The Problem With Tar Sands
Last week, when I expressed my concern about biofuels, it generated a lively discussion. But I'd hate for folks to think I'm picking on biofuels. Petroleum can really chap my hide. To wit, check out this new report from Environmental Defence Canada. The title says it all: Canada's Toxic Tar Sands: The Most Destructive Project On Earth (pdf).
I found the title a bit overheated at first, but take a look before you decide. The claim may be debatable, but it's also not mere hyperbole: the tar sands oil extraction very well could be the most destructive project on earth. In fact, it's already yielding catastrophic results for human health, not to mention for a vast swath of North America's ecology. (In any case, I've had the privilege of working on climate policy a bit with one of the authors, Matt Price, and I can attest that he's a smart guy.)
I won't summarize the study here, but just point out that among the many problems with tar sands oil, is that it can only be extracted and processed with very large energy inputs (which means very large carbon emissions):
The main reason is that extracting the oil from the sand is so energy intensive, from the large machines to the natural gas used to melt the bitumen out of the sand. It is estimated that by 2012 the Tar Sands will use as much gas as is needed to heat all the homes in Canada... Using huge amounts of relatively clean burning natural gas in order to produce dirty and carbon heavy oil is what commentators have dubbed “reverse alchemy” – the equivalent of turning gold into lead.
For a long time, it wasn't economical to extract tar sands oil. But now, with high and rising oil prices -- and plenty of demand from Canada's neighbor -- it's starting to pencil out. It's just a shame the accounting doesn't factor in pollution, the cancer risk, the wildlife, the water quality, the air quality, the atmospheric carbon...
You get the idea.
Horsepower vs. MPG
This should be perfectly obvious -- but automotive technologies have changed an awful lot over the last few decades. From about 1975 through 1987, federal standards prompted massive and surprisingly rapid improvements in fuel economy. Cars designers focused on nimbleness and efficiency over raw power, and the fuel savings were enormous. But since the late 1980s, most engineering advances have focused on making cars more muscular, and fuel efficiency has taken a back seat.
For graphic proof, here's a nifty chart derived from this very large powerpoint presentation by Cambridge Systematics. The yellow arrow represents the passage of time, the horizontal axis represents fuel economy (increasing for the first 12 years) and the vertical axis represents horsepower (on the rise since the late 1980s).
The numbers show that, as of 1975, the average new passenger vehicle burned 7.6 gallons of gas for every 100 miles driven. By 1987, that had fallen to 4.5 gallons -- meaning that new cars used about 40 percent less gas than they did 12 years earlier.
By any measure, a 40 percent decline in gas consumption in just 12 years is quite an accomplishment! The fuel savings were the result of two simultaneous trends: the average car got lighter, and engineers tuned new car engines for efficiency rather than power and acceleration. In short, the auto industry -- from boardroom to design shop to factory floor -- focused its efforts on squeezing more miles out of less gasoline.
But in the mid-1980s, oil prices fell, the economy picked up, and federal fuel-economy standards topped out. So car manufacturers switched gears, pouring their technological advances into increased vehicle weight and horsepower. As a result, automotive engineers spent most of their time trying to squeeze as much torque and acceleration out of their engines as possible. Efficiency gains stalled at first; and then later, with the rise of SUVs and other light trucks, fleet-wide fuel economy actually went into reverse.
Fortunately, since 2004 -- when fuel prices started to rise in earnest -- we've notched some modest improvements in fuel economy. Yet preliminary data for the 2007 model year suggest that those improvements may have hit yet another road block, with an incremental gain in horsepower but no improvements in fuel efficiency. Sigh.
