The main thing you’re arguably missing is the response of a global market economy to the increase in price of one of its commodities. There are three significant responses. The first is simple economisation in the use of the resource—but this tends to drive down output. The second response is that of increased investment in extraction of the commodity in short supply—the higher price makes more money available as profits for existing providers, and acts as a strong draw to investors of capital who wish to increase the supply. The third reaction is substitution—replacing the commodity in short supply with a new supply of something else.
All of these operate over both the short and long term. Let’s look at strategy 1 - economisation. In the short run, you can simply drive less. You can turn down the thermostat on your central heating. You can skip the expensive foreign holiday on the gas-guzzling airliner.
In the long run you can go further—much further—with the first strategy. You can build houses and businesses that don’t need to be heated. You can make cars with far better gas mileage. You can make compact cities that don’t need cars.
But we still have two strategies to go. We can increase our investment in finding more oil. Resources that used to be uneconomic become viable with higher prices, so we can dig up Canada’s oil sands. You can use the new shale gas that’s coming on stream, and convert that into oil. You can even convert coal into oil using well-known chemical processes. We can use new recovery technologies on existing fields. All of this increases the supply of oil—probably to the point where the main reason we can’t burn it is the CO2 rather than the lack of supply.
All of this depends on the price. Higher prices allow more complex and expensive recovery processes. This is why your list of technologies that never developed exists—they were never profitable at the present price. The price of oil isn’t high enough to make those activities worthwhile—at least at our current level of expertise.
And finally you have substitution—and this is far and away the most powerful strategy. We can of course substitute telecommunications for travel already. But there are other reactions. Maybe battery vehicles, or less exotically, electrified highways. High speed trains instead of airplanes. Uranium nuclear. Fast breeder nuclear. Thorium nuclear. Solar thermal. Solar photovoltaic. Long distance DC electrical transmission. All backed up with the general theme of manufacturing these days—everything gets cheaper every year. The approach of the singularity is not merely seen in microchips—it’s also seen in the steady, remorseless decrease in the cost of anything manufactured.
These are just the accomodations we can make with the technology we already know about. Who knows what else we might come up with on top of this?
My own expectation is that in 40 years time, energy will be cleaner, much more abundant, much cheaper, and much more efficiently used than today. Just like the last 40 years, only more so.
The main thing you’re arguably missing is the response of a global market economy to the increase in price of one of its commodities. There are three significant responses. The first is simple economisation in the use of the resource—but this tends to drive down output. The second response is that of increased investment in extraction of the commodity in short supply—the higher price makes more money available as profits for existing providers, and acts as a strong draw to investors of capital who wish to increase the supply. The third reaction is substitution—replacing the commodity in short supply with a new supply of something else.
All of these operate over both the short and long term. Let’s look at strategy 1 - economisation. In the short run, you can simply drive less. You can turn down the thermostat on your central heating. You can skip the expensive foreign holiday on the gas-guzzling airliner.
In the long run you can go further—much further—with the first strategy. You can build houses and businesses that don’t need to be heated. You can make cars with far better gas mileage. You can make compact cities that don’t need cars.
But we still have two strategies to go. We can increase our investment in finding more oil. Resources that used to be uneconomic become viable with higher prices, so we can dig up Canada’s oil sands. You can use the new shale gas that’s coming on stream, and convert that into oil. You can even convert coal into oil using well-known chemical processes. We can use new recovery technologies on existing fields. All of this increases the supply of oil—probably to the point where the main reason we can’t burn it is the CO2 rather than the lack of supply.
All of this depends on the price. Higher prices allow more complex and expensive recovery processes. This is why your list of technologies that never developed exists—they were never profitable at the present price. The price of oil isn’t high enough to make those activities worthwhile—at least at our current level of expertise.
And finally you have substitution—and this is far and away the most powerful strategy. We can of course substitute telecommunications for travel already. But there are other reactions. Maybe battery vehicles, or less exotically, electrified highways. High speed trains instead of airplanes. Uranium nuclear. Fast breeder nuclear. Thorium nuclear. Solar thermal. Solar photovoltaic. Long distance DC electrical transmission. All backed up with the general theme of manufacturing these days—everything gets cheaper every year. The approach of the singularity is not merely seen in microchips—it’s also seen in the steady, remorseless decrease in the cost of anything manufactured.
These are just the accomodations we can make with the technology we already know about. Who knows what else we might come up with on top of this?
My own expectation is that in 40 years time, energy will be cleaner, much more abundant, much cheaper, and much more efficiently used than today. Just like the last 40 years, only more so.