I just attended a reception with Colorado oil and gas employees, and the conversation was eye opening. I expected to hear about how difficult life in America would be without fossil fuels. There was some of that, but not in the way I expected. Many of the conversations were not about how badly we need gasoline for our cars or electricity for our homes and businesses.
There was, instead, a new twist that most of us spend little time thinking about. Namely, all the products in our daily lives that come from oil, though many people don’t realize it. This is important, because the push to decarbonize our society assumes that most uses of fossil fuels can be replaced by renewables. Though it costs more and is less reliable, the technology to create electricity from wind and sun does exist. That technology has been steadily improving for years, and while there are still major challenges, we shouldn’t underestimate the power of human ingenuity. But as engineers and researchers seek ever better ways to generate more reliable and efficient electricity from renewables, they can never make the wind or the sun manufacture – anything.
It is a fundamental distinction between oil and renewables. About 11 percent of America’s electricity now comes from wind and solar. About 61 percent comes from natural gas and coal, another 20 percent from nuclear, and 7 percent from hydro. Virtually none comes from oil, so the debate about weaning America from oil has nothing to do with electricity. Rather, it has everything to do with all the devices that use electricity, and an estimated 6,000 consumer products that originate from petroleum.
The controversy over electric car mandates has become very divisive. But even among people who understand that without oil there is no gasoline for their cars, there is a shocking ignorance about all the other uses of minerals in the modern world. For example, a nationwide online survey revealed that 72 percent of Americans are unaware that plastic is made from oil. Americans rely on plastics in all aspects of their lives, yet most don’t know where it comes from.
Even people still wedded to their internal combustion engines (including me) should understand that less than half of all the oil in America (47 percent) is used for gasoline. Some is used for heating oil, diesel fuel, and aviation fuel, but a substantial portion – almost 2 million barrels a day – is used to make plastic, and the rest goes into all sorts of other products we take for granted.
Even electric cars have bodies, motors, and frames made of steel, while batteries, tires, interiors, hoses, wires, and all the rest are essentially made from oil. So are all our kitchen appliances, products in our bathrooms, ink to print newspapers, the carpet, drapes, upholstery, and paint in our homes, and the clothes on our backs. So are wind machines and solar panels.
Few of us can imagine life without shampoo, toothpaste, combs, deodorant, or toilet seats. Even fewer would choose to live without televisions, computers, cell phones, tablets, or wifi equipment. How much fun would we have without basketballs, football helmets, soccer balls, tennis rackets, golf clubs, skis, hiking boots, or fishing poles?
Without fertilizers or pesticides, most of which are derived from oil, the food supply would be smaller and more expensive. Imagine travel without paved roads. Wind and sun can power electric cars, but they cannot make pavement. Nor can they make the supplies used by modern hospitals, including pharmaceuticals and surgical equipment. They might eventually discover how to fly airplanes with solar panels, but the sun cannot build an airport and its runways.
Ronald Stein, noted engineer and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated “Clean Energy Exploitations,” points out a reality of modern life, that crude oil refined into a wide range of petrochemicals “is the basis for virtually all the products in our materialistic society that did not exist before the 1800’s.” That is, the consumer products that are the backbone of the most prosperous society in history, enabling a higher standard of living than any previous generation could have imagined.
I have never worked for any oil company, nor any of their associations, but in one sense this is still personal. That’s because I expect the lights to come on when I flip the switch. The electricity for that light might come from the wind, but without oil, there would be no switch to flip – you can’t make light switches out of wind.
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