The history of fossil energy, the basis of industrialisation
Episode 8 of the series: History of Technology - Nuclear Power for energy supply is a hopelessly outdated technology
Translation from the German original by Dr Wolfgang Hager
Coal, oil and natural gas were the basis and are still the dominant energy sources of our industrial civilisation. It was only through the contribution of nanoscience that oil and gas production in particular were able to grow to their present volume. Although the climate-damaging impacts of fossil fuels have been known for more than half a century, the giant fossil industries have managed to hold on to their dominant power position to this day. What can be learned from their history? And have they also created technologies that are useable for a non-fossil future?
This series explores the far-reaching consequences of the revolution in the natural sciences at the beginning of the last century for energy technology and energy supply. A profound change in the scientific worldview that opened the door to previously unknown nanoworlds on the scale of atoms. The first episodes looked at nuclear energy, which was an early product of this upheaval, and then turned to newer developments that offer superior options for addressing the climate crisis.
Coal - the origin of the industrial energy economy
The first phase of industrialisation was based on coal - in Europe, in the USA, later also in China, Australia, India, Indonesia... Already the Romans mined coal in Britain. And in the 13th century, coal was used for energy production in China. In Europe, too, the use of coal has been documented since the 13th century. But at the end of the 18th century, technically used energy was still being obtained mainly from biomass.
The industrial use of coal first started in England. As early as the 16th century, coal, which was easy to extract, was used for heating in London. From the 17th century, it became the springboard of the incipient industrialisation. James Watt developed significant improvements to the previously rather inefficient steam engines from 1760 onwards, making coal-fired mechanical drives competitive with wind and water mills or horses. The first functioning steamship sailed in 1783 and the first locomotive rolled in 1804. But it took decades for these technologies to become generally accepted - not least because the iron and steel industry had to be developed in parallel, enabling the efficient construction of durable machines.
Coal was of central importance for the development of the steel industry. As a supplier of energy, but also, to this day, as the basic chemical material for reducing the iron oxide contained in iron ore to pig iron (i.e. binding the oxygen in the iron oxide). Therefore, where coal and iron were found underground, coal and steel regions sprang up, such as the English Midlands, Wales, the Lorraine, the Saar, the Ruhr area, and Pennsylvania. These were the powerhouses of industrial development for over a century. While giving rise to large industrial corporations and a strong labour movement, they also resulted in heavy environmental pollution and a one-sided dependence of large regions on the coal and steel industry. By that time coal was no longer easily accessible. Deep mining would not have been possible without steam-driven pumps - fired by coal. A prime example of vital technological co-development.
From 1812 onwards, the first commercial gasworks in London produced gas from coal for lighting with gas lamps - a technology that spread rapidly, enabled a significant extension of working hours and also greatly changed private lifestyles. From 1880, the conquest of electricity began with improved generators and, in 1893, the ascendancy of alternating-current technology, invented by Nikola Tesla and commercialised by Westinghouse, over direct current, favoured by Edison. Electric light bulbs began to displace gas lamps - but gas consumption continued to rise in industry, and for cooking and hot water. With alternating current, electricity could be transmitted over longer distances and was increasingly used for mechanical and thermal applications, as it was both flexible and clean.
By 1900, coal was the dominant technical energy source - for heating, mechanical power and electricity. It accounted for 96 percent of fossil energy - oil was still insignificant. Only electricity from water power had a certain regional significance. Despite the emergence of other energy sources, the consumption of coal on a global scale increased inexorably for more than another hundred years until 2014.
After World War II, new technologies enabled gradual, but not game-changing efficiency gains and lower environmental impacts in the extraction and use of coal, now primarily used for large-scale electricity generation and heat. One important improvement since the 1970s has been flue gas cleaning. Protests against poor air quality in urban centres and later against dying forests compelled legislation in western countries which imposed the building of multi-billion dollar plants to remove dust and sulphur from power plant flue gases. The low price of energy and high coal consumption in Asia are largely due to the fact that a corresponding debate has not been resolved, and regulations on stack emissions are much weaker than in OECD countries.
Today, coal is essentially used for large-scale heat generation in power plants and industrial facilities, as well as for steel production. The basic technologies have not changed since the middle of the last century. In the countries of origin of industrialisation, coal production has declined sharply due to high costs and environmental regulations. Highly efficient, large-scale coal mining in Australia, and Asia’s ten times larger coal mines, with lower environmental regulations, are cheaper.
Hundreds of billions in subsidies have gone into propping up coal mining in Europe and the US, where it is no longer profitable under free-market conditions. In 1957, 600,000 workers were employed in West Germany's mines. Already then, half the mines in the Ruhr area were unprofitable. From 1950 to 2008 alone, 295 billion euros were spent on coal subsidies in Germany - not counting the environmental damage. Even today, well over one billion is still spent annually. This shows the enormous staying power of old industries.
From 2002 to 2012, global coal consumption rose sharply, mainly due to Asian economic development, and peaked in 2014. Because of its particularly high CO2 emissions, but also because of the considerable local air pollution it still causes even in Europe, efforts are being made everywhere to reduce the use of coal.
Coal, so easy to mine in some parts of the world, is tempting. The deposits contain much more carbon than the atmosphere can bear.
Oil could only maintain production levels thanks to new technologies
Technological advances were more significant in the oil and natural gas sectors. With the advent of the internal combustion engine from the 1880s, the use of oil derivatives slowly increased. In 1920, it accounted for 8% of total fossil energy consumption. From 1940 onwards, a sustained boom in oil began. In 1950 it supplied about half as much energy as coal. In 1965 it was already the equal. Between 1950 and 1970, oil production increased almost fivefold (+370%).
In 1973, the year of the first oil crisis, the share of fossil fuels was at its highest at a little over 54%. It then declined. The production cuts by the OPEC cartel had made it clear that reserves were finite. In 1979, the second oil price shock - triggered by the revolution in Iran - caused oil prices to almost triple. This had severe economic consequences worldwide, but oil consumption continued to rise after a brief pause.
In absolute terms, annual oil production continued to rise by more than one and a half times (+55%) from 1973 to its preliminary peak in 2018. Given that new deposits were increasingly challenging, considerable progress in exploration and extraction was required. This would have been inconceivable without the latest developments in sensor technology and data processing, novel materials and discoveries of processes on a nanoscale deep underground.
Improved "fracking" (underground fracturing of shale formations by high-pressure injection of chemicals), as well as remote-controlled drilling techniques allowing"horizontal drilling" and underground branching, allowed the US to increase its oil production by 75% and natural gas production by 39% between 2007 and 2016 - not without mounting controversies over local and global environmental impacts.
Since the 1990s, there has been a debate about "peak oil" - the hypothesis that the maximum production of crude oil had already been or would soon be reached because recoverable reserves were running out. Thanks to new technologies, however, production has continued to rise until 2019. Investment in oil and gas started to decline significantly, but not dramatically, in 2014. In 2019, oil production and proven reserves fell slightly for the first time. The energy crisis following the Russian invasion of Ukraine showed that oil and gas production had expanded much less than was previously widely assumed. However, the massive profits of national and international oil companies this year could put a stop to the continued decline in oil investment. According to the International Monetary Fund, additional oil revenues for energy exporters in the Middle East and Central Asia could amount to $320 billion in 2022 alone.
The comparison of the historical growth rates of the different energy sources in the graph below is instructive.
The growth of oil production ended sharply in 1973 and resumed only moderately since the end of the 1980s. Nuclear energy initially grew very strongly from the mid-1960s, but then quickly lost momentum. Renewables showed stronger growth than fossil energy sources from the mid-1960s onwards and shot upwards after the turn of the millennium because particularly photovoltaics delivered growth of over 35% annually, which had not been achieved by any energy technology previously.
The oil industry and the car
Road transport now consumes half of the world's oil production. This is a remarkable success of the joint efforts of the oil and car industries. Much has been written about their endeavours to create all kinds of incentives and advantages for the private car, to discourage public transport, to delay stricter emission regulations, to badmouth alternative propulsion systems and to sow doubt about climate change - we will not repeat this here. In 2012, the externality costs of car traffic in the EU were estimated at €370 billion per year. A more recent study found that larger cars in Germany are subsidised by society to the tune of about €5,000 each per year .
But now a tipping point seems to have been reached. The introduction of electric vehicles is gaining speed. In the EU, no internal combustion vehicles can be sold after 2035. This is causing a faster depreciation of ICE vehicles, which could further accelerate the move away from the personal ICE car. Unlike in earlier times, the established car companies can no longer control events: Asian manufacturers are increasingly ready to replace European car manufacturers, who are not yet able to deliver. Then there is the threat of autonomous driving offering significant cost advantages for more intensively used rental vehicles and flexible shuttles. In Asia, millions of electric two-wheelers are already on the road - market analysts expect 266 million units by 2029. Thus, it does not seem impossible that technological developments, which we will discuss in the next episodes of this series, will cause the power of the oil industry to collapse faster than previously assumed.
A natural gas boom enabled by new technologies
As mentioned earlier, from the middle of the 19th century, town gas was produced from coal and distributed with pipe networks - first for lighting purposes and then also for cooking and heating water. Natural gas from natural sources was already known in China before our era. It was first used commercially in the 1820s and 1830s in the USA, where some sources were easily accessible. For a long time, it was only used locally as a by-product of the emerging oil production and was largely flared as too costly to transport.
Initially, gas consumption developed primarily in the USA: in 1965, the USA's share of global gas consumption was 66%, compared to 36% for oil. At the same time, its gas consumption was already two-thirds of its oil consumption. In Germany, gas consumption at that time was only 3% of oil consumption; in the Netherlands - where natural gas had just been discovered - only 5%, in Italy already 12%. As a result of the 1970 pipe deal between Germany and the Soviet Union, in which steel pipes for pipelines were exchanged for natural gas supplies on a large scale, natural gas consumption in Germany tripled within a decade - the beginning of Europe's current gas dependence on Russia.
Transporting natural gas is much more expensive than oil, because it has a thousand times lower energy density under normal conditions. In international gas trade, the cost of transporting natural gas usually accounts for more than half of the cost of the entire supply chain. In 1970, less than 1% of the world's natural gas consumption was traded internationally, today it is about one-fifth - for oil about half.
Considerable infrastructure investments and technical developments were needed for the international diffusion of natural gas use. For distances of less than a few thousand kilometres, transport in high-pressure pipelines is the cheapest option. For longer distances, it is more economic to first liquefy the gas in huge plants at high pressure and low temperatures, then transport the LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) thus obtained in special ships at minus 163 degrees, and finally convert it back into gas fed into local pipelines for distribution.
For problem-free compression and, even more so, liquefaction, as well as clean combustion in standardized appliances, the raw natural gas, which consists mainly of methane, must be purified. For this purpose, all components other than methane are separated out in several stages. The key component in these purification processes are so-called molecular sieves, which can selectively collect gas molecules in complex crystal structures. After strange properties of minerals called zeolites had attracted attention earlier, suitable molecular sieves with different pore sizes could only be developed from 1950 onwards. The new nanosciences were indispensable enablers of the international success of natural gas. The result of these developments was a fossil fuel that enjoyed great popularity because of its clean and simple combustion compared to oil and coal - once the pipelines were in place, which also replaced private fuel storage.
The technology for manufacturing suitable steel pipes and compressors was more conventional, but it too only developed over time. What is remarkable, however, are the huge, long-term investments required for both pipeline and LNG transport, while their running costs are relatively low. The lifespan of the plants in question exceeds that of nuclear, photovoltaic or wind power plants. That is why the gas industry, which in Europe is essentially involved in transport, is extremely interested in using its investments for as long as possible.
In times of climate crisis, it hopes for green hydrogen, which is supposed to (partly) replace methane. This would, however, involve considerable additional costs: Hydrogen needs twice as many pipelines and much larger compressors because of its lower energy density. Transport by ship is much more expensive because of its lower boiling point. Hydrogen penetrates through smaller pores than methane and leads to the embrittlement of key materials... more on this another time.
New overcapacities will further complicate the shift away from natural gas: In response to the gas crisis following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it was decided to build additional LNG capacities that are more than twice the size of Russia's total gas exports in 2021 - a climate policy nightmare.
Underground storage of CO2 - new source of revenue for the oil and gas industry?
Under pressure from the climate debate, the big oil and gas companies are looking for less climate-damaging sources of income and are trying to use their highly developed technologies to do so. Process technology and underground exploration and drilling techniques are supposed to make it possible to inject the climate-damaging carbon dioxide produced during combustion into underground cavities or rocks. To do this, the waste gas must first be captured, which is easiest where it is produced in large quantities, such as in fossil-fuel power plants.
Such a process - called Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) or Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) - would allow the useful life of fossil fuels to be extended. This, of course, is what the oil industry is hoping for. Given rapid climate change, the scenarios of the IPCC and the International Energy Agency (IEA) also rely to some extent on CCS. We are talking about gigantic amounts of CO2.
Contrary to earlier hopes, however, all attempts to capture CO2 and store it safely underground have proven to be so energy-intensive and expensive that fossil fuels relying on subsequent CO2 disposal have no hope of competing with renewable energy sources.
.jpg){kind=link}
This is obvious because the amounts of gas produced are huge: during combustion, one carbon atom (atomic weight 12) combines with two oxygen atoms (atomic weight 16 each). Therefore, the combustion of one kilogram of carbon (about 1.25 kg of hard coal) produces about 3.7 kg of carbon dioxide. Since this usually simply escapes into the air, we are hardly aware of it. And one cubic metre of natural gas (methane, CH4) produces one cubic metre of carbon dioxide, but it weighs 2.75 times as much. One kilogram of carbon dioxide (this is how much is produced when generating one kilowatt-hour of electricity from lignite) measures half a cubic metre in gaseous form at atmospheric pressure. Under high pressure, it can be liquefied into half a litre of liquid. Since the heavy waste gas would first have to be separated and then, in most cases, transported over long distances (e.g. from Germany to the Norwegian coast) and finally injected, disposal would often be more costly than the fuel itself. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that in industrial processes where fossil fuel use can only be avoided with difficulty, such as cement production, such a procedure would temporarily make sense.
Since the 1970s, CO2 has been used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR): CO2 injected under high pressure is used to recover oil from otherwise depleted oil reservoirs. The larger CO2 storage projects have come into being in this context. However, as the IEA also reports, genuinely operational projects have made little progress in recent decades, despite major announcements. In total, global storage in 2021 amounted to only 41 megatonnes of CO2 - equivalent to the CO2 emissions of less than ten large coal-fired power plants. Only a quarter of this is in pilot projects that are not tied to oil production. The capacities of capture plants, which also supply CO2 to various industries, have also remained roughly constant for more than a decade. Capture and storage not only cost a lot, but are also very energy-intensive: in electricity generation, it would increase energy consumption by about 40%. Moreover, capture always remains incomplete.
Nevertheless, in the Net Zero Emission Scenario 2050 of the World Energy Outlook 2022, published last week, the IEA calculates a carbon storage capacity that is already thirty times higher for 2030 (1.2 Gt) and a further fivefold increase for 2050 (6.2 Gt, or 18 per cent of CO2 emissions in 2021). That is still considerably less than in comparable 1.5-degree scenarios of the IPCC. The cost of capturing CO2 can be up to three-quarters of the cost of CCUS and varies considerably: between $20 and $200 per tonne of CO2. Then there is transport and storage. The IEA avoids giving any cost figures. If one optimistically calculates with 100 dollars per tonne of CO2 for the entire CCUS cycle, then the amount targeted by the IEA for 2050 would correspond to 620 billion, which is about ten per cent of last year's oil and gas market.
It is even more expensive to capture the carbon dioxide from the air (i.e. after it has been diluted to less than 1 per mille) and then store it underground. Today, this costs 250 to 600 dollars per tonne of CO2 . Research projects hope to be able to reduce the costs to 150 to 200 in the next few years. In the IEA Net Zero Emission Scenario, 600 megatonnes of CO2 are expected to be captured in 2050 by so-called "direct air capture". There are pilot plants for this in places where immediate storage is relatively cheap and safe.
The generation of one kilowatt-hour of electricity in a coal-fired power plant produces about one kilogramme of CO2. So capturing and storing that will cost 10 to 20 cents per kilowatt-hour in the medium term. In its latest report, the IEA estimates the cost of electricity from photovoltaics in 2030 at 2 to 3 cents per kilowatt-hour. Delaying the turnaround not only leads to massive climate damage, but also makes energy supply that much more expensive.
More sensible, but megalomaniac: off-shore wind energy needs high technology and large amounts of steel
Another opportunity to harness the technological know-how of the oil industry is the offshore wind industry. Here, huge structures made of steel and concrete have to be built and maintained in the open sea. So far, we are dealing with offshore wind turbines that are firmly anchored in the seabed. An 8 MW turbine needs 1,000 tonnes of steel. Today, 16 MW turbines are being built that need proportionally less. In a comparison based on the amount of electricity produced, the steel requirement is similar to that of photovoltaic power plants, but lower than that of onshore wind power plants, where wind conditions are less favourable.
In the future, there are plans to build huge floating wind power plants. Their advantage is that these can be anchored at greater depths, where the wind blows more strongly and constantly. Extensive areas of this kind can be found off many heavily populated coasts. For example, the technical potential of the coasts of the US is estimated to be about three times the current electricity production in the US.
Dedicated shipyards and harbours would need to be built for the construction of the planned floating structures, because existing facilities cannot efficiently fabricate the huge steel and concrete frames required. It is hoped to reduce the cost of the understructure of a floating wind power plant from five times to twice that of a permanently installed offshore power plant. The leader in this technology is the Norwegian oil company Equinor, which has been experimenting with floating wind power plants for twenty years and expects them to be competitive by 2030. Only powerful industrial consortia can be in this game.
A valuable contribution to the heat transition: Deep geothermal energy
The geological and drilling skills of the oil industry come in useful also for a smaller- scale technology, with nevertheless considerable potential: deep geothermal energy. The German Deep Geothermal Roadmap, developed by a broad partnership of government research institutes, estimates that with a potential of 70 GW, up to 25% of the municipal heating demand (170 TWh/a) and up to 25% of the industrial heating and cooling demand (130 TWh/a) in Germany can be met with this technology.
To achieve this, boreholes have to be drilled to a depth of 3000 to 5000 metres in suitable geological formations. Heat is extracted from the earth by closed water circuits so that no pollutants escape, as happens with the historical use of geothermal energy, e.g. at Larderello in Tuscany. Where required, heat pumps can achieve the temperatures of up to 200° required for various heat applications in municipal grids or in industry. The roadmap calculates energy costs of only 2.5 to 3 ct/kWh.
This would require a massive expansion of the existing exploration, drilling and equipment capacities, as well as a contingency insurance for unsuccessful wells. For despite sophisticated exploration techniques, up to 20% of the wells do not lead to the desired success. About 100 wells are needed for 1 gigawatt. In addition, industrial mass production of large-scale heat pumps would have to be established, as well as dedicated municipal heat grids.
The time it takes to develop geothermal projects, three to seven years, could be shortened through various measures. This means that it is a technology that can be implemented relatively quickly. Until now, I was very sceptical because of serious problems with improperly implemented geothermal projects (Basel, Staufen, discussion in Tuscany). However, after recent studies and the experiences in Bavaria, I feel justified in considering deep geothermal energy as a serious renewable energy for heat applications, provided a careful and scientifically sound approach is taken. It could make an important contribution to a rapid energy transition, because it can be easily linked to other technologies with the help of local heating networks.
Learning from the experience of the powerful fossil industry
Many of the new developments in the oil and gas industry, that have occurred on the basis of nanotechnology in the past seven decades, can also make significant contributions to renewable energies. In the early seventies and even in the eighties, fossil fuels could still be seen as bridging technologies. Today, however, fifty years later and with fossil consumption more than doubling, we are at the end of the bridge and still largely dependent on coal, oil and gas.
The fossil industries are largely to blame for this. For decades, they have created dependencies, collected subsidies, denied or downplayed the climate problem, and pushed alternatives wherever they could. Many of the actors were even in good faith because they were trapped in a technological tradition and organisational structures in which alternative approaches seemed often unthinkable. This tradition includes beliefs such as those about the need for high energy intensities, impossibly long development times of alternatives, and the inevitability of heavy, base-load-capable thermal power plants.
Within this framework, the engineers of the oil and gas industry have achieved astonishing feats of excellence that are now ruining our societies. At the same time, the independent oil companies, and by now especially the National Oil Companies, are managing brilliantly to channel hundreds of billions into their coffers in a short period of time, now even with the help of the latest crisis. Given their political and financial power, it remains necessary to win them over for a drastic change of course in energy policy, even if huge floating wind power plants are not among the best and fastest practicable ideas to replace fossil energy sources.
Powerful industries can survive for a long time even when they are socially harmful and make no economic sense. In the case of nuclear energy, it became apparent within two decades that it not only poses considerable risks but was also economic nonsense. But its large-scale industrial structure, the fascination with huge, dangerous machines and the capillary political networks grown over decades have kept it in the discussion until today. From this we can see how difficult it will be to transform the disproportionately more powerful fossil industries within a few years. At least - the example of the car industry gives us hope that positive tipping effects might help.
What an amazing article, thanks so much for sharing. Wish that the beauty industry would take note too and stop using unsustainable methods for their own gain...