Will Green Energy Replace Fossil Fuels?

Will Green Energy Replace Fossil Fuels? (Did Automobiles Replace The Horse?) by Michael Silverstein and Kay Wood Will alternative energy resources like solar and wind largely replace fossil fuels in the near future? A new cadre of economists and journalists has set out to prove that this is impossible. Employing arguments based on present growth of alternative resources, total projected energy needs in years to come, deficiencies of alternative energy collection and storage, and most importantly, the vast costs of going from where we are (a fossil fuel based economy) to where many environmentalists want us to be (an alternative energy based one), they have declared the case for the latter undone. Arguments like these can seem persuasive. But only if you think that both technology and market acceptance develop at a steady pace. They often don’t. And in cases when they don’t, long established ways of doing things can change with incredible speed, persuasive arguments that this can never happen notwithstanding. Look, for example, at the story of how automobiles replaced old Dobbin as the primary mode of individual transportation. Talk about an established mode of getting places! Horses had been doing the job for millenia. There was a huge and powerful industry built around their breeding and selling and care and accoutrements. In the year 1900 any good journalist or economist could prove, prove!, that while autos might play some role in private transportation in the future, in the following few decades that was highly unlikely. Consider the arguments they could put forward in 1900. There were only 8,000 automobiles in the entire country that year, less than 4,200 manufactured domestically. You could impress friends taking one out for a spin, but were well advised to follow a relatively flat track. Even going up a modest rise often required going up in reverse. Given the general dependability of most of these vehicles, venturing not too far from home was not advisable in any case. Buying an auto that year was risky for another reason— the obsolescence factor. Technology here was evolving rapidly. Steam and electric powered cars dominated this small market, but internal combustion engines models seemed like they might have a future. But could you really take a chance on one of these? A very small auto market didn’t require a lot of paved roads. Which was fortunate. Because in all of the United States in 1900, there was less than 100 miles of paved roads. Any economist worth his salt that year could work out the average cost per mile of paving, note the distances between tens of thousands of villages, towns and cities that would require paving to make auto travel practical, and come up with a number larger than the GDP. And who would pay for this auto-friendly road building and maintenance? These costs alone would make the changeover from horse to car terribly impractical if not outright impossible. A horse could feed on grass and grass was everywhere. Internal combustion engines (if that ultimately became autos’ power source) needed gasoline. In 1900 there wasn’t enough of it being refined from petroleum because there wasn’t all that petroleum coming out of the ground. Nothing coming from the Middle East. Little coming from the Caucasus. And if you look at a graph of U.S. production, it’s a bell-shaped, with the bottom left of the bell reading almost nothing in 1900. Would there be a huge enough surge of production from Texas and Oklahoma and California, enough to power a huge fleet of automobiles? Could enough be refined? And even if this came to pass, could anyone imagine the tens of thousands of auto fueling and servicing stations coming into being to keep these undependable auto beasts on the road? The cost of this new infrastructure over and above the cost of the paved roads automobiles would need could make any sensible economist prognosticator see only a very limited future for autos in decades after 1900. To be fair and balanced here, however, there was one very important and well-known argument for autos as horse replacements, especially in cities. It involved pollution. Specifically, horse-generated pollution. A famous article that appeared in the London Times in 1874 featured an estimate made by its reporter based on considerable research. He calculated that at its then present rate of build up, the entire city of London would be under a nine foot pile of horse manure by the year 1950. Manure build up wasn’t a problem on country roads, of course. But in cities in Europe and the United States, it was the pollution problem more than any other that led to early use after 1900 of powered vehicles instead of horses in both public and private transportation. Summing up. In 1900 in this country, based on then existing technical factors and apparently sensible cost projections, internal combustion-powered automobiles could not possibly replace horses as the prime mode of transportation any time soon — though a pollution factor (horse droppings) might play a role in spending up the changeover. But eight years later Henry Ford was selling an inexpensive and dependable car for the mass market. By the start of WWI there were already 1.7 million cars on America’s fast growing network of paved roads. By the 1930s America was a largely motorized nation. Summing up. In 2014, based on currently existing technical factors and apparently sensible cost projections, green energy of various kinds can not possibly replace fossil fuel generated energy as the prime animators of our economy any time soon— though a pollution factor (global warming) could play a role in spending up the changeover. So say the present generation of green energy debunkers. To which I (and history) reply: Don’t bet on it. *** Michael Silverstein is a long time environmental writer, and former senior editor at Bloomberg. Kay Wood is the author of an environmental graphic novel, The Big Belch.

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