We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now we can control our future instead of letting the future control us. – Jimmy Carter
Much of the world’s energy comes from materials formed hundreds of millions of years ago. Decomposing plants and other organisms buried beneath layers of sediment and rock, have taken millennia to become the carbon-rich deposits we now call fossil fuels. These non-renewable fuels, which include coal, oil, and natural gas, have been supplying approximately 80% of the world’s energy for more than a century, powering our businesses, keeping the lights on in our homes and propelling our cars. They also feed the processes that make a wide range of products such as steel and plastics.
Fossil fuels have been the topic of conversation for years amongst climate scientists and different environmentalists. Using fossil fuels for energy has developed many societies and awarded citizens a better quality of life. However, it comes with a price. The fossil fuel industry has detrimental environmental impacts ranging from pollution and global warming to climate change. Furthermore, the unearthing, processing, and moving of underground oil, gas, and coal deposits which are central to the fossil fuel industry, severely degrades our landscapes and ecosystems.
Typically, for onshore drilling, the fossil fuel industry leases vast stretches of land for infrastructure such as wells, pipelines, access roads, facilities for processing, waste storage and waste disposal, resulting in severe deforestation or relocation of communities. This can be seen in the USA or Canada where indigenous communities have been forced to relocate and pipelines have been built on sacred grounds. In the case of strip mining, often referred to as overburden removal, entire swaths of terrain including forests and whole mountaintops are scraped and blasted away to expose underground coal or oil. After completion of the operation, the land is typically left nutrient-rich, polluted, barren with no ecology activity and is often unable to return to its original state.
The environmental impacts don’t end there. The development of coal, oil, and gas also pose countless threats to our waterways and groundwater. Coal mining operations wash acid runoff into streams, rivers and lakes and dump vast quantities of unwanted rock and soil into streams. Further to this, oil spills and leaks sometimes occur during extraction or transport. This can pollute drinking water sources and jeopardise entire freshwater or ocean ecosystems. Fracking (a process of extraction) and its toxic fluids have also been found to contaminate drinking water. As if things are not bad enough, all drilling, fracking, and mining operations generate enormous volumes of wastewater, which can be laden with heavy metals, radioactive materials, and other pollutants which usually finds its way into freshwater resources.
The fossil fuel industry also contributes to global warming. When we burn oil, coal, and gas, we don’t just meet our energy needs, we also drive the current global warming crisis. Fossil fuels produce large quantities of carbon dioxide when burned and these emissions trap heat in the atmosphere which leads to global warming and climate change. Fossil fuels, however, emit more than just carbon dioxide when burned. Coal-fired power plants singlehandedly generate 42% of dangerous mercury emissions in the United States, as well as two-thirds of U.S. sulfur dioxide emissions (which contribute to acid rain) and the vast majority of soot (particulate matter) in our air. Meanwhile, fossil fuel-powered cars, trucks, and boats are the main contributors of poisonous carbon monoxide and nitrogen which produce smog (and can cause respiratory illnesses) on hot days. Believe it or not, the ocean is also affected by the fossil fuel industry. When oil, coal, or gas is burnt the ocean’s basic chemistry becomes acidic. This is because our seas absorb as much as a quarter of all man-made carbon emissions and since the start of the Industrial Revolution (and our coal-burning ways), the ocean has become 30%. As the acidity in our waters increases, the amount of calcium carbonate, a substance used by oysters, lobsters, and countless other marine organisms to form shells, decreases. This can slow growth rates, weaken shells, and hinder entire food chains. Ocean acidification also impacts coastal communities. In the Pacific Northwest, it is estimated to have cost the oyster industry millions of dollars and thousands of jobs.
Some environmental disasters that have occurred because of the oil and gas industry include the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, the devastating Lac Megantic oil train derailment in 2013, as well as thousands of pipeline incidents. Trinidad and Tobago has also been home to several oil spills significantly impacting our marine resources and the livelihoods of hundreds.
You may be asking yourself, if the fossil fuel industry has so many environmental impacts why are we still using it ? This is an age-old question, plaguing the globe especially since the discovery that the industry contributes to climate change, but the hard truth of the matter is that despite the alternatives and new technologies, we still live in a world heavily dependent on the fossil fuel industry.
In order to better understand this, let’s take a deep dive into the different types of fossil fuels.
Coal: Black or brown chunks of sedimentary rock that range from crumbly to relatively hard, coal began to form during the Carboniferous period about 300 to 360 million years ago, when algae and debris from vegetation in swamp forests settled deeper and deeper under layers of mud. Mined via surface or underground methods, coal supplies one-third of all the world’s energy with the top coal consumers and producers being China, India, and the United States. Carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal account for 44% of the world total, and it is the biggest single source of the global temperature increase above pre-industrial levels.
Oil: Crude oil, a liquid composed mainly of carbon and hydrogen, is often black, but exists in a variety of colours and viscosities depending on its chemical composition. Much of it formed during the Mesozoic period, between 252 and 66 million years ago, when plankton, algae, and other matter sank to the bottom of ancient seas and were eventually buried. Extracted from onshore and offshore wells, crude oil is refined into a variety of petroleum products, including gasoline, diesel, and heating oil. The top oil-producing countries are the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Russia, which together account for nearly 40% of the world’s supply. Petroleum use accounts for nearly half the carbon emissions in the U.S. and about a third of the global total. In addition to the air pollution released when oil is burned, drilling and transport have led to several aformentioned major accidents. Nevertheless, the demand for oil continues to rise, driven by our thirst for mobility as well as the many products, including plastics, made using petrochemicals, which are generally derived from oil and gas.
Natural gas: An odourless gas composed primarily of methane, natural gas often lies in deposits that formed millions of years ago from decaying plant matter and organisms. Both natural gas and oil production have surged in the U.S. over the past two decades because of advances in the drilling technique most people know as fracking. By combining fracking or hydraulic fracturing with horizontal drilling and other innovations, the fossil-fuel industry has managed to extract resources that were previously too costly to reach. As a result, natural gas has surpassed coal to become the top fuel for U.S. electricity production. The U.S. leads the world in natural gas production, followed by Russia and Iran. Trinidad and Tobago houses one of the largest natural gas processing facilities in the Western Hemisphere: The Phoenix Park Gas Processors Limited (PPGPL) natural gas liquids (NGL) complex is located in the Port of Savonetta. It has a processing capacity of almost 2 billion cubic feet per day and an output capacity of 70,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) of NGL. The electricity sector in Trinidad is fueled entirely by natural gas and although cleaner than coal and oil in terms of emissions, the environmental impacts are still present.
It is no doubt that fossil fuels opened new doors for humanity. First coal, then oil and natural gas allowed rapid growth in industrial processes, agriculture, and transportation. The world today is unrecognizable from that of the early 19th century before fossil fuels came into wide use. Human health and welfare have improved substantially, and the global population has increased from 1 billion in 1800, to almost 8 billion today. It is therefore safe to say that the fossil fuel energy system is the lifeblood of the modern economy, as it has powered us through the industrial revolution, pulled millions out of poverty and afforded us many of the luxuries we enjoy to date. Unfortunately, as aforementioned, it comes with a cost, one which we can no longer deny or ignore. The impacts the industry continues to have on our environment and societies across the globe, especially with respect to climate change, are detrimental.
Currently, Governments around the world are engaged in efforts to ramp down greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels to prevent the worst effects of climate change. At the international level, countries have committed to emission reduction targets as a part of the 2015 Paris Agreement, while other entities including cities, states, and businesses have made their own commitments. These efforts generally focus on replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources, increasing energy efficiency, promoting energy conservation and electrifying sectors such as transportation and buildings.
However, many sources of carbon emissions, such as existing power plants that run on natural gas and coal, are already locked in. Considering the world’s continued dependence on fossil fuels, in addition to efforts aimed at replacing them, we also need to suck carbon from the air with technologies such as carbon capture, in which emissions are diverted to underground storage or recycled before they reach the atmosphere. A handful of commercial-scale projects around the world already capture carbon dioxide from the smokestacks of fossil fuel-fired plants, and while high costs have prevented wider adoption, advocates hope that advances in the technology will eventually make it more affordable.
So where does that leave you and I? Trinidad and Tobago literally looks like an explosion of light during the night, and as stunning as that may be, as a country and as citizens we can definitely do our part by practising energy conservation. The environment will be grateful and your pockets would also rejoice when you start seeing a reduced energy bill. People often mistake energy conservation to mean making limited resources last as long as they can, but that would mean that you are only prolonging a crisis until you finally run out of energy resources altogether. Conservation is the process of reducing demand on a limited supply and enabling that supply to begin to rebuild itself. Many times, the best way of doing this is to replace the energy used with an alternate source. However, in the case of fossil fuels, conservation can also include finding new ways to tap into the Earth’s supply so that the commonly used oil fields are not drained completely. Without energy conservation, the world will deplete its natural resources. Many people tend to not see this as an issue because it will take many decades to happen and they assume that by the time the natural resource is gone, there will be an alternative, however this is not guaranteed and is certainly not a reason for inaction. Therefore, it is important that we practise energy conservation on a daily basis as this reduces demand, protects and replenishes supplies, encourages the use of alternative energy sources, and also cleans up the damage from prior energy processes.
With this being said I would like to encourage each and every one of you reading this article to start practising energy conservation. You can take small actions and day by day add new techniques of conserving energy toward doing your part in protecting our planet for future generations. Check out some energy conservation tips below.
Written by: Khadija Stewart of @ecovybz