I think we're getting to the crux of the situation here. And this is where my luddite views will come out and where many of you will simply disagree.
As you say, Glenn, commercial and residential processes are where the big savings are. We can also stop moving things (and ourselves) around so much. Industrial needs are very diverse so it's a lot more difficult to make generalizations. It's also more challenging to achieve reductions. I'm going to try to take a crack at a few suggestions in a moment, but I'll pause to recognize for a moment that this is where my priorities may diverge from most of the people here.
I would love to include a link to David Hughes's excellent diagram showing world energy use over the last century. Imagine a 43-fold increase from a little wee baseline that goes way back in history. First coal grows monstrous and levels off. Then petroleum gets introduced, gets monstrous and levels off. Then we bring in natural gas. And finally uranium. Uranium is just the tip of the steadily rising mountain. At the end of the 1800s most of our fuel was renewable, with a tiny layer of coal on top. That same absolute amount of energy we still obtain from renewables today. The only thing that's changed is that most of it is now hydroelectric where it used to be wood. Looking at that diagram it's difficult not to get struck by how unsustainable this is. It's a lot like looking at Al Gore's hockey-stick diagrams.
In the absence of David Hughes's diagram, I'm going to point you to a diagram developed by the Energy Information Administration of the United States showing world energy projections. It begins in 1980 with 283 quadrillion BTUs and projects to 702 quadrillion BTUs in 2030. That's an increase of 250% over 50 years. This is what keeping the status quo involves. This is what it would take if we insist industries continue to pursue constant steady growth.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/world.html
One thing we need to begin with is the fact that industry today is much more energy-intensive than it ever was. Hence the suggestion that we just replace the dirty fossil fuel energy that's killing us with something else that's energy intensive but doesn't have the same emissions problem, and nuclear presumably comes to mind.
I object to this for a number of reasons. I've already expressed my concerns about toxic tailings and spent fuel. But another thing is that our industry is also very resource intensive. In my lifetime, the world will not only have probably gone through the majority of its petroleum and North American natural gas, it will have also gone through most forests, all the best uranium, most of the largest fish.... In a single century we've killed so many lakes and rivers. I'm not worried about cute fuzzy animals here. I'm concerned about the livability of the planet for humans, for my grandchildren.
So I'm not in a huge hurry to make sure that our industry can keep at it, unless we can develop a way of making industry more responsible for its actions. I think of global warming as just the most critical warning sign that our relationship with the environment that sustains us is seriously dysfunctional. Anyone who wants to can bite my head off now. It seems to me more important to have breathable air and drinkable water than a monster fridge.
But I see another problem.
Replacing electricity from coal with electricity from splitting atoms is just not going to save our industrial sector if we're serious about tackling global warming. The plastics industry is huge and relies on petroleum products. Feeding ourselves relies on industry which derives fertilizer from fossil sources.
In addition, industry just uses more fuel than nuclear can provide. Replacing just the coal currently used for power generation in North America would require a tripling of the nuclear fleet. David Hughes thinks even maintaining current nuclear capacity will be difficult. But electricity is not the only energy source for industry, and many of the sources are carbon-intensive. The steel industry, for example, relies on coal.
And we still have to eliminate the fuel used for transportation -- personal, commercial and industrial.
And then we still have to account for the crazy growth patterns of 250% every half-century that current industrial models predict.
So can ALL this energy be replaced by nuclear power? I've spent time with people who lived near uranium mines and watched their communities get decimated by cancers. Yes, you can extract uranium even by grinding up granite, but imagine what that would do to the landscape. Imagine the manpower that would be required.
And even then, would it be enough?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently updated their predictions to point out that the 2 degree temperature rise that would signal catastrophic impacts is now almost certainly unavoidable. This is a pretty conservative bunch. George Monbiot suggested that Canadians need to cut their emissions by 94 percent by 2030 in his book Heat. The majority would need to happen in the next decade. Now, a year later, he's saying that's probably not enough.
The fact is, we don't have economically viable thorium, breeder or fusion reactors. If there's a place for the remaining high grade uranium, it will probably be at most to replace the current aging nuclear fleet during the next decade.
In the meantime, a lot of painful cuts will have to be made, whether we want to see them or not. The only alternative is accepting even higher temperature increases. At 2 degrees some self-perpetuating cycles may already kick in. The IPCC speculates that 7 degree increases may be reached by century's end. The last time the Earth warmed by 7 degrees, the mass extinctions destroyed every land animal larger than a pig.
If we want a good shot at preventing this, we need to make massive cuts within the next few years. We can't wait around counting on a nuclear breakthrough.
I would personally like to see no more nuclear. I can't stomach the thought of imposing uranium mining on yet another community. And if massive changes are going to be made anyway, I figure we might as well do it right instead of dickering with uranium. But I can't help feeling that sitting around dreaming about fusion is keeping us from the very real and urgent need to drop emissions now, whether or not we invest in nuclear.
Now, I'm going to take a crack at making a few suggestions about what to do about industry, but I'll admit at this stage I'll be guessing and would appreciate corrections.
Not all industrial processes are streamlined. A lot use a great deal of heat or other energy or pressure. Some of this can be captured. Petroleum cracking ovens, for example, release a lot of heat. Coking coal for steel releases not only heat but also combustible gases, which are actually less harmful if burned. Unfortunately both these ideas rely on maintaining industry dependent on fossil fuels. If we want to get creative, we can start manufacturing steel in the winter in communities that can use the waste heat and turn to agriculture in the summer. Some industrial processes will go back to being done by hand. Monbiot has ideas about how to change the way we make concrete so that fewer emissions are involved. We need to make a lot fewer cars. Some industries may just die because they have no place in a low-carbon future. I think that's okay. I'm pretty sure we'll have full employment. Food will have to be grown closer to home. Economies will be more local. We'll be throwing fewer things out and fixing things more.
Go ahead, bite my head off.
The thing is, there are distinct advantages to a low-energy lifestyle. It's not something I fear. Plus, I was just sent this link to a New Scientist article headlined "Zero emissions needed to avert 'dangerous' warming" which states:
http://environment.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn12775
So here's the thing. Some of the people on this forum think that low-carbon does not mean low-energy, and the most exciting prospect for maintaining high energy is nuclear. I think that nuclear is costly, unreliable and leaves a hazardous legacy for descendants we've already burdened enough. But most of all, it just can't deliver enough energy fast enough to maintain our current energy trajectory. I'm sympathetic to people who fear energy descent so much that they're willing to invest in every last scrap of energy available (though my greater sympathies are with the First Nations living among the uranium tailings who never even benefited from our high-energy party), but I think that fantasizing about a high energy future is simply a dangerous distraction.
