Oil and gas are used for much more than just transportation. For example, natural gas is the primary ingredient in agricultural fertilizers so a portion of all gas is used for that purpose. Some of the energy from wells has to be used to drill new wells, fabricate and transport pumping equipment to new wells, and also to pump the oil out of the ground. Ten percent of the crude oil is used in fact to keep oil flowing. This naturally leads to the concept of ERoI (energy returned on investment). That is, what percentage of the amount of inherent energy available can be used after it is extracted and refined. Throughout much of the 20th century, oil had an ERoI of 100, meaning one barrel of oil had to be expended at the well head for every 100 barrels produced. There were 99 of every 100 barrels available for other uses. Today, the ERoI is approaching 10 for the US and the ERoI number continues to fall. I created a graphic from the data contained in a paper by Hall, Lambert, and Balogh (2014, Energy Policy, 64, 141). The graphic illustrates most of the oil energy pumped from Earth’s crust is actually used for purposes other than as a fuel for cars, trucks, planes, and ships. The drop in ERoI from the 20th to the 21st century, for example, now means 10 of every 100 barrels is used just to extract the oil. Another 10 barrels is used to refine the crude oil into useful products with 17 more being used to create petrochemicals such as plastics, pharmaceuticals, and agricultural herbicides and pesticides. When another 5 barrels are consumed in transporting the fuels and byproducts to the points of use, we have already used up 42 of the original 100 barrels pumped at the wellhead. But that’s not the end of the story. Another 37.5 barrels are used to build and maintain roads, to manufacture cars, planes, and other durable goods (refrigerators, large appliances). What is leftover for transportation fuels 20.5 barrels from every 100 barrels.

I am a big fan of renewables. However, those who advocate for renewables (solar PV or wind power) should note there are no silver bullets, no technological fixes to allow society to continue living as we have. The ERoI for solar PV or wind power are ~8-10 and 18, respectively, but reduce to 6 and 10 if battery backups are used. Both power sources are intermittent and all forms of power storage (e.g. batteries, pumped hydro., etc.) collectively are ten-thousand times too small to meet current needs. (Bio-fuels and hydrogen cells have ERoI’s of ~1 so these are of little use.) One way or another, humanity will be forced into a 100% conversion to renewables, but even if we had been building renewables on a massive scale for decades, there still would have been much less energy than available today and it will be intermittent.

The grid itself presents another major technological challenge. Currently, electrical grids lose approximately 40% of the power generated to transmission losses. There will have to be a 4-fold increase in the capacity of the power grid if it’s to handle the increased needs for manufacturing and to replace cars and trucks with electric vehicles. Such an increase in grid capacity would cost $1-2 trillion in the US alone and the consumption of huge amounts of fossil fuels. Then, there is the problem of petrochemicals made from fossil fuels. When fossil fuels become too expensive to extract there will be significant reduction (factors of 2) in food production and there will be very few medicines produced.

All industrialized nations have experienced huge increases in debt relative to GDPs, most have ballooned to 3x GDP with two-thirds of it private debt. These countries including the citizenry are essentially bankrupt, which will become apparent during the next recession. These countries are in no position to make huge investments in the conversion to renewables or to expand their electrical grids. There is no alternative but to crash economically without hope of recovering to our good ol’ glory days.