The Fossil Fuel Reality Check: Here's Why “Eliminate Oil Companies” Is Easier Said Than Done

We hear it constantly: oil companies are the enemy, and the fastest path to a green future is to shut them down yesterday. Yet most of the loudest voices seem unaware of how deeply fossil fuels are woven into everyday materials and processes that even “green” technologies depend on. The uncomfortable truth, laid out clearly by energy scholar Vaclav Smil in Numbers Don’t Lie, is that while solar and wind have matured and can now be added quickly to decarbonize electricity, several massive economic sectors have no realistic non-carbon alternatives that can replace fossil fuels rapidly and at the required global scale.

Consider long-distance transportation. Jetliners run on aviation kerosene; container ships, bulk carriers, and tankers burn diesel, bunker fuel, or liquefied natural gas. There are no batteries or hydrogen systems ready to power these vessels across oceans at the scale of today’s fleet. The same fossil fuels fire the massive rotating kilns that produce more than four billion tons of cement every year and provide the coke needed to smelt more than a billion tons of primary iron in blast furnaces—the very steel used to build wind-turbine towers and monopiles.

Then there’s agriculture and manufacturing. Nearly 200 million tons of ammonia (the backbone of synthetic fertilizer that feeds roughly half the world) and about 300 million tons of plastics start with compounds derived from natural gas and crude oil. Even space heating in much of the world still runs on natural gas. These are not niche uses. They are foundational.

Smil puts the scale in perspective: displacing roughly 10 billion tons of fossil carbon annually is fundamentally different from scaling up smartphones or electric cars. The latter happened in years; the former is a multi-decade challenge. Wishful thinking can't change chemistry or physics. Pretending we can simply “ban” oil companies ignores that the steel in wind turbines, the fuel in cargo ships, the fertilizer in our fields, and the plastics in our hospitals. They all trace back to the same hydrocarbons activists want to eliminate overnight.

Energy transitions are inevitable, but they must be guided by numbers, not slogans. Understanding the full scope of fossil fuels’ roles isn’t climate denial—it’s honesty. Until we acknowledge these dependencies, we’re not solving the problem; we’re just shouting at it.

Related Links

What Are the Primary Uses of Plastic?

Where Does Plastic Come From?

The Four Grand Transitions That Created the World We Live In Today

I've always admired people who have the ability to take complex issues and make them simple to understand. This is doubly enjoyable/useful when people with a comprehensive grasp of history do the hard work of identifying events or trends and assembling them in a manner that creates new insights that any average Joe or Josephine can grasp. 

One such thinker who specializes in this sort of thing is Vaclav Smil, a Czech-Canadian scientist, policy analyst and Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. I myself became aware of him because of his reputation as one of the world's leading experts on the history of energy.

In 2021 Smil wrote a book titled Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made. In it, he examines the transitions that structure our modern word. What made the modern world work? For Smil, it all boils down to four "grand transitions" of civilizations: (1) population, (2) agriculture, (3) energy and (4) economics. The cumulative effect of these transitions has transformed the way we live. 

When a society goes through all four of the major changes—like improvements in health, farming, energy, and the economy—it ends up in a very different place: people live longer, there's plenty of food (and a lot gets wasted), energy use goes way up, and there are more job and business opportunities. But not everyone in the world has caught up—hundreds of millions of people still live without many of these advances. 

Vaclav Smil looks at how all these big changes connect. He says it's more important than ever to share the good stuff of modern life, especially with the growing gap between rich and poor. But doing that while also trying to protect the planet is a tough balancing act. The next big challenge—what he calls the fifth transition—is dealing with climate change, shrinking resources, and disappearing wildlife. Whether we succeed at this will decide if all the progress we've made actually lasts.

* * * 

When I read the Four Transitions cited by Smil, it brought to mind Niall Ferguson's fire alarm Why Civilizations Fail. Ferguson in his book cites four things that together produced the rise of Western Civilization. They were:
1. Democracy -- the consent of the governed.
2. Capitalism -- and the vibrant society healthy markets produce.
3. Rule of law -- secure property rights, fairness and (in theory) equality.
4. Civil society -- how we treat one another.

The lists differ, but both author express a serious concern about the cracks in our foundations today, and more importantly, the ever widening gap between haves and have nots. 

There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about the direction things are going.  What do you think?

Related Links

Why Civilizations Fail: Niall Ferguson Sounds A Wake-Up Call
Grand Transitions: How the modern world was made

Niall Ferguson on the Breakdown of the Rule of Law

Things People Don't Realize About Wind Energy and Why We Can't Shut Down Oil Production

Creative Commons. © Hans Hillewaert

When the Biden administration recently approved the proposed Atlantic Shores offshore wind farm in New Jersey, the Sierra Club rejoiced. While many who long for the elimination of fossil fuels are celebrating, it might be useful to learn more about the role oil plays with regard to the ever expanding wind turbine push.

Few people realize how much fossil fuels are required to get electricity from wind. When we look at wind turbines, those towering giants you see on wind farms, we're looking into the face of green energy. But here's the twist: while they capture wind, a totally free and eco-friendly resource, the turbines themselves are actually built and maintained using fossil fuels.

Until I read Vaclav Smil's Numbers Don't Lie, I had no idea of the degree to which fossil fuels are needed to manufacture a single wind tower, even though I was involved in the wind business to a certain extent. (AMSOIL makes gear lubes for these wind-driven power plants.)

Here's an excerpt from Smil's book.

 

Large trucks bring steel, and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats the path to otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures – and all these machines burn diesel fuel. So do the freight trains and cargo ships that convey the materials needed for the production of cement, steel, and plastics. For a 5 MW turbine, the steel alone averages 150 tons for the reinforced concrete foundations, 250 tons for the rotor hubs and nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator) and 500 tons for the towers.

If wind generated electricity were to supply 25% of global demand by 2030, then even with a high average capacity factor of 35% the aggregate installed wind power of about 2.5 terawatts would require roughly 450,000,000 tons of steel. And that’s without counting the metal for towers, wires, and transformers for the new high voltage transmission lines that would be needed to connect it all to the grid.

Making steel also takes a ton of energy, Smil writes. It starts with sintered or pelletized iron ore that gets smelted in blast furnaces filled with coke made from coal. They also add powdered coal and natural gas to the mix. The pig iron produced in these blast furnaces is then decarbonized in basic oxygen furnaces. After that, the steel goes through continuous casting, which shapes the molten steel into rough forms of the final product. For turbine construction, the steel used typically contains about 35 gigajoules of energy per ton.

 

To make the steel required for the wind turbines we want by 2030, Smil writes, you need fossil fuels equivalent to more than 600 million tons of coal. 

This is before we consider the 60-meter long airfoils, each of which weighs 15 tons. Making these giant blades also requires hydrocarbons--liquefied petroleum, gas or natural gas.

That's not all. Smil adds still more including the cost of fiber-reinforced composite material, water-proofing with resins, rotors and the gearbox itself. Then you have the lubricants for those gearboxes, which must be changed from time to time like the oil change on your typical car or truck, albeit not as often but on a very large scale.

Undoubtedly, and lastly, Smil suggests that a new wind turbine will generate as much energy as it took to produce it, but it will be in the form of intermittent energy production. (i.e. the turbines turn only when the wind blows.)

Generating electricity – installation, production and maintenance -- remain critically dependent on specific fossil energies. Moreover, most of these energies -- coke for iron ore smelting; coal and petroleum coke to fuel cement kilns; naphtha and natural gas as feedstock and fuel for synthesis of plastics and the making of fiberglass; diesel fuel for ships, trucks, and construction machinery; lubricant for gearboxes – we have no non-fossil substitutes readily available on the requisite large commercial scale.

Smil sums up his chapter thus: For a long time to come – until all energy that is used to produce wind turbines and photovoltaic cells comes from renewable energy sources – modern civilization will be fundamentally dependent on fossil fuels.

* * *

See: Made in the USA: The Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing Is A Humbling Warning

Vaclav Smil's Made in the USA: The Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing Is A Humbling Warning

The 20th century has been proclaimed by many to be "The American Century" because of its surprisng rise as a powerhouse in the wake of Britain's decline after 300 years of global dominance. For many, this premise is unchallenged, accepted as fact. And many see the next 100 years as more of the same, with the U.S. remaining on top of the heap as the world's top dog. 

Vaclav Smil sees things differently, hence ths book about what he calls as The Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing.,the subtitle of his 2013 assessment of the USA today. 

It's easy to see how America became a manufacturing powerhouse after WW2. Our competitors' industrial capabilities, infrastructure and populations were decimated by that war, and many had not yet fully recovered from the earlier global conflict.

For Smil, America's ascent began with the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s. Advancements in technology, infrastructure, and workforce skills turned the U.S. into a manufacturing powerhouse. These advances were mega-amped by the rise of mass production techniques (hence Huxley's A.F. in Brave New World) that boosted productivity and economic growth. 

However, from the late 20th century onward, several factors contributed to the sector's decline. (1) The rise of global competition (esp. Japan, China and Germany) eroded the U.S. manufacturing base. (2) Many American companies relocated production to countries with lower labor costs. This outsourcing lead to job losses and deindustrialization in the U.S. (3) Automation and advancements in technology reduced the need for manual labor, changing the nature of manufacturing jobs. 

And how has this played out?

Smil shows how the loss of manufacturing jobs contributed to economic inequality, regional disparities, and the decline of the American middle class. The shift away from manufacturing has also affected communities that were once heavily reliant on factory jobs (eg. Detroit) leading to social challenges such as unemployment and declining living standards.

Surprisingly, Smil still expressed cautious optimism about the future of American manufacturing, arguing that the sector can be revitalized through strategic investments in innovation, education, and infrastructure. Key recommendations include reindustrialization, advanced manufacturing and sustainable manufacturing practices to address environmental concerns and improve efficiency.

I find it interesting that some critics considered the book too pessimistic. I find it overly optimistic. Is the glass half empty or half full. We'll eventually find out.

Smil makes a solid case for the importance of manufacturing. Yet here in Northern Minnesota there is very little being done to incentivize it, even though we are rich in natural resources. Our economic base has flipped, away from manufacturing to a service economy. The biggest employers are universities, hospitals and our tourism related services. I don't see evidence of this turning around. Do you?