Lifestyle? How Resource Strategy Leads From Wasting Materials to Using Them
9.3 Going Astray and Searching for New Transformations of Materials
"The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone. And the Oil Age will end long before
5 The concept was originally developed and applied in university courses; it was developed in more de- tail at the Environmental Science Center; put to the test in exhibitions (Staub [Dust] 2005; CO2 2007; Stickstoff [Nitrogen] 2012), a book series (Stoffges- chichten [Material Histories], oekom publishers, Munich, since 2004), and academic teaching; and applied in industrial and educational contexts (Schmidt et al., 2007).
this world runs out of oil." 6 James Canton, Chairman of the Institute for Global Futures Among the questions regarding sustainability, our energy system takes top priority, and in times of the “en- ergetic turn” proclaimed by the German government every schoolchild is aware of this. In order to make our (fossil) energy system sustainable it urgently needs to be reconsidered from and transformed into a post-fos- sil direction. As yet, mankind is still on a drip: the in- fusion bag on which it depends contains a mixture of oil, natural gas, and coal, which the biosphere has filled with the remains of plants and animals over millions of years – that is, in the final resort, with ancient, stored solar power. Between 1950 and 2000 the consumption of coal increased by about 400 per cent, that of min- eral oil by about 700 per cent (Meadows et al., 2009, p.9). There is widespread consensus that this needs to change – not necessarily because we know that supply is limited, but mainly because anthropogenic climate change forces constraints on an oil-addicted world.
From “decarbonization” (cf. WGBU, 2011) to the post-fossil and low-carbon society, a number of terms has been proposed for the intended restructuring of the energy system. Work on the technologies necessary for this restructuring is going ahead at full speed. It is quite probable, therefore, that this paradigm change and the investments motivated by it will be regarded as having catalyzed the sixth Kondratjeff cycle (cf. Hauff and Kleine, 2009, among others) by future generations – rather than rivaling candidates such as biotechnolo- gy, nanotechnology, and nuclear energy. It is well known that the first Kondratjeff cycle7 and the Industrial Rev-
olution were fueled by the invention of the coal-fired steam engine. 230 years and many innovations later, however, one thing has remained constant in energy technology: the global demand for energy, which has grown by 25 per cent between 2000 and 2008 alone, still relies on fossil primary energy carriers (coal, min- eral oil, natural gas) for 80 per cent of its supply (Wag- ner, 2011, p. 65). The proportional share of black coal in global primary energy consumption is even growing. It
6 Cited in Kaku 2012, p. 321. (our trans.)
7 In 1926, the Russian scientist Nikolai D. Kondratjeff (1892-1938) first described the fluctuations of global business activity as “long waves” (Kondratjeff, 1926).
9.3 Going Astray and Searching for New Transformations of Materials
has increased by 2.5 per cent in 2012, mainly because of the demand generated by the People’s Republic of China, which accounts for 50 per cent of this increase (BP, 2013).
Going Astray: Fracking, Deep-Sea Drilling, Biofuels
Ironically – even tragically – the importance of tran- sitioning to a post-fossil age finds its most urgent ex- pression in our increasingly elaborate and ecologically harmful procedures for the extraction of natural gas and oil.
In Europe, a controversial debate has emerged around the practice of hydraulic fracturing, in which oil and gas are squeezed from slaty sedimentary rock and which creates considerable environmental problems (Umweltbundesamt 2012, p.7). While some investment banks nevertheless praise fracking as a revolutionary energy source, many consumers and environmentalists associate the procedure with menacing images. Igniting a cigarette lighter under a water pipe causes a darting flame: a key scene from the American documentary Gasland, which caused considerable insecurity in 2010 by taking its audiences along an investigation of the damages caused by fracking, which is a widespread practice in the United States.
Equally problematic are the deep-sea oil reserves, which can only be recovered through considerable effort and grave ecological consequences (deep-sea drilling). Off the coast of the state of Rio de Janeiro, for example, large oil fields have been located beneath enormous salt beds, at a depth of 6,000 meters below sea level. The concession rights were auctioned off to Shell, Total, two state-owned Chinese concerns, and Petrobas, a parastatal Brazilian oil company. According to media reports, other bidders kept away because “the thing is risky and expensive” (Fischermann, 2013, our trans.). Further north, in Canada, equally risky projects are being undertaken. The Athabasca oil sand mines in the province of Alberta, which are considered the third-largest oil reserves on earth, are being extracted at undiminished speed. The mines extend over an area of 149,000 square meters of virgin forest. One of the en- vironmental problems caused by extraction is that oil sand has a bitumen ratio of up to 10 per cent: in fact, the term “oil sand” is a euphemism; “tar sand” would be more accurate. In order to extract the bitumen from this compound, the oil sand is mixed with hot water and caustic soda. The result of this procedure is a broth of
heavy metals and other toxic substances that is stored in basins. Moreover, the procedure leaves a dispropor- tionate substance and energy footprint: two tons of oil sand are required for each barrel of crude oil (Lux 2012, p. 26).
Another dubitable way of extracting resources is the shift toward fuels based on biomass. These fuels can be gained from a variety of renewable resources: oil plants, crops, sugar beets, sugar cane, forest wood, scrap wood, wood from fast-growth plantations, special energy plants, and animal waste. Praised as a game changer just a few years ago, biofuels today have a equivocal reputation. Their production is held respon- sible for hunger, land speculation, and predatory culti- vation (see Smith, 2013). A 2008 World Bank document leaked to the public attributes three fourths of the price increase for staple food to biofuels – an increase as- sumed to have amounted to 140 per cent between 2002 and 2008 (Mitchell, 2008). In 2001 around 100 billion liters of biofuels were produced, requiring an estimated four per cent of arable land worldwide, at an upward rate.
Phosphate: Sufficient Deposits But …
The intensified cultivation of oil plants contributes to the increasing use of mineral phosphate fertilizers. Phosphate is gained from phosphate rocks such as ap- atite or phosphorite; the major deposits of these rocks are located in Morocco, which accounts for two thirds of global reserves. After nitrogen, phosphate is the most frequently used fertilizer8 worldwide and a ma-
jor factor for global food safety. Yet phosphate will not run out anytime soon, despite numerous media reports to the contrary9. USGS data suggest that the current
deposits will last another 300 years at the very least (USGS, 2013b). Currently the global annual production amounts to about 220 million tons of phosphate rock. Such estimates, however, are subject to continuous re- calculation.
8 Phosphate compounds can be found in the carrier molecules of the genetic information of all life forms. They are necessary for the energy metabo- lism of cells and for many other biological process- es.
9 See for example the headline, “The Fate of the World Depends on Phosphate. But It Might Run Short Soon” (Die Welt, 2013).
9.4 Low Carbon Society – Not Without Rare Earth Metals
More problematic than its supposed scarcity is the environmental damage caused by the use of phosphate fertilizers. Phosphates are usually contaminated by ura- nium and cadmium, heavy metals that reach the bio- sphere via fertilization. Besides, overfertilization leads to the enthropication (excess of nutrients) of waters (see Fig. 3). If the soil contains more phosphate than it can store, rainfall can eluviate the substance (cf. Hut- ner, 2013). In the worst case, the waters acidify and be- come toxic environments for animals.
On the other hand, phosphate has enabled the population growth that has occurred since the begin- nings of industrialization, and we will need it to feed a still-growing global population. It is important, there- fore, to use phosphate efficiently and to advance phos- phate recovery methods via recycling and reprocessing procedures like those pursued by the “German Phos- phorus Platform10” (Deutsche Phosphor-Plattform)
founded in 2013.