1000 Football Stadiums Filled With Oil = 1 Year of Global Energy Consumption
by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY 
on 11.18.08
I’m not sure if Malhotra was referring to American Football or what the rest of the world calls football, but both stadiums are quite large. Wembley Stadium photo: Lawrie Cate.
Got your attention now? That amount of oil equivalent, three cubic miles, is how much the world uses in a year if you take into account all sources of energy, says Ripudaman Malhotra of SRI International's Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory in Greentech Media. What’s more, is that by 2050 at current rates of increase the world will consume nine cubic miles of oil.
Pretty sobering, but what is more sobering (it does indeed feel like cold water thrown on the renewable energy industry) is that to replace that amount of energy usage with renewable sources is nigh impossible. Here’s Malhotra on the challenge laid before us in a nutshell:
Renewable Energy May Not Be Enough
While it is true that there is enough solar energy potential to meet such an increase in demand, to deploy enough solar technology to capture it will be very very difficult. To create the same amount of energy as one cubic mile of oil from solar power in the next 50 years would require some “4.2 billion 2 kW rooftop systems, or 250,000 installed every single day over that timeframe.” If terms of large solar thermal power plants it would take 7,700 900 MW facilities—3 built per week over the next 50 years.
To get just one cubic mile oil equivalent would require 1,200 1.6 MW wind turbines going up every week over the next 50 years.
Using biofuels, Malhotra using soybean biodiesel as the example, to make up the energy in one cubic mile of oil would require an 85-fold increase in land put under cultivation.
Nuclear power doesn’t fare any better in Malhotra’s analysis: to create the energy in one cubic mile of oil would require 2,500 new nuclear plants—one a week for 50 years.
Doom and gloom aside, no one is suggesting that only one energy source be used to move us towards carbon-neutral fuels (and Malhotra’s example of soybean biodiesel could quickly made ludicrous if anyone succeeds in producing true commercial quantities of algae-based biofuel), but the numbers are still staggering. And this is where Malhotra touched upon what I think is the road less travelled: Energy efficiency and even more importantly energy demand reduction.
One Billion CFLs Would Save 1 Cubic Mile of Oil
Malhotra pointed out that replacing one billion incandescent lightbulbs with CFLs would save one cubic mile of oil per year; if all building renovations were done with energy efficiency in mind in India and China then perhaps two more cubic miles of oil could be saved. That's a high bar but one which can be cleared with technologies that exist today by the individual.
We Need to Reduce Energy Demand...
Beyond this I think we all need to address energy demand reduction and deeply consider ways to radically reduce our energy usage. How many things which were considered luxuries two decades ago are considered absolute necessities now? (I’m thinking particularly of air conditioning, but also of the fact that so many things seem to have needless power sources in them.)
Perhaps those things should go back to being considered luxuries? Unless you have a genuine medical condition, not using air conditioning is not a health problem, nor is being a bit sweatier a reduced standard of living; but not using air conditioning does seriously reduce energy demand.
...To Find a Middle Ground Between Energy Poverty & Energy Gluttony
Past a very meager (by developed world standards) use of energy and material consumption there is little direct correlation between increased consumption and personal satisfaction in life. I’m not suggesting, as a commenter once accused me, of wanting people to live in rags and scrape in the mud (or something like that) for food—not by a long shot. But surely there is middle ground between genuine material poverty and the energy gluttony becoming increasingly prevalent?
We constantly talk about painless choices that will let us keep our standard of living, but in terms of energy usage in particular, perhaps we should reevaluate that standard so that it simply uses less energy even if at first it is a bit painful. And if we don’t make that choice willingly, perhaps it will be made for us.
As Malhotra said in the original Greentech Media piece:
The question is what about the rest [of the energy that efficiency can’t offset]? Those solutions will have to come from the supply side now—and as we’ve seen, we have absolutely nothing on the supply side to meet this right now.
More at: Greentech Media.
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Efficiency is critical, as is reducing waste and unnecessary consumption. But there is a silver lining to the fact that the world is set to triple (at least- I've heard higher projections) its energy consumption between now and 2050 (besides the fact that it represents vastly higher standards of living for billions of people in countries that are currently very poor).
Namely, we have to build the capacity to provide twice our current consumption NO MATTER WHAT source we get it from, and let's face it: it isn't going to come from oil, not if we really are near peak oil already; it might come from coal and natural gas, but if so then we'll likely hit peak coal and peak gas by around mid century; and it might come from nuclear, if the world decides to embrace nuclear power. But more likely most of it will come from the sources of power expected to soon be the cheapest- renewables. And we also know that producing clean power is a virtuous circle- each unit makes the next unit cheaper- as opposed to each barrel of oil or ton of coil being more costly than the previous. And so long before 2050, it will be in our financial best interest to replace aging fossil fuel infrastructure with renewable power.
If we have to build 2, we might as well build a third while we're at it.
Scrat! The point is well taken, but the stat is basically meaningless. The fact is we do NOT use that much oil, so painting the metaphor is not really very interesting. Why can't you state the actual amount that is actually oil? How does this all break down? This is an attention grabber, but then lips little utility after the post. Nem kewl chiquita....
Energy use won't increase at current rates for 40+ years. A 3% increase 40 years from now is way more than a 3% increase today. And the world as a whole will not voluntarily decrease their energy consumption by declaring certain things luxuries, like AC. The only way to lower demand for energy is to increase the price and let everyone decide what is a luxury to them and what is not.
Standard of living is a measure of consumption. It is not a measure of happiness or quality of life.
Who will be the first to find the carbon footprint of the average college football game? Hotdogs, hummers, blimps, ESP data servers and all.
@ Martin
Actually college football games are pretty green as far as sporting events go. A large part of the crowd walks to the stadium, and most are played during the day so artificial lighting is often not required.
Also, I agree with Potts. This is just an attention grabber but likely to confuse people.
"What’s more, is that by 2050 at current rates of increase the world will consume nine cubic miles of oil."
I already commented about why the first part of this sentence is off, but it should also read "the equivalent of nine cubic miles of oil".
I remember during the SARS crisis (I lived in Toronto at the time) I became alarmed by the steady rise in cases every day. Each day I looked up the number of new cases on the WHO website, and after a couple of weeks I did a projection into the future based on past trends. It suggested that within a few months there would be millions of deaths from SARS.
The fallacy of this approach, and of the suggestion that energy demand will far outstrip our ability to generate renewable power, is that both fail to account for natural limits and conscious responses. A disease like SARS is naturally limited by the fact that if it kills too many of its hosts, it won't have a means of transmission. It is also limited by the conscious response of humans to the illness - as we saw with SARS, where hospitals were closed to all visitors, hospital staff wore extensive protection, everyone started washing their hands more, and so on.
In the case of our energy future, there are obvious limits to how much energy of any kind we can use. No, there may not be enough renewable energy to create 1,000 oil-filled football stadiums worth of energy now, or 3,000 stadiums in 2050. But the huge growth rates predicted for energy use fail to take into account natural limits. Where is all that energy going to come from? Coal and oil? If so, we'll fry the planet, which is a way for the planet to naturally limit (or eliminate) us. Nuclear? Not likely - it takes fossil energy to extract and refine uranium, and we'd run out of that trying to switch to a largely nuclear future - not to mention the nuclear waste issues such a huge transition would entail. Renewables? Not a chance, as the article suggests.
If natural limits will prevent us from tripling energy use by 2050, then we can either let that happen, and suffer the consequences, or we can take conscious action to reduce our energy use now, so that renewable sources can become a bigger part of a shrinking energy demand, instead of a smaller part of a growing one.
I find the energy-wasting fact of a football stadium filled with oil kind of depressing. But there are energy saving facts, such as the fact that if every North American recycled all the aluminum cans they currently throw out, that would save energy every year equivalent to two days worth of our oil consumption. That's only 2 days out of 365 - but there are plenty of other things we can do to get rid of the other 363.
Being depressed by the oil-filled stadium metaphor is like letting the SARS epidemic run its natural course. We can't afford to wait for natural limits. We have to take conscious action.
We'll, it looks like the best thing we cna do as a whole right now is to put our weight behind Obama. I am not endorsing him in any way, but the fact that he is out president-elect and does seem to have environmental concern, it is our best bet. But he is only as powerful as we make him, so let's all do our part and help make the U.S. a global leader in becoming green.