I just read a diary by BruceMcF about alternatives to our unsustainable consumption of oil. It's a good read so go check it out:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Anyway, his numbers on the Canadian Tar Sands got my thinking into high gear about the subject. Read below the fold to see why trying to "upgrade" billions of barrels of dirty tar underneath pristine forest using clean water and (cleaner than oil) natural gas is a profoundly bad idea. WARNING! There will be numbers with units and such, so be prepared!
Energy Returned on Energy Invested is a figure that compares how much energy someone has to invest (person, oil company, etc.) to get energy out of a process. See Wiki for the lowdown dirt on this subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
In the heydey of fossil fuels, an EROEI of around 100 was about as good as they could get, meaning that 100 units of energy were returned for every 1 unit spent producing oil. This was before lots of heavy machinery, deepwater wells and sideways hydrofracking had been developed. In addition, there were HUGE reservoirs of oil all over the globe and all they needed was a little pinprick in the roof of the oil sequestering layers to come gushing out.
Nowadays, the oil industry's EROEI is down to about 10 - 20x depending on whom you ask. The the easy-to-extract mega-giant oil fields are either tapped out or their production rates are declining at an accelerating rate. More drilling has to occur to produce less and less oil while most of the best reserves are under miles of ocean, ice or in dangerous parts of the world. These factors, along with historically high oil prices, provide powerful incentives to develop Canadian Tar Sands.
BruceMcF mentions that the EROEI for Tar Sands crude is around 5-10%. It's actually 5-10x based on this little nugget from here:
http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/...
"...the EROEI of tar sands is about 5.8 million BTUs (the value of a barrel of oil)/0.8 million BTUs (the approximate energy content of 0.8 MCF that was externally purchased), or 7.25. By true EROEI accounting – which includes the internally consumed energy as an input – the EROEI would be 5.8/1.5 = 3.9."
This doesn't mean we should cheer on the Tar Sands because it's still a horrible fuel. This source confirms the approximate number I heard a number of times on this subject that for every 100 units of energy from tar sands crude, you have to expend 25 units of energy in the form of (mostly) natural gas to produce it. This was just to produce CRUDE, mind you. It still has to be shipped to the refinery and turned into usable products.
Look here to see how much energy oil refining uses:
http://gatewayev.org/...
According to the author:
"Your average EV can go 16 miles on 4kwh...so that’s on the electricity used to just to refine that gallon of gas, nevermind the energy used to extract and transport the oil, and the tailpipe emission."
The numbers might not be exact (I've driven a Nissan Leaf and can get 21.6 miles on 4 kWh), but the average Electric Vehicle like the Leaf can go about the same distance the average gasoline car can JUST ON THE ELECTRICITY IT TAKES TO REFINE THE GASOLINE FOR THE CONVENTIONAL (ICE) CAR!
OK, so let me get this straight...We need to tear up virgin boreal forest to get at nasty tar sands. Then we have to dig THAT up and use clean water and cleaner (than oil) natural gas to produce crude oil that these bozos want to ship thousands of miles across valuable farmland and delicate ecosystems...Only to spend electricity that would be of better use charging electric cars refining that crude into gasoline. Oh, wait! There's more! THEN, the gasoline has to be shipped to a gas station and pumped into the gas tank of a machine that throws away 80% of the energy in that gasoline as waste heat ON A GOOD DAY!!!!!
http://web.mit.edu/...
(note, the efficiency curve is for an IDEAL otto or gasoline cycle, so 20% efficiency is a good nominal estimate for real-world efficiency)
But you see, if we don't tear up half of Alberta getting tar crude, then we won't get all the air pollution, healthcare expenditures, oil spills and polluted water that we would get with a tarball-infested energy strategy!
All kidding aside, here are some policy prescriptions in light of these numbers:
1. President Obama should DEFINITELY block the construction of Keystone XL
2. Before the ink is even dry on the denial of Keystone XL construction permit, the president should go back to his original position on fuel economy and require car companies to achieve over 60 MPG by 2020 or so.
3. The plug-in vehicle tax credit should be turned into a point-of-sale rebate and increased to $10K. We should take some of the $10B in yearly oil subsidies to fund this as well as a $1/barrel imported oil tax.
4. BruceMcF's suggestions concerning rail and zoning sound really good to round out the policy initiatives that are no-brainers and MUCH preferable to our current heading.
Oh, and I didn't even get started on how "alternative" oil sources like the Tar Sands make it even harder (maybe even impossible) to slow down Climate Change...