THE POWER SATELLITE: TOWARD WHICH ENERGY CRISIS? T. A. Heppenheimer Center for Space Science - Fountain Valley, California What role may the power satellite play in meeting future energy needs? To gain insight into this question, one must consider carefully the changing prospects for energy in the decades to come. It has been proposed that the power- sat be developed during the next twenty years, to aid in meeting near-term needs. This goal is neither feasible nor desirable. However, a somewhat longer development time may prove quite justifiable, in order to meet the "second energy crisis." In considering our present energy problems, the term "energy crisis" is a misnomer. What we have is a petroleum crisis, and to a lesser degree, a fossilfuel crisis. During the years 1950-1973, the U.S. and world economies came to rely on abundant supplies of petroleum at costs which were low, and diminishing in real terms. (Arabian oil was $2.17 per barrel in 1947, $1.79 in 1970.) Recent massive OPEC price hikes, and attendant supply instabilities, have not caused the crisis. The crisis has been caused by physical limits on the availability and recovery rate of the world's petroleum deposits. Indeed, as early as 1956 the geologist M. K. Hubbert predicted that U. S. production would peak in 1970, as it did. Today not even Saudi Arabia has major untapped production capacity. Although $2-per-barrel hydrocarbons may never again be seen, it is generally accepted that acceptable petroleum substitutes are available from the world's stores of non-petroleum fossil fuels. These include heavy oils, tar sands, oil shales and coal. In seeking to develop these alternative sources, the difficulty is the present-day lack of an industry akin to oil refining, which can accept the crude feedstocks as taken from the ground, and render them into a range of useful products. This difficulty may also be seen in that whereas crude petroleum is an excellent feedstock for existing refineries, coal, shale oil, and the like all require stages of industrial processing before they can be upgraded to useable synthetic crudes. The solution to our present petroleum shortages then will lie in the development of these synfuel industries. Their growth rates will be limited chiefly by considerations of capital formation, environmental regulation, and (particularly in their startup phases) the overcoming of unanticipated difficulties, in order to guarantee economic attractiveness. This last point is important. Oil shale has been recognized as a potentially important resource for most of this century, but its costs have delayed its development. The basic Fischer-Tropsch process for making gasoline from coal was patented in Germany in 1925. Since 1955 South Africa, a nation with abundant coal but little oil, has made a very strong commitment to Fischer-Tropsch gasoline, but even after it completes two very large new plants in 1985, it still will obtain some 50% of its gasoline from petroleum. If in this country we have built no Fischer-Tropsch plants, despite the decades- old and well-tested character of the process, then what may we say of the power satellite? Since the near-term problem is petroleum, the powersat must be assessed in its light. The powersat is a generator of electricity. In 1977, 17% of America's electricity was generated by burning oil. This amounted to 9% of overall petroleum product use, or 631 million barrels. This is projected to change to 878 million barrels per year in 1987, or 15% of generated electricity. Hence, even if powersats were instantly available to replace our oil-fired generating plants, their contribution could amount to the equivalent of no more than about 10% of our domestic oil usage, or 20% of our imports. Nor should we
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