The Bottomless Well

"This book points out that the cheaper energy gets the more we use. Electric light is now ludicrously cheap compared with candlelight in the days of Jane Austen, and the result is that I’ve got ten bulbs on in this room on a bright day. So, if we conserve energy through insulating our houses then we burn more. If we make our cars more energy efficient we’ll drive them further. What he’s saying on the one hand is: don’t kid yourself that we’re going to use less energy. On the other hand he’s saying: don’t kid yourself that energy’s going to run out. The degree to which we can make our use of energy more efficient means that our resources will stretch further and further. He gives the example of the old steam engine which was 99 per cent inefficient. Only one per cent of the coal you burnt turned into energy. Nowadays a modern turbine using gas is 60 to 80 per cent efficient. There’s an extraordinary reduction in the amount of fossil fuel you have to burn to produce the same amount of work. The result is that electricity is cheaper and therefore we use more of it. It’s a wonderful explanation of the technologies and how they fit into the world. That’s roughly where I am. Natural gas is going to do us nicely for this century, with nuclear added in. It’s highly unlikely that we’re going to run out of sources of cheap energy. If we look at the industrial revolution and what happened there was the discovery of cheap energy. Wood, wind and water got more expensive the more you used it. “It’s highly unlikely that we’re going to run out of sources of cheap energy” You’d dam the best rivers first and then the streams in the hills. The thing about coal was that it got cheaper the more you dug out. Same with oil and gas. That’s the story and that’s why we’ve been able to give up using slaves and forests and use these lovely things that come out of holes in the ground. Ha."