<DrumBeat: October 23, 2007 The Oil Drum ASPO Houston - a comment>

178 comments on The Connection Between Food Supply and Energy: What Is the Role of Oil Price?

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GliderGuider on October 23, 2007 - 12:38pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

We use 4% of the world's natural gas production for ammonia fertilizer, which is where Wikipedia's "1% of the world's energy" figure comes from. NG is a depletable commodity with a worse decline profile than oil.

Here's a scenario. It's 2050. Natural gas production is 40% of its present value. Home heating, electrical generation and the plastics industry are still competing with the fertilizer industry for the remaining supply. The price of ammonia has gone up 10x. The world now has 40% more people, every last one of them in a poor country for a total of 7 billion energy-poor (aka just plain desperately poor) people along with 2 billion or so "middle class". Those 7 billion poor couldn't afford fertilizer at its current price, let alone at 10x the price and with peak oil hammering them as well.

The only way Malawi went from famine to agricultural riches was fertilizer subsidies, which hints at what poor nations are going to face as the fertilizer goes away.

Welcome home, Mr. Malthus sir.

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kjmclark on October 23, 2007 - 12:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Of course, the flip side of this is that there are fairly ample supplies of natural gas in other parts of the world and we have a few more years until they peak. As it is, fertilizer and chemicals production are shifting to the Middle East because of cheaper supplies; part of the reason North American natural gas prices haven't gone through the roof yet.

I don't think that changes your 2050 scenario, though. By 2050 enough former grain producing regions will be in perpetual drought that we won't be producing grain there whether there is fertilizer available or not.

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Dezakin on October 23, 2007 - 12:48pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

We use 4% of the world's natural gas production for ammonia fertilizer, which is where Wikipedia's "1% of the world's energy" figure comes from. NG is a depletable commodity with a worse decline profile than oil.

This sort of scaremongering is silly. Ammonia is gated on hydrogen production which is easily produced from coal, and someday, nuclear, wind or solar.

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GliderGuider on October 23, 2007 - 12:57pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

It can be produced from coal, but at what cost, in both economic and environmental terms? The main reason CH4 is used right now is because it is very cheap. No other source is likely to match that. Coal has the disadvantage of containing not much hydrogen but lots of carbon, so the CO2 production profile will have to be reckoned with as well as the higher cost of handling a greater mass of a solid to get the same mass of hydrogen.

By 2050 there are likely to be 5+ billion people living on less than $5 a day. Where does the money come from for nuclear-cracked hydrogen to fertilize their fields? Unless you're claiming that such hydrogen would be as cheap as that derived from methane, they are going to be in a serious bind. Read the Malawi article - some third world farmers are already finding it tough to afford fertilizer at today's prices.

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Dezakin on October 23, 2007 - 1:04pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

It can be produced from coal, but at what cost, in both economic and environmental terms? The main reason CH4 is used right now is because it is very cheap. No other source is likely to match that.

Given its produced with steam reforming and coal based hydrogen production uses the very close cousin of the water shift reaction, the cost should be pretty similar. As to the CO2 production, its all about priorities; You can make up for it by replacing just a few coal power plants with nukes or wind farms.

By 2050 there are likely to be 5+ billion people living on less than $5 a day. Where does the money come from for nuclear-cracked hydrogen to fertilize their fields? Unless you're claiming that such hydrogen would be as cheap as that derived from methane, they are going to be in a serious bind.

I'm claiming that coal derived hydrogen is nearly as cheap as methane derived hydrogen; I dont have any illusions as to the prospect of nuclear cracked hydrogen before 2050.

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totoneila on October 23, 2007 - 1:31pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Hello Dezakin,

See my post upthread. Shutting off continental nightime illumination, so we can enjoy the natural darkness, will allow the shifting of enormous amounts of electricity to making nitrogen fertilizer, and continuing the mining of potash and phosphate rocks [while it lasts]. I hope some leaders are considering my earlier postings on the need for stockpiling NPK and building bird & bat guano shelters before this method is inevitably required. If most of us are engaged in daily relocalized permaculture: we will be too tired to stay up very long after sunset anyway. At a minimum: except the Halliburton workcamps to be dark at night, with night-vision & infrared equipped Merc Snipers picking off those who refuse to mentally-assimilate Peak Everything and the Thermo/Gene Collision.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

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GliderGuider on October 23, 2007 - 1:59pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Your hand-waving got me interested in the state of hydrogen from coal these days. I went looking, and found this on the DOE web site:

Hydrogen from Coal Research

Goal: By 2015, have ready to operate a zero emissions, high-efficiency co-production power plant that will produce hydrogen from coal along with electricity.

Partial oxidation of coal is a promising technology for the production of electric power and hydrogen that uses integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) technology. There currently are no commercial demonstrations of these joint power and hydrogen plants, however. Partial oxidation, or gasification, combines coal, oxygen and steam to produce synthesis gas that is cleaned of impurities such as sulfur or mercury.

To produce hydrogen, this synthesis gas is further processed using mature water-gas shift reactor technology to increase hydrogen and convert carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide. Hydrogen is then separated using PSA technology. Hydrogen production from coal-derived synthesis gas essentially uses the same gasification process steps currently being developed in DOE's coal-based clean electric power generation program.

To reduce costs, novel and advanced technology must be developed in all phases of the gasification through hydrogen separation phases. Carbon dioxide produced in the hydrogen production process is separated and would be removed utilizing storage technology now being developed in DOE's carbon sequestration research program.

I'm not quite ready to park my skepticism just yet, I'm afraid.

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Dezakin on October 23, 2007 - 2:12pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Oh come on; Its all mature and works. The DOE sketchyness is attatched to the carbon sequestration nonsense and using IGCC for hydrogen production and power production when you would optimize it either for power production or chemical synthesis.

SASOL has been producing ammonia from coal for decades after all. At a profit today.

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wkwillis on October 23, 2007 - 5:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Natural gas can be turned into hydrogen at low cost. Making hydrogen from water using intermittant power sources like windmills that don't always have a market is possible, but more expensive than is commercial at present wholesale electricity and natural gas prices.
Unless there are too many windmills, or not enough coal or nuclear power. Then the windmills can make power that sells at a higher price, so we will build more, so there will be more off peak windmill power than we can use, so the offpeak price will go down, which will make it cheap enough to use to make hydrogen.
In short, if wholesale electricity prices go up, hydrogen production from water will explode. We cannot have high wholsale electricity prices AND high nitrogen fertiliser prices past three times the present price for both.
That isn't politics, it's arithmetic. We aren't going to run out of wind power sites in the Great Plains Windbelt the way we ran out of water power sites in the Rocky Mountain Wetbelt.

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178 comments on The Connection Between Food Supply and Energy: What Is the Role of Oil Price?

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