The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World

by Daniel Yergin

  And here is the core barrier—to break down the body armor that protects the sugar. The cellulose and the hemicellulose need to be separated from the lignin and then broken down into sugars suitable for fermentation into ethanol (ethyl alcohol). This can be accomplished through what is called enzymatic conversion; that is, the application of specialized enzymes. More has to be done on enzymes to make them more competitive.

  The raw material for cellulosic ethanol is cheap. It may be crop residues or agricultural waste; for instance, the leftover corn stover or straw from wheat cultivation or the bagasse that is a waste product from fermenting sugarcane. It can also be other agricultural residue or wood waste or even some kinds of garbage. Or it can be obtained from various kinds of grasses that are grown on marginal land, such as the aforementioned switchgrass or micanthus or sorghum, a cousin of sugarcane.

  But costs of processing are still high. It is estimated that building the facilities for manufacturing cellulosic ethanol can be four times as expensive or more as that for corn-based ethanol.

  THE FORGOTTEN CHALLENGE

  There is also what has been called the “daunting logistics”—the “forgotten challenge.” For compared with oil, biomass has a very low energy density. Therefore, a lot of it has to be gathered, and the costs of doing all that gathering, transporting, and storing are high. The energy density of oil is such that transporting it halfway around the world is economic. By contrast, biomass has what has been described as an “inherently local nature,” which, according to some, makes a 50-mile radius a potential outer limit. Consider a 6,000-barrel-per-day cellulosic plant. It could require as many as 50,000 semitrailer trips per year to supply it.

  The refinery also needs a steady source of supply. If material is being harvested once or twice a year, then it needs to be stored, which is yet another logistical problem. Matter rots and decays. All this adds to the cost. And then, eventually, there will also be a price on the raw material itself.18

  The industry cannot go to scale unless these logistical challenges can be met. One way to do that is by changing the raw material in the upstream—that is, the plant itself.

  “TOUGHER THAN PEOPLE MAY HAVE EXPECTED”

  Inspiration comes in many shapes. For Richard Hamilton, it came during the tenth grade in the form of an article in Newsweek about the IPO of Genentech in October 1980. This was the first public offering of a company from the new biotech industry, and it marked the opening of a whole new age of biotechnology.

  The Genentech story captured Hamilton’s imagination. By the time he was in college, when people asked him what he wanted to do, he would knowingly reply, “Biotech.” They would look at him blankly. After all, this was still the early days for biotech.

  After getting a Ph.D. in molecular biology, Hamilton spent a year as a postdoc at Harvard, where he honed ideas about using biotechnology and genetic engineering to create designer plants. He helped launch a company, Ceres, in 1997, to focus on plant genes. It was not until 2004, as the ethanol boom was building, that he focused on using biotech to create plants specifically designed as fodder for fuels to cope with the logistical challenges that will come with the growth of a cellulosic industry. Indeed, Hamilton and others in this field are bringing a new biological perspective to biofuels.

  “Many people are focused on the refining technology and have worried less about feedstock,” he said. “But this will change as the industry tries to scale. High-yield density is one of the key enablers because of the logistics. Overall, cellulosic ethanol has proved to be tougher than people may have expected. The biggest challenge is that the timelines are determined by the life cycles of living organisms. We are dependent on the passage of seasons to see the results of our work.

  “Our crops did not just spring forth from a mythical garden of Eden,” added Hamilton. “They have been bred and improved by man.” He held up his hand and pointed to his fingernail. “This is how big the first ears of corn were. We have had agriculture for 10,000 years. We did not know that DNA was the genetic material until 1946. The Green Revolution in the late 1960s was an example of beginning to apply modern biology to plant improvement.”19

  Many of the people working in this field are applying the know-how that emerged from the sequencing of the human genome. Calling on the new fields of bioinformatics and computational biology, and using what is called highthroughput experimentation, they seek to identify specific genes and their functions. The aim is to speed up the process of evolution, selecting for characteristics that will make such tall grasses as miscanthus and switchgrass effective energy crops that can grow in marginal lands that would not be cultivated for food. That means selecting for such objectives as speedy growth, accessibility of the sugars, resistance to drought, and lower requirements for fertilizer. The ultimate objective: to increase substantially the number of “gallons per acre.”

  There are other approaches. One is to heat biomass to very high temperatures and create a syngas that can, in a process analogous to turning coal into liquids, be transformed into liquid fuel. Another is to use hydrolysis, combining water and acids, under pressure and at high temperatures, to decompose biomass and turn it into ethanol.

  The focus of refining technology is increasingly on drop-ins, otherwise known as “fungible molecules” or “green molecules.” The aim is, using catalysts, to turn sugars into hydrocarbons that in performance and content are virtually identical with conventional hydrocarbon fuels: gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel. If this works on scale, it would mean products that could be dropped seamlessly into the existing fuel supply system with no requirement for any infrastructure changes. As it is, ethanol must be shipped and stored separately from gasoline because ethanol mixes so easily with the small amounts of water in gasoline pipelines and storage tanks.

  ALGAE: THE LITTLE REFINERIES

  Another potential biofuel source is algae, single-cell creatures at the bottom of the food chain in oceans, lakes, and ponds. Algae are little refineries; they absorb sunlight and CO2 and produce oxygen (about 40 percent of the world’s supply) and bio-oils. Those oils are, in molecular terms, very suitable for the production of gasoline and diesel and jet fuel. They are also, theoretically, very efficient. At work, on land or in ponds of brackish water or in more-controlled bioreactors, they could turn out, on a per-acre basis, about three times as much fuel as a palm plantation and about six times as much as a corn farm.

  Some teams are trying to do this by naturally breeding strains of algae, while others are seeking to apply the genome and develop a fully functioning superalgae that could have significant impact on global energy supply.

  One basic challenge in all the algae work is to find the most productive strains of algae and then maintain the stability of the algae population—which has proved very challenging—and do all this at commercial scale.

  WHAT IS POSSIBLE FOR BIOFUELS

  What will be the timing and impact of commercial cellulosic ethanol and other advanced biofuels? That is the subject of much argument. Some say it is almost within reach; to others, it remains a major research problem. Some who come from Silicon Valley, with its short life cycles for software and computers, might project that same kind of time frame of twenty-four to thirty-six months for biofuels. If one’s point of reference is biotechnology, then a time horizon might be five to ten years. If one comes from the conventional oil and gas industry, with its very long development cycles and with its experience of the complexity and scale of the distribution system, then the thinking might be in terms of 15 to 20 years.

  What is ultimately possible? A bold assessment comes from Steven Koonin, a theoretical physicist and former provost at California Institute of Technology, former chief scientist for BP, and current undersecretary of science at the Department of Energy. He suggests that biofuels could eventually supply 20 percent of global motor fuel demand in a manner that is environmentally responsible.”20

  When one thinks about this vision, it is breathtaking, for it
does suggest a future in which hydrocarbons give way, increasingly, to carbohydrates and other biological sources of energy. However, in terms of getting there, many “ifs” are along the way—about technology, price, scale, and the environment—before Carbohydrate Man could really begin to overtake Hydrocarbon Man on the highways of the world.

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  INTERNAL FIRE

  Thomas Edison was, by the end of the nineteenth century, not just the most famous American in the world. With so many inventions and innovations, he had shaped much of what was called the Age of Edison. He was also, of course, the patriarch of the American electric power industry. And so it was not surprising that when the executives of the Edison Illuminating Companies gathered for their annual convention in New York in August 1896, the guest of honor at the closing banquet was the great man himself.

  The conversation at the head table got around to one of the big questions of the day, electric batteries and cars. Someone called attention to a person farther down the table, the chief engineer from the Detroit Edison Company, Henry Ford. He had just built what he called a “quadricycle,” but it was powered by gasoline, not by a battery.

  The 33-year-old Ford was shifted into the seat next to the hard-of-hearing Edison. In response to Edison’s many questions, Ford sketched out a design on the back of a menu. Edison was very impressed that the vehicle carried its own fuel—what he called “hydrocarbon.” The problem with electric cars, said Edison, is that they “must keep near a power station” and the battery was, in any event, too heavy. Edison told Ford to stick with gasoline and the internal combustion engine. To emphasize his point, Edison struck his fist down on the table. “You have the thing,” he said to Ford. “Keep at it.”

  Ford later said, “That bang on the table was worth worlds to me.” It was a blessing; for Ford revered Edison as “the greatest man in the world.” And now “the man who knew most about electricity in the world had said that for the purpose my gas motor was better,” said Ford. “And this at a time when all the electrical engineers took it as an established fact that there could be nothing new and worthwhile that did not run by electricity.”

  Ford had harbored his own doubts. “I wondered a little whether I might not be wasting my time,” he added. But with Edison’s commendation, “I went on at least twice as fast as I should have otherwise.”1

  Yet the race for personal mobility was still wide open. Indeed, two years later, in 1898, when the New-York Sun marveled that at a busy street corner in New York City “there may be seen cars propelled by five different methods of propulsion,” the gasoline-powered car did not even make the bottom of the list.2

  But within a decade or so, by about 1910, the race would be just about over. The automobile operating with an internal combustion engine would be the victor. And ever since, the automobile has defined personal mobility, which—along with heat, light, and cooling—is one of the fundamental characteristics of modern life.

  FUEL FOR THE FUTURE?

  The amount of energy embodied in oil-derived fuels is tremendous, and these fuels can be stored conveniently as a stable, easy-to-use liquid. If oil is king, its realm of unquestioned supremacy is road transportation. Yet the world’s demand for mobility is only going to grow, and enormously so as the populations in emerging markets achieve income levels that put cars within their reach.

  But how will that demand for mobility be fueled?

  A decade ago, the answer seemed pretty clear: more of the same. Transportation would continue to be based on oil. No longer. A new race for the future of transportation has begun. Its outcome will determine what kind of automobiles people around the world will be driving two or three decades from now and whether oil keeps its preponderant position on the road (and in the air). Will vehicles primarily continue to be powered by the familiar internal combustion engine—the ICE—fueled by gasoline or diesel, but with increasing efficiency? Will the existing and new biofuels be an increasingly important part of the mix, displacing petroleum but meaning relatively little change in cars themselves? Will the vehicles be natural gas–fueled? Or will they be hybrids—vehicles that meld the internal combustion engine with a second drive train, electric, to gain much greater efficiency? Or, more radically, will the real winner be the out-andout electric vehicle, which fills up not at the gas pump but at the wall socket? Further out, there is the possibility of hydrogen-fed fuel cell–powered cars.

  There is another possibility as well: that new kinds transportation systems will emerge that challenge current assumptions about the ways people travel. This may be the necessary response to the impending gridlock that could paralyze so many of the world’s megacities.

  What we do know is that nothing fast will happen to change the world’s auto fleet. It is too large, and the turnover of the existing fleet is too slow—the average life of a car is 12 to 15 years. That is true in the developed world. In fast-growing emerging markets, however, where people who do not own cars are now acquiring them, the answer will be somewhat different—or perhaps very different—because they do not have a large existing stock of cars to replace.

  The race has been reopened by a confluence of factors, beginning with heightened concern about energy security, conflict in the Middle East, the risks from a global supply system, and volatility of oil prices. A second reason is sustainability. When the motorized car first appeared more than a century ago, it provided an immediate solution to the growing challenge of sustainability of rapidly growing cities, an enormous environmental and pollution and health problem that threatened to choke these cities and threaten human health: This was the manure from the vast and ever-growing number of horses that pulled carts and wagons and carriages and trolleys through the expanding cities of the late nineteenth century. Motorization took the horses off the streets.

  Today great progress has been made in cleaning up the exhaust coming out of auto tailpipes. But emissions are still a problem for many cities around the world. Moreover, as the engine burns gasoline or diesel fuel, it emits CO2 out of the tailpipe. And thus concerns about climate change are driving efforts to find an engine that does not add to the carbon stock. Another reason for the new race is sheer scale—anxiety about the ability of the world to meet the additional demand for oil that economic growth in emerging markets will generate.

  The ambition is great: to transform the auto fleet and the infrastructure that supports it and, at the same time, to deliver vehicles that meet the functionality that motorists want at a price that they—and society—are willing to pay. This is no small undertaking. The stakes are huge in this new race: the fuel of the future for the automobile, the shape of tomorrow’s transportation, and global political and economic power. This time out, the total purse to the winners will be measured in trillions of dollars.

  THE STEAM ENGINE

  In 1712 Thomas Newcomen invented the first mechanical steam engine, used to pump water out of coal mines. Many decades later, the Scottish inventor James Watt dramatically improved the design and efficiency of the steam engine, bringing it, as one historian wrote, “within reach of all branches of the economy.” The result was the “Age of Steam.”

  Around the same time, a Swiss engineer, Nicolas Joseph Cugnot, with funding from France’s King Louis XV, developed a steam-powered vehicle that would transport artillery on the battlefield at speeds approaching five miles per hour, carrying four passengers. Cugnot’s mechanical beast performed badly and was vexingly unbalanced for traversing the French countryside. The king finally gave up on Cugnot and cut off the funding.3

  Over the nineteenth century, enormous advances were made in the steam engine, which powered not only the mills and factories of the Industrial Revolution but also the railways and ships. By the latter decades of the nineteenth century, the steam engine was a highly developed machine that tied together the world. By then, however, a competitor had appeared.

  HERR OTTO

  In 1864 a 31-year-old entrepreneur, Eugene Langen, made his way to a workshop
on Gereonswall street in the city of Cologne, Germany, where he heard an “erratic thrashing.” Inside the shop, Langen found Nikolaus Otto experimenting with one of his gas-engine designs. Langen had been told that Otto was doing something interesting, and he was curious to meet Otto, who was one of a number of German inventors and tinkerers trying to capture the energy of combustion more efficiently than was possible with a steam engine.

  Nikolaus Otto’s family was not very well off, and he struggled to make ends meet by selling tea and sugar and doing other odd jobs. Despite his lack of formal technical training, he was intuitive and afflicted with “an obsession with engines.” He was also hungry for a breakthrough, for he was deeply in debt. Langen had little in common with Otto. He was an investor; by his early thirties he had already successfully started several different businesses. But Langen was taken by Otto’s experiments and decided to put up some money.

  Within three years, Otto had achieved a breakthrough, a dramatically more efficient engine design. It won a gold medal at the 1867 Paris Exposition, and soon this initial engine was in high demand. Langen and Otto eventually formed a new company, Gasmotoren-Fabrik Duetz AG, named for a Cologne suburb, and took on new hires, including two brilliant engineers, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach. However, the new company’s prospects were uncertain. Try as they did, they could not get their engines to break what seemed at the time an insurmountable barrier: three horsepower.

  The engineers were very much at odds as to which way to go. Otto wanted to work on a new kind of engine, an internal combustion engine. Daimler was highly skeptical. Meanwhile, competing inventors and engineers were busily trying to find their own breakthroughs. A friend of Langen’s, a professor named Franz Reulleaux, warned him that while they dithered among themselves, competitors were moving ahead. Reulleaux argued that they should pursue Otto’s idea for an internal combustion engine. “Get with it,” he declared. “Herr Otto must get off of his hind legs, and Herr Daimler must get off his front.”