For someone who is new to the peak oil/energy predicament community it makes sense for me to establish some basic points that relate to the whole situation. Now, of course, I'm not offering anything particularly novel to the discussion. In fact, I'm retreading old ground. I think this should be done once in a while in order to help those like me ease into the paradigm shift that accompanies learning about energy limits.
Now let me open this up by asking the question that I posed in this post's title: Why has oil been so valuable to our industrial society?
If you want to understand oil's value you must see it as an energy commodity. Okay, so maybe you don't know what a commodity is. Let's define it first using the following definition from Investopedia:
1. A basic good used in commerce that is interchangeable with other commodities of the same type. Commodities are most often used as inputs in the production of other goods or services. The quality of a given commodity may differ slightly, but it is essentially uniform across producers. When they are traded on an exchange, commodities must also meet specified minimum standards, also known as a basis grade.
2. Any good exchanged during commerce, which includes goods traded on a commodity exchange.
Beyond its place as a commodity, there are at least four solid reasons for its value.
1. You can transport it with relative ease. (Liquid fuels are much more economic to move than solid fuels like coal, or gases, such as methane.)
2. Oil is more energy-dense. Basically, this means that oil packs a lot of energy into relatively smaller quantities when compared to other types of fuel. (Consider that a gallon of gasoline contains the equivalent of 40 kilowatt-hours of power.)
3. It can be used in a wide variety of ways, including as a fuel for transportation, heating, as well as the production of the chemicals for agriculture, and so on.
4.Oil can be refined into several types of fuel, including gasoline, kerosene, and diesel, all of which can be used in a variety of applications.
When you can couple these positive attributes with the fact that oil has been very easily accessible, which has provided a high degree of EROEI (energy return on energy invested), then you may begin to construct a picture of oil's impact on human civilizations, particularly in the development of the modern industrial nations.
Cheap oil has been the cornerstone of all of our revolutions in industry, transportation, communications, public health, agriculture, and so many other achievements of our era. My advice is that you take a look for yourself and learn as much as you can about oil and its impact. That's been a great starting point for me.
, and his classic work on peak oil and the global energy predicament, The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century
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