The Learning Curve and the Hubbert Peak

The development of the sources and uses of energy since 1908 has been filled with contradictions and even anachronisms. However the one unchangeable influence has been that of the Law of Supply and Demand.

What seems commonplace today was, only 100 years ago, rare: electricity wired to buildings and homes; natural gas delivered by pipelines to consumers; petroleum distilled into heating oil and gasoline to run vehicles.

And the true harm came with the belief that these incredible energy supplies were endless.
The American public came up short in the 1970’s when the supply of oil and gasoline was shortened and it was common to see lines of cars waiting at service stations to buy gas – at greatly increased prices. Some of us raised the warning flags.

But the lesson was not learned. As soon as the supply was restored and the prices dropped to “normal,” all thoughts of developing alternate fuel sources faded.

Back in the 1950’s we found that while electricity was generated by utilities at an efficiency level of 35-40% - total efficiency could be increased to 80% or more by making use of the waste heat developed during generation and there was plenty of that. (We’ll discuss the Total Energy Concept later.)

Con Edison of NY started to use this principle and generated steam from its waste heat and sold the steam to consumers in Manhattan. But soon it had to develop more steam in boilers to meet increasing demand and had to set up a new corporation – New York Steam.

A few of us saw other problems coming. In 1956 an American geophysicist M. King Hubbert posited the theory that the rate of petroleum production tends to follow a bell shaped curve. It suggested that production of the finite supply would peak and then decline as discoveries declined. This was independent of demand.

It happened that Hubbert’s Peak was reached in the continental US in the early ‘70’s. – A coincidence? We think not. And this same theory will apply to sources in the mid-East and elsewhere.

SO –instead of reducing its dependence on oil, the US began importing ever-increasing amounts of oil from abroad, at ever increasing costs. Do you know who our largest supplier is?
And what about natural gas? And coal? Same theory applies as well as other areas of concern. So how do we use what we have learned? Wait there’s more learning to some.

Oh, and that largest supplier of petroleum imports to the US is……….…………Canada