Fossil fuels are finite; now what?
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Fossil fuels are finite. At some point — whether it is 50 years or 200 years, depending on who you ask — we will run out of coal, oil and natural gas. While there are valiant efforts to control usage, our reliance on fossil fuels continues to increase globally with no end in sight. With a world population that has almost doubled in the last 45 years, the most urgent questions are: How long will fossil fuels last?
What will we do when fossil fuels are no longer an option? Acknowledging that this will be our reality someday, how and when do we start to respond?
Consider this: In the western world, we take it for granted that if we need any type of fossil fuel, we can obtain it — usually within 30 minutes, barring a few limited exceptions. Even in the face of periodic long gas lines, there is little doubt that the pumps will be turned back, and things will get back to normal. But what happens when the world wakes up to the fact that someday, in a foreseeable future, there will not be any fossil fuels left? What happens when people become aware that almost everything in our civilized world is heavily dependent on the very thing that is going away?
Take what do the most recent studies show? This has become controversial as there are many ways to spin the data depending on the outcome you want to promote. The math seems complex, but the main factor to consider is the reserves-to-production ratio (R/P). The R/P provides the length of time fossil fuel reserves will last if production continues at a constant rate. A snapshot of today’s R/P projects that the world only has enough oil for another 50 years if production remains at its 2018 average of 82 to 84 million barrels per day (BPD). This calculation means that we either need to discover a significant amount of new oil reserves each year, or we need new technologies to make it economically feasible to tap all the reserves we know exist. As a business leader focused on advanced energy, I speak with hundreds of experts in the energy sector every year and there is a growing consensus that the true R/P figure could move closer to 114 years.
In terms of fossil fuels, the obvious solution is hydrogen, and not just hydrogen, but liquid hydrogen. Liquid hydrogen is a clean and sustainable fuel because it produces only water. It can be produced domestically with resources like natural gas, biomass, nuclear power and renewable powers like solar and wind. It can power homes and feed industries. However, the urgency is also evident. We need to start creating the hydrogen economy now, because it will take decades to build out a full hydrogen infrastructure. I always say, we are not setting up a hydrogen economy for today, or even 25 years for now, we are building it for the next millennium. And we need to start before it’s no longer an option.
It’s critical that we change the debate on whether or not we need to move to hydrogen to save the planet from an environmental perspective to realizing that we must build a hydrogen economy just to keep the lights on and feed the masses. We must start thinking about the end of fossil fuels, because the future is closer than we want to admit.
