Potential
1950 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 20201960
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
petroleum product equivalent (Mbbl/d)
year
EIA projection Conventional Wisdom State of the Art
plus biofuels and biomaterials plus saved natural gas substitution
total petroleum use
EIA projection Conventional Wisdom State of the Art
plus biofuels and biomaterials plus saved natural gas substitution
net petroleum imports
Figure 33: U.S. oil use and oil imports if end-use efficiency, biosubstitution, and saved-natural-gas substitution were realistically implemented during 2005–25, vs. EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2004 Reference Case projection. Leftover saved natural gas isn’t shown.
Source: EIA 2003c; EIA 2004; preceding RMI analysis.
Using oil efficiently and displacing it with cheaper conventional substitutes could meet 80% of forecast-ed 2025 oil imports.
The rest is less than what efficiency will capture soon after 2025. Domestic supply alternatives could even displace that last 20% plus, if desired (pp. 227–242), the forecasted domestic oil output.
Making America oil-free within a few decades is thus both practical and profitable.
Combined Conventional Potential
But how to capture that combined potential? Next we’ll show how inno-vative business strategies, accelerated by public opinion, can actually cap-ture half of Fig. 29’s efficiency potential and the other half soon thereafter.
But even with 7 Mbbl/d of savings still to be captured after 2025 as vehi-cle stocks complete their turnover, the 2025 supply-demand balance could be revolutionized, as charted in Fig. 34. Eighty percent of forecasted 2025 U.S. oil demand—all but 5 Mbbl/d—can be met in that year either by profitable, actually implementable efficiency and alternative supplies or by the 7.8 Mbbl/d of domestic petroleum supply that EIA forecasts for 2025.567Adding the 7 Mbbl/d of further efficiency gains to be captured soon after 2025 would thus meet the entire forecasted demand without even needing 2 Mbbl/d of the forecast domestic petroleum output.
And as we’ll see on pp. 227–242, this doesn’t yet count two large further options—substituting leftover saved natural gas in the form of hydrogen, or making still more hydrogen from non-biomass renewables.
The 7.8 Mbbl/d of domestic petroleum output shown isn’t actually needed either. That’s because the 8 TCF/y of leftover saved U.S. natural gas, plus another 2.5 TCF/y we’ll explain on pp. 238–239, can be converted to hydrogen (pp. 227–242), which can be used 2–3 times as efficiently as oil.
It can then provide end-use services, such as mobility, considerably greater than the 7.8 Mbbl/d of oil can do.
Thus we have a recipe for profitably eliminating all U.S. oil use, imported and domestic, over the next few decades, with considerable flexibility in both means and timing. Achieving this would take only about as long in the future as the 1973 Arab oil embargo is in the past. Within two generations, a more prosperous and secure America could be oil-free—
without even counting any potential from expanding renewable energy sources other than biofuels.
Having charted this journey beyond oil, how do we begin, conduct, and complete it? The business and policy opportunities we present next can take us there, as part of a broader strategy for building a durably competitive economy, revitalized industries, a vibrant rural sector, a cleaner environment, and a safer world.
567. Comprising 4.61 Mbbl/d crude oil and lease condensate, 2.47 Mbbl/d natural-gas plant liquids, 0.48 Mbbl/d other refin-ery inputs (chiefly from natural gas), and 0.24 Mbbl/d for volumetric gain from domestic crude.
We have a recipe for profitably eliminating all U.S. oil use, imported and domes-tic, over the next few decades, with considerable flex-ibility in both means and timing. Achieving this would take only about as long in the future as the 1973 Arab oil embargo is in the past. Within two generations, a more prosperous and secure America could be oil-free—possibly without, and certainly with, a modest part of the cost-effective potential from expanding renewable energy sources other than biofuels, notably windpower converted to hydrogen.
Combined Conventional Potential
EIA 2000 EIA 2025 U.S. 2025 oil output (EIA forecast) remaining supply
biofuels biomaterials and biolubricants substituted saved natural gas
2025 with full SOA end-use efficiency 2025 savings with Coherent Engagement
SOA savings left to capture
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
demand or supply (Mbbl/d)
end-use efficiency
— supply
— asphalt buildings cars
commercial aircraft electricity
feedstocks and lubes heavy trucks industrial light trucks marine medium trucks military other rail demand
end-use
efficiency State of the Art 2025 supply Figure 34: Petroleum product equivalent supply and demand, 2000 and 2005
Supply-demand integration for 2025, using EIA’s convention of expressing savings volume in Mbbl/d of petroleum product equivalent.
EIA’s forecasted demand in 2025 (with 2000 shown for comparison) could be cut in half (third bar from the left) if State of the Art end-use efficiency were fully implemented. The following implementation analysis finds that ~55% of that efficiency potential can be captured by 2025 through Drift plus Coherent Engagement policies, as shown, leaving the other ~45% as the not-yet-captured profitable
efficiency potential shown by the vertical arrow. The 20 Mbbl/d of net demand can then be met as shown by a combination of bio-derived oil substitutes, saved and substituted natural gas, and domestic petroleum production, plus 5 Mbbl/d of “remaining supply”
to be derived from any combination of: North American oil imports, biofuel imports, saved natural gas (8 TCF/y of saved gas remains for substitution either directly or as hydrogen), buying more efficiency or biosubstitutes than shown (since our analysis, especially for
efficiency, stopped short of the forecasted oil price, and far short of the full social value of oil displacement including externalities), or simply waiting a bit longer to finish implementing the remaining 7 Mbbl/d of State of the Art efficiency, chiefly by completing
the turnover of vehicle stocks.
Source: EIA 2003c; EIA 2004; preceding RMI analysis.
Winning the Oil Endgame:
Innovation for Profits, Jobs, and Security