A New Energy Paradigm for the 21st Century.

• Author: Flavin, Christopher
• Position: Review

An intimate relationship between energy and international affairs has developed during the last two hundred years. The 18th century rise of the British Empire was fueled by the Industrial Revolution, which was in turn powered--and to some degree symbolized--by the heavy use off coal.(1) Modern Germany's late-19th century industrial expansion and its subsequent imperial aspirations were likewise supplied and characterized by massive coal consumption.(2) The 20th century has been labeled "the age of oil," which laid the foundation for unprecedented economic growth in the United States.(3) Access to petroleum has factored into many of the modern era's international conflicts, including the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the Persian Gulf war in 1991, and has shaped the geopolitics between and among Western economies, the Middle East and the rest of the developing world.

At the close of the 20th century, however, a new energy paradigm, forged by technological advances, resource and environmental constraints and socioeconomic demands, has begun to emerge. This paradigm is based not on a finite stock of fossil fuels, but on a virtually limitless flow of renewable energy--sun, wind, water, wood, the earth s heat--and on the most abundant element in the universe: hydrogen. Whereas today's dominant energy model is centralized, large-scale and focused on increasing supply, its successor will be decentralized, downsized and directed toward meeting demand.(4) The energy system, in other words, is undergoing a sort of glasnost and perestroika similar to that seen in the economic and political systems of the Soviet Union a decade ago. Now as then, the broader implications of this upheaval are likely to be nothing less than revolutionary.

This energy paradigm shift may have particularly dramatic repercussions for today's international system. The new model has the potential to mitigate security threats that are both familiar and new, such as dependence on imported oil and climate destabilization. Such a model may be especially welcome in the developing world, where 4 billion people have been underserved or entirely bypassed by the conventional energy system.(5) The structure will create new economic and political rewards, transforming the roles of government and industry in the energy sector. It is likely to broaden the geopolitics of energy, which traditionally has been preoccupied with resource conflict, to include the new dynamic of environmental cooperation.

Radical as this worldview may seem relative to traditional views on energy, it has found its way into the speeches of major oil company leaders. In a remarkable message delivered in Houston, the capital of the American petroleum industry, Michael Bowlin, then chairman and chief executive officer of ARCO, announced to fellow executives in February 1999, "We've embarked on the beginning of the last days of the age of oil.... Conditions are converging for another sea change in the energy use mix--along the spectrum away from carbon and headed toward hydrogen and other forms of energy." Bowlin concluded with a challenge to fellow oil executives that applies equally to nation-states: "Embrace the future and recognize the growing demand for a wide array of fuels; or ignore reality and slowly but surely be left behind."(6)

Like the hydrocarbon era that preceded it, the dawning solar-hydrogen age carries its own set of risks and opportunities, as well as its own set of winners and losers. Nations that anticipate and position themselves for the transition are likely to reap an array of social, economic and environmental benefits. Those who remain mired in the status quo will only prolong the fossil-fuel legacy of ecological instability and political insecurity, leaving them less prepared to face the challenges of the new millennium.

FUELING THE TRANSITION

Technological change alone cannot account for the emergence of the new energy paradigm. Past transitions--from wood to coal, from coal to oil--have also been influenced by a volatile mix of forces, including resource limitations and environmental and socioeconomic issues. America's oil-based economy developed from new technologies, the discovery of plentiful oil, the desire for cleaner alternatives to horse-drawn carriages and the popularity of gas-lighting. Similar forces exist today, though their relative importance has changed in significant ways.

The Limits to Cheap Oil

Resource limits could help push the world away from fossil fuels in coming decades. Oil is the leading energy source today, with a 34 percent share of commercial use; natural gas has emerged as an environmentally-preferred alternative for many uses, and accounts for 23 percent; and coal, retaining a grip on power generation, holds a 22 percent share.(7) While reserves of natural gas and coal are believed sufficient to last past the 21st century, those of oil are not. In much the same way that 17th century Britain ran out of cheap wood, today's concerns center on the possibility of running out of inexpensive petroleum.

While the size of the remaining oil resource is hardly a new issue, the latest wave of worry has been led by geologists from the oil industry itself. Geologists Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere estimate that roughly 1 trillion barrels of oil--little more than half the original resource--remain to be extracted.(8) Extrapolating their figures results in a projected peak (and subsequent reduction) in world production by the year 2010; applying more optimistic resource estimates from other oil experts prolongs the peak by only a decade.

A peak in world oil production early in the next century raises issues for prospective new consumers. The problem is less the large amount of oil currently used--67 million barrels daily(9)--than the intent of many developing countries, most lacking sizable indigenous supplies, to increase their use of oil for automobiles and trucks. Even if industrial-country oil use were to plateau, meeting the growing needs of China, India and the rest of the developing world via the petroleum-heavy path of the industrial world would require a tripling of world oil production by 2020--a point at which production may well be declining.(10)

Hitting Environmental Limits

Ecological constraints, however, are likely to influence the evolution of the new system more than resource limits. The burning of fossil-fuels is a leading source of air pollution and a leading cause of water and land degradation. Combustion of coal and oil produces carbon monoxide and tiny particles that are associated with lung cancer and other respiratory problems. Nitrogen and sulfur oxides form urban smog, bringing acid rain that damages forests, bodies of water and historic buildings. Water quality is further degraded by the toxins released in oil spills, refinery operations and coal mining. More and more, oil exploration disrupts fragile ecosystems and coal mining removes entire mountains. Although in recent decades modern pollution controls have improved the air quality in most industrial countries, the deadly experiences of London's 1952 "fog" that killed 4,000 risks being repeated in Mexico City Sao Paulo, New Delhi, Bangkok and many other cities in the developing world.(11) Each year, coal burning contributes to an estimated 178,000 premature deaths in China's cities.(12)

Beyond these local and regional problems lie the cumulative global environmental threats that undermine the long-term sustainability of the current energy system. More than 200 years after people began burning the sequestered sunlight of fossilized plants that took millions of years to accumulate, scientists have discovered that the carbon that those fuels produce is disrupting the earth's energy balance, causing the planet to warm. Fossil fuel combustion has increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide ([CO.sub.2]) by more than 32 percent since pre-industrial times. [CO.sub.2] levels are now at their highest point in 160,000 years, and global temperatures at their highest in at least 1,200 years.(13) Climatologists have determined that these human activities have ended the period of relative stability in the atmosphere that has endured over 10,000 years, and which has permitted the rise of agricultural and industrial society.(14)

In 1995 the 2,500 members of the United Nations-appointed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reached, for the first time, consensus on the existence of anthropogenic warming: "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate."(15) The IPCC also agreed that the planet has warmed between 0.3 and 0.6 degrees Celsius since the late 19th century. Should current emission trends continue, global temperatures will increase by another 1.0 to 3.5 degrees during the 21st century.

A broad range of social, economic and environmental dislocations are projected to result from this warming. These include, but are not limited to, rising sea levels and reduced coastal areas; an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events; a greater incidence and range of infectious diseases; an overall reduction in the productivity of agriculture and forest systems and in freshwater availability; and the forced redistribution and loss of temperature-sensitive species.(16) Climate change is anticipated to become a major additional stress on a number of existing environmental pressures already confronting the human species--from water shortages to land degradation to air pollution. While developing countries--particularly sub-Saharan Africa and low-lying small island states--will by virtue of economic situation and geography be hit hardest, many regions in the industrial world, from the U.S. midwest to the United Kingdom to Australia, are also vulnerable to severe and potentially irreversible impacts.(17)

Signs of a warming world--retreating ice shelves, receding glaciers, dying coral...