Brittle Power- PARTS 1-3 (+Notes) - Natural Capitalism Solutions

Chapter Four: What Makes the Energy System Vulnerable? 43require additional, auxiliary supplies of another kind of energy in order tooperate. Interruptions of one kind of energy supply can therefore cause interruptionsin others. Most home furnaces, for example, burn oil or gas but needelectricity to ignite them, pump their fuel, and distribute their heat. Thepumps at gasoline filling stations generally run on grid electricity. Mostmunicipal water plants (and sewage treatment plants that do not burn theirown methane byproduct) 37 require grid electricity to operate; 38 the water inturn is needed, among other things, to fight fires, run power plants, and coolrefinery columns. Most oil refineries depend so heavily on grid electricity 39that a blackout may cause them “extremely serious” damage. 40 About half ofU.S. domestic oil extraction depends on electrical supplies, 41 for example todrive the motors that pump the wells. In turn, all the heavy machinery usedthroughout the energy industry depends on a continuous supply of lubricantsfrom the oil industry.Failure of power for dewatering coal mines can flood them so badly as toforce their abandonment. Except for the tiny fraction of U.S. coal carried in slurrypipelines, virtually all coal transportation depends on diesel fuel, 42 so a cutoffof imported oil “may threaten our supply lines for coal as well.” 43 Likewise, manypower stations depend on diesel generators for safe shutdown and to run criticalcontrol and protective circuits if the stations and their grid supplies fail.Some fuels are coproducts of others (natural gas liquids from natural gasprocessing, for example). Some fuels, like heating oil or propane, can becomescarce if a shortage of, say, natural gas forces buyers to substitute. 44In short, any disturbance in the intricately interlinked web of fuel andpower supplies can spread out in complex ripple effects at all levels, from primarysupply to end use, complicating substitutions and making the initialshortage much worse.Another worrisome interdependence of supposedly independent energysystems can arise from their being built close to each other or to equipmentthat provides other critical services. Broken water mains can short out electriccables. Fire and explosion can propagate between nearby pipelines or througha tank farm: people were recently evacuated from five square miles ofFranklin Township, New Jersey, when a fire at a natural gas pipeline compressorstation threatened to engulf two nearby propane tanks. 44 Earthquakescan cause gas mains to break and explode or burn over a wide area simultaneously,destroying energy facilities that survive the initial shock. 45 On a smallerscale, exploding gas mains can simultaneously disable electric and telephonecables located in the same tunnels under city streets. During the Britishconversion to North Sea gas, some public telephone booths started exploding:the higher gas pressure was too much for old joints, and the leaking gas