and the heating of limestome to
make the CaO is done using a
fossil fuel, and the cement is
transported to the construction
site using petrol/oil vehicles.
So all that concrete equates top a
massive contribution to global
warming.

So our debate now should be centred
around 'which will get us first,
energy depletion or abrupt climate
change?'

Does anyone know if the CO2 emitted by cement production is counted towards a country's emissions for Kyoto?

It's all high-rise apartment blocks and roadways, equivalent to building a brand new Houston from scratch every year.

It's the same process the U.S. went through in the early 20th century, but a lot faster, and with a lot more people, and with cement instead of wood, because there just aren't that many trees to go around.

For example, if the peak is now, 5 years from now will our knowledge and analyses have improved to the point where we can say for certain - "We peaked in 2006, and it's all down hill from here".  Or, say the peak will happen in 2015....in 2010 will our analyses have improved to the point that we can say fairly certainly that peak will occur in 2015?

I guess my question is about the sources of uncertainty in all of the models and analyses.  And whether these uncertainties are diminishing over time, or will they still be just as uncertain 5 or 10 years from now as they are today?

Simmons says that we will only know the peak date after we are well past it and have the production data to look at.  If this is so, it seems like it will be difficult to get people/countries to agree that there's a problem until after it's already too late.

Back in the '70s, my employer added automatic adjustments to its large contracts for fuel and asphalt.  The prices went up so suddenly that if we held the contractor to them, the contractor went bankrupt.  So now the price we pay them for those items increases automatically with the market price.  Last year, we added similar automatic adjustments for concrete and steel.

I was just reading this article, from the Grand Rapids Press:

Material Costs Put the Heat on Business

The costs of plastic, resin, steel, etc., have all spiked.  

...last year, cold-rolled steel was up 66 percent while hot-rolled steel surged 124 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The article doesn't quite put the pieces together, though.  It talks about how energy prices are killing business, and about how commodity prices are just as bad, but doesn't seem to realize there's a link between the two.

Some business owners seem to be hoping China starts to export steel, and floods the market the way they have with clothing and gewgaws.  I'm not holding my breath on that one.

This is about my personal observations on concrete, energy, betterment of lives and the fascinating situation in China, also points north:  

Long winded preface that has relevance:  

I've been in alternative energy research for 35 years, including for Exxon, EPRI, others.   My curiosity is high about everything.  It can be manifested by such things as tracking power lines in the Yucatan jungle to see where they go (In one case a Maya pool hall).  I am also very interested in and have published on climate.  My house has also been a low rent refuge near Stanford in CA for foreign grad students/ scholars at about 1/2 the normal rent around here.  The students and I have greatly enjoyed the arrangement.  Among others I have housed 10 Chinese (PRC) scholars over the past 10 years.  That's my China connection.  

So -- with a backpack no less -- I went to Beijing (a) at the invitation of a Chinese Ph.D and  and (b) for a USEPA/UN/China Global warmimg conference

http://www.ergweb.com/methane_china/

Gave a paper on landfill gas energy which is actually very greenhouse cost effective wherever it can be done in the world.  

Shown around greater Beijing (greater area than Belgium) by my grad student friend for 10 days.  (Bus. and cheap cabs were about 25 cents US/mile) I was stunned, awed by the number of construction cranes with heights probably 100 meters.  Not just one at a site but in clusters of 3, 4, 5, simultaneously at work, building, on and on. Photographed a few thousand.  

I lived in Manhattan 40 years ago.  The Badaling highway north from Beijing reminded me of 3 or more Manhattans jammed together complete with crowds and traffic that is already approaching maddening.  

China undertakes a massive task -- to bring say 20-30 million previously impoverished people each year to a better life.  But note that those 20-30 milion people a year are only about 2% of their population annually attaining that better life.  And speaking with my friends, life is getting better even though needs and arguable shortfalls and flaws and hurdles remain great,  

Economic activity, and materials and energy use as China strives for these things strongly affects the world.  China is becoming to us somewhat like Pierre Trudeau of Canada once said of the US--like being in bed with an elephant.  It is not in the least surprising that Chinese purchases about doubled the world price of steel scrap and concrete last year.  Or that Chinese consumption will be a huge factor in world oil and natural gas.  And climate --they well recognize this but when you want to raise the standard of living of well over half a billion people what can you do? China is short of wood--thus relying heavily on cement.  

China gets into some CO2 abatement solutions. Merits of these will vary according to persectives. There is the 3 Gorges 20 GWe hydro project, and China recently finshed constructing a couple of Canadian CANDU natural uranium/thorium reactors in fine style. But I do not know how much greenhouse-neutral energy they are developing in their total mix.  I suspect there are major gaps in statistics, in the same way that elements of internal Chinese economy were not measured. Just the inclusion of these in World Bank figures raised Chinese GDP from sixth to fourth in the world

Took the railroad north to Mongolia, Siberia and Moscow.  All the way north to China/Mongolia border at Erlian power plant after power plant is under construction. All coal fired.  Even in Mongolia where pop is about 2% of China's the coal fired electric plant construction goes on.  Got photos. And later on the great trans-Asian Siberian railroad artery I recollect clocking returning empty Russian coal trains  at about one every 10 minutes.  I do not know whether Russian coal consumption goes up or down but back of the envelope tells me that each train has fueled about half a gigawatt-day.  This is big time.  Is Russian coal-firing of electricity sparing natural gas for sale to Europe -- including the Ukraine?  

Stuart--another great post.  I recognize that I have rambled on and postings should be relevant.  But  all of these many issues like cement and Chinese energy are extremely relevant to peak oil.  Your post has prompted me to release my own pent-up thoughts.

Not too surprising, cement manufacture is one of the most energy-intensive of the bulk commodity industries. These cement kilns are huge and operate at a very high temperature (a feature that has made them attractive for the co-incineration of hazardous wastes). Though my numbers may be a bit outdated, energy consumption for the manufacture of portland cement is roughly on the order of 0.15 to 0.2 tons of coal per ton of final product.  However, some of the newer facilities with energy recovery probably do better. So, if China is producing a billion tons of cement a year, that would imply that doing so consumes on the order of 150 million tons of coal.

Anybody out there: does this figure make sense when compared to China's annual coal production?

Maybe I'm more surprised that India beat the US in concrete production?  I guess we kind of knew that too ... the world is not flat yet ... but it's flattening.

TODA's = (acronyms)exp n (where n=days of site acitivty)

Conclusion: we need a glossary

While I don't contribute, I read TOD daily.  Not knowing the acronyms has forced me to read more elsewhere, which is a good thing, but if it were possible to handle this acronym data as well the peak oil data, TOD might be more educational.  I'm not saying dumb-down the blog, just make it easier to follow.  Thanks.

1. the type of source & its production
2. supply & demand (including ecomomics)
3. the consequences of our consumption
4. alternatives to those consequences and scarcity

So, to those who might think this is not an appropriate subject for discussion here, I disagree. I look forward to reading Sturt's series on the carbon cycle and commenting on what he says.

And it's surprising to me that some people even know (outside climate scientists & other specialists) that cement production is a source of CO2. Its overall contribution is relatively small but apparently not in China! That graph is shocking.

By the way, if China is determined to pave over the very natural resources it needs to survive, maybe we should coin the term The Greap Leap Backwards.

I am indeed picking up the pieces of my jaw bone. Those two years back to back are absolutely astounding. We can imagine what the preceding 6 or 7 years look like.

I am reminded of Winston Churchill's position in the mid-1930's. He kept telling the House of Lords that trouble was coming. His point was very simple.

He said: Germany is building, building, building... what happens when they stop?

Is these cement production figures are representing domestic consumption or aslo include exportation?

I heard on CNBC a few weeks ago that there was a shortage of cement in the US due to the hot housing market and that most of the cement was imported from Indonesia and China.

According to my rough back-of-the-evelope calculation, I was quite surprised to see that every ton of cement produced puts almost a ton of CO2 into the atmosphere.

The basis of this calculation was as follows:

- Coal @ 80% carbon

- 300 lbs of coal burned per ton of cement produced.

- Typical cement composition of 62% CaO (the remainder being primarily silica, alumina, ferric oxide, plus a variety of other minerals)

Interestingly, the amount of CO2 produced from the calcination of limestone is almost the same as the amount of CO2 from the burning of the coal to power the kilns.

So, that billion tons of cement produced in China last year also produced roughly a billion tons of CO2.

When you see a picture of Hoover Dam, just keep in mind that roughly its weight in CO2 was emitted to the atmosphere as the result of its construction.  While I'm sure that over the years Hoover Dam saved many times that amount of CO2 emissions due to the clean hydro power it produced, it is still a good reminder that all energy generating systems have a not-insignificant amount of initial energy investment.

I've heard many suggest that we can build fleets of hybrids, plenty of rail systems, as well as nuclear and "clean coal" plants.  I've also heard people suggest that we can build enormous "air cleaning" plants to extract carbon and other pollutants from the air to be sequestered.

My sense is that while we must use some high-tech, energy-and-materials-intensive technologies, our most effective and most essential strategy will be to change the way we live.  Intensive relocalisation, permaculture, and reorganisation of our culture so that walking and biking are our primary means of daily transportation are strategies which I think will be both essential and more effective than building new fleets and structures.

We need to plan our way out of needing huge fleets of energy-intensive machines to move around.  We need to plan our way out of needing massive energy-intensive infrastructure to sustain our population.

Here's a Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA anecdote to illustrate my point:

Today, my son and I took my cargo trike to a neighborhood park.  He wanted to try out his new ice skates.  We were the only human-powered vehicle on the street.  There were many cars, many carrying only one or two people.  At the park, the sign said that the rink was closed.  The ice was too soft due to warm weather.

I've lived in the region for over 30 years, and note that I don't recall a day in January or February when it was too warm to skate -- until maybe last year or this year.

My son was disappointed!  We talked a bit about global warming, and noticed the huge parking lot of a church near the park.  On Sundays the church also uses the parking lot of a nearby public school and much street parking to accomodate all the cars of parishioners.  They hire off-duty Minneapolis Police to direct traffic. We noticed SUVs and Audi sedans and all kinds of other cars pouring in and out of the parking lot between services.

This same phenomenon was no doubt occuring all over town at churches, movie theatres, shopping malls, and the like.

Yet the people in the cars seemed to me to be existing in a parallel universe, oblivious to the fact that our weather is changing.

People here are warned of thin ice on lakes at a time when they "normally" drive trucks out on the lakes towing large ice houses for fishing.  But no comment is made about global warming or climate change.

I spoke with an elderly friend who grew up on a dairy farm near Mitchell, South Dakota.  She said that when she was a child, her mom was concerned about whether or not it was *too cold* to go ice skating at this time of year, but never about whether or not it the ice would be too thin or too soft.

Here in Minneapolis, there are more "indoor" ice rinks to accomodate ice skating sports.  They require a bit of concrete to make, and a bit of energy to operate.  "Hockey families" joke about the need for new big SUVs to haul all their kids and equipment from home to games in various rinks in town and in the metropolitan area.  Again, no mention is made of global warming related to our living patterns.

Scientists who speak of global warming do not fit the facts to accomodate the narrative needed to continue the "non-negotiable American way of life."  The American people are kept in a dis-infotainment bubble.  We will be told, no doubt, that we are victims of bad people who want "our" energy and other resources.  We will be told that we need to fight and build our way through the bottleneck of the next two or three decades.

I wonder if we can develop a narrative fitted around the facts to guide us to a peaceful and rational approach to the bottleneck we are in?

If we replaced 30% of our cars with walking and biking instead of shiny new cars (hybrid or otherwise) think of the energy and material we'd save.  If we transport less food and other "stuff" around the world to sell, think of the materials and energy we could save.

I know we'll need to build some energy-efficient transport and some infrastructure, I suggest, though, that we think carefully about how to design our lives so as to need the least cars and energy-intensive infrastructure possible.

It takes far less energy and material to build a cargo trike (or quad) than a car.

Is it possible or needful to design a future where we do not need so much concrete?

Things are closing in on us from many, many directions, even though I still think Peak Oil is going to hit first, is hitting first. After Peak Oil, how would one prioritize the problems? Climate, soil depletion, metals, etc. Any informed speculation? Of course, war and geopolitics make all such projections highly iffy. But just on the basis of what we know about the resources and the workings of the globe, what might one say? There's nothing more interesting than these questions. There have never been more interesting times to live in! Scary, but interesting.

First, I work in wind energy development, and the cost of wind energy projects has gone up 50% in the last 2 years, in large part because of the +/- 100 m3 of concrete in the foundation and many, many tons of steel (I don't have an exact number, but can say that it takes a crane weighing 500 tons to put up the newest and biggest turbines). The Chinese appetite for concrete and steel have been playing havoc with our economics for several years.

Second, my wife and I are expecting our first baby in March. The most interesting piece of advice that we've gotten from a stranger was to teach our child Mandarin at a young age.

Thanks again, Stuart, for your biweekly world-changing information!

According to this:
http://www.wbcsd.org/web/projects/cement/tf2/R2002_UK.pdf

Cement manufacture uses temperatures up to 1450 C.

Solar power towers can reach at least 1100 C, according to this:http://www.volker-quaschning.de/articles/fundamentals2/index_e.html

Could concentrated solar power be used to reduce fuel requirements for a cement plant?

BTW, the first-linked article suggests using not only tires and ground-up cars, but also slaughterhouse residue such as meat and bone meal, and even sewage sludge as fuel.

Chris

If they have 450lbs of cement + 47lbs of ash per cubic yard of ready-mix... that's 1.83 metric tons per standard 9cubicyard truck...

I doubt they get even close... but say they get 2 metric tons of cement in every cement truck.

That's 500 MILLION loads of cement in one year.... I'm truly frightened to think what the average emissions out of the average chinese cement truck is.

I just can't comprehend that...

I don't speak Chinese, but felt I was able to interpret their body language pretty well, perhaps because I lived near Silicon Valley for 15 years. I spent quite a few hours wandering the cities un-escorted and looking at how people lived and interacted.

I saw a lot of SUV's, despite the fact that a gallon of gas cost (if I remember right) something like a day's wages for the typical city dweller. Apparently, it's even more true in China than here: if you've got it, flaunt it. The traffic rules are simple: obey traffic lights; aside from that, the bigger vehicle has the right of way--except that a small car with VIP's on board can claim right of way by honking.

In Shanghai, we stayed in an old, formerly grand hotel, built in the first half of the 20th century. It was 18 stories high. I was told that until 1983 it had been the tallest building in Shanghai. Now there must be hundreds of taller buildings; even residential buildings (row upon row of them!) are taller.

Although I walked through several areas where poor people lived--including alone after dark--I never saw or felt anything that made me feel unsafe, or that I was in a high-crime area. It just didn't have the "slum" or "inner city" feel of American poor areas. (I heard that Beijing and other northern cities are more dangerous.) My impression was that people there are comfortable with large wealth disparities, and don't resent them or feel an urge to turn to crime out of a sense of poverty. I speculate that part of this lack of resentment comes from a feeling that things are getting better and everyone has a chance to improve their lot, and meanwhile everyone can at least make a living.

I hope some of these impressions will be useful...

Chris

So many "coal-mine canaries" have been identified: bleaching of the coral reefs, melting of the permafrost.... Each time one turns around, a new canary is found: Now the amphibian population.  Climatologists really should talk with the biologists; both should talk with the economists, only the last seem to have the ear of the politicians and the business world.  How we do business is at the heart of everything, including "peak oil."

Climatologists deal with an incredibly complex system. If they try to understand just the dynamics, they will miss seeing some of the effects. To speak simply of rising sea levels in eighty years or the abrupt halt of the Gulf Stream misses the point, leaving us to believe that we can escape the effects for another sixty or so years.  The effects are here and increasing, not quite so much to affect us seriously, yet; but they will shortly.  

The unease many of us feel lies in the fact that each time we turn around the situation has changed.  Each year we notice something else that escaped our notice.  And what we notice seems only to make matters worse.  Now it appears that plants produce much more methane than we ever thought.  Who knows? Maybe life itself has played an important part in past climate swings.

I suspect that in two or three years climate change, a.k.a. "global warming" will be, along with peak oil, a much "hotter" issue in the press.  Critical mass for both these issues is approaching.  

Economists, pay attention. You have the ear of the media, politicians and businessmen.  Until the businessmen listen, there is little hope.

I'll repeat here that a recent LA Times piece covered a fight with Mexico about trying to make them reduce cement prices to us.

And what about building and repairing roads, bridges, etc?   There must be huge amounts of energy required to just patch up a mile of potholed freeway.

Crumbling infrastructure will be a positive feedback pushing us that much further into collapse.

Worse, as noted above,  China has become a gross importer of grain as of only a few years ago.  They are moving out into world markets sucking in grain bigtime.  But grain equals animal protein (processed grain) equals essentially what we live on.   This could drive our food prices skyhigh in a very short time.  I'm no economist but it would seem that if our massive debt is unpayable, China could ask for payment in grain--"our" grain!  Lester Brown covers the grain story in detail at www.earth-policy.org.

They're building roads, sidewalks, highways, dams, factories, massive apartment complexes, stadiums, you name it.  The Three Gorges Dam is but one of several massive hydroelectric projects currently underway that completely dwarf Grand Coolie or Hoover in size and scope.  I'm sure some of it is going to military uses as well, but it's mostly just infrastructure improvements on a massive scale as one might expect for a population of 1.3B people starting essentially from scratch (i.e., dirt).

(We're paying for this concrete, by the way, with our massive trade deficit.)