I got woken up early by Ranchero music being blasted at 5:30 AM, so while I wait for video clips to render I played with my calculator…
I was reading some numbers recently on world biofuel production levels, and got to wondering just how close we are to being able to meet our fuel needs using ethanols and biodiesels and so on. The US currently produces 5 million barrels of oil per day domestically — 290 billion liters annually — although it imports 75% of its oil for a total annual domestic consumption of 5.8 trillion liters of oil. This doesn't count oil consumed internationally (manufacturing in China for example), nor does it include other non-renewable fuel use like coal (which currently is used to generate 55% of the electric power in the US).
To put those oil numbers into a slightly different context, with a population of 300 million, that means that every American citizen from babies to those on their deathbed consumes 19,345 liters of oil every year inside the borders of the country. If oil was beer, that would be like drinking 141 beers every single day. Every two days, you could fill a standard sized bathtub with the oil consumed… and as I said, that doesn't count the fuel consumed internationally or the coal.
Now, the largest biofuel producer in the world is Brazil, which manufactures a whopping 16 billion liters of it every year. To put that into context, that's a miniscule 0.28% of the annual US consumption. The US government is considering mandating minimum levels of biofuel production inside the US (which is currently the world's number two producer thereof) — by 2012 they want to see US production reach 30 billion liters per year. This would consume a quarter of all corn production in the United States, but would only satiate 0.52% of the current oil use. Even if every current corn farm in the US dedicated its output to creating biofuel, barely 2% of the US oil demand would be met.
I'm skewing the numbers a little because I'm comparing apples and oranges; one barrel of oil produces less than half that much in gasoline, whereas ethanol fuel can be run in your car as is — so if you want to be overly optimistic, double my numbers. Unfortunately, even doing so, production of biofuel can meet at best 1/25th the current fuel consumption. Renewable electrical energy generation (solar, wind, and hydropower) is ramping up, but it will be some time before it can replace fossil fuels — if ever; wind power for example is believed to max out at about 20% of total consumption. Hydropower currently generates about 10% of US power, and wind and solar account for well under 1% each.
Barring the advent of some new miraculous method of power generation (cold fusion, zero point, whatever), it should be clear that the only way that the US can avoid a horrendous crash is to ramp down its energy consumption, and fast. ExxonMobile predicts that by 2035 the average US car will have achieved a fuel consumption rate of 35 miles per gallon. To put that into context, in 2005 the average car sold in Europe has a fuel consumption of 35 miles per gallon.
If the best America can do is taking thirty years to reach the standards of the second most gluttonous region of the world, there's going to be a problem…
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