“I find we are living in a world that is absolutely fact-free.”
A provocative sentence that Vaclav Smil used to open his address to the Calgary energy audience at the Canadian Energy Executive Association (CEEA) Beyond Boomers event at the Calgary Petroleum Club last week. It was a refreshingly direct and informed comment and although Smil is known for his no-nonsense, research-dense style of writing, he was a very entertaining speaker in person.
Vaclav Smil is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Science Academy), and a Member of the Order of Canada. He does interdisciplinary research in the fields of energy, environmental and population change, food production, history of technical innovation, risk assessment, and public policy. He is a prolific writer and the author of 48 books and more than 500 papers on those topics. His most recent book is “How the World Really Works”.
He is an academic who defies the current norms of academic biases and rigorously questions modern myths about energy, energy transition, economic progress, and faith in new technologies in his writing.
Smil discussed his research and conclusions in a very personable way at the CEEA event.
“It’s just like diagnosing a patient. The planet has a sickness -there is too much greenhouse gas. So we need them (GHGs) but we don’t need excess quantities and people are (still) debating this? We’ve known this since the middle of the 19th century. There is nothing new about the fact that if you keep pumping CO2 and CH4 into the atmosphere, there will be a temperature response. The question is how high that temperature response will be and how rapid. The problem has been around for a long time. I wrote my first global warming paper in 1972. So, as a scientist, I’m appalled that we are just discovering this and discussing it.”
Smil agrees we should reduce CO2 emissions but recognizes that we can’t totally eliminate them – likening the world to a patient with a sickness due to too much CO2 – an element that the “patient” still needs to survive. He maintains that we cannot get rid of fossil fuels by 2050 -it is simply impossible. It is only possible, according to Smil, if people are willing to spend 30 to 40% of the global economic product (World GDP) to achieve that goal.
Smill addressed some of the contradictions facing the world and Canada. Because there is more CO2 in the atmosphere, the biosphere has been massively greening over the past 30 years. Biomass in tropical rainforests, boreal forests, and from farms and agriculture is growing bigger and better and we appreciate that effect.
He questioned the energy technologies we are contemplating as alternatives to hydrocarbons. As Smil pointed out – we now have affordable solar panels but much of the affordable supply is made in China with the issue of forced labour. Hydroelectricity generation is possible but has been designated as “not green enough” even though Canada is the third largest producer of hydroelectricity globally. Canada is the fourth largest producer of natural gas and fourth largest producer of crude oil but as Smil says “We can’t do that anymore.” Which brings us to nuclear generation. Smil experienced the first nuclear era in Canada which began 30 years ago and failed to flourish despite the development of great Canadian technologies. Will SMRs succeed? Is nuclear fusion coming? Smil had some wry comments.
“You’ve heard small modular nuclear reactors are coming,” Smil said. “My answer is very simple. Send me an email when one is working. And nuclear fusion is coming? It’s not coming in your lifetime or the lifetime of your great-grandchildren”
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there are currently four SMRs in advanced stages of construction in Argentina, Russia and China.
Wikipedia reports: “As of 2023, only China and Russia have successfully built operational SMRs. The U.S. Department of Energy had estimated the first SMR in the United States would be completed by NuScale Power around 2030, but this deal has since fallen through after the customers backed out due to rising costs.”
On the subject of electricity Smil cautions it is more complicated than energy transition advocates realize due to continuous demand 24/7 and 365 days a year, as outages of mere seconds in our era of computers have profound effects. He indicated that wind and solar projects are located in areas of high generation capacity and are highly reliant on high voltage transmission lines for reliable delivery which adds high costs to those projects and are subject to strident public opposition – “the classic NIMBY problem.”
His biggest objections were on the subject of the direction Canadian industry is taking – shutting down domestic production and offshoring too many major industries for which we have advantages and resources at home. He cautioned that Canada now has bigger trade deficits with China than the US (relatively speaking) and is more dependent on China than the United States or Europe and then added his particular brand of humour saying:
“So we have more boreal forest, but we import toilet paper and writing paper and toothpicks from China. We have been importing oil for the past 40 years into Canada – the fourth largest oil producer on the planet, and we are importing oil as we speak – tankers bringing it from Saudi Arabia.”
Smil’s main criticism of Canada and the U.S. centers on the lack of strategic thinking for industrial development. He cites the critical importance of the pillars of modern civilization- steel, cement and ammonia and asserts that steel is foundational to modern societies. In his words, “Either things are made of steel or made with steel” and regretfully noted that currently China is now the biggest global manufacturer of steel. The market size of the Iron & Steel manufacturing industry in Canada is declining, down by 12.1% in 2023. He pointed out that Canada is now among the most de-industrialized countries globally. Only nine percent of Canadian GDP is coming from manufacturing which is similar to the UK, now the most de-industrialized country in Europe according to Smil.
He left the audience to ponder his estimates of the sobering cost of achieving the U.N. and Canadian government targets of Net Zero by 2050.
“Please know we cannot decarbonize the world by 2050. We don’t know how much it will cost actually and we don’t know what the shape of it will be by 2050. We are trying to shape the system when we don’t know what the final composition of the system will be. That is extremely difficult, and that’s why it cannot be costed. But I can say my best estimate is that it will cost something in the order of a minimum of $500 trillion. So the global economy will be totally devoted to this over the next 36-37 years. Basically, we would have to spend something like 15 to 20% of the GDP of all countries of the world every year. And because the poorer countries cannot do it, rich countries will have to spend 30 to 40 to 50% of their GDP every year for the next 30 years. Good luck with that.”
Maureen McCall is an energy professional who writes about issues affecting the energy industry.