Extreme Energy is a term used to describe a group of energy extraction methods that have emerged in recent years, as more usual methods of extracting fossil fuels fail to provide the amounts of energy that civilisation demands. Examples include Tar Sands, Mountain Top Removal, Deep Water Drilling, Coal Bed Methane and Shale Gas. Harmful energy sources that are not based on fossil fuels, such as agrofuels and a nuclear, are also sometimes considered part of the extreme energy sector.
The big picture is one of increasingly more energy expended to get less energy in return. We’ve used up most of the fossil fuel resources that are easy to get at. Now we’re left with oil, gas and coal reserves that take more energy to extract. At some point the ‘net energy‘ from fossil fuel extraction will drop too low and extraction will stop.
Energy production is going to use up more and more of society’s resources.
The pressure driving this wave of extreme energy methods is the depletion of natural resources by the demands of the present economic system. This has been driving up the price of resources and increasing competition for them in recent years. Since around 2005 the global production of crude oil has stopped significantly increasing and is now on a bumpy plateau. This has resulted a huge jump in the price of oil.
We are now in a situation where total energy production is not nearly rising fast enough to counteract the increasing costs of extracting it. The amount of energy used in energy extraction processes will grow with time. This means that the fraction of gross domestic product (GDP) devoted to energy extraction is going to grow.
What will a world be like where over half the economy is devoted to energy production, most of which goes straight back into producing more energy? Looking to places such as the Niger Delta, where people ground into abject poverty by a massive energy extraction system from which they derive no benefit, may give us some idea of the situation the whole world is headed towards.
Extreme energy methods will not provide energy security.
They are simply the desperate last gasps of a system addicted to fossil fuels. Coal Bed Methane production in the US has already peaked, as has coal production from the Appalachian Mountains. The system is having to run harder and harder just to stand still. Is it really worth destroying our health and the ecosystems we depend on just for a few more years of a system that’s utterly dependent on fossil fuels?
For more information, see Energy, climate and cuts: a fork in the road and Extreme Energy: the road to nowhere.
