“Heart of darkness” — bleak future for all forms of transport over the next 10 years
Part 11 of Looking down the barrel — the Tooth Fairy & the Dragon-King
Preamble
This is our 13th GB Post on the emerging global demand for something else than what we currently have.
We have previously demonstrated that we are living through the last ten years of the Oil Age and examined some of the main consequences of what is shaping up as the defining event of the 21st century. We have called this the Oil Fizzle Dragon-King (OFDK) — Oil Fizzle because net energy from oil, delivered to the globalised industrial world (GIW) as transport fuels, is rapidly fizzling out and will be close to nil around 2022, and Dragon-King because although this threat has been dangling in front of everyone’s nose for decades almost no one saw it coming (Dragon-Kings being high probability, high impact events versus Black Swans being low probability, high impact events).
We are now caught in an avalanche of untoward events triggered by OFDK, an avalanche powerful enough to disintegrate the GIW over the next decade or so. We are caught is this avalanche because of persistent cognitive failure prevailing globally among decision-makers, that is, the inability to become aware of and to deal with major challenges as they arise and to make effective use of available knowledge and expertise to do so.
Food and transport are probably the two most critical areas of concern as the OFDK avalanche unfolds. In our previous post we focused on food, real food, the kind of food one learns about when one lacks it, aka famine, recurring famine, globally, over the next 10 years and perhaps beyond that — one of the main likely consequences of OFDK, in the absence of rapid responses to it. In doing so, we highlighted prevailing cognitive failure among decision-making elites.
In the present post we are now focusing on transport, real transport, the kind that, as for food, one learns about when one lacks it, aka when petrol pumps run dry erratically, recurrently, planes don’t fly, container ships don’t ship, and trucks no longer truck things around… Here too we will find chronic cognitive failure writ large.
In the series of posts to this point we have shown that this cognitive failure specifically stems from what we called the Tooth Fairy syndrome, this weird commingling of magical thinking and believing in myths with bits and pieces of science and rational thinking thrown in, here and there. We have highlighted how this syndrome renders all present governments and large centralised corporate businesses ill equipped to handle the nexus of closely interrelated financial, economic, social, energy and ecological challenges engendered by OFDK. Their beliefs and resulting decision-making have created the present global mess. They show no inclinations to drop their Tooth Fairy beliefs. They all demonstrably lack the expertise and experience to chart a new course. Their response times are also demonstrably far too slow (e.g. it took over 50 years for them to acknowledge and begin act on global warming). They are mostly in financial trouble or will be very soon. After repeated failures all are in the process of losing credibility and legitimacy. And yet the expertise to meet the present avalanche of challenges is available within the global scientific, engineering and entrepreneurial community.
In our first post on Looking down the barrel — the Tooth Fairy & the Dragon-King, we flagged that the GIW is losing access to the two main sources of energy it vitally depends on, phytomass and net energy from oil. Loss of access to phytomass is most critical to food supply. The fizzling out of net energy from oil, that triggered OFDK from around 2012 onwards, is critical to all forms of transport globally… and without transport, well, everything else grinds to a halt in no time flat… For most people this is just as unthinkable as a generalised lack of food. “Surely ‘they’ will think of solutions… we will go electric… It’s obvious…” Or maybe, the straight denial response: “No way, there is enough oil to last us for the whole century”.
So we will now explore how, under the garbs of a bright fantasised future made of self-drive electric vehicles, “renewable energy”, the Internet of Things, and more, Tooth Fairy-impelled, massive, cognitive failure is in the process of knotting together an abrupt, global, breakdown of all forms of transport — the very transport that we have come to take for granted and without which our world can no longer operate.
Setting the scene
“Previously in Looking down the barrel”… As in popular TV series, let’s first recapitulate some key points from previous posts — as a means of bringing the unfolding transport scene into full light.
In How is an Oil Fizzle Dragon-King created? (Part 4 of Looking down the barrel — the Tooth Fairy & the Dragon-King), we asked the question:
“What will you do when, in the near future, fuel supplies are severely disrupted, gasoline, diesel, marine fuels, aviation fuels, all fuels, not just for a few days, as in the case of a strike, or a few weeks, as for a geopolitical event, but month after month, year after year? And what will you pay with if and when by any chance you can get some fuel?”
Many bright souls have ready answers to this question or rather, in the world they live in, the question never arises because in that imaginary world, they already expect that “Peak Oil Demand” will soon eventuate because of the unstoppable exponential rush of EVs (electric vehicles) powered with PVs (photovoltaic things, panels, thin films, paints, etc.) and WTs (wind turbines of all kinds, on and off shore) and of the surge of SDs (self-drive, autonomous robotic vehicles). This “alphabet soup” of tech-acronyms will save us from such a despicable fate as global transport breakdown, well before it can ever arise… Really?
OFDK means that the Oil Age does not end when oil runs out. Instead it ends when net energy per average barrel fizzles out, which began to happen in 2012 and, by our estimates, at the very latest will be over by about 2030.
This situation does not mean that the oil industry (OI) is going to just “curl up and die.” There is plenty of evidence showing that, since 2012, the OI has entered into a process of self-cannibalisation that is typical of any mining industry approaching the end of its life and that is battling to survive. This involves reducing staff, trimming down costs, postponing maintenance, a large number of businesses going bankrupt or being acquired by others, acquiring at fire-sale prices equipment or reserves disposed-of by other members of the OI, and pressuring members of the OI support systems (OS, such as producers of equipment, pipelines, tankers, etc.) to bring their costs down. The responses of the OI also involve building a new role for what is now becoming a vital component of the petroleum production system (PPS = OI + OS), “debt-that-cannot-be-repaid”, aka DTCBR — we could not resist adding such an awful acronym to the ongoing series.
Beyond self-cannibalisation, the PPS is also making attempts to survive by shifting focus towards natural gas as well as XTL developments (anything X to liquids, L; X means coal, natural gas, biomass, electricity from wind, solar, etc., used to produce liquids, i.e. transport fuels). Some key players within the PPS are even moving towards electricity generation… Some members of the OS are moving to become directly involved in the OI (e.g. Schlumberger)… Meanwhile some key players within the GIW are placing all their bets on EVs, PVs, WTs, SDs, and some fancy new business models or concepts called “TaaS” — namely “Transport as a Service”…
All of the above, and more, are part of what we have called the Big Mad Energy Scramble (BigMES) — that is, a large number of more and more desperate attempts within the PPS and the globalised industrial world (the GIW) to keep things going energy-wise, unaware that the very thermodynamic foundations that had sustained the GIW since the early days of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century are rapidly fizzling out and that the clock can’t be turned back.
Some forms of XTL have been underway since well before 2012. Initially they concerned finding alternatives to oil as sources of transport fuels (TFs), in response to high oil prices, e.g. synthetic gasoline from natural gas in the 1980s or from coal (in Germany during WWII or in South Africa under apartheid and the resulting global embargo) or yet fuels from biomass. Now, under OFDK, XTL developments take on a new strategic dimension, as much as and probably more so than the EV-SD-TaaS- PV-WT tech string.
As the critical 2022 time horizon approaches, keeping wheels running no matter what, and much else beside wheels, becomes a matter of sheer business survival for both the PPS and the GIW. Recall that under OFDK, since around 2012, oil is ceasing to be a primary energy source. This means that, in order to keep using high energy density oil-derived molecules or their equivalent from other sources to produce TFs, or to shift to something else like EVs, one must tap into other sources of primary energy. Under BigMES, this is taking place on a “everyone to themselves and the devil take the hindmost” mode that is already accentuating the chaotic character of OFDK, hence also the “big mess” metaphor. However, at no time any of the “players”, large or small, has examined seriously, rigorously, the thermodynamics of their own business, nor of the PPS or of the GIW — all are flying blind into BigMES, mostly outside a viable thermodynamics space.
A €34 trillion matter… at least. As stressed in previous posts, for its ongoing functioning and growth, the GIW relies on over 1.3 billion land transport vehicles, plus a global merchant fleet of over 1.75 billion dead weight tonnes (dwt), plus over 362,000 active aircraft… and those numbers keep increasing. Some analysts already talk of some 2 billion vehicles by 2040, meaning an order of magnitude of €34 trillion in vehicles (about US$40 trillion) that would have to be scrapped and replaced in a 100% EV scenario — with no one knowing where the funding for this would come from, in a world already €210 trillion in debt.
Meanwhile, the GIW has been “running on empty” since 2012. At present rates the “show” stops around 2022 in terms of net energy per average barrel, meaning that beyond 2022 only barrels that are better than average (net energy-wise) can sustain some residual supply of TFs, tapering rapidly to nil by about 2030; and here “tapering” is not something that any central banker can postpone or fiddle with — “The laws of thermodynamics have no mercy” (Schramski et al., 2016).
Meanwhile also, renewable power generation capacities at the 2030 time horizon remain low. As recapped at the latest Bloomberg New Energy Finance show, the Breaking Clean London Summit, 19 September 2017, London, UK, the latest forecasts project about 1TW (Terawatt) of installed capacity for solar (PVs, concentrated, etc.) and also about 1TW for wind by 2030, that is, in total only about 12% of total GIW requirements when considered in terms of whole system replacement.
So in the most optimistic way of looking at this, by 2030 the legacy transport show stops and the GIW only has 12% of what it requires to keep operating a few “things”.
In fact the situation is much worse because the 2TW of so-called “renewables” are only installed capacity. Wind and sun are not available all the time like hydro, coal, gas, or nukes… Capacity factors, i.e. the proportion of installed capacity actually available on average, are in the order of 22% for wind and somewhere between 12% and 20% for solar… So in practice, by 2030 the GIW could rely only on some 0.4TW of effective new “renewables” capacity… Adding hydroelectricity, some biomass, etc., and taking into account disruptive OFDK impacts between now and then, by 2030 “renewable” supplies may reach some 15% of total GIW plus PPS energy requirements… So, even though the global EVs fleet is presently growing at a high rate (well over 50%/year), it still represents only some 0.1% of total on road light duty vehicles, meaning at best much less than 600 million EVs by 2030 (IEA’s most optimistic estimate is 200 million EVs by 2030)[1], and no firm idea as to where the power to recharge them may come from if not from fossil fuels.
And it’s not just cars that we must think about… For the foreseeable future, planes and merchant navy fleets do not run on electricity and in terms of their fuel requirements, at best, by 2030 transport fuel production from XTL won’t be any better than the effective capacity for renewables…
So to sum this up… Recall, no net energy from oil available by 2030 means that only “things” that can keep running without involving much transport (for supplies and personnel deliveries) can be relied upon to generate electricity that could be used by EVs. Well maintained PVs and WTs, or hydro, can keep running for a while assuming workers can keep going to work somehow and can manage to keep operating them; but not other legacy infrastructures like coal, gas or nuke power generation… In other words, renewables installed and operating by 2030 are likely to prove rather crucial and, even in the most optimistic considerations, this is not going to be anywhere near actual requirements.
We can also look at this in financial terms. The cost of converting all power supplies to PVs and WTs to a point of being able to both cover stationary and transport requirements by 2050 is in the order of $350 trillion (about €300 trillion — against present world debt of €210 trillion).[2] Presently we are far from seeing such a trend. So, from a financial perspective also, it is highly unlikely that by 2030 the capacity to power EVs at any significant level to address the abrupt fall in transport fuels supplies will be in place. Overall, just surveying the scene, the future of transport looks bleak.
It’s magic! EVs, TaaS, and the Tooth Fairy
Figure 1 — Flying blind into BigMES
As summarised on Figure 1, whichever way we look at present transport dynamics we face a substantial gap between Tooth Fairy dreams and reality. At the present stage, none of the BigMES attempts along self-cannibalisation, XTL, or new EV, PV, WT, technologies routes can save the PPS or the GIW. All are still far too costly, development lead times remain too long relative to the 2022 and 2030 time horizons, and energy efficiencies are far too low — BigMES attempts are not within the thermodynamic viability space.
Still, could some Tooth Fairy magic, with a waving of her wand, produce salvation out of some “left field” new technology disruption? This is where TaaS and SDs come into play… Recall, the TaaS-cum-SD deus ex machina stands for transport as a service based on self-drive autonomous robotic vehicles. The general idea is that new technology and business models would result in a drastic reduction in the number of vehicles — substituting 1.3 or 2 billion ICE vehicles would no longer be required.
In Living on credit, the 10% & the Remainder (Part 9 of Looking down the barrel), we pointed out that, among the spectrum of countries where at least some players have begun to intuit part of OFDK challenges, the US is in a unique position. It still has relatively abundant hydrocarbon resources with other primary energy sources located nearby that it can, and knows how to, mobilise to continue using oil-derived molecules as pure energy carriers. This includes, of course, coal and gas, but also wind and PVs (e.g. wind in Texas is now becoming a key strategic resource for the oil industry). Presently, this cannot be done in a thermodynamically viable fashion (e.g. note that mobilising coal and gas requires net energy from oil that now requires primary energy from coal and gas and much else besides… the dragon bites its own tail and begins to run round and round madly). However, the US also knows how to play the debt-that-cannot-be-repaid game better than anyone else — it invented DTCBR — in other words, the “game” is to get (force) others to pay for what you are doing that is not thermodynamically viable but that is vital for your own survival… This is fundamentally the heart of the “make X great again” game that we discussed in our previous post on Food.
The US is also in a unique position with respect to the “twin” of energy resources, that is new knowledge capital, new technology development, new intellectual property (IP), especially of the disruptive kind. Often people do things for reasons that they do not know. They see opportunities, have new “great ideas”, rationalise them all the way into “smart” market intelligence and new disruptive business models without ever realising to what extent in doing so they in fact unconsciously and confusedly sense challenges, and get pushed this or that way by circumstances that they do not know or understand. Still they forge ahead, impelled by their beliefs, in good old Tooth Fairy fashion. For decades, Silicon Valley has been a great site for such developments that has transformed the GIW — PC, Internet, the GAFAs, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, iTune, PayPal, Twitter, Uber, Airbnb, EVs and now self-drive cars and more…
And so now we see emerging the prospect of TaaS… Recently RethinkX, a US think-tank, reminded all within the GIW that “Silicon Valley” has the business know-how, technology creativity and financial expertise (in “play with debt” fashion) to rapidly disrupt transport.[3]
The RethinkX report is blind to OFDK. It considers solely some matters like climate change and urban air pollution. Above all, its focus is the huge potential business opportunity to radically disrupt the present car manufacturing industry and the PPS. In effect, here matters like climate change and air pollution from internal combustion engines (ICE), taken in aggregate, act as a proxy for OFDK (RethinkX’s report projects a reduction in transport energy demand by 80% and tailpipe emissions by over 90%). However, in RethinkX’s perspective this is not the prime factor. The key driver is what some call “creative destruction.” RethinkX focuses on this opportunity simply because it considers it doable based on existing know-how and emerging IP and because it would generate massive profits for the disruptors.
The potential identified by RethinkX is to substitute a large number of the presently individually owned and driven cars with novel transport services that it calls TaaS, based on a much reduced number of self-drive vehicles used intensively, 24 hours/day, everyday of the year (EVs and/or internal combustion engine based, ICEs). RethinkX sees this as the logical and unavoidable extension of what it calls Pre-TaaS, that is, ride hailing services offered by the likes of Uber, Lift and Didi under a winner-take-all dynamic. RethinkX considers that autonomous EVs will be the key disruptive factor because of the cost reductions they would entail — some 10 times higher vehicle utilisation rates, vehicle life of 500,000 miles (over 800,000km) potentially extending to 1M miles by 2030 (1.6M km), and much reduced maintenance, energy, finance and insurance costs.
In consequence, RethinkX estimates that TaaS would translate into substantial transport cost reductions for end-users — costs 4 to 10 times lower per mile or kilometre than buying a new car and 2 to 4 times cheaper than operating an existing ICE vehicle in 2021. RethinkX also sees extra sources of revenue in data monetisation, entertainment for passengers, and other services and products sales.
RethinkX considers that the prime driver for rapid uptake would (it says “will”) be the overall cost savings: “TaaS will provide 95% of the passenger miles travelled within 10 years of the widespread regulatory approval of AVs. By 2030, individually owned ICE vehicles will still represent 40% of the vehicles in the U.S. vehicle fleet, but they will provide just 5% of passenger miles.” It heavily discounts entrenched habits re car ownership, love of driving, or fear of new technology. Pointing out that adopting TaaS requires no investment in new technology or lock-in on the part of adopters, it expects massive uptake among lower income people and that non-adopters will be mainly in rural areas. In other words, this is an urban focused vision.
In brief, in RethinkX’s vision, the wealthy and rural people will continue owning and driving their own cars, the others will be “TaaSed”… like it or not.
Figure 2 — TaaS magic
As shown on Figure 2, in RethinkX’s scenario the outcome would be eliminating the best part of the present US car manufacturing industry and most ICE car ownership within 10 to 15 years to replace them with novel industries, products and services.
The top left diagram from the RethinkX report shows in blue the number of US passenger vehicles going down from close to 247 millions to about 44 millions by 2030, with 97M ICE vehicles left stranded and ICE vehicles 100% eliminated from the operating fleet before 2040 (shown in black), and only 26M TaaS vehicles delivering 95% of all passenger transport in the US (shown in red). The top right diagram shows the corresponding substitution of miles driven by individually owned vehicles (in blue) with TaaS vehicles (in red-orange).
The resulting impact on oil demand from light duty vehicles is shown on the bottom left diagram. RethinkX expects it to drop to less than 1M bbl/day by 2030… In consequence, considering also the uptake of the TaaS technology abroad from the US, without batting an eyelid, RethinkX expects that this “will have a catastrophic effect on the oil industry through price collapse (an equilibrium cost of $25.4 per barrel), disproportionately impacting different companies, countries, oil fields and infrastructure depending on their exposure to high-cost oil. The impact of the collapse of oil prices throughout the oil industry value chain will be felt as soon as 2021…”
In our view, the RethinkX report is a good example of BigMES attempts to respond to OFDK based on very foggy views of the situation. We consider it as seriously flawed on a number of counts, especially re cybernetics and systems dynamics, thermodynamics and the dynamics of technology disruptions. Instead of a rigorous analysis of market dynamics we read it rather as a manifesto by Silicon Valley-like parties, presenting their objectives to seize a perceived opportunity and precipitate the demise of both the present car manufacturing industry and the PPS — simply because it can be done and make money.
The paradox is that oil-wise the 2030 outcome is almost the same in RethinkX’s vision as along OFDK dynamics — in both cases by 2030 the PPS, car manufacturing and much else, in the US and abroad, are destroyed. The big differences are (1) that RethinkX is blind to OFDK and its likely impacts well before 2030 and (2) if by any chance RethinkX’s vision ends-up implemented, even in part, then a large number of people in the US stand to retain some mobility, possibly to a substantial level, albeit at the cost of massive unemployment issues in both the PPS and car manufacturing, massive consequential turmoil in the US and other global economies, and massive, global financial/debt crises.
In short and with reference to Living on credit, the 10% & the Remainder (Part 9 of Looking down the barrel), it appears that the RethinkX vision is a strategy by and for the US 10% that the Remainder would have to live with, like it or not. In that vision, what also happens abroad, in other countries, is another matter largely left unsaid — presumably, in the mind of the report’s authors, they would have to follow the US lead… again, like it or not.
Could by any chance the TaaS magic work?
The emerging questions therefore are (1) is the TaaS vision doable under OFDK, and (2) is this a potential avenue to actually handle OFDK transport challenges, even in part, not only in the US but globally?
The chief reason to be considering these questions is that RethinkX is far from alone in projecting the advent and impacts of SDs, autonomous EVs, related TaaS-like services and a rapid decline in ICE car ownership. Simply, with the scenarios shown on Figure 2, RethinkX’s vision appears to be the boldest. It thus provides a sharp template to assess the prospects of rapid technology substitution to keep wheels running in spite of OFDK and in spite of the challenges of developing large EV fleets within the required short time frame of about 10 years.
The EV and TaaS dreams are “in the air”. For example, earlier this year (2017) the MIT Energy Initiative launched a new study, “Mobility of the Future” to examine how transportation changes may be driven by developments in technology, fuel, infrastructure, policy, and “consumer” preferences. MIT researchers expect an over 30% decline in ICE car ownership over a similar period, while 44 companies presently work on self-driving cars. In recent months and weeks, the governments of the UK, France, Norway, India and now China have declared their intent to phase out ICE cars (diesel and gasoline) at various time horizons between 2030 and 2050 — India, for example, want to ban ICE vehicles by 2030 and go 100% EV, but presently some 800 million of its population go without much power or none at all… A number of large companies have also created a new initiative, EV100, to speed-up the uptake of EVs (https://www.theclimategroup.org/project/ev100) “and making electric transport the new normal by 2030.” The first members include: Baidu, Deutsche Post DHL Group, Heathrow Airport, HP Inc., IKEA Group, LeasePlan, METRO AG, PG&E, Unilever, Vattenfall.
A big factor in the rush to EVs, SDs, TaaS, etc., is the emergence in recent years of intolerable, chronic, and mounting levels of urban air pollution (particulates and NOx engendering massive chemical smog) combining with the diesel motor scandal that began with the revelation of the Volkswagen fraud and that now extends to most of the global car manufacturing industry.
Here the fundamental matter that remains largely unsaid and unacknowledged is that the physical limits of what can be done to increase efficiency and reduce pollution of internal combustion engines are being reached. Hybrids are probably the ultimate, albeit at a cost that many if not most end-users can’t afford. Plug-in hybrid EVs do not improve matters in terms of overall efficiency gains (wells and mines to wheels) and worsen cost matters. It ensues that, in the face of ever-tougher emission standards that the industry finds it harder and harder to meet in ways affordable by its customers, manufacturers have little alternatives left but to cheat by any other name… or change paradigm. Cheating was and remains the easiest short-term route. Paradigm change does not necessarily mean going EV. There are other avenues that are probably simpler, much lower cost, much more feasible and much more ecologically sound that we plan to examine in our next series of posts. However, these avenues do require letting go of Tooth Fairy beliefs and overcoming cognitive failure. For now this is too much to ask of decision-making elites, so the EV-SD-TaaS tech magical thinking string is the order of the day.
Another factor is the urgent necessity to address global warming — transport is one of the main emitter of GHGs. Here too there are other much more effective and promising avenues that remain largely unexplored under prevailing Tooth Fairy magical thinking.
And so politicians and bureaucrats, rush to the obvious conclusion that EVs are the obvious solution that it is their duty to impose… and industry, in the shadow of the “Dieselgate”, dutifully follows suit… while architects and town planners wax lyrical about the cities of the future where most traffic is by “Goobers” — a mix of the Google car and Uber, using SDs, aka TaaS….[4] Without ever actually analysing rigorously what are really the issues that we must face, whether an eventual move to EVs, SDs and possibly TaaS is really the best way, and what is the feasibility of it all.
This is where another whole herd of yet largely invisible “elephants-in-the-room” have begun rampaging, actually not so much in any room but in the streets, roads, highways, car dealerships, factories, mines, and above all among boardrooms and ministerial cabinets, globally. It is amazing to see how, in full Tooth Fairy mode, all elites and pundits promoting the EV fad hold fast onto the belief in technology, “progress”, and the certainty of a bright radiant future… After all, isn’t EV production now exponential, the progress of SDs fantastic, enhanced with “deep learning” and artificial intelligence inputs (AI)? Already numerous pundits predict the demise of taxis, Uber drivers and the like. The future belongs so obviously to EVs, SDs and TaaS in one name or another… But is it that simple?
Besides the fact that the numbers don’t add up, as we have noticed earlier while surveying the transport scene, a few specialists have dared mentioning a few cumbersome further issues, aka “invisible elephants”. Some concern the management of power grids. For example, Todd Royal observes that:
“Britain will need billions of pounds of new investments into new power plants (either renewable or fossil fuels), transmission lines, smart grid network technology and EV charging points and stations throughout the country. Otherwise, Britain could potentially suffer power shortages when EVs overtake fossil-fuelled vehicles. Britain has the technology to support millions of EVs over the next two to three decades, but drivers will have to recharge their vehicles overnight or face billions in costs… Britain already faces a power supply crunch, because older nuclear reactors and coal-fired power plants will be phased off the grid by 2025. No one at the National Grid, Parliament or the Prime Minister’s office has stated how this power will be replaced to support a huge surge in electricity demand caused by widespread EV adoption… The National Grid, which also operates the British transmission system said: ‘The rise in peak demand can be kept up to 5 GW if there is smart charging and time-of-use electricity tariffs’…”[5]
In other words, it can all work fine if EV “consumers” obediently do what they are told or are ruthlessly made to comply and recharge their car batteries when it suits the power grid operators to avoid untoward peak loads — all according to numerous simulation models. Said consumers will have to be “educated” — a minor detail since either they will be part of the Remainder and thus are already used to comply via regulations and/or mass advertising based on countless existing simulation models and “nudging” of their behaviour…
Or, under TaaS, as the Remainder, they will have had to relinquish their cars completely and will have no other option but pay to be mobile according to further simulation models decided upon and run by new large hyper-realised corporations that will also take care of power grid management. In Food (in)security & cognitive failure under the Oil Fizzle Dragon-King we have illustrated the precession of countless models simulating a “reality more real than real” concerning “food”, hyper-realised into endless simulations of “good old traditional food”. Here concerning “mobility” the same hyper-real logic is at play. Instead of the “old” consumerism of the “car” that one has to own, we potentially shift to the “new” hyper-reality of EVs and TaaS, wholly marketed to consumers as being vastly superior to the old… except that said consumers won’t be “kings” or “queens” — they will have to comply to the dictates of the models that in-form. i.e. shape, their lives in an emerging world of transport scarcity. Our take is that people actually demand something else…
According to the promoters of this fancy “new mobility”, concerned “sparkies”, as we affectionately call people dealing with electrical matters, should rest reassured. All will be fine — except that present grids, even when well maintained, are in no way able to cope with the amount of data and thus communications bandwidth entailed by a near 100% shift to EVs; except that many grids are actually ailing (typically the US grid but also in Europe and in most “emerging countries”) and would require massive investments to merely be brought to decent standards let alone shifted to accommodate the challenges of EVs and TaaS — investments that presently are nowhere in sight.
To clarify further, without entering into long technical developments, power grid management requires extensive communications systems (SCADA is the technical acronym). Going to near 100% EVs under high end-user ownership globally (1.3 billion vehicles), assuming this to be doable in time, means going well beyond current notions of smart grids. This is all the more so if one also wants to avoid those EVs being powered with fossil fuelled power stations. Having a high level of PVs and WTs distributed across the grid means a high level of variability in power supplies and tough storage management issues. All of this translates into many points to many points communications requiring high levels of bandwidth, with low latency and low jitter at all points of use — a major elephant. Current communications technologies are simply not up to this kind of challenge at affordable costs — “smart grid” developers are already only too familiar with the challenges under much more benign conditions.
Amongst other elephants, current technologies and communications managements systems entail shared bandwidth, meaning that, per square kilometre, the more points of use within a network the less bandwidth per point of use — limits are rapidly reached when one increases the number of points of use. 100% EVs are not within current technology’s scope, not even a much reduced number of TaaS EVs. It requires another class of communications networking. This too is part of the demand for something else that Tooth Fairy believers are blind to.
Another elephant concerns requisite variety management. This is a bit technical but is as important as the second principle of thermodynamics (aka “there ain’t such a thing as a free lunch”). The “variety” of a system is the number of states that system can take, measured in bits. For a system A to manage a system B, the variety of A must be equal to or above that of B — this is called the requisite variety. This sounds simple enough. In practice many systems are nested within systems, which makes things a bit more complicated. This means that for overall management to succeed the variety of the overall management carried out by A must be well above the aggregate of the subsystems B. One must consider in practice at least four kinds of requisite variety to handle in intelligent energy and communications networks, the requisite varieties of energy distribution over many points of use and generation, that of energy storage, that of energy end-use systems at each point of end-use, and that of communications and management between many points to many points. Current technology is not up to it. At GB we know how to get there but we have not managed yet to get the funds to demonstrate it, and so what we know does not count, not yet.
Beside the requisite variety elephants concerning power grids, there is, of course, another requisite variety bunch concerning SDs and TaaS in a context where they are meant to dominate the roads, streets and highways. With present technology SDs get utterly confused by road signs, such as a simple stop sign, where a sticker has been affixed — for current software, a stop sign with a sticker on is not a stop sign. Even a relatively small sticker suffices; hence the substantial dangers of deadly road crashes… For now it appears that there is no ready cure for this kind of ailment that pertains to the broad spectrum of requisite variety issues… This is the kind of elephant that makes MIT Prof. David Mindell consider that “Google’s vision of self-driving cars is wrong”.[6] Jean-Louis Gassée raises similar concerns: “Can we ‘algorithmicize’ eye contact and stuttering restraint? Can an SD car acknowledge a pedestrian’s nod, or negotiate ‘turning rights’ with a conventional vehicle? No, we can’t. And we don’t appear to have a path to overcome such ‘mundane’ challenges”.[7]
In other words, sober minds consider fully fledged SDs where no driver keeps hands on driving wheels, the kind RethinkX considers for Taas, to be far away into the future, well past 2030, maybe never, hopefully never, except for very specific standardised and regulated traffic conditions, e.g. shuttles within airports or automated container carriers in a shipping terminal (already well implemented)[8] Recall, it is most likely that by 2030 all petrol pumps will have run dry — so there appears to be a gap between fantasy and reality; even assuming that TaaS would be a “good idea,” and wholly feasible, technology development timelines are far too long.
In addition, as we noted in our earlier post on Elephants in the cryptocurrency room, current communications systems require far too much electricity for their operation (recall that the Internet understood in the broadest sense is well on its way to require 50% of the world electrical power by 2030).
SEP fields in overdrive
In all of this conundrum, it appears that the Somebody Else’s Problem field of Douglas Adam fame is used extensively:
“An SEP is something we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a blind spot… The Somebody Else’s Problem field… relies on people’s natural predisposition not to see anything they don’t want to, weren’t expecting, or can’t explain…” (the Somebody Else’s Problem field figured prominently in Adams’ Hitchiker’s guide to the galaxy — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_else%27s_problem).
SEP fields magically hide the whole herd of “transport elephants”. The flurry of fields come out of the Tooth Fairy’s magical wand… and woof, the “elephants” disappear…
Besides the numerous invisible elephants concerning power grid management, another also conveniently hidden by the Tooth Fairy’s SEP field is called Lithium. Recently, a group of scientists from the French Academy of Science pointed out that energy storage in the “new brave world” implied by the current fad for EVs and SDs, is an unresolved issue, and by a wide margin. Powering large numbers of EVs from non-fossil sources, numbers large enough to replace current ICE fleets, means massive amounts of storage. Many parties imply the extensive use of Lithium-ion batteries. Our academics pointed out that France currently requires some 10TWh per week, all told, for its ongoing living (with only a negligible number of EVs connected yet). To store only 2 days of electricity use (say a winter period with extensive cloud cover and no wind — this happens), with the same kind of batteries used by Tesla, would require some 12 million tonnes of batteries using 360,000 tonnes of Lithium — while current global Lithium mining is about 40,000t/year…[9] These academics obviously forced the point to get the message across. Scaled to the global fleet, there is an obvious gap: not enough Lithium (in fact UBS has estimated the likely production increase required to achieve 100% EV globally: 2,898%).[10]
Batteries require more than Lithium. The main form of Li-ion battery requires 6g of cobalt per gram of Li. That means 10kg of cobalt per EV. The main sources of cobalt are Zambia and Congo (DCR), mined in distressing conditions, where quasi-slavery child labour is rife and wars/guerrillas also common place… Hence a shift to lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt-oxides (NMCs) in cell phones, and lithium-nickel-cobalt-aluminium-oxide (NCA) batteries, for example, in Tesla cars. However, nickel mining and smelting is highly polluting and energy intensive, ditto for aluminium, and this renders even more complex the yet unresolved issue of Lithium recycling — many more “elephants” hidden in that corner. EVs also require rare earth metal, graphite and many more materials. UBS estimates that in a 100% EV world cobalt requirements would increase by 1,928% relative to now, rare earths 655%, graphite 524%, and nickel 105% — no one has any clear idea as to where such amounts may come from, at what energy costs and what the ecological impacts would be…[11]
There is more and worse since the EV fad aims to get rid of ICE vehicles not only because of air pollution but also to combat global warming. As noted earlier, this means intensive use of PVs and WTs, at least in the minds of decision-makers and pundits. Globally a number of studies point at the need to move from the present 17TW of installed power to some 50TW possibly over 100TW of so-called “renewables” (recalling the low capacity factors of renewables). Here others point out that besides the above issues, said PVs and WTs require amounts of steel and concrete (and many other minerals, rare earth metals, etc.) that are substantially higher than for current coal fired power stations (about 7 times the amount of steel per kWh supplied, for example); ditto for copper use in PV farms (11 to 40 times more copper);[12] ditto for aluminium (90 times more aluminium).[13] A number of parties have raised such matters.[14]
Others have also pointed out that, Paris Agreement to combat climate change or not, present installed “renewables” (not counting existing hydro) are far from covering recent increases in global energy consumption up to 2012. That, is the world is nowhere near able to substitute fossil fuels with “renewables” even without considering the added potential demand of 100% ICE vehicle substitution with EVs, even in a TaaS context… Furthermore, since 2012 energy consumption increments have been low and so have new investment in “renewables”. This is officially all due to the “sluggishness” of “growth”. We do know that this sluggishness is caused by net energy from oil fizzling out, but that is the largest of our invisible elephants… They are all “somebody’s else problem”; why worry? EVs, SDs, Taas are so clearly the way to go, aren’t they?
And so, car manufacturers face some dilemmas. The EV-SD-TaaS fad is “new business, which is still losing money, is cannibalising its profitable existing one, creating incentives to delay the necessary change”.[15] Not one car manufacturer is likely to make decent money in the foreseeable future with EVs, SDs, etc., not the kind of money they made with ICE cars. But governments said it, EVs are the way to go, ICEs shall be banned…
There are many more elephants that we have not mentioned yet… Consider, for example, the dangers of hacking and cyber attacks. No software system has been shown to be 100% immune. SDs have been hacked. Mass EV-SDs fleets would entail substantial dangers against which there is presently no known cure (although some experts do their utter best to attract attention to the issues and work hard to develop solutions).[16]
Still, for now, the herd of elephants that we have singled out should suffice to show that, maybe, in the face of global urban air pollution and global warming, along EV hyper-real lines, the chief implied consequence is “good old” rationing of mobility by whatever other fancy name marketing and communications people will call it — the days of mass car ownership are counted, some will retain access to constrained mobility and others, probably the majority, mostly not.
To avoid misunderstandings, let’s stress it further — somehow, somewhere, in various parts of the world, there are experts working hard to address each of the invisible elephants. The chief issue is that they all remain under a SEP field. The still far too long timelines to solving each elephant and the interactions between them are not factored in coherently and rigorously by decision-making elites supposedly dealing with climate change, air pollution or energy matters.
Finally, recall that none of the above takes OFDK into account. Bring OFDK in, and it is in since 2012, and the already grim picture instantly darkens into a deep shade of black. Under OFDK the net energy from oil required to make, distribute, install, operate, and maintain all the fancy EVs, SDs, PVs, WTs, batteries, intelligent grids, TaaS, and so on, that are meant to save us from choking in air pollution and sweltering under global warming, that key net energy fizzles out by about 2022, with a final tapering out by 2030… Fizzling out is not a nice, smooth affair. It means disruption, erratic moves, breakdowns, and worse, well before 2030. So, a nice, happy substitution of ICE by EVs and SDs and TaaS by 2030? Most unlikely… And then what?
Well, the end of car ownership is exactly what TaaS promoters are about. Ironically, notwithstanding the flaws that we can see in RethinkX’s analysis (and that of others), while the demise of mass car ownership is unlikely to happen as they expect it, the drastic drop in privately owned and operated ICE vehicles is likely to turn out about correct, i.e. only about 5% of ICE passenger vehicles remaining in activity by 2030 in the USA, and not only in the USA but also globally…
Of course, EVs and some forms of SDs are likely to continue expanding between now and then but only as specialised, limited, market niches. Except in the fantasies of Tooth Fairy believers, this is not what can bring “salvation” to current car users from the impacts of the OFDK avalanche, including the impacts of pollution and global warming.
Furthermore, electrifying transport fantasies also leave out the remainder of transport, the trucks, buses, trains, the global merchant fleet of over 1.75 billion dead weight tonnes, and the over 362,000 active aircrafts. Yes, some electrification of trucks, including using overhead catenaries on some main roads, use of computer controlled kites for some merchant shipping, and electrically powered planes are feasible; research and development work is taking place in such areas; however, the matters of timelines, EROI, and costs remain intractable. What could be done if we had 50 years or even 30 years lead times is no longer doable within a mere 10 years during which we must expect that numerous disruptions will impede development.
So overall, no, the Tooth Fairy EV-SD-TaaS magic simply cannot work in time and many cracks are beginning to show, tearing the SEP fields apart, and revealing the rampaging elephants.
XTL, Petro-X, DTCBR — OFDK’s heart of darkness
It should be clear that we do need something else. Could it be found in the direction of those XTLs that have been under development since the 1980s and that are now central to BigMES? Sadly, the same fundamental thermodynamic and systemic issues as concerning the EV-SD-TaaS fad apply, translating into another herd of rampaging elephants — meaning that “salvation” the XTL way is no more likely than the present EV fad.
Many XTL projects that were being planned, even undertaken up to 2014 when oil prices were around $100/bbl or above were postponed indefinitely or abandoned when oil prices crashed. Of course, the thermodynamics are unfavourable and thus production costs for XTLs are high. In a generic sense, the XTL challenge is to use energy (a lot of it) to do rapidly what nature did over millions of years to produce the kinds of high energy density molecules found in sweet crude. To do so, there is a progression in complexity and energy costs in going from coal and natural gas, through various forms of biomass, to completely starting from scratch and using energy from wind or sun to produce electricity and use it to synthesise the right molecules from, say, atmospheric CO2 and water or some other sources of carbon and hydrogen. Energy returns on energy investments (EROIs) and overall energy efficiencies remain abyssal; well below what’s required for societal viability. Which means that the present situation is reminiscent of those Greek tragedies where the more the heroes endeavour to avoid their fate the more they precipitate it.
In the face of thermodynamics and cost reality, Tooth Fairy believers operating on “supply and demand” mythology count on an eventual major price increase, way above $100/bbl, to bring back XTLs into the main play. However, in earlier posts (The threat of an Oil Pearl Harbor; The end of the Oil Age, as we knew it; How is an Oil Fizzle Dragon-King created? — Parts 2 to 4 of Looking down the barrel), we have shown how and why oil prices are currently being thermodynamically driven to the floor (zero net energy results in zero oil value and the oil stays underground).
Except the odd, short lived, price flares caused by various parties taking inopportune pot shots at others and/or cutting pipelines or bombing oil terminals, and/or hurricanes, fires, floods, and large volcanic eruptions, there can’t be salvation by sustained oil price increases.
Sweet crude was never a “free lunch” but it certainly has been a bonanza, at least for some people, the 10% wealthiest. It is now mostly gone. We have said it; we repeat it, the old game is over — net energy from oil is fizzling out. Price flares of sorts may well become the norm, mostly on an overall downward trend, but they have become irrelevant. As we have also stressed, in the present OFDK BigMES, what matters is that the future for transport fuels prices is up and up and concerning security of supplies this future is erratically disrupted.
In other terms, we are now in an “everyone to themselves” world where what matters is who may manage to lay their hands on transport fuels at least for vital activities, where, when and how. Sadly, but of course, here “vital activities” include military ones — no matter what, pushing aside all other considerations, notably ecological and global warming ones, the matter increasingly will be to do “whatever it takes” to keep “things” running, flying, sailing.
This is where, for example, “Petro-X” comes in. So far the globalised industrial world (GIW) has only known the Petro-dollar, at least since President Nixon finally severed the last link between the US dollar and gold in 1971, and since subsequently, after the first oil shock, the US reinforced its already strong links with the Middle East that favoured trading oil almost exclusively in US dollars and reinvesting the surging OPEC profits in the US and more broadly in the West.
Since the early 1970s, there have been several attempts or dreams to trade oil in different currencies and create some other “Petro-X”. At best, most were unsuccessful (e.g. Gaddafi’s apparent dream of creating a new gold-backed African currency) or limited (e.g. Iraq’s shifting to the Euro in 2000 for its oil trading — reverted to the US dollar after the war).
More recently Iran has been using other currencies than the dollar, notably the Euro and Yuan. So has Qatar who could switch completely away from the dollar. Venezuela has also followed suit completely stopping its oil exports trade in US dollars and shifting to the Yuan (which seems to baffles most oil analysts). And now Russia seems intent in stopping using the US dollar in all its sea ports and is backing BRICS efforts in promoting international financial regulation reforms and changes to reserve currencies. None of this would matter a great deal if it were not for OFDK. Under OFDK’s BigMES there is mounting pressure to escape the Petro-dollar and carve out other Petro-X avenues able to outcompete the US.
China, the biggest oil importer, is preparing to launch a Yuan-denominated, gold-backed crude oil futures contract. Besides initially enabling countries like Russia, Iran and Venezuela to by-pass the US banking systems and US sanctions, this has potentially major BigMES implications. Combined with a series of deals in the Middle East and Russian support of BRICS efforts, the emergence of a Petro-Yuan may end up giving China a strong influence over some 40% of global oil and gas production (recall that Russia, Iran and Qatar hold the largest natural gas reserves, and by a wide margin).
Recall also that for oil importing countries, under OFDK, what matters is not oil production but oil available for export. For decades oil used domestically by oil producing countries has increased more and more, constraining oil available for exports. Many oil-exporting countries have also increasingly been exporting transport fuels rather than crude oil. Presently, export oil is dominated by “Chindia”, i.e. the oil imports by China and India. This results in a rapidly declining fraction of total exports available to older industrialised countries and everyone else. In recent years, China has also considerably increased its strategic oil reserve (while the US has been reducing its own). China’s Petro-Yuan move is thus very important in a BigMES context where what matters is who has access to what, at what price and for how long — knowing that the “music stops” by 2030 at the latest.
In Living on credit, the 10% & the Remainder (Part 9 of Looking down the barrel), we highlighted the emergence of “debt-that-cannot-be-repaid” (DTCBR) as a key post-modern form of tribute levying. We pointed out that the US invented it and is master at it. The Petro-dollar has until now been a major vector of this activity. Under OFDK’s BigMES every large player, private and public, has now no other choice but to be involved in that DTCBR game. With a total debt at 260% of its GDP, China is presently the most indebted large country in the world. The Petro-Yuan is another way of playing the DTCBR game in order to secure a substantial share of the last dregs of net energy from oil and to move on to transport fuels from XTLs.
Other important factors in the DTCBR game are how the various military powers and the global arms trade are evolving. Historically, military power has always been a key, and often the ultimate, factor to achieve tribute levying. Presently there are signs that the US military may no longer be what it used to be (recurring accidents plaguing its Pacific fleet, poor level of preparedness, high proportion of old, sometimes obsolete equipment).[17] Meanwhile the Syrian conflict has highlighted the power and advanced capabilities of some of the Russian technologies and the development of China’s military, especially its navy, has been well publicised, notably all along its oil supply routes.
In our previous post on food, Food (in)security & cognitive failure under the Oil Fizzle Dragon-King, we highlighted the extent of cognitive failure and the resulting inability of elites to think the unthinkable concerning one of the two most critical of the GIW’s support systems: food.
Here, concerning transport, the other most critical system, we enter OFDK’s “heart of darkness”.[18] As we stressed in The end of the Oil Age, as we knew it, some of the parties in play sense that matters are far from well — they have read some tea leaves and writings on walls. However, none has any clear notion of what they are flying into. And so they are positioning themselves and gearing up to play the big mad energy scramble, the BigMES game, in “wild west” poker players’ fashion, where cheating the other players is key, guns at the ready.
Beside the “guns”, militaries cum secret services, the main components of this game are the dregs of net energy from sweet crude that can still be had, by some but not by all, the ability to control and muster other primary energy resources to extend oil further and go XTL, albeit at unavoidable, substantial, unviable, thermodynamic deficits, the ability to impose some of the EV-SD-TaaS hyper-reality, also at unavoidable, large thermodynamic deficits, and above all the many forms of “cheating” thermodynamics financially, aka DTCBR by whatever name, to force others to pay for said deficits. Based on 20th century experience, including two world wars, colonial and decolonialisation wars, and ever since various forms of oil related turmoil notably in the Middle East and Africa now extending all the way to the so-called China Sea, the prospects are bleak to say the least. There is no way of telling how each player will fare, what sequence of events will eventuate, how far each will go during this end phase of the Oil Age. It is likely to be very messy. In the near future, we must expect to see the SEP fields of “supply and demand” and “free market” torn apart along with the growth of new preferential oil trading relationships along Petro-X lines, bartering deals, embargoes, blockades, “sanctions”, export bans, effective control of distant oil fields by various foreign states, maybe via oil majors, cutting off strategic pipelines by opposing interests, sabotages, cyber warfare, and worse forms of playing BigMES.
OFDK’s heart of darkness, that is now unfolding on the transport scene, is the tragedy of cognitive failure at its peak — while elites pursue fantasies of progress, mastery over nature, technical prowess, “going green to combat climate change”, all along fixing problems by adding more and more technology that in turn create more problems, their world, the GIW, is in the process of losing access to its sources of energy and is about to grind to a halt.
Beyond short-term expediency and rearguard delaying tactics, absolutely nothing can be gained at the EV-SD-XTL-Petro-X-DTCBR game by any of the players. By 2030 it all stops. Playing EV-SD-XTL-Petro-X-DTCBR can only precipitate what is in train and make it far worse. It does not and cannot lead to a viable “world after”, once the Oil Age has ended. It may instead, we should say it is likely to, lead to considerable hardship, loss of life and worsening of global warming and other ecological challenges.
Scrambling for Oil Age dregs or dreaming of magical alternatives is madness. The whole world demands something else. As we have stressed since the beginning of this series, there are other ways to make use of existing knowledge and technologies. Using them, it is feasible to re-invent the entire set of existing value chains within the remaining timeframe. This won’t happen at the initiative of elites plagued with cognitive failure, remaining firmly under the sway of a Tooth Fairy playing with SEP fields. It can only happen at the initiative of a few entrepreneurs who have intuited enough of the situation and seen the opportunities that it represents — as has always been the case historically since the early days of farming some 10,000 years ago. In our next and last post in this series we will outline the bases for such an approach. In the next series we will then present how we plan to address the emerging demand for something else — the urgent necessity of putting in place means of access to energy, a new class of networking and new cryptocurrency means.
* * * * * *
If you have followed our posts to this point, a reminder:
This series focuses on the emerging global demand for something else than what we currently have concerning energy and all other aspects of living in the globalised industrial world (the GIW). Most importantly it concerns money, the end of fiat currencies over the next few years and their unavoidable replacement with cryptocurrencies backed with sustainable energy supplies.
The posts gradually explain the rationale for the solutions that we are developing to address that global demand for something else. A subsequent series will explain our solutions themselves and our entire approach to creating a sustainable and scalable energy backed cryptocurrency.
You can find all the previous posts at: https://medium.com/@GeeeBee/
[1] International Energy Agency, 2017, Global EV Outlook 2017. https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/GlobalEVOutlook2017.pdf
[2] Based on the recent and much criticised assessments of the feasibility of a full conversion to renewables by 2050 in order to stay below 1.5oC warming, e.g. by Mark Z. Jacobson, Mark A. Delucchi, Zack A.F. Bauer, et al., 2017, 100% Clean and Renewable Wind, Water, and Sunlight All-Sector Energy Roadmaps for 139 Countries of the World. Joule 1, 108–121, September 6.
[3] Arbib, James and Seba, Tony, 2017, Rethinking Transportation 2020–2030, The Disruption of Transportation and the Collapse of the Internal-Combustion Vehicle and Oil Industries, A RethinkX Sector Disruption Report, RethinkX.com.
[4] See for example, Kinder Baumgardner, 2015, Beyond Google’s Cute Car — The Time to Think through the Impact of Self-Driving Vehicles on Architecture and City Planning is Now. http://www.swagroup.com/press/beyond-googles-cute-car/
[5] Todd Royal, 2017, Electric Vehicles: The High Cost Of Going Green. OilPrice.com, Sep 14.
[6] https://www.cnet.com/news/googles-vision-of-self-driving-cars-is-wayward-says-mit-prof/. This is a view he expands on in his recent book, 2017, Our Robots, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy, Viking.
[7] Jean-Louis Gassée, 2017, Autonomous Cars: The Level 5 Fallacy. https://mondaynote.com, 11 September.
[8] Chris Urmson Google’s Director of Self-Driving Cars from 2013 to late 2016 actually pointed that much: no hands on a driving wheel — at least 30 years into the future maybe never (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj-rK8V-rik&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=SXSW and https://www.recode.net/2017/9/8/16278566/transcript-self-driving-car-engineer-chris-urmson-recode-decode).
[9] Members of the Energy Futures Committee, 2017, La question de la transition énergétique est elle bien posée dans les débats actuels ? [Is the matter of energy transition properly asked within present debates?], Institut de France — Académie des Sciences, Paris, 19 April.
[10] UBS Evidence Lab, 2017, Electric Car Teardown — Disruption Ahead? www.ubs.com/investmentresearch, 18 May and UBS Research, 2017, The massive impacts of EVs on commodities, http://cdn.oilprice.com//images/tinymce/zh16.jpg
[11] UBS, 2017, Op. Cit.
[12] Edgar G. Hertwich, Thomas Gibon, Evert A. Bouman, Anders Arvesen, Sangwon Suh, Garvin A. Heath, Joseph D. Bergesen, Andrea Ramirez, Mabel I. Vega, and Lei Shi,2017, Integrated life-cycle assessment of electricity-supply scenarios confirms global environmental benefit of low-carbon technologies. PNAS. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1312753111.
[13] Olivier Vidal, Bruno Goffé and Nicholas Arndt , 2013, Metals for a low-carbon society. Nature Geoscience Vol 6, November. www.nature.com/naturegeoscience
[14] 2015, Ressources minérales et énergie [Mineral resources and energy], Rapport du groupe « Sol et sous-sol » de l’Alliance Nationale de Coordination de la Recherche pour l’Energie (ANCRE). See also, Daniele La Porta and Kirsten Hund, 2017, The Growing Role of Minerals and Metals for a Low Carbon Future, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/ World Bank Publications The World Bank Group www.worldbank.org; Nuss P, Eckelman MJ (2014) Life Cycle Assessment of Metals: A Scientific Synthesis. PLoS ONE 9(7): e101298. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0101298.
[15] Simon Hage, 2017, The Arrival of Tesla: German Auto Giants Face an Existential Challenge — Spiegel Online — International, 15 September.
[16] See for example, James Somers, 2017, The Coming Software Apocalypse. The Atlantic, 28 September. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/09/saving-the-world-from-code/540393/.
[17] John Cooper, 2017, The U.S. Military Is In Really Bad Shape. http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-us-military-really-bad-shape-19446?page=show. 14February. See also, Dedefensa.org, 2015, La domination aérienne US globale est menacée [US airspace domination is threatened].http://www.dedefensa.org/article/la-domination-aerienne-us-globale-est-menacee. 16 September.
[18] In reference to Joseph Conrad, 1899, Heart of Darkness, Blackwood’s Magazine.
