Energy: Crisis or Opportunity?

From the dawn of civilisation energy use has been the most important single material factor influencing man’s activities, ranging from physical comfort and food supplies, to every type of economic achievement. Without the use of energy the quality of life can hardly rise above subsistence level, or the necessities for bare survival. This fact is today readily apparent in many communities of the Third World.

By 1973,36 per cent of the world’s oil was supplied by the Middle East countries since oil from that quarter was more abundant and cheaper to produce than other known sources. Historically, however, the region has always been riddled with political and cultural tensions. As the result of Egypt crossing the Suez Canal and attacking Israel on 6 October 1973, which led to the Yom Kippur War, many countries in the industrial world had their oil supplies curtailed and by the following year oil prices had quadrupled. By mid-1980 the price of crude oil had risen nearly twelvefold. To what extent did the 1973 ‘oil crisis’ prove a turning point or watershed in the history of energy use, and how did the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War affect energy policy not only in the U.K. but throughout the world?

Oil is found in the world’s sedimentary basins and is widely believed to have been generated from countless millions of marine organisms which lived in the shallow waters surrounding pre-historic land masses. Through time, these drifted down to the sea-bed where the fatty acids contained in the organisms were transformed to a proto-petroleum product through bacteriological reduction. Probably through continuous and prolonged geothermal heating, this proto-petroleum was later transformed into the crude oil and natural gas we now know. In certain areas where porous rock was covered by impervious rocks such as salt or clay, the oil and gas gradually collected in these reservoirs.

Though the fuel is now far less familiar a sight than it was a generation ago, coal is well known as a blackish rock hewn out of the depths of the earth or — if we are luckier — from near the surface. Rich in carbon, this rock is combustible. It is not a single mineral but a range of natural solids varying in composition. The complete range is broadly taken to extend from peat, through brown coal, lignite and bituminous coal to anthracite.

Nuclear energy is the most concentrated form of energy in use today. In the social sphere, the control of nuclear energy is no less concentrated. The two go together and any worthwhile discussion must cover both aspects.

Current world energy consumption is around 3.5 × 10²⁰ J per year. The solar radiation reaching the earth’s upper atmosphere has an intensity of around 13001400 W/m². Not all of this reaches the earth’s surface but even so the energy from the sun received at the earth amounts to some tens of thousands of the world’s energy requirements for a given period. Clearly there is the potential for solar energy to supply some, if not all, of our energy demand. However, the low power density and intermittent nature of solar radiation makes collection, conversion, and storage a challenge.

Biomass is the generic term given to dry plant materials and organic wastes. It is also used to describe vegetation and wastes that are subsequently used for conversion into fuel. All biomass products are originally derived from photosynthesis and are potential sources of energy. For centuries biomass has been used by man in the form of wood and charcoal. The fossil fuels oil, coal, gas and peat were also once biomass, transformed over hundreds of thousands of years by natural geological forces and micro-organisms.

By harnessing the small temperature differences between the warm surface of the ocean and the cooler deep water, energy can be generated using a heat engine. Although technically possible, at the present time (1984) no commercial system is yet operational. Views also differ on the projected generation costs.

Conservation was practised throughout history until the second half of the twentieth century. Most civilisations reclaimed, recycled and re-used materials. Old ships’ timbers were preserved to build houses and barns; rags were used in the paper industry; organic wastes were spread on the land as fertiliser. As industrialisation progressed with cheap and abundant energy and materials, conservationist habits were gradually abandoned in favour of manufacture using virgin raw materials. These were often imported relatively cheaply and avoided the more expensive labour costs incurred by reclaiming and sorting used materials before recycling. Increasingly too, as both social and industrial structures developed towards specialisation, they became more energy-intensive and the overall use of energy became more profligate and more prone to promoting wasteful practices. Also, after the 1950s accelerating changes in new product design and concepts such as built-in obsolescence to guarantee continuous markets for replacements were introduced to stimulate demand and increase production. The increasing throughput of materials, in turn, led to higher overall energy consumption, the creation of additional waste and further pressure on reserves. Before the 1973 oil crisis some people were becoming alarmed by these runaway trends in energy consumption and waste. Some of the ‘prophets of doom’ as they were then labelled, came from within the oil companies themselves but, on the whole, up to the 1970s such critics were associated with the antipollution or anti-industry movements.

By far the most critical energy problems of today are those that confront certain countries of the Third World, this being the generic term covering the world’s poorest nations. It includes countries of Latin America and the more recently independent states of Africa and Asia. The other two ‘Worlds’ are the Western World (Western Europe, the U.S.A., Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa), and the Communist World which includes those countries with centrally planned economies such as the Warsaw Pact nations and China.

Previous chapters have attempted to evaluate our current and future energy options. They have also described the immense changes that have taken place in energy-supply patterns in different countries over the past few years, more especially since 1973. It was then first generally realised that: oil and natural gas could not indefinitely supply two-thirds of the world’s commercial-energy needs; reserves were limited; and within 50 years they could run out. Consequently, in most industrialised countries a substantial switch to fuels other than oil and gas has recently taken place. The coal industry is again expanding steadily despite the CO₂ build-up and acid rain for which it is partly responsible, and vigorous investment has been undertaken in the nuclear industries notwithstanding the unresolved safety and environmental problems. Considerable interest has also been shown in conservation and renewable-energy sources and in the development of synthetic fuels. At last there is some consensus that unless new patterns of energy use are quickly established, new forms of fuel developed and world energy-demand stabilised, an ‘energy gap’ will inevitably occur at some unspecified date in the future. Unless bridged, this could undermine the whole structure of society as we know it, affecting both the industrialised and Third World countries. Every country that has not secured its own long-term indigenous fuel supplies could face the crippling hardship currently experienced by many poorer countries. The supposed ‘energy affluence’ of the early-1980s in the rich countries is as misleading as the frequent abundance of fruit before a tree dies.