by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) … But is the real RINsanity the focus on RINsanity itself?
We might be more focused on the insanely huge amounts of energy demand that are coming, and what the heck we are going to about it, regardless of how you feel about climate change, the shale gas revolution, or the joys of electric vehicles.
Consider, ahem, the math.
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Here in the US, it is fair to say that not everyone feels replete with energy supply at affordable prices. Most families and businesses feel constrained to some extent by the cost and availability of energy. We have to double the 100-energy supply to make us all feel energy replete.
Now go a step farther, and give everyone that lifestyle. That is, not only the West — but Burundi, Brazil, Indonesia, India and all the other energy-consuming nations.
Now, go a step father and add in the impact of population increase — and the global population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050.
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the world needs 6000 quads of energy.
Translated into the fuel sector, that would be translating today’s 1.2 trillion gallons of petroleum into something around 18 trillion. Talk down those numbers — on the economics — and you’ll get no argument from the Digest. But anything short of 18 trillion is a world where someone feels short on energy. And if you’ve spent any time in a gasoline line, after a hurricane or in the midst of a supply disruption — and you know what being short-changed on energy feels like. Senator Charles Grassley said that any civilization is just nine meals from a revolution.
Let’s put the US proved reserves in that context. The EIA estimates these to be 218 billion barrels. Those would cover a shortfall in current supply, vs 2050 demand — for six months.
Six months! Then it’s all gone.
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It is not the case that sugar-based feedstocks are doomed, or gasification can’t deliver affordable fuel. Everything based on sufficiently cheap feedstocks works — and, in sharply constrained markets, that where we find out what cheap really is.
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Think of it this way — anything that competes effectively with $125 oil is probably cheap enough. Why? In a brief note from Liam Denning in this week’s Wall Street Journal, he noted that $125 per barrel, for Brent crude, is described as the “demand destruction” tipping point, where rising energy prices cause consumption to actively taper off.
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We need economic drivers that get more acute, not less acute, when hard times come.
That is supply itself. There’s not enough. We need more. We’ve seen the same shale gas reports that everyone else has — and interviewed many of the key players.
There still isn’t enough energy. Not near enough. READ MORE