Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
billions in new infrastructure will be more frequent and ever-longer blackouts and brownouts,
leading perhaps to electricity rationing and a host of fairly dire economic impacts.
• Unavailability of sufficient investment capital. Replacing infrastructure will require capital and
political will. The current grid was built when energy was cheap, demand for electricity was
lower, and the economy was growing at a rapid pace. Today investment capital is scarce, so the
federal government will have to pay for most of the grid upgrade. But the US budget is already
overextended in paying for bailout and stimulus packages, not to mention a globe-spanning mil-
itary presence. Until an unavoidable crisis arises, grid investment is likely to continue being
moved back in the line of projects needing money.
• Inability of the industry to maintain sufficient supplies of fossil fuels for electricity generation. In
my 2009 book
Blackout
, I discussed credible reports suggesting that US coal production could
peak in the years between 2020 and 2030 and decline afterward, with prices for the resource
inevitably escalating. Natural gas seems plentiful for the time being, but continued exploration
and production from new shale gas plays require high gas prices; further, problems with well
productivity, limits to potential drilling locations, and low energy return on energy invested may
render the new shale gas plays a mere flash in the pan, as I argued in my 2013 topic
Snake Oil:
How Fracking's False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future
.
• Inability of alternatives to make up for fossil fuels. If higher-priced and soon-to-be scarce coal
and gas could be easily, quickly, and cheaply replaced with other energy sources, fossil fuel sup-
ply limits would pose no great difficulty. However, all of the available alternatives are inadequate
in one way or another. Yes, we could have more wind, solar, geothermal, and tidal power—but
it will take time and enormous amounts of investment capital (see above), and most of these al-
ternatives are intermittent energy sources. And with transport of workers, fuel, and waste com-
promised by oil depletion, and availability of cooling water rendered unpredictable by droughts
and floods associated with climate change, nuclear power will become more of a problem than a
solution.
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• Nuclear war. The electromagnetic pulse generated by the explosion of hydrogen bombs has the
capacity to fry the grid, and the hundreds of millions of electrical devices plugged into it, nearly
instantaneously. For war planners, this possibility is not only real and credible, it is one of the
greatest causes of worry with regard to national survival following any nuclear exchange.
• Solar pulse, geomagnetic storm. Under rare circumstances, an extremely intense solar flare has
the capability of wiping out electricity grids across entire continents. In 1989, one such storm
caused a blackout across Quebec. The largest recorded geomagnetic storm, often referred to as
the Carrington Event, occurred on September 1-2, 1859. Telegraph wires in both the United
States and Europe lit up, in some cases shocking telegraph operators and causing fires. If an event
of similar magnitude were to occur today, millions of electronic devices would be permanently
damaged, along with crucial high-voltage transformers that maintain electricity grids. A similar-
intensity solar eruption aimed at our planet will inevitably occur at some point.
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• Systemic vulnerabilities. We live in a world that is increasingly interconnected, and in which
the pursuit of economic efficiency has reduced overall resilience. In such a system, problems
in one area have a way of spilling over to create more problems elsewhere. For example, diffi-
culties with oil supply will also eventually impact the electricity system, since spare parts and
fuel (especially coal) for that system are made and/or transported with oil; similarly, problems
with the electric grid will impact oil supply, since pumps and refineries require alternating cur-
