2
When the Engine Dies (Limits that Cannot be Crossed)

Let’s start with energy. This is often considered as a secondary technical issue after the main priorities, namely employment, the economy and democracy. Now energy is at the heart of every civilization, especially our own industrial and consumerist civilization. You can sometimes do without creativity, purchasing power or investment capacity, but you can’t do without energy. It’s a physical principle: without energy, there is no movement. Without fossil fuels, globalization, industry and economic activity as we know them are finished.

Over the last century, oil has become essential as the main fuel for modern transport, and thus for global trade, the construction and maintenance of infrastructure, the mining of resources, logging, fishing and agriculture. It has an exceptional energy density, is easy to transport and store, and simple to use: it fuels 95 per cent of transport.

A society that has taken the path of exponential growth needs the production and consumption of energy to follow this same path. In other words, to maintain our civilization in working order, we must constantly increase our energy consumption and production. But we have reached a peak.

Figure 2.1 The concept of ‘peak’ was introduced by geophysicist Marion King Hubbert in 1956 for conventional oil production in the United States

Note: The grey dots that follow the curve represent Norwegian oil production which peaked in 2001.

Source: BP Stat. Review, 2013.

A peak is the moment when the extraction rate of a resource reaches an upper limit before declining inexorably. This is more than a theory, it’s a kind of geological principle: to begin with, extractable resources are easy to access; production explodes, then stagnates and finally declines when the only raw material left is not easy to access, thus describing a bell curve (see Figure 2.1). The top of the curve, the peak moment, does not mean the resource has been depleted but rather signals the beginning of its decline. This notion is conventionally used for extractable resources, such as fossil fuels or ores (phosphorus, uranium, metals, etc.), but it is also applied (sometimes wrongly) to other aspects of society, as well as to the population or to GDP, in so far as these parameters are strongly correlated with the extraction of resources.

At the top of the peak, does energy starts to fall?

But we have reached the top of the curve of conventional oil production. As the International Energy Agency, known for its optimism about oil reserves, has itself admitted, the global peak in conventional oil, accounting for 80 per cent of oil production, was crossed in 2006.1 We have since been on a ‘wavy plateau’. Past this plateau, world oil production will begin to decline.2

According to the most recent statistics,3 half of the twenty leading producing countries, representing more than three-quarters of the world’s oil production, have already crossed their peak, including the United States, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Mexico, Norway, Algeria and Libya.4 In the 1960s, for every barrel consumed, the industry discovered six new ones. Today, with an ever more efficient technology, the world consumes seven barrels for each barrel discovered.

In a scientific overview published in 2012,5 British researchers concluded that ‘more than two-thirds of current crude oil production capacity will need to be replaced by 2030, simply to keep production constant. Given the long-term decline in new discoveries, this will present a major challenge even if “above-ground” [technical and economic] conditions prove favourable.’6 So, in the next fifteen years, in order to maintain itself, the industry will need a supply of 60 million barrels per day, equivalent to the daily capacity of six Saudi Arabias.

The state of oil reserves is becoming clearer, and a growing number of multinationals, governments, experts and international organizations are increasingly pessimistic as to the future of production. The authors of the aforementioned study conclude, ‘On the basis of current evidence we suggest that a peak of conventional oil production before 2030 appears likely and there is a significant risk of a peak before 2020’, a conclusion shared by reports financed by the British government,7 and the US8 and German9 armies. In short, there is a growing consensus about the fact that the age of easily accessible oil is over and we are entering a new era.10

The oil situation is so tense that many business executives are sounding the alarm. In Great Britain, a consortium of large companies, known as ITPOES (the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security), wrote in its February 2010 report, ‘As we reach maximum oil extraction rates […] [w]e must plan for a world in which oil prices are likely to be both higher and more volatile and where oil price shocks have the potential to destabilise economic, political and social activity.’11

For more optimistic observers, on the contrary, estimates concluding that a ‘peak’ has been reached are based on maximum extractable quantities that are far too alarmist. So a group of researchers has looked into the matter, comparing a range of scenarios from the most optimistic to the most pessimistic. The result was that only the scenarios considered to be pessimistic fit the actual data observed over the last eleven years.12 The study thus confirmed that the worldwide production of conventional oil has entered an irreversible decline.

Fine: but what about new deposits, in particular so-called unconventional forms of oil, i.e., heavy hydrocarbons and/ or hydrocarbons trapped at great depths between the sand, the tar and the rocks of the Earth’s crust? Won’t the offshore platforms in the depths near the Brazilian and Arctic coasts, the oil sands of Canada, and shale gas and oil gradually replace conventional crude?

No. And the facts are overwhelming. In regard to shale oil and gas, let’s just pass over the fact that extraction techniques threaten the environment and the health of local residents,13 cause micro-earthquakes,14 leakages of methane15 and radioactive material,16 consume a lot of energy (we will come back to this),17 sand and fresh water,18 and contaminate the groundwater tables.19

In fact, drilling companies in this domain mostly produce dreadful financial results. According to a report from the American energy department, the combined assets of 127 companies that drill for shale oil and gas in the United States show a deficit of 106 billion dollars for the fiscal year 2013—14,20 a deficit which they have hastened to fill by opening up new credit lines. But to attract more investment and show financial analysts a positive result, they have had to sell 73 billion dollars’ worth of assets. The result has been exploding debts and an increasing lack of capacity to generate the revenue necessary to repay them.21

A study commissioned by the British government warns, ‘Greater dependency on resources using hydraulic fracturing will aggravate the tendency to increase average decline rates, since wells have no plateau and decline extremely quickly, sometimes 90 per cent or more during the five first years.’22 Others say the figure is a 60 per cent decline in production in the first year alone.23 So, to avoid bankruptcy, companies must drill ever more wells and pile up ever more debt, both to offset the decline of wells already worked and to continue to increase the production that will serve to repay their growing debts. This is a race against the clock whose outcome is already known.

It’s this little bubble that many people did not see (or refused to see) when they trumpeted that these unconventional fossil fuels would enable the United States to regain a certain energy independence.24 In an attempt to artificially inflate the growth and competitiveness of the United States, the Federal Reserve Bank allowed oil companies to borrow at extremely low interest rates, thereby manufacturing a time bomb: the slightest rise in interest rates would push the most fragile companies to the edge of bankruptcy. The problem is pretty much the same for shale gas.25 The Obama administration thought that the whole edifice would stand for only a few years after reaching its ceiling in 2016.26

Estimates – very optimistic estimates – from the International Energy Agency indicate that the oil sands of Canada and Venezuela will each provide five million barrels per day in 2030, which represents less than 6 per cent of total fuel production by this date (projected).27 So, even in the best-case scenario, it is impossible to compensate for the decline of conventional fuels in this way.

What about the Arctic? Risks to the environment28 and risks for investors29 are far too significant here. Major oil companies withdrew from the race even when the price per barrel was raised: they included Shell, which suspended its explorations in 2013,30 and Total which did the same, warning all those active in the sector of the potential dangers.31

Biofuels are hardly any more ‘reassuring’. Their contribution is forecast to be limited to 5 per cent of the fuel supply for the next ten to fifteen years,32 not to mention the fact that some pose a serious threat to food security in many countries.33

It is hardly realistic to imagine that electrifying the transport system will replace oil. Electric networks, batteries and spare parts are manufactured from rare metals and other raw materials (which are running out), and the entire electric system consumes fossil fuels: they are needed for the transport of spare parts, workers and materials, for the construction and maintenance of power stations and for the extraction of ores. Without oil, the current electric system, including nuclear power, will collapse.

In fact, it is unimaginable that we could replace oil with the other fuels we are familiar with. On the one hand, not natural gas, nor coal, nor wood, nor uranium possess the exceptional qualities of oil, which is easy to transport and very dense in energy. On the other hand, these energies would be exhausted in no time at all, not only because the date of their peak is approaching34 but also and mainly because most of the machines and infrastructure necessary for their operation need oil. The decline in oil will therefore lead to the decline of all other forms of energy. It is thus dangerous to underestimate the magnitude of the task that faces us if we are to compensate for the decline in conventional oil.

But that’s not all. The main ores and metals are following the same path as energy, moving towards a peak.35 A recent study has assessed the scarcity of 88 non-renewable resources and the probability that there will be a permanent shortage of them by 2030.36 Those for which this is a high probability include silver, essential to the manufacture of wind turbines, indium, an essential component for several photovoltaic cells, and lithium, used in batteries. And the study concludes that these shortages will have a devastating impact on our way of life. In the same vein, we have recently seen estimates in which peaks will be reached for phosphorus37 (an essential fertilizer in industrial agriculture), fisheries38 and even drinking water.39 And the list could easily be extended. As the specialist in mineral resources Philippe Bihouix explains in L’Âge des low tech (The Age of Low Tech),

we could allow ourselves a degree of latitude when it comes to any of these resources, energy or metals. But the challenge now is that we are having to face them all at pretty much the same time: [there is] no more of the energy needed for the less concentrated metals, [there are] no more of the metals needed for less accessible energy.40

So we are rapidly approaching what Richard Heinberg calls ‘peak everything’.41 Remember the surprising fact about exponentials: once the consequences are visible, it’s all just a matter of years, or even months.

In short, we can expect an imminent decline in the availability of fossil fuels and the raw materials that drive industrial civilization. For now, no alternative seems likely to make up for the coming scarcity. The fact that production is stagnating at the expense of increasingly intense prospecting on the part of oil majors with ever more efficient technologies is all too clear a sign. Since 2000, investments made by the industry have grown on average by 10.9 per cent a year, ten times faster than in the previous decade.42 The very fact that oil sands, shale oil, biofuels, solar panels and wind turbines are now being taken seriously by those same industries that formerly looked down on them indicates that we are moving into a new era – the era of the peak.

But what comes after the peak? A slow, gradual decline in the production of fossil fuels? Possibly, but there are two reasons for doubting this. The first is that, once they are past the peak of their own deposits, oil-producing countries will have to deal with growing domestic consumption. If they decide – legitimately – to stop exporting in order to meet this demand, it will be to the detriment of the major importing countries (including France), and this could trigger predatory wars that will disrupt the productive capacity of oil-producing countries. In any case, the decline will probably be faster than expected. And the second reason for doubt is that …

At the top of the peak, there is a wall!

Normally, after climbing a bell curve on one side, there is the other side to go down. It would be logical to believe that this still leaves half of the oil we discovered under the Earth’s surface. True! And it’s a proven fact: the quantities of fossil fuel stocked underground – and proven to exist – are still gigantic and all the more significant if we take into account the methane hydrates that we might imagine drawing on after the melting of the Siberian and Canadian permafrost. So is this good news?

Let’s not rejoice too soon. First, it would be a disaster for the climate (see next chapter). Also, even if we wanted, we would never be able to extract all that oil. The reason is simple: to extract oil, it takes energy, a lot of energy – for prospecting, feasibility studies, machinery, wells, pipelines, roads, and for the maintenance and the security of all these infrastructures, and so on. Now common sense dictates that in extraction, the amount of energy garnered should be greater than the energy invested. Logical enough. If you garner less than you invest, it’s not worth digging. This relation between the energy produced and the energy invested is called the energy return on investment (EROI).

This is an absolutely crucial point. After the effort expended in an extraction, it is the energy surplus which allows a civilization to develop. At the beginning of the twentieth century, US oil had a fantastic EROI of 100:1 (for one unit of energy invested, one hundred units were recovered). You hardly needed to start digging before the oil started gushing. In 1990, it had fallen to only 35:1, and today it is about 11:1.43 As a comparison, the average EROI of the world production of conventional oil is between 10:1 and 20:1.44 In the United States, the EROI for oil sands lies between 2:1 and 4:1, that for agrofuels between 1:1 and 1.6:1 (10:1 in the case of ethanol made from cane sugar), and for nuclear power between 5:1 and 15:1.45 The EROI for coal is about 50:1 (in China, 27:1), for shale oil about 5:1 and for natural gas about 10:1.46 All these EROIs are not only declining, but declining at an accelerating rate since it is always necessary to dig deeper and deeper, go further out to sea and use ever more expensive techniques and infrastructures so as to maintain the level of production. Think, for example, of the energy that would be needed to inject thousands of tons of CO2 or fresh water into ageing deposits, and the roads that would need to be built, and the kilometres that would have to be covered in order to reach the remote areas of Siberia …

The EROI concept does not only apply to fossil fuel. To obtain energy from wind turbines for example, first you have to spend energy to gather all the raw materials used in their manufacture, and then to manufacture them, install them and maintain them. In the United States, concentrated solar power (those big mirrors in the desert) produces a yield of around 1.6:1. Photovoltaics in Spain produce around 2.5:1.47 As for wind power, it initially seems to offer a better yield of about 18:1.48 Sadly, these figures do not take into account the intermittent nature of this type of energy and the need to back it up with a storage system or thermal power plant. If we take this into account, the EROI for wind turbines comes down to 3.8:1.49 Only hydroelectricity apparently offers a comfortable yield of between 35:1 and 49:1. But besides the fact that this type of production seriously disrupts natural habitats,50 a recent study has shown that 3,700 projects underway or planned across the world would increase global electricity production by only 2 per cent (from 16 per cent to 18 per cent).51

In short, renewable energy does not have the potential to offset the decline in fossil fuel, and there are not enough fossil fuels (or ores) to massively develop renewable energies so as to offset the predicted decline in fossil fuels. As Gail Tverberg, actuary and specialist in the economics of energy, puts it, ‘We are being told, “Renewables will save us,” but this is basically a lie. Wind and solar PV are just as much a part of our current fossil fuel system as any other source of electricity.’52

The problem is that our modern societies need a minimum EROI to maintain all the services currently offered to the population.53 The principle of energy use is roughly the following: we first allocate all the energy surplus we have to the tasks essential for our survival, such as food production, building and heating our habitats, making our clothes, and running health systems in the cities. Then we split the remaining balance between the systems of justice, national security, defence, social security, health and education. Finally, if we have any energy surplus left, we use it for our entertainment (tourism, cinema, etc.).

Today, the minimum EROI to provide all of these services has been assessed as within a range of between 12:1 and 13:1.54 In other words, there is a threshold beneath which we should not venture unless we are prepared to decide collectively – and with all the difficulties that this implies – which services are to be maintained and which it will be necessary to give up.55 With an average EROI in decline for fossil fuels, and an EROI of no more than 12:1 for the majority of renewable energies, we are coming dangerously close to this threshold.

Of course, all these ranges of numbers can be argued with, and some people will not fail to question them, but the general principle is less controversial. The idea we need to grasp is that we are facing a thermodynamic wall that is getting ever more rapidly closer. Today, each unit of energy is extracted at an ever higher environmental, economic and energy cost.

Figure 2.2 Modelling the price of a barrel of oil as a function of the EROI (using the historical correlations observed)

Source: after K. Heun and M. De Wit, ‘Energy return on (energy) invested (EROI), oil prices, and energy transitions’, Energy Policy 40, 2012: 147–58.

Economic indices also make it possible to visualize this wall. Two research teams on different methods have recently modelled the complex relationship between EROI and production costs (price per barrel).56 Their conclusions are the same: when the EROI of fossil fuel dips below 10:1, prices rise in a non-linear way, in other words, exponentially (see Figure 2.2). This upward trend in production costs is also noticeable for gas, coal and uranium, as well as for metals and ores indispensable for the production of renewable energy.57

Knowing that about two-thirds of the growth in the years 1945–75 was due to the burning of fossil fuels – the remainder being the product of labour and investment58 – we can deduce that the inexorable decline of the EROI for fossil fuel will result in a huge shortfall that will make it impossible to keep the promise of economic growth.59 In other words, an energy decline is the sign of nothing less than the definitive end of global economic growth.

A glance at the curve in Figure 2.2 will also help us to realize that we are really dealing with a wall, to use the metaphor of the car. This wall is an impassable wall as it is built on the laws of thermodynamics.

And before the wall … a precipice

In these conditions, it is hard to see how our civilization could rediscover the prospect of abundance or at least of continuity. But, as surprising as it may appear, the energy shortage is not the most urgent threat to our engine. Something else threatens to bring it to a halt just before that point: the financial system.

In reality, the energy system and the financial system are closely linked, and the one cannot function without the other. They form a sort of belt drive, an energy–financial axis, which represents the heart of our industrial civilization. We can become aware of this link by observing the close correlation between GDP and the oil production curve (see Figure 2.3). A recession means a high oil price and low consumption; a period of expansion indicates the opposite, a low oil price and high consumption. This mechanism is not a simple correlation but a causal relationship: a historical study has shown that, out of eleven recessions that took place during the twentieth century, ten were preceded by a sharp increase in oil prices (see Figure 2.4).60 In other words, an energy crisis precedes a serious economic crisis. This was the case during the oil shocks of the 1970s and during the 2008 crisis.

Figure 2.3 Growth rate of oil, energy and global GDP

Source: after Gail E. Tverberg, ‘Energy and the Economy – Twelve Basic Principles,’ Our Finite World, 14 August 2014.

Figure 2.4 Price of a barrel of oil and periods of recession

Source: after J. Hamilton, ‘Causes and Consequences of the Oil Shock of 2007–08’, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2009 (updated by the authors).

To consider economic problems while forgetting their origins in the energy situation is a serious mistake. But the opposite is equally true. Gail Tverberg has become an expert in the analysis of this energy–finance axis and observes that, in the context of a peak, it is no longer possible to extract significant quantities of fossil fuel without incurring ever greater debts. ‘The problem we are encountering now is that once resource costs get too high, the debt-based system no longer works. A new debt-based financial system likely won’t work any better than the old one’.61 A debt system has a bulimic need for growth and thus energy. But the opposite is also true: our energy system ‘shoots up’ on debts. Thus the belt drive works both ways: a decline in oil production pushes our economies towards recession; conversely, economic recessions accelerate the decline in energy production.62 More specifically, the global economic system is now caught between a high price and a low price of oil. But these two extremes are the two sides of the same coin.

When the price of oil is too high, consumers end up reducing their expenditure, which causes recessions (and then pushes the price of crude down). Conversely, a high price is excellent news for oil companies, who can invest in prospecting through the development of new technologies of extraction, which ultimately enables production to be maintained and alternative energy sources to be developed.

When the price of energy is too low (after a recession or as a result of geopolitical manipulation, for example), economic growth may start to rise again, but the oil companies then experience serious financial difficulties and reduce their investments (as we saw from the fall in oil prices in 2014),63 which dangerously compromises future production. The 2014 report of the International Energy Agency64 observes that the effort required to offset the natural decline of old deposits which have come to maturity ‘appears all the more difficult to keep up now that the price of a barrel has fallen to 80 dollars, […] especially for oil sands and ultra-deep drilling off the coasts of Brazil’. And the Agency’s chief economist, the very optimistic Fatih Birol, notes that ‘clouds are starting to gather on the long-term horizon of production of global oil production; they may be bringing stormy conditions our way’.65

The fragility of the global financial system no longer needs to be demonstrated. It consists of a complex network of monies outstanding and bonds, linking together the balance sheets of countless intermediaries such as banks, hedge funds and insurers. As demonstrated by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and its aftermath in 2008, these interdependencies have created an environment conducive to knock-on or contagion effects66 (see chapter 5). Moreover, the global political and financial oligarchy shows no sign that it has actually understood the diagnosis; it thrashes about making inappropriate decisions, thus contributing to the further weakening of this economic system. The most urgent limiting factor for the future of oil production, then, is not the quantity of remaining reserves or the energy return rate (EROI), as many people think, but ‘how long our current networked economic system can hold together’.67

In short, our economies are doomed to try and maintain a very precarious and oscillating balance, a roller-coaster ride, based on the price of a barrel of oil being between about US$80 and US$130 a barrel, while hoping and praying that the now extremely volatile financial system does not collapse. In fact, a period of low economic growth or recession could reduce available credit and investment on the part of oil companies and could cause the engine to seize up even before the physical extraction limit is reached.

Without a functioning economy, easily accessible energy ceases to be available. And without accessible energy, it’s the end of the economy as we know it: swift transport, long and fluid supply chains, industrial agriculture, heating, water purification, the internet, and so on. But history shows us that societies are quickly destabilized when tummies start to rumble. During the economic crisis of 2008, the dramatic increase in food prices provoked food riots in no fewer than thirty-five countries.68

In his latest book, the former petroleum geologist and energy advisor to the British government, Jeremy Leggett, identified five global systemic risks linked directly to energy and threatening the stability of the global economy: oil depletion, carbon emissions, the financial value of fossil fuel reserves, shale gas, and the financial sector. ‘A market shock involving any of these would be capable of triggering a tsunami of economic and social problems, and, of course, there is no law of economics that says only one can hit at one time’.69 So we are probably listening to the last splutterings of the engine of our industrial civilization before it dies.

Notes

  1. 1. International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook 2010.
  2. 2. Richard Miller and Steve Sorrell, ‘The future of oil supply’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 372(2006): 2014.
  3. 3. ‘BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2014’. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph240/milic1/docs/bpreview.pdf.
  4. 4. Steve Andrews and Randy Udall, ‘The oil production story: Pre- and post-peak nations’, Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas USA, 2014.
  5. 5. Steve Sorrell et al., ‘Shaping the global oil peak: A review of the evidence on field sizes, reserve growth, decline rates and depletion rates’, Energy 37(1), 2012: 709–24.
  6. 6. Richard Miller and Steve Sorrell, ‘Preface of the special issue on the future of oil supply’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 372(2006), 2014: 20130301.
  7. 7. Steve Sorrell et al., ‘An assessment of the evidence for a near-term peak in global oil production’, UK Energy Research Centre, 2009.
  8. 8. United States Joint Forces Command, ‘The Joint Operating Environment 2010’. https://fas.org/man/eprint/joe2010.pdf
  9. 9. Bundeswehr, ‘Peak Oil: Sicherheitspolitische Implikationen knapper Ressourcen’, Planungsamt der Bundeswehr, 2010.
  10. 10. J. Murray and D. King, ‘Climate policy: Oil’s tipping point has passed’, Nature 481(7382), 2012: 433–5.
  11. 11. ITPOES, ‘The oil crunch: A wake-up call for the UK economy’, Second Report of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security, 2010.
  12. 12. J. R. Hallock et al., ‘Forecasting the limits to the availability and diversity of global conventional oil supply: Validation’, Energy 64, 2014: 130–53.
  13. 13. Madelon L. Finkel and Jake Hays, ‘The implications of unconventional drilling for natural gas: A global public health concern’, Public Health 127(10), 2013: 889–93; H. Else, ‘Fracking splits opinion’, Professional Engineering 25(2), 2012: 26.
  14. 14. William Ellsworth, ‘Injection-induced earthquakes’, Science 341(614), 2013: 1225942.
  15. 15. R. J. Davies et al., ‘Oil and gas wells and their integrity: Implications for shale and unconventional resource exploitation’, Marine and Petroleum Geology 56, 2014: 239–54.
  16. 16. J. Henry Fair, ‘Radionuclides in fracking wastewater’, Environmental Health Perspectives 122(2), 2014: A50–5.
  17. 17. Cutler J. Cleveland and Peter A. O’Connor, ‘Energy return on investment (EROI) of oil shale’, Sustainability 3(11), 2011: 2307–22.
  18. 18. Bridget R. Scanlon et al., ‘Comparison of water use for hydraulic fracturing for shale oil and gas production versus conventional oil’, Environmental Science & Technology 48(20), 2014: 12386–93.
  19. 19. Erik Stokstad, ‘Will fracking put too much fizz in your water?’, Science, 344(6191), 2014: 1468–71.
  20. 20. US Energy Information Administration, ‘As cash flow flattens, major energy companies increase debt, sell assets’, Today in Energy, 29 July 2014, http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=17311.
  21. 21. Asjylyn Loder, ‘Shakeout threatens shale patch as frackers go for broke’, Bloomberg, 27 May 2014, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-26/shakeout-threatens-shale-patch-as-frackers-go-for-broke.html.
  22. 22. Sorrell et al., ‘An assessment of the evidence for a near-term peak’.
  23. 23. J. David Hughes, ‘Energy: A reality check on the shale revolution’, Nature 494(7437), 2013: 307–8.
  24. 24. For example, Daniel Yergin, ‘US energy is changing the world again’, Financial Times, 16 November 2012; L. Maugeri, ‘The shale oil boom: A US phenomenon’, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, 2013, Discussion Paper tbc2013‑05.
  25. 25. B. K. Sovacool, ‘Cornucopia or curse? Reviewing the costs and benefits of shale gas hydraulic fracturing (fracking)’, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 37, 2014: 249–64.
  26. 26. US Energy Information Administration, ‘Annual Energy Outlook 2014’, p. 17.
  27. 27. Quoted in Sorrell et al., ‘An assessment of the evidence for a near-term peak’.
  28. 28. Charles Emmerson and Glada Lahn, ‘Arctic opening: Opportunity and risk in the High North’, Chatham House-Lloyd’s, 2013.
  29. 29. James Marriott, ‘Oil projects too far – banks and investors refuse finance for Arctic oil’, Platform Education Research London, 24 April 2012.
  30. 30. Audrey Garric, ‘Après une série noire, Shell renonce à forer en Arctique cette année’, Le Monde, 28 February 2013.
  31. 31. Guy Chazan, ‘Total warns against oil drilling in Arctic’, Financial Times, 25 September 2012.
  32. 32. G. R. Timilsina, ‘Biofuels in the long-run global energy supply mix for transportation’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 372(2006), 2014.
  33. 33. Tatsuji Koizumi, ‘Biofuels and food security in the US, the EU and other countries’, in Biofuels and Food Security (New York: Springer International Publishing, 2014), pp. 59–78.
  34. 34. G. Maggio and G. Cacciola, ‘When will oil, natural gas, and coal peak?’, Fuel 98, 2012: 111–23; Philip Shearman et al., ‘Are we approaching “peak timber” in the tropics?’, Biological Conservation 151(1), 2012: 17–21; Russell D. Warman, ‘Global wood production from natural forests has peaked’, Biodiversity and Conservation 23(5), 2014: 1063–78; Michael Dittmar, ‘The end of cheap uranium’, Science of the Total Environment 461–2, 2013: 792–8.
  35. 35. Ugo Bardi et al., Extracted: How the Quest for Mineral Wealth Is Plundering the Planet (White River Junction VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2014).
  36. 36. Chris Clugston, ‘Increasing global nonrenewable natural resource scarcity: An analysis’, Energy Bulletin 4(6), 2010.
  37. 37. Dana Cordell et al., ‘The story of phosphorus: Global food security and food for thought’, Global Environmental Change 19(2), 2009: 292–305.
  38. 38. Ransom A. Myers and Boris Worm, ‘Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory fish communities’, Nature 423(6937), 2003: 280–3.
  39. 39. Peter H. Gleick and Meena Palaniappan, ‘Peak water limits to freshwater withdrawal and use’, PNAS 107(25), 2010: 11155–62.
  40. 40. Philippe Bihouix, L’Âge des low tech. Vers une civilisation techniquement soutenable (Paris: Seuil, 2014), pp. 66–7.
  41. 41. Richard Heinberg, Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Decline in Earth’s Resources (West Hoathly: Clairview Books, 2007).
  42. 42. Barclays Research Data, quoted in Steven Kopits, ‘Oil and economic growth: a supply-constrained view’, Columbia University, Center on Global Energy Policy, 11 February 2014, http://tiny.com/mhkju2kurl.
  43. 43. Cutler J. Cleveland, ‘Net energy from the extraction of oil and gas in the United States’, Energy 30, 2005: 769–82.
  44. 44. N. Gagnon et al., ‘A preliminary investigation of energy return on energy investment for global oil and gas production’, Energies 2(3), 2009: 490–503.
  45. 45. David J. Murphy and Charles A. S. Hall, ‘Year in review – EROI or energy return on (energy) invested’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1185(1), 2010: 102–18.
  46. 46. Charles A. S. Hall et al., ‘EROI of different fuels and the implications for society’, Energy Policy 64, 2014: 141–52.
  47. 47. Pedro A. Prieto and Charles A. S. Hall, Spain’s Photovoltaic Revolution: The Energy Return on Investment (New York: Springer, 2013).
  48. 48. Hall et al., ‘EROI of different fuels’.
  49. 49. D. Weißbach et al., ‘Energy intensities, EROIs (energy returned on invested), and energy payback times of electricity generating power plants’, Energy 52, 2013: 210–21.
  50. 50. Brad Plumer, ‘We’re damming up every last big river on Earth. Is that really a good idea?’, Vox, 28 October 2014, http://www.vox.com/2014/10/28/7083487/the-world-is-building-thousands-of-new-dams-is-that-really-a-good-idea.
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