Is Ending Fossil Fuel Dependence Just a Pipe Dream

US Oil/Gas Pipeline Map from Propublic.Org

In August, Secretary General António Guterres declared the climate change crisis to be a “code red for humanity.”  Climate is one of the few levels of diplomatic conversations taking place between China and the United States where we are “kind of sort of” on the same page. Hurricanes continue to pound the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the United States. Storm surges and massive rain have flooded vast tracts of the United States as far north as Massachusetts. Wildfires still rage in California, Oregon and other western states. All this has happened as we are currently experiencing a relatively small average global temperature increase of 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit). So, if you think this is bad, experts are telling us that we can expect a near-term increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), almost inevitably. And if exceptional measures to contain, if not reverse, greenhouse emissions, we can rise above these thresholds within a few decades beyond.

For more details, please see my August 15th Red Alert - Much of Climate Change is Both Severe & Irreversible for Centuries If Not Millennia blog. Could the earth become uninhabitable? Parts of the planet are nearing that objective reality. And we can make it worse, much worse. It’s going to take an arsenal of solutions, perhaps a reliance in material part on a new generation of nuclear power generators that vastly reduce waste disposal and the possibility of meltdowns, since our ability to generate all the energy that we need through alternative energy, even if we optimistically build that infrastructure, is likely to fall 30% short of projected requirements. New, less wasteful power lines and better architecture will help, but we are a long way from conquering this problem.

We have a huge and powerful fossil fuel lobby, telling us with one side of their mouth all the wonderful things they are doing to reduce fossil fuel dependence while their lobbying groups are trying to limit efforts to eliminate refinery pollution and shift cars to electrical power. We have a massive infrastructure supporting the oil and gas industry, from a huge network of gasoline/diesel filling stations to a vast network of pipelines moving fossil fuels across the nation. Can the filling stations adapt to become electrical charging stations? Can cars be charged fast enough? Who pays for the conversion? These are issues facing the Biden administration’s infrastructure budgetary challenge, one that is being met with fierce resistance, particularly by representatives of oil and gas states. Coal, one way or another, is fading without a lot of governmental pressure.

But what about that maze of pipelines that crisscross the nation carrying oil and gas. It that wasted infrastructure, or is there another potential use for that network? Environmentalists and disaster recovery experts, Steven Bingler (New Orleans base) and Martin Pedersen (NYC based) provide an interesting possibility in their September 20th FastCompany.com analysis of the future of the oil and gas industry: 

“While we don’t need to shed any tears for the corporate brass and private investors enriched by fossil fuel in its heyday, the industry employs an estimated 150,000 workers and contributes nearly 8% to the U.S. GDP (a tiny percentage, we’d argue, given its immense hidden costs). The eventual demise of the oil and gas industry will also leave a vast array of idle refineries, tank farms, and abandoned off-shore drilling platforms (there are about 1,900 operating in the Gulf of Mexico alone). We believe a huge part of this vast system, the continent-spanning distribution system, holds immense promise for our warming and water-starved future, especially for drought-stricken states in the West.

“We know that extreme weather conditions will escalate in the coming years. Severe drought across the Southwest and Western regions of the United States is likely to persist and intensify. But a solution lies just underground, not in the parched aquifers, but in the pipes that have for decades channeled the fossil fuels now certifiably complicit in driving us to the brink. A staggering 2.3 million miles of oil and gas pipelines crisscross the United States, most of them with paths that end or originate in two states, Texas and Louisiana…

“The existing oil and gas pipelines connect the rest of the continent to the Gulf of Mexico—a source of water that would have to be desalinated, at grave environmental cost. (Right now much of that infrastructure, post-Ida, lies in ruins, creating a huge toxic soup.) Louisiana is also washed by the outfall of the mighty Mississippi River, one of the nation’s largest sources of fresh water. Add to that annual rainfall of more than 60 inches, with considerably more projected in the future. The state is in fact on track to set a record for rainfall this year (a mark that’s unlikely to go unbroken for long). We’re swimming in excess water, rich in potentially potable water. So why not repurpose the system of pipes currently distributing fossil fuels, and use it to distribute the fresh water needed to sustain life elsewhere in the country? What if oil storage tanks were converted into rainwater reservoirs and capturing it became an industry? What if Louisiana transitioned from oil-production (a dying industry, linked to high rates of cancer) to water distribution (linked to life itself)? What if the Great Lakes were also hooked up to this transformational water-delivery system?

“Well before the value of water reaches parity with the value of a barrel of oil, incentives exist to begin converting our existing oil and gas infrastructure. We don’t have time for the federal government to design, plan, and approve a national water pipeline, as some have proposed. Our recent track record with these large projects, when a decade is considered fast, remains spotty at best. Do we really think a national pipeline, authorized by Congress and built by the Army Corps of Engineers, could be completed in 10 years, let alone in time to keep California, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico from running out of water? Utilizing existing infrastructure is the only approach that meets the urgency of the moment. For those worried about using water drawn from former oil conveyances, fear not—pipelines are routinely reversed and repurposed for new uses.

“Even if the water distributed through the oil pipelines wasn’t immediately drinkable, that almost infinite volume of new water could be used as greywater, which still constitutes a very healthy percentage of total water use. In addition, the science required to make all of this transported water potable is surely shorter in timeframe and exponentially cheaper in cost than building an entirely new distribution system.” We need solutions… fast. We are out of time. We are well past the time where there is even a box to think out of.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we need to stop being a reactive nation… waiting until disaster makes “horrible” almost unsolvable.