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Life after Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy
This book is a reality check of where energy will come from in the future. Today, our economy is utterly dependent on fossil fuels. They are essential to transportation, manufacturing, farming, electricity, and to make fertilizers, cement, steel, roads, cars, and half a million other products.
One day, sooner or later, fossil fuels will no longer be abundant and affordable. Inevitably, one day, global oil production will decline. That time may be nearer than we realize. Some experts predict oil shortages as soon as 2022 to 2030. What then are our options for replacing the fossil fuels that turn the great wheel of civilization?
Surveying the arsenal of alternatives – wind, solar, hydrogen, geothermal, nuclear, batteries, catenary systems, fusion, methane hydrates, power2gas, wave, tidal power and biomass – this book examines whether they can replace or supplement fossil fuels.
The book also looks at substitute energy sources from the standpoint of the energy users. Manufacturing, which uses half of fossil fuels, often requires very high heat, which in many cases electricity can't provide. Industry uses fossil fuels as a feedstock for countless products, and must find substitutes. And, as detailed in the author's previous book, "When Trucks Stop Energy and the Future of Transportation," ships, locomotives, and heavy-duty trucks are fueled by diesel. What can replace diesel?
Taking off the rose-colored glasses, author Alice Friedemann analyzes our options. What alternatives should we deploy right now? Which technologies merit further research and development? Which are mere wishful thinking that, upon careful scrutiny, dematerialize before our eyes?
Fossil fuels have allowed billions of us to live like kings. Fueled by oil, coal, and natural gas, we changed the equation constraining the carrying capacity of our planet. As fossil fuels peak and then decline, will we fall back to Earth? Are there viable alternatives?
One day, sooner or later, fossil fuels will no longer be abundant and affordable. Inevitably, one day, global oil production will decline. That time may be nearer than we realize. Some experts predict oil shortages as soon as 2022 to 2030. What then are our options for replacing the fossil fuels that turn the great wheel of civilization?
Surveying the arsenal of alternatives – wind, solar, hydrogen, geothermal, nuclear, batteries, catenary systems, fusion, methane hydrates, power2gas, wave, tidal power and biomass – this book examines whether they can replace or supplement fossil fuels.
The book also looks at substitute energy sources from the standpoint of the energy users. Manufacturing, which uses half of fossil fuels, often requires very high heat, which in many cases electricity can't provide. Industry uses fossil fuels as a feedstock for countless products, and must find substitutes. And, as detailed in the author's previous book, "When Trucks Stop Energy and the Future of Transportation," ships, locomotives, and heavy-duty trucks are fueled by diesel. What can replace diesel?
Taking off the rose-colored glasses, author Alice Friedemann analyzes our options. What alternatives should we deploy right now? Which technologies merit further research and development? Which are mere wishful thinking that, upon careful scrutiny, dematerialize before our eyes?
Fossil fuels have allowed billions of us to live like kings. Fueled by oil, coal, and natural gas, we changed the equation constraining the carrying capacity of our planet. As fossil fuels peak and then decline, will we fall back to Earth? Are there viable alternatives?
- GenresSocietyNonfictionScience
205 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 29, 2021
3 people are currently reading
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May 22, 2021
In 2020, Jeff Gibbs’ documentary Planet of the Humans fell out of the sky. It aimed a spotlight on the many ways in which solar and wind power were neither green nor renewable — no free pony. In response, many “green” activists explosively soiled their britches and demanded that the film be banned. Millions watched it. Similarly, in 2021, Derrick Jensen and team published Bright Green Lies, which was soon followed by a documentary based on the book.
These two projects were righteous fire-breathing exposés of the deceptions regularly made by folks promoting “green” technologies. Passionate preaching can often get some folks to listen. Sometimes it inspires minds to change. Other folks prefer to have deeper understanding before revising their views. Alice Friedemann’s book, Life After Fossil Fuels, will appeal to them.
Without rage and condemnation, she calmly and carefully described why she thinks we would be wise to end our addiction to fossil fuels as soon as possible. She evaluated the alternatives, and concluded that most are not free ponies. Importantly, she carefully explained the benefits, limits, and faults of the various options, and meticulously cited the sources of her information — literally hundreds of them.
Readers are introduced to the notion that alternative energy is not the magic key to a sustainable utopian wonderland. The status quo is a high speed, ridiculously luxurious, one-way path into dark and treacherous realms. We’ve been living like scruffy back alley gods on drugs. The good news here is that no “green” solution can permanently keep the massively destructive status quo on life support — it’s going to end up where it’s headed. “We are nearing the end of a one-time binge.” Indeed!
So, my eyes began tap-dancing across page 1, and I was soon scrolling through a thrilling 86-page joyride. Friedemann presented an informative and embarrassing birds-and-bees discussion of the horrific unintended consequences of our childlike obsession with living like crazy dysfunctional grownups. I cheered with excitement with each new chapter. It was so refreshing to experience such a sumptuous feast of clear and coherent bullshit free information.
Readers are introduced to the important notion of EROI (energy returned on energy invested). Each year it’s taking more and more energy to find, extract, process, and distribute fossil energy. Imagine having a job that paid $100 per day, but the bridge toll for getting to work was $99. For this reason, enormous amounts of fossil energy will remain in the ground forever, thank goodness! About 65 percent of buried oil is technically or economically unrecoverable.
The fracking industry is drilling like crazy, while more and more unlucky tycoons land with a splat in the tar pits of bankruptcy. The richest discoveries were drilled and drained first. “Globally, new oil discoveries have fallen for 6 years, with consumption of oil six times greater than discoveries from 2013 through 2019.” Trouble ahead.
In manufacturing, would it be possible to eliminate fossil energy by switching to wood-based fuel? Take a wild guess. Can we continue producing mountains of food when energy-guzzling synthetic fertilizers have become fond memories of the good old days? Can industrial agriculture continue when energy-guzzling farm equipment runs out of affordable fossil energy to guzzle? Will high speed horse carts haul fresh California veggies to Minnesota?
Can industrial civilization exist without energy-guzzling fleets of ships, planes, trains, and trucks? “In the U.S., trucks deliver 80% of goods over 4.1 million miles of roads, with 80% of towns completely dependent on trucks.” Can transportation systems shift to electric power? “A truck with a driving range of 600 miles needs a battery pack weighing 35,275 pounds and can carry just 10,000 pounds.” Oh, and cold weather reduces driving range by 35%.
“All contraptions that produce electricity need high heat in their construction. They all need cement made at 2600°F.” There is no known way to make concrete with electricity. Making steel for wind turbines requires 3100°F (1700°C). “Solar panels require 2700° to 3600°F (1500° to 2000°C) of heat to transform silicon dioxide into metallurgical grade silicon.” Nuke plants still on the drawing board, in theory, might be able to generate 1562°F (850°C), but this is not hot enough for making cement, steel, glass, and lots of other stuff.
Friedemann’s key question is: could life as we know it continue in an alternative energy future? By chapter 13, all contestants for powering a happy sustainable future were rejected, except one — biomass. Prior to the fossil fuel era, heavy industry was powered by charcoal made from dead trees. Brazil is still making steel with rainforest charcoal.
“Biomass is the only renewable energy source that can generate the high heat needed by industry to make cement, iron, steel, aluminum, trucks, computers, electronic equipment, ceramics, bricks, and machinery. Biodiesel is the only renewable drop-in fuel that can keep heavy-duty trucks, locomotives, and ships running. Biomass, with a little help from hydropower, is the only renewable way to keep the electric grid up.”
Yikes! This spooky paragraph sent a cold chill through my body. Weird chapters followed. I began to wonder if I had just wasted two entire days of the only life I may ever live. But, by this point, I was aware that Friedemann had a whimsical side, so I kept reading, hoping for a sharp turn. It came later. Act two of the book was focused on contemplating how we could produce enough biomass to power industrial civilization, and prepare to feed the 3 billion additional folks expected for dinner in 2050. Hope fiends will have a good cry.
Bummers obstructing the rise of a biomass utopia include climate change, freshwater scarcity, brutalized topsoil, and our addiction to countless fossil powered processes. Turning biomass into a liquid fuel known as ethanol is idiotic. Trucks can’t guzzle it, and it refuses to be pumped through pipelines. It takes about as much energy to make a gallon as the finished gallon contains. (Ethanol is a monster child fathered by gold plated government subsidies to Big Ag.)
The bummer parade is long and unusual. Make biodiesel with algae? Make ethanol with seaweed, sorghum, or corn stalks? Biodiesel could indeed replace oil-based diesel, if we were able to produce it in high volume. This would require enormous amounts of cropland, and it would pummel the land as much as other types of agriculture. If climate shifts blindside farm country, game over.
Bottom line: “The electric grid can not stay up without natural gas due to a lack of energy storage. Transportation, agriculture, and manufacturing can not be electrified. If transportation can not be electrified or run on Something Else, civilization as we know it ends. Agriculture goes back to horses and human labor.” When readers finally reach chapter 33 and slither across the finish line, their brains have been reduced to a bucketful of steaming glop. It doesn’t look like we’re on the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City. The sky is full of flying monkeys. What a book!
The pisser here is that this very important book is sold by a textbook publisher, and it’s very expensive. It won’t be able to catch much of a ride on the wave of interest generated by Gibbs, Jensen, and others. Its modest collegiate audience is mostly the well-dressed offspring of the idle rich, and desperate students who are massively in debt. Non-billionaires may need to rob a gas station, or get a library card.
The bigger pisser is that every 12 year old doesn’t know this stuff already. Maybe it would be polite to inform youngsters about the challenging future they have inherited. I hope that Friedemann is busy working on something like a Dick and Jane primer for school kids — an affordable, competent, un-redacted, easy to read, mind-expanding introduction to actual reality, warts and all. Imagine that.
NOTE TO ALL: Alice Friedemann has made THIS ENTIRE BOOK AVAILABLE ONLINE FOR FREE on her website:
https://energyskeptic.com
These two projects were righteous fire-breathing exposés of the deceptions regularly made by folks promoting “green” technologies. Passionate preaching can often get some folks to listen. Sometimes it inspires minds to change. Other folks prefer to have deeper understanding before revising their views. Alice Friedemann’s book, Life After Fossil Fuels, will appeal to them.
Without rage and condemnation, she calmly and carefully described why she thinks we would be wise to end our addiction to fossil fuels as soon as possible. She evaluated the alternatives, and concluded that most are not free ponies. Importantly, she carefully explained the benefits, limits, and faults of the various options, and meticulously cited the sources of her information — literally hundreds of them.
Readers are introduced to the notion that alternative energy is not the magic key to a sustainable utopian wonderland. The status quo is a high speed, ridiculously luxurious, one-way path into dark and treacherous realms. We’ve been living like scruffy back alley gods on drugs. The good news here is that no “green” solution can permanently keep the massively destructive status quo on life support — it’s going to end up where it’s headed. “We are nearing the end of a one-time binge.” Indeed!
So, my eyes began tap-dancing across page 1, and I was soon scrolling through a thrilling 86-page joyride. Friedemann presented an informative and embarrassing birds-and-bees discussion of the horrific unintended consequences of our childlike obsession with living like crazy dysfunctional grownups. I cheered with excitement with each new chapter. It was so refreshing to experience such a sumptuous feast of clear and coherent bullshit free information.
Readers are introduced to the important notion of EROI (energy returned on energy invested). Each year it’s taking more and more energy to find, extract, process, and distribute fossil energy. Imagine having a job that paid $100 per day, but the bridge toll for getting to work was $99. For this reason, enormous amounts of fossil energy will remain in the ground forever, thank goodness! About 65 percent of buried oil is technically or economically unrecoverable.
The fracking industry is drilling like crazy, while more and more unlucky tycoons land with a splat in the tar pits of bankruptcy. The richest discoveries were drilled and drained first. “Globally, new oil discoveries have fallen for 6 years, with consumption of oil six times greater than discoveries from 2013 through 2019.” Trouble ahead.
In manufacturing, would it be possible to eliminate fossil energy by switching to wood-based fuel? Take a wild guess. Can we continue producing mountains of food when energy-guzzling synthetic fertilizers have become fond memories of the good old days? Can industrial agriculture continue when energy-guzzling farm equipment runs out of affordable fossil energy to guzzle? Will high speed horse carts haul fresh California veggies to Minnesota?
Can industrial civilization exist without energy-guzzling fleets of ships, planes, trains, and trucks? “In the U.S., trucks deliver 80% of goods over 4.1 million miles of roads, with 80% of towns completely dependent on trucks.” Can transportation systems shift to electric power? “A truck with a driving range of 600 miles needs a battery pack weighing 35,275 pounds and can carry just 10,000 pounds.” Oh, and cold weather reduces driving range by 35%.
“All contraptions that produce electricity need high heat in their construction. They all need cement made at 2600°F.” There is no known way to make concrete with electricity. Making steel for wind turbines requires 3100°F (1700°C). “Solar panels require 2700° to 3600°F (1500° to 2000°C) of heat to transform silicon dioxide into metallurgical grade silicon.” Nuke plants still on the drawing board, in theory, might be able to generate 1562°F (850°C), but this is not hot enough for making cement, steel, glass, and lots of other stuff.
Friedemann’s key question is: could life as we know it continue in an alternative energy future? By chapter 13, all contestants for powering a happy sustainable future were rejected, except one — biomass. Prior to the fossil fuel era, heavy industry was powered by charcoal made from dead trees. Brazil is still making steel with rainforest charcoal.
“Biomass is the only renewable energy source that can generate the high heat needed by industry to make cement, iron, steel, aluminum, trucks, computers, electronic equipment, ceramics, bricks, and machinery. Biodiesel is the only renewable drop-in fuel that can keep heavy-duty trucks, locomotives, and ships running. Biomass, with a little help from hydropower, is the only renewable way to keep the electric grid up.”
Yikes! This spooky paragraph sent a cold chill through my body. Weird chapters followed. I began to wonder if I had just wasted two entire days of the only life I may ever live. But, by this point, I was aware that Friedemann had a whimsical side, so I kept reading, hoping for a sharp turn. It came later. Act two of the book was focused on contemplating how we could produce enough biomass to power industrial civilization, and prepare to feed the 3 billion additional folks expected for dinner in 2050. Hope fiends will have a good cry.
Bummers obstructing the rise of a biomass utopia include climate change, freshwater scarcity, brutalized topsoil, and our addiction to countless fossil powered processes. Turning biomass into a liquid fuel known as ethanol is idiotic. Trucks can’t guzzle it, and it refuses to be pumped through pipelines. It takes about as much energy to make a gallon as the finished gallon contains. (Ethanol is a monster child fathered by gold plated government subsidies to Big Ag.)
The bummer parade is long and unusual. Make biodiesel with algae? Make ethanol with seaweed, sorghum, or corn stalks? Biodiesel could indeed replace oil-based diesel, if we were able to produce it in high volume. This would require enormous amounts of cropland, and it would pummel the land as much as other types of agriculture. If climate shifts blindside farm country, game over.
Bottom line: “The electric grid can not stay up without natural gas due to a lack of energy storage. Transportation, agriculture, and manufacturing can not be electrified. If transportation can not be electrified or run on Something Else, civilization as we know it ends. Agriculture goes back to horses and human labor.” When readers finally reach chapter 33 and slither across the finish line, their brains have been reduced to a bucketful of steaming glop. It doesn’t look like we’re on the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City. The sky is full of flying monkeys. What a book!
The pisser here is that this very important book is sold by a textbook publisher, and it’s very expensive. It won’t be able to catch much of a ride on the wave of interest generated by Gibbs, Jensen, and others. Its modest collegiate audience is mostly the well-dressed offspring of the idle rich, and desperate students who are massively in debt. Non-billionaires may need to rob a gas station, or get a library card.
The bigger pisser is that every 12 year old doesn’t know this stuff already. Maybe it would be polite to inform youngsters about the challenging future they have inherited. I hope that Friedemann is busy working on something like a Dick and Jane primer for school kids — an affordable, competent, un-redacted, easy to read, mind-expanding introduction to actual reality, warts and all. Imagine that.
NOTE TO ALL: Alice Friedemann has made THIS ENTIRE BOOK AVAILABLE ONLINE FOR FREE on her website:
https://energyskeptic.com
May 17, 2021
One of the essential web sites for those interested in issues of energy and climate is Alice Friedemann’s Energy Skeptic (www.energyskeptic.com) at which she presents detailed, meticulously researched and referenced evaluations of energy and environmental issues and extensive summaries and reviews of key books in the field. Alice focuses very much on the ecological crises that we face through our use of fossil fuels, and on issues arising from constraints in their supply and declining energy return on energy invested (EROEI).
In addition to the blog, Alice writes books on the same topic. Her 2016 book “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation” explored the dependence of transportation, especially freight transport, on petroleum and the difficulties that will be encountered in trying to substitute alternative energy sources for oil. In ‘Life After Fossil Fuels’ she develops further the arguments in ‘When Trucks Stop Running’, extending the analysis to issues of manufacturing and materials, among others, and providing in particular a detailed evaluation of the possibilities of using biomass and biofuels and a substitute for fossil fuels.
Life After Fossil Fuels is a relatively short book at about 200 pages, and comprises 33 easy to read chapters, each typically 4 or 5 pages excluding the extensive references that are provided throughout. It is written in an accessible style, for a general reader. Friedemann first explains how we use fossil fuels in today’s societies, how it follows from a dependence on wood before fossil fuel use began in earnest, and the predicament that we face as supply and/or demand falls, especially of oil. She notes the current very strong interest in the impacts of fossil fuel use of climate, but stresses that she sees constraints in the supply of fuels (and other resources) as a challenge of similar magnitude. She then explores the potential for alternative sources of energy for those aspects of our lives and economies currently dependent on fossil fuels, especially including transportation, manufacturing and materials production. She concludes that for many applications (especially long-distance transportation and materials) the most suitable substitute is biomass, which she then proceeds to damn with faint praise, exploring in a number of chapters the challenges of the various bio fuels and other biomass alternatives from corn ethanol and wood gas to algae and kelp derived fuels. While biomass and biofuels may be the most suitable substitute for fossil fuels, it is clear that they will not be available in quantities necessary to maintain our current energy debauchery.
Life After Fossil Fuels is not an optimistic book. At the end, Friedemann states “This book essentially is a reality check of where energy will come from in the future. It has not been an easy read”. She concludes that “The best way to manage our energy decline is to accept its inevitability and to embrace the challenge of transitioning to a simpler world”, suggesting that one of the few up sides may be that reduced supplies of fossil fuels will pull us back from the most pessimistic predictions of greenhouse gas emissions. Freidemann makes her case well, supporting each chapter with numerous references. Whether or not you share her pessimism, her message is an important one that deserves widespread discussion and debate.
In the final chapter, Friedemann makes suggestions for what a simpler world might look like: radical changes in transportation, in our cities and economies, conservation of farmland and more diverse agriculture, planting of trees, planting of wetlands and more. In this regard Friedemann is another voice calling for a simplification, a pulling back from endless growth. Perhaps as we emerge from the restrictions imposed by Covid there might be a more widespread enthusiasm for adopting such an approach but on recent experience it does not seem to be likely.
In addition to the blog, Alice writes books on the same topic. Her 2016 book “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation” explored the dependence of transportation, especially freight transport, on petroleum and the difficulties that will be encountered in trying to substitute alternative energy sources for oil. In ‘Life After Fossil Fuels’ she develops further the arguments in ‘When Trucks Stop Running’, extending the analysis to issues of manufacturing and materials, among others, and providing in particular a detailed evaluation of the possibilities of using biomass and biofuels and a substitute for fossil fuels.
Life After Fossil Fuels is a relatively short book at about 200 pages, and comprises 33 easy to read chapters, each typically 4 or 5 pages excluding the extensive references that are provided throughout. It is written in an accessible style, for a general reader. Friedemann first explains how we use fossil fuels in today’s societies, how it follows from a dependence on wood before fossil fuel use began in earnest, and the predicament that we face as supply and/or demand falls, especially of oil. She notes the current very strong interest in the impacts of fossil fuel use of climate, but stresses that she sees constraints in the supply of fuels (and other resources) as a challenge of similar magnitude. She then explores the potential for alternative sources of energy for those aspects of our lives and economies currently dependent on fossil fuels, especially including transportation, manufacturing and materials production. She concludes that for many applications (especially long-distance transportation and materials) the most suitable substitute is biomass, which she then proceeds to damn with faint praise, exploring in a number of chapters the challenges of the various bio fuels and other biomass alternatives from corn ethanol and wood gas to algae and kelp derived fuels. While biomass and biofuels may be the most suitable substitute for fossil fuels, it is clear that they will not be available in quantities necessary to maintain our current energy debauchery.
Life After Fossil Fuels is not an optimistic book. At the end, Friedemann states “This book essentially is a reality check of where energy will come from in the future. It has not been an easy read”. She concludes that “The best way to manage our energy decline is to accept its inevitability and to embrace the challenge of transitioning to a simpler world”, suggesting that one of the few up sides may be that reduced supplies of fossil fuels will pull us back from the most pessimistic predictions of greenhouse gas emissions. Freidemann makes her case well, supporting each chapter with numerous references. Whether or not you share her pessimism, her message is an important one that deserves widespread discussion and debate.
In the final chapter, Friedemann makes suggestions for what a simpler world might look like: radical changes in transportation, in our cities and economies, conservation of farmland and more diverse agriculture, planting of trees, planting of wetlands and more. In this regard Friedemann is another voice calling for a simplification, a pulling back from endless growth. Perhaps as we emerge from the restrictions imposed by Covid there might be a more widespread enthusiasm for adopting such an approach but on recent experience it does not seem to be likely.
May 20, 2022
No matter the fact of its accurate representation of the energy crisis, the unbiased point of view in some areas and the broad list of provided valid references the book seems to be a bit too negative and criticizes society and humankind too much on how it handles the approaching energy and climate problem. Moreover, in my personal opinion, some of the suggested so-called "energy crisis solutions" are in fact not that useful and valid at all, especially biomass-based diesel engines and natality. Regardless of the afore short critique, the book deserves to be read and would broaden everyone's understanding of the energy-climate crisis, and with that, it deserves a three-star rating.
December 2, 2022
Excellent book, really knows her stuff, breaks down why a whole slew of so called renewables are not worth while, and shows than basically wood and hydroelectric are only things viable, and we should stop all the other nonesense and start growing forests.
Love it, worth archiving. Help future generations avoid the silliness.
Love it, worth archiving. Help future generations avoid the silliness.
February 3, 2022
a really long-winded way of saying the world is built on fossil fuels, and when we run out wood will be the future because the alternatives suck. honestly skipped half of it because reading about how all the different permutations of biofuels aren't going to replace oil and gas put me to sleep
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews