850
1900
1950
2000
Year
Cheap energy has made the population explosion
possible. The expansion of human civilization is
strongly linked to access to cheap, high-quality energy
sources. World now uses ~13 trillionWatts, roughly
1,000 barrels of oil per second.
How much time do we have?
WHAT IS BEING DONE
TO REPLACE OIL?
We spend more money
every ten minutes buying
gasoline than we do on
alternative energy R&D
each year.
www.private-eye.co.uk
The NIH gets a yearly
budget increase greater
than the whole annual
budget of the Department
of Energy.
Governments the world over
provided around $45 billion to
renewable energy technologies in
2009.
BUT….
Fossil fuel subsidies got $557
billion in 2008, reported the
International Energy Agency.*
Hawaii’s energy
initiative of 1977
projected that we
should be free of oil by
2010.
Since then, our use of
oil has risen by about
40%.
The US Navy has an initiative to cut oil
use in vehicles by 50% by 2015.
The US military says:
“Bt 2012, the surplus oil production
capacity could entirely disappear, and as
early as 2015, the shortfall in output
could reach nearly 10 million
barrels/day.”
GREENWASHING
In MY opinion:
Many of the efforts in “green” renewable energy
prospects are motivated by potential for profit not the need for change.
Much of the hype implies that the problem is
solvable or solved. Some of these projects
might even work, but which ones?
Nearly all alternatives have an achille’s heal cost, scalability, net energy, dependence on
other resources, etc.
Peak Oil Task Force
geologic time
1 million years
1 second
Earth history compresses into 75 minutes
(Your fingernails grow 50 miles in 1 sec)
Nature took about 10 minutes to store all
the fossil fuels in the earth.
We will burn most of it in less time than it
takes to explode a firecracker.
Most of the people alive today will see the end of
the oil age.
SUMMARY
• No alternative or combination of alternative
energy sources can replace oil without a
huge development effort - and it isn’t
obvious that ANYTHING will replace oil.
• Civilization without cheap energy will be
much different than it is today.
• Does civilization have the incentive to
develop new energy sources while there's
still time and energy available?
• At the very least, there will likely be a
serious gap in energy available starting
soon.
Modern Arab saying: “My grandfather drove a
camel, my father drove a Ford, I fly a jet plane,
my son will drive a camel.”
What's the most critical problem
facing humanity?
Probably not energy
Not the economy
Not food supply
Not the environment
Not global climate change….
All of these would be mitigated if we
could only control
HUMAN
POPULATION
“If we don’t control the earth’s population,
nature will do it for us,
and nature will have no pity.*
Nature will NOT honor your rights to life,
liberty and the persuit of happiness.
*heard on broadcast of Nobel Debate on Technology, MIT president’s speech
OIL
We’re out of time….
MAHALO !
MORE?
Google: "peak oil"
"peak oil books"
and
http://www.withouthotair.com/
ERoEI
• ERoEI MUST be greater than 1 to
supply ANY net energy.
• All energy storage processes charging batteries, making
hydrogen fuel, etc. REQUIRE
energy (ERoEI < 1)
The United States is more dependent
on oil than any other country, and
Hawaii is more dependent on oil than
any other state.
Hawaii is the “canary in the coal
mine” for peak oil.
What is sustainability?
• Something is ecologically sustainable if
it doesn’t destroy the environmental
preconditions for its own existence.
• The goal of most sustainability efforts is
to sustain our current society with
minimal disruption and pain.
“Get your facts first and then you can distort
them as you please.” Mark Twain
sustainability
When conditions are changing
rapidly, the probability of
reliably forecasting the future
is very low.
What can we expect in the
future?
Before getting deeper into the problem,
we need to understand the difference
between energy and power.
Energy is the stuff matter has that
allows it to be used to do work. The
spin of a wheel, heat of the sun,
movement of water, chemistry of fuels,
etc.
POWER is the amount of energy being
used per unit time.
Power is measured in Watts, or
kiloWatts (kW: 1000 Watts), and a
useful unit of energy is the kW-hour
(kWh), or the amount of energy used in
an hour if the power is 1 KW. One kWh
of electricity costs about 25¢ on
Oahu. One kWh/day is equivalent to a
single 40 W light bulb burning all day.
One person doing heavy work burns
about 1 kWh/day. Thus if you personally
use 10 kWh/day, you have the equivalent
of 10 "servants" working for you.
So… You get the electrical energy
equivalent of one hard-working
person at a cost of 25¢ per day, or
$7.50 per month.
! CHEAP !
Pie in the sky
This is the future that we’ve all been conditioned
to expect, with a strong requirement for and
dependence on cheap energy.
Optimistic
Local, self-sustaining, low-energy communities
[who makes the bicycles?]
Worst Case
Complete collapse of civilization as we
know it
population
World population is growing by ~ 80 million people
per year; 99% of the growth is in developing
countries. USA now has over 300,000,000 people.
At this low rate, (~1.3%) the population of the
world DOUBLES about every 53 years.
“If we don’t control the earth’s population,
nature will do it for us,
and nature will have no pity.”*
*heard on broadcast of Nobel Debate on Technology, MIT president’s speech
San Francisco
The red patch
in this
California
Google Earth
image is Lake
Tahoe. All of
the oil still in
the Earth
would fit in
Lake Tahoe.
2100
www.popin.org/pop1998/4.htm
Population and demand for
energy and other resources is
growing. Can the earth
support this growth? Is growth
sustainable?
12
10
8
TODAY
1990
6
4
1960
Middle
Ages
New Stone Age
8000
BC
6000
BC
4000
BC
Bronze
Age
2000
BC
2
1800
Iron Age
0001
AD
2000
AD
0
Biological populations, like yeast, increase
until resources necessary to sustain the
population are no longer available, until the
environment is poisoned, or until parasites,
disease, competition or predation limit the
population.
Are we smarter than yeast?
We could limit our own population by
choice.
Will we?
Fortunately for the
world economy,
nobody is paying
attention.
Example: America in 1950
• World’s foremost oil producer
• World’s foremost oil exporter
• World’s largest exporter of machine tools and
manufactured goods
• World’s foremost creditor nation
• Self-sufficient in nearly all resources
America in 2008
• World’s foremost oil importer
• World’s foremost debtor nation
• World’s foremost importer of manufactured goods and
non-petroleum resources
• Manufacturing jobs fleeing to other countries
energy comes in many flavors
Electrical
base load
coal, nuclear, oil
hydro, geothermal, biomass, OTEC
intermittent
solar, wind, wave
Transportation
oil, natural gas
biomass: biodiesel, ethanol, methanol
Say that 1 acre of energy is required.
How much land area is actually required to return the
required energy for different values of ERoEI?
SOURCE REQUIRED
5
4
3
2
1
1
3
5
EROEI
7
9
SOURCE REQUIRED
5
4
3
2
1
1
3
5
7
9
EROEI
The general case is that the source required can be
anything - not just acres.
Implications:
1) A low ERoEI product cannot be a primary
energy source.
2) A process with a low ERoEI must be sustained
by a high ERoEI energy source.
WINE
MAKING
Yeast Population in a 10% sugar solution
(wine). Population increases until
resources are gone or until waste products
poison the yeast.
Oil Production by Country
1 4 ,0 0 0
Russia
Thousands of Barrels/Day
1 2 ,0 0 0
1 0 ,0 0 0
USA
Saudi Arabia
8 ,0 0 0
6 ,0 0 0
IRAN
4 ,0 0 0
China
Mexico
2 ,0 0 0
0
1980
1990
2000
Y ear
A lge ria
I ndones ia
I ran
I raq
K uwait1
L ibya
N ige ria
Q atar
S audiA rab
UAE
V enezuela
N orway
UK
A ngola
A rgentina
A us tra lia
B razil
C anada
C hina
C olombia
E c uador
E gy pt
G abon
I ndia
M alay s ia
M exic o
O man
R us s ia
S yria
U SA
Is oil
production
reaching its
peak? US
production is
decreasing at
~ 8% per
year.
World Oil Production
80,000
Thousands of BBL/Day
75,000
70,000
65,000
60,000
55,000
50,000
45,000
40,000
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
Year
Its difficult to tell when the peak in production will
occur because reserves are kept secret.
Oil prices rose >20% 38% in the last
year, and doubled almost tripled since
2003.
CONSIDER a product, A, with an ERoEI of P.
If A is a crop, and we assume that no other
primary energy sources are available, then
ALL energy needed to produce A must come
from A.
The number of acres required to produce a
unit of energy must also include the acres
needed to produce that crop, and the acres
needed to produce that energy, and so on.
ERoEI = 4
TOTAL AREA REQUIRED
TO SUPPLY A: 1.33 A
Energy A
Energy A
B
needed to
produce A
B
needed to
produce A
ERoEI =0.6
TOTAL AREA REQUIRED
TO SUPPLY A: INFINITE
C
needed
to
produce
B
C
needed
to
produce
B
Energy Density Isn’t Everything
How will people in cities get food?
Who will rescue refugees if the crisis is global?
Who controls the oil reserves? Much is controlled
by NATIONAL oil companies - countries that
aren't very stable and don't like us much.
ERoEI is often difficult to calculate, and it
changes with the environment.
Proponents of particular fuels routinely
calculate high ERoEI values, while
detractors calculate low values.
If we ASSUME that the ERoEI is infinite that NO energy is required to produce the
product - we can look at the BEST
POSSIBLE conditions for use of that
product.
As we will see, the best possible may not
be good enough…
This is a power series.
If one energy unit is required for consumption
How much energy must be harvested? (TR)=TA?
TR= Total Required
NE= Net Energy = Energy out – Energy in
P=ERoEI
ERoEI~Net energy +1

TA  E * G *  P
n
n 0
1
TA  E * G *
1 1
P
NE
TR 
NE 1
Overview
• Hawaii’s Energy Situation: Dependence on Oil
• Oil Demand: Worldwide Competition for Oil
• Oil Supplies: Are We Running Out?
• What’s Driving High Prices?
• Oil – Issues and Implications for Hawaii
• Some Energy and Policy Options for Strategic
Change of Hawaii’s Energy Situation
Petroleum Consumption
Sectors
Hawaii – 2003
Other 14%
U.S. Average – 2002
Air Transport 31%
Other 30%
Electric
Utilities
2%
Electric
Utilities
26%
Ground & Water
Transport
29%
Air Transport 9%
Ground & Water
Transport
59%
Sources: State of Hawaii – DBEDT, 2004; and U.S. Energy Information Administration, State Energy Data Report, 2002 (Latest).
Electricity Generation by Source
2003
United States
Hawaii
PV
0.02%
Other RE
2%
Oil
3%
Geothermal
1.67%
Hydro
7%
Solar WH
1.62%
Wind
0.11%
MSW
3.50%
Bagasse
0.65%
Hydro
0.53%
Nuclear
20%
Coal
15.52%
Coal
51%
Oil
76.38%
Nat. Gas
17%
Source: USEIA
Sources: HECO and KIUC RPS Reports, FERC Form 1
or Annual Reports to PUC, and IPP reports to US EIA
Nonconventional Oil Reserves
• Oil, or “tar” sands
• Ultra-heavy oils
• Gas-to-liquids technologies
• Coal-to-liquids technologies
• Shale oil
Global Trends in Crude Oil Quality
1.45
API Gravity, Degrees
34.5
Sulfur
34.0
1.33
API Gravity
33.5
33.0
1.21
32.5
32.0
1.09
31.5
31.0
0.97
Sulfur Content, Wt %
35.0
30.5
2001
1999
1997
1995
1993
1991
1989
1987
1985
1983
0.85
1981
30.0
Sources: J. Shore, World Fuel Conference, in State of Hawaii DBEDT -- September 2003.
• few of us would trade the comforts
and freedoms we enjoy today for
life as a serf on a baronial estate,
or even for the pre-electricity, prepetroleum life of a mid-nineteenthcentury farmer.
Consider hydrogen
“The hydrogen promises a cleaner, less
fossil fuel dependent future. Having a
hydrogen economy means first that cars will
be using fuel cells or hydrogen-powered
internal combustion engines that create zero
greenhouse gases, zero pollution and provide
more energy than the current fossil fuels.”
The ECONOMIC ARGUMENT:
MAYBE, but the problems associated with
exploiting these resources include
- high cost of production
- high carbon release
danger of climate change
- requirement for large amounts of water
- heavy pollution, environmental damage
“There's almost certainly enough coal
left for us to do the atmosphere (and
by extension, ourselves) serious
damage. But the really epic crash may
not be in the climate, it may be in
human civilization, which is by now
entirely dependent for its growth and
complexity on relatively cheap,
relatively abundant fossil fuels. The
absence of extreme global warming
will be of little comfort if we end up in a
post-apocalyptic Mad Max hellscape.”
Net Energy  Energy Recovered - Energy Invested
Energy invested includes all energy required for
production of the product:
mining
construction
farm equipment
It does NOT include
fertilizer
the energy inherent in
insecticides
the fuel - such as the
irrigation
energy supplied by
harvesting
the sun or wind.
transportation
refining, etc.
One estimate is that a stable huntergatherer group needs a source of energy
with a net energy ~10.
Technological cultures likely need even
more.
If your primary energy source has a net
energy of 1.0, then you need to find twice
as much of that energy than you actually
need, since much of the energy you
produce must be used to produce more.
1) OAHU ELECTRICITY:
HECO needs the capacity to generate 1,800
MW of electricity to satisfy Oahu's current
peak demand.
2) TRANSPORTATION:
• cars and trucks
• A 747 burns about 1 gallon of jet fuel per
second. 850 aircraft/day
• A container ship burns 260 barrels of heavy
fuel oil per day.
A container ship uses the energy equivalent of
247 acres of sugar cane to go from California to
Hawaii.
United 747
Airplanes that bring our tourists to Hawaii
and keep the economy going use large
amounts of petroleum.
Are we ready for a world
without cheap energy?
• Could this be a serious threat to
modern human civilization?
• Without oil, can the current
population be supported?
• Should we have begun planning
decades ago?
• Is it too late?
Global Energy Sources
86%