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00:04Welcome to Planet Oil.
00:08Over the last 150 years, we've become more and more dependent on this extraordinary resource.
00:18Our use of oil defines us.
00:25It's not just transport. Oil helps us build in lighter cities.
00:32It grows the food we eat.
00:36And it helps make the clothes we wear.
00:41But that comes at a high price.
00:45To satisfy our addiction, we've exploited fossil fuels on an industrial scale.
00:54As a professor of geoscience, I've taught many students who went on to earn big money as geologists in the
01:01oil and gas industries.
01:04Like many of my academic colleagues, I now face a dilemma.
01:10Whether the young geologists I'm training will become Earth exploiters or Earth stewards.
01:20Today, the spectre of climate change has forced many geologists, including myself, to confront the stark realities of one big
01:28question facing us all.
01:29And that is, given there's loads of fossil fuels still on the ground, can we really afford to burn what's
01:36left?
01:46But just how did we get here?
01:50And is it really possible to kick our addiction?
02:10I grew up in the 70s, and I remember it as a decade plagued by energy crises.
02:19Back then, climate change wasn't on the radar.
02:23What gripped us was the lack of a reliable oil supply?
02:29Would the lights keep going out?
02:37Would there be enough fuel for our cars?
02:46Come the 80s, when I was a fresh-faced geology student, all that was about to change.
03:03Rather than a lack of oil, we were about to confront a world with too much of it.
03:13This is the Stapfjord platform, which sits on one of the largest oil fields in the North Sea.
03:21The Norwegians have drilled it since 1979, but the huge revenues it produces is shared with the UK.
03:40So this is North Sea Oil Cruise.
03:42It's amazing to think that an hour or so ago, that was 3,000 litres down below us, and I've
03:49been sitting there quite happily for 150 million years.
03:53Look at it now.
03:54It's just pure liquid money.
03:57That's amazing.
04:03The discovery of oil from these waters was announced to the press in 1971 at Aberdeen Airport.
04:10The announcement came from this BP representative who was wearing a tartan shirt, a hard hat, and holding a bottle
04:16of salad cream, filled with what seemed to be flat Guinness.
04:20And he said, this is North Sea Oil, but the thing was, it wasn't any old oil.
04:26The field in question was a fabled 40s field, with a whopping 1.8 billion barrels of oil.
04:34It's what's known in the business as an elephant field.
04:37The North Sea Oil industry was born.
04:44Britain scrambled to extract the oil.
04:47And within a decade, we were enjoying the benefits.
04:50By 1985, the UK Treasury was earning a staggering 2.5 million pounds per hour in revenues.
04:58Oil stimulated the economy and helped pull us out of recession.
05:03And in the late 80s, Britain was booming.
05:08And still new reservoirs of oil were being discovered.
05:12Oil companies poured billions into developing yet more offshore facilities.
05:18Jim Cook, installation manager of Shell's Shearwater platform, was there during that North Sea bonanza.
05:26There was a huge sense of adventure, a huge sense of unknown.
05:30When you got on that helicopter, you didn't really know what you were going into.
05:35And then you arrived.
05:36Yeah.
05:38And the technology changes that was going on was extraordinary, wasn't it?
05:42It's huge.
05:43When you think back in the early days when we built some of the really big platforms, they were built
05:49on site.
05:50It was not unusual to have 2,000 guys living over three complex installations, building everything out here.
06:00It was almost a mini industrial revolution.
06:02So was there any inkling in your minds and those around you at the time that it was going to
06:08grow this big?
06:09No.
06:09It was only supposed to last a few years.
06:11It was the golden years.
06:13It was a boom.
06:15But it was more than a boom.
06:18For a short time, the North Sea produced as much oil as Saudi Arabia.
06:24Around the same time, other huge discoveries were made in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.
06:34All this new oil meant the world was swimming in it.
06:40But as the world markets were hit by the deluge, prices plummeted.
06:49The world was flooded with oil.
06:51The financial press complained of an oil glut.
06:54In fact, it was so much oil that at one point, the price of oil was cheaper than bottled water.
07:01You would think that cheap oil would be good news for all.
07:04But while oil helped the UK claw its way out of an economic recession,
07:09for other nations, it would prove to be a disaster.
07:16The Soviet Union was rich in oil.
07:18And the Russians had been selling it to the West for nearly a century.
07:25When prices were high, the hard dollar earnings from oil
07:28had helped pay for the Soviet nuclear arms programme.
07:31And essentials like food and clothing imports.
07:35But when the price of oil dropped in the 1980s,
07:39the whole Soviet economy was threatened.
07:50This mural was a tribute to all those workers that toiled away in the Soviet oil fields.
07:55You got a sense there of just how much struggle every drop was.
07:59But despite up in production,
08:01by 1991, the Soviet empire itself was bleeding to death.
08:06And what was helping to kill it was the price of oil.
08:12As the Soviet economy collapsed, rationing was introduced.
08:21Vera Neserova can remember living under the last days of Soviet rule.
08:25Can I ask, at what point did rationing come in?
08:29And were you surprised that it suddenly came in?
08:32No, I remember.
08:34There were such large letters.
08:37They had to cut them out.
08:40The meat, the sugar, the other one, the other one.
08:44There were large letters, they had to cut them out.
08:47For us, it was a surprise for us.
08:50Was there any warning?
08:51Was there any indication that something was going to come in?
08:54No, the goods were suddenly disappeared, yes?
08:57Yes, the goods were disappeared.
08:57They were declared a перестройment and said that it was time for these difficulties, yes?
09:02All this is time for them.
09:04And how much is the перестройment of Gorbachev?
09:06Gorbachev, yes.
09:11The person in charge of the Soviet Union at the time was President Mikhail Gorbachev.
09:16He came to power determined to modernize both the economy
09:19and the political system that suffocated it.
09:23But when the oil prices collapsed, so did his plan.
09:30The economic and political system in the Soviet Union was already broken.
09:37But when the price of oil collapsed,
09:40the great centrally planned socialist economy
09:42could no longer adequately clothe and feed her people.
09:47Mikhail Gorbachev then took an extraordinary and unprecedented step.
09:53On Christmas Day, 1991,
09:56he went on TV to declare a state of national emergency.
10:02The whole thing is,
10:03the whole thing is,
10:04the oil,
10:05the gas,
10:06the other natural wealth,
10:09the human beings,
10:11the God's not ashamed of it,
10:12the God's not ashamed of it.
10:13We live a little worse than in the developed countries.
10:16We are leaving them all more.
10:20The required to serve the ideology is possible.
10:26Six days later, Mikhail Gorbachev announced the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
10:31The mighty Soviet empire had just gone bust.
10:39Cheap oil had helped to bring this mighty empire to its knees.
10:44As the Soviet Union crumbled, it left behind untold riches in land and natural resources,
10:50all of which was now up for grabs.
10:57One of the empire's most precious resources were the oil reserves of the Caspian Sea.
11:06I remember what I guess is best described as the town square, but the nearest dry land is 50 miles
11:11in that direction.
11:13And this place is just weird. You've got these holiday-style apartment blocks.
11:17You've got football pitches, telephone exchanges, museums, cafes.
11:20Inside there, you've got a restaurant, you've got a sports centre, there's a mosque, there's a hospital.
11:28This is Nefdashlari, an entire town built on the Caspian Sea.
11:34It was constructed by the Soviets towards the end of the 1940s.
11:40Thousands of workers lived out at sea, travelling along miles of road to extract oil from hundreds of wells.
11:54It grew to become one of the largest offshore oil facilities in the world.
12:08It grew to become one of the largest offshore oil facilities in the world.
12:14With the Soviets gone, everyone asked two questions.
12:19How much oil was left under the Caspian?
12:22And who would get their hands on it?
12:38It's no wonder that in the early 90s, Western oil companies flocked like vultures to the Caspian region to court
12:45Azerbaijan's new rulers.
12:51This could be the new Persian Gulf, an oily Eldorado.
12:58And the Azeris were ready to make a deal.
13:06In September 1994, after months of negotiation, Azerbaijan's president, Haydar Aliyev, assembled this group of diplomats and oil executives in
13:16the capital Baku.
13:19Thirteen oil companies representing eight different nation states were gathered there to sign what was hailed as the deal of
13:26the century.
13:27What was at stake were billions of barrels of oil.
13:32Caspian oil was being opened up to the world.
13:43Probably doesn't seem like much, does it?
13:45But actually this is the most significant expression of that deal of the century.
13:50This pipeline marks a step change in Caspian oil production.
13:53You can actually feel it throbbing.
13:56That throb is the pulse of huge amounts of oil.
13:59It's been drawn up from thousands of metres beneath the Caspian Sea, only to be sent underground again here, heading
14:06west.
14:11From here on the Caspian coast, the new pipeline travelled underground for 500 miles to Supsa on the Black Sea.
14:18And from there, oil would be transported to Europe and beyond.
14:24The vast reserves of the Caspian Sea were being unleashed on a world that was already flooded with oil.
14:34That was just the beginning, because the oil production of the Caspian accelerated at a rate that no one could
14:41have imagined.
14:48This is the Sangachal terminal.
14:51Run by BP, it's one of the largest oil and gas terminals in the world.
14:58Caspian oil was so abundant that the foreign oil companies decided that another, bigger pipeline would be needed, along with
15:05this terminal to service it.
15:10The new pipeline would allow the oil companies to transport more oil out of Azerbaijan than ever before.
15:18What's come through here at the moment, Ian, is in excess of 700,000 barrels of oil every day of
15:24the week.
15:25At any one point in time, we've got something like 10 million barrels of crude sitting in this pipeline.
15:33So how much would that be worth?
15:35At today's prices, that's in excess of a billion dollars.
15:42All that oil has had an extraordinary effect on Azerbaijan's capital, Baku.
15:48Often dubbed the Dubai of the Caucasus, Baku feels like a city in transition.
15:54It's a testament to the transformative power of oil.
16:00Traditional buildings rub shoulders with modern skyscrapers.
16:04Brand stores pop up on streets clogged with the proud owners of Western cars.
16:10And as the 20th century came to a close, a similar story was being played out across our planet.
16:17Oil was now being produced in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, South America, West Africa, the North Sea, the Caspian
16:24and the Middle East.
16:33Meanwhile, developing nations look with envy at the West's lifestyle.
16:37And we're demanding the same.
16:40The burgeoning economies of Southeast Asia, India and China.
16:46We're consuming more and more energy in the form of travel, plastics, clothes, food, electronics, housing.
16:58There might have been loads of oil, but globally we were guzzling it like never before.
17:07As global consumption escalated, questions were been asked about the coming century.
17:11Could supply possibly continue to match demand?
17:15What next for planet oil?
17:19As the 21st century dawned, the world's stock markets began to wake up to the unprecedented economic boom of the
17:2780s and 90s.
17:30The scale of the hydrocarbon binge was breathtaking.
17:34And some traders and speculators suspected it wasn't sustainable.
17:39Any further increase in demand or reduction of supply could only mean one thing.
17:47A price rise.
17:50And that would be disastrous for us all.
17:53We'd become so reliant on oil, it now fueled the modern global economy.
18:00A hike in oil prices would impact on every aspect of our lives.
18:06Ensuring a steady and secure supply had become crucial to keeping prices stable.
18:17One way the oil companies found to secure more oil was by using ships like this.
18:23It's called the Gryphon Alpha.
18:26You can't see them from the air, but beneath the waves, pipelines from nearby oil platforms snake their way across
18:34the seabed to feed this floating oil and gas facility.
18:40It allows companies to extract oil without building an expensive pipeline to take the oil ashore.
18:47It can separate oil and gas, store half a million barrels of oil, and then pump it onto waiting tankers
18:55that ship it to onshore refineries.
19:05The oil that Robert's sampling here is coming off of pipelines about 100 metres below us on the seabed.
19:11Coming up here through separators that take off the water and the gas and then leave the finished product.
19:17This is Brent crude.
19:21The really important point is it's this stuff that sets the global price of crude.
19:26So those commodity brokers that trade on the exchange flows in New York and London use Brent crude to set
19:32the worldwide oil price.
19:34During the first decade of the 21st century, those prices were rising alarmingly.
19:40In the first years of the millennium, oil prices sat at around $25 per barrel, thanks in part to a
19:48plentiful supply.
19:50But as developing nations grew, demand for oil rose.
19:54By 2006, the world was demanding four times as much oil per day as it had in 2000.
20:03This sharp rise became known as the demand shock.
20:09Many started to voice concerns that the rate of consumption was becoming unsustainable.
20:15Including oil man, President of the United States, George Bush.
20:21Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy.
20:24And here we have a serious problem.
20:27America is addicted to oil.
20:29As demand rose, the price of oil rocketed.
20:33By January 2008, the price broke the $100 per barrel barrel.
20:41And it didn't stop there.
20:43Climbing to $130 in May.
20:46$140 in July.
20:49Peaking at a record-breaking $147 per barrel.
20:54To some, this could only mean one thing.
20:57Demand had outstripped supply.
21:01Many in the financial markets assumed we were facing something called peak oil.
21:10To get a sense of just how quickly the world became gripped by the spectre of peak oil,
21:16you just need to look at these two front covers of The Economist magazine.
21:19This one's from 1999 when oil was something like $10 a barrel and it proclaimed that we're drowning in oil.
21:27And yet, four years later, when demand shock forced up prices, the same magazine announced that it was all over.
21:36It was at this point that environmentalists and journalists recalled the predictions of an American scientist called Marion King Hubert.
21:45In the mid-1950s, Hubert had predicted that U.S. oil would peak in 1970.
21:52The U.S. will hit the peak of oil production in about 10 or 15 years from that date.
21:57In other words, the production of oil would reach a maximum peak and then inevitably decline as reserves ran dry.
22:06The oil companies laughed this off.
22:08But when production did peak, Hubert was hailed as a prophet.
22:14But he made a second and more disturbing prediction.
22:18That in the early decades of the 21st century, we would run out of oil altogether.
22:27When oil prices spiked in 2008, some believed the price rise reflected a grim truth.
22:33We'd reached peak oil.
22:35And that from now on, our oil reserves were in decline.
22:40It was looking like Hubert was right.
22:42The threat of a looming energy crisis had sparked global panic buying.
22:47That demand shock had fuelled the belief that this was the beginning of the end.
22:51That peak prices meant peak oil.
22:53And that from now on, we were running out.
22:56So have supplies peaked?
22:58Are we really running on empty?
23:03Just months after the sharp price rises of 2008, oil prices fell just as dramatically as they had rocketed.
23:13But the drop only went so far.
23:16While prices have fluctuated ever since, they're still higher than the average of $25 per barrel we enjoyed for much
23:24of the 20th century.
23:25And that's because the days of easy oil are over.
23:33The age of discovering vast new viable reserves like the North Sea has passed.
23:38We're now left with oil that's more difficult and expensive to extract.
23:46That huge price hike in the first decade of the 21st century had an unexpected benefit.
23:53The profits of the oil companies skyrocketed as well.
23:56And much of that was reinvested in ways to help geologists find ways to maximise recovery or to extend the
24:04lives of the existing fields.
24:07The companies were trying to find new ways to extract the oil that we're so dependent on.
24:13And they continue to do so today.
24:31Just south of Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, is a huge training facility.
24:38Here, a new generation of oil workers are trained in using new technology that's designed to recover as much oil
24:45as possible.
24:49The age of what we call as easy oil is gone, right?
24:53We're almost in that state maybe 30 or 40 or 50 years ago when in Saudi Arabia you'd be able
24:58to drill a well without really looking too much and get good production from it.
25:02But as all wells age, they fill with water rather than oil, because you pump water from the side to
25:10push the oil out.
25:11So it gets very complicated.
25:14So, Clive, this looks like something that's kind of a sci-fi movie or something. What is this beast?
25:20So this is a formation of micro-imager and it has around 200 buttons around those pads that you've just
25:26seen closing.
25:26Yeah.
25:27And we'll open that in the well. So it'll give us an image, an electrical map of the borehole.
25:35Okay.
25:35And which will help geologists to describe the reservoir properly.
25:39Right.
25:39And be able to know where to drill the next well, perhaps.
25:43This technology is essentially a science lab on a wire.
25:47It can perform a barrage of tests that allow geologists to see underground.
25:56So, Clive, is this the well?
25:57Yeah. So what we're seeing here is a graphical representation of that electrical image I was talking about.
26:03So these are kind of your eyes into the ground that you were referring to?
26:06This is the lab, yeah. Lab on a wire, yeah.
26:09This technology is being used every day to help us extend the lives of the reservoirs, right?
26:15To make sure that we get everything out of the reservoir that we can do.
26:20So is it things like this that's essentially kind of, you know, putting paid to the idea of peak oil?
26:26You'll always be able to get more and more through better technology?
26:30If you look at the world oil reservoirs, some have produced 30, 40, 70 percent.
26:36Some have only produced a few percent.
26:38Yeah.
26:38So there's plenty of oil left in the ground.
26:40You just have to be cleverer in the way you extract it.
26:43While the age of easy oil might be behind us, new technologies are helping us find and extract ever more
26:50difficult sources.
26:52The prospect of peak oil, it seems, has been pushed back yet again.
27:03But it's not just that we've got smarter at getting oil.
27:07We've also found new ways to exploit fossil fuels.
27:15Titusville is a small town in western Pennsylvania.
27:18It was here, in 1859, that the world's first commercial drilling for oil began.
27:33Today, yet again, this region is at the forefront of an energy revolution.
27:41This is shale, a rock that underlies much of the Pennsylvania region.
27:46It's just mud turned into stone.
27:49Sounds kind of boring, really, but it's what's locked in with the mud that makes all the difference.
28:00Heating the liquid solution allows us to see what's trapped in the rock.
28:05Initially, not much happens.
28:07But after a few minutes, the heating makes gas trapped in the rock expand and it bubbles to the surface.
28:16And energy companies have been racing to extract this gas in a process called fracking.
28:22Water is pumped under high pressure to crack the rock and release the gas.
28:30These tiny bubbles might not seem like much, but shale gas has made the US a major hydrocarbon producing nation
28:37once again.
28:38Some experts even say that it might displace Russia and the Middle East as the world's biggest energy producer.
28:45Saudi America.
28:50This success isn't just due to shale gas.
28:54Oil sources are also being exploited in new and unconventional ways.
29:00Heavy oil, tar sands, shale oil.
29:04Collectively known as unconventional oil and gas, these resources stand in contrast to the conventional wells we provide on.
29:14This has led to a period of optimism in the US.
29:18It's business as usual.
29:21With new technology extending the life of conventional wells and unconventional resources being extracted, it seems like the hydrocarbon age
29:30will extend well into the 21st century.
29:35So, Steve, how important have the unconventional fossil fuels been?
29:40Unconventionals today make up about 7% of the global oil supply.
29:45So they're important, but they're not the core of it.
29:4893% of the oil supply is still what was there in 2005.
29:53Okay?
29:53So the way to think about unconventionals is they are the icing on the cake, but not the cake itself.
29:58That cake today is smaller than it was in 2005.
30:02So that conventional, if we take out oil sands and shale oils, right, the conventional supply is actually smaller than
30:09it was in 2005.
30:11So basically, we've got the conventional, the traditional oil supply is declining.
30:16The unconventionals are getting bigger, but they're dwarfed really by the conventional.
30:20Correct. They're still very small.
30:21And we don't know how far they can run.
30:23Is that a case that the unconventionals, shale oil, sugar, have kind of masked peak oil essentially, masked the decline?
30:31They have masked it in terms of the press and in terms of the industry narrative.
30:36The concern is not the volume of oil in the ground.
30:40There's plenty of oil in the ground, lots and lots and lots of oil.
30:43The question is, can we get to it?
30:45And can we do that in an economical way?
30:51Since Hubert raised the spectre of peak oil in the 1950s, experts like Steve have been debating if he was
30:57right and when we might run out of oil.
31:01But it seems to me that there's no easy answer to the issue of peak oil.
31:06Because it's an issue that revolves around how much oil we consume, how much is left on the ground and
31:12what price we're willing to pay.
31:17But it's not just about the cost of heating our homes or filling our cars.
31:21There could be much more at stake.
31:27While energy experts argue about whether Hubert's peak oil prediction is right or wrong, the whole debate is fast becoming
31:34a bit academic.
31:36That's because in the last decade or so, a very different threat to our energy supplies has come to overshadow
31:42the world.
31:55In 1982, the BBC science series Horizon televised a United Nations-sponsored debate on the state of the planet.
32:05Expert witnesses from around the world came together to examine the progress we'd made in protecting the world's environment.
32:14The speakers didn't pull any punches. They painted a pretty grim picture.
32:21Drought.
32:22Famine.
32:25Pollution.
32:26Breakneck population growth.
32:28Acid rain.
32:29Resource wars.
32:30Deforestation.
32:31Species extinction.
32:33Species extinction.
32:33We're paraded as our biggest challenges.
32:36No society today wants to live within the resources of its own environment.
32:40It wants resources from everywhere else.
32:43And in the process, nobody recognises what is being done to the environment because it has no interest.
32:50Back in the 1980s, we were just starting to get a sense of what had become known as global warming,
32:54which is why it gets barely a mention in this debate.
32:58But what I find fascinating about this film is that, while none of these issues have gone away,
33:03today it's climate change that dominates the environmental agenda.
33:07The answer as to why that is,
33:10is contained in this box.
33:20Since the 19th century, we've been on a fossil fuel binge.
33:24And the burning of hydrocarbons, like coal, oil and gas, has released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at an unprecedented
33:32rate.
33:36As carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere, it creates this kind of invisible filter that traps more and more
33:42of the Earth's heat down here,
33:44rather than let it escape off into space.
33:45And that produces a net warming effect.
33:48Now, devices like this can actually measure the CO2 levels.
33:52The actual measuring device is in here, and you can see the numbers on this screen here.
33:57So let's see what we get.
33:59Levels of carbon dioxide are measured in parts per million.
34:03In the 19th century, the levels sat below 300 parts per million.
34:09In the 1950s, the levels were measured at 315 parts per million, rising to 350 by the mid-80s.
34:19Since then, the levels of carbon dioxide have not only risen, they've accelerated rapidly.
34:24Now, I know what you're thinking.
34:26You're thinking down here at street level, all this traffic and all these people breathing on it,
34:31then this is going to be a really strange measurement.
34:34And right enough, I mean, these measurements are pretty consistently over 400 parts per million.
34:39But the thing is, measurements like this get made, you know, every day, right across the world.
34:44And when they get averaged, to give you the kind of global mean, it turns out that that number is
34:49about 398 parts per million.
34:53The climate has changed many times in our planet's history.
34:56But this time, much of that change is because of our behaviour.
35:03When we exceed 400 parts per million, we'll mark the highest levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide in human history.
35:12The concern is that if levels continue to rise, we'll raise the global temperature to catastrophic levels.
35:21There might be lots of oil left in the ground, but the question is, can we really afford to burn
35:27it?
35:32Around 80% of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels.
35:36And yet climate scientists are telling us that we've got a few decades at most to reduce our dependence on
35:41them,
35:41and stave off dangerous climate change.
35:44But can we really do that?
35:46How easy is it to set course for a low carbon future?
35:54Achieving a low carbon future means changing how we produce energy.
35:58We do have a range of options, perhaps the most obvious being renewable energy.
36:04All over the world, including the UK, governments are investing in the renewable family.
36:10Solar, wind, hydroelectric, tidal.
36:15The idea of harnessing the power in the natural ebbs and flow of our planet is an attractive one.
36:22Because it offers us a practically zero carbon energy that doesn't rely on a finite resource.
36:29But for renewables to replace hydrocarbons, we'd need to increase their numbers massively.
36:36Despite years of investment, the entire renewable family only produces the UK with about 15% of all the electricity
36:44we consume.
36:46For some, renewables are a viable future option.
36:50But it seems unlikely they'll be enough on their own.
37:08In November 2013, a group of world's top climate scientists wrote this open letter to international leaders.
37:16They said time is running out.
37:19Renewable energy supplies on their own won't be enough to head off the extremes of climate change.
37:26For them, in some shape or form, nuclear had to be part of the energy mix.
37:35Although the nuclear industry has a chequered history of radiation leaks and accidents like Fukushima,
37:41some climate scientists argue that the threat of global warming poses a much bigger risk to the planet.
37:52Here in Norway, research is taking place that might change the image of nuclear power.
37:57Because they're trying an alternative to uranium fuel.
38:03Such a beautiful country, isn't it?
38:05From this hilltop, you can see the port of Halden, which is a couple of hours drive south of Oslo.
38:10And then beyond that, it's the fjords somewhere.
38:14It just doesn't seem like the kind of place to be testing a different kind of nuclear fuel.
38:19And yet what you can't see is what lies directly beneath my feet.
38:23A nuclear reactor.
38:30Deep inside this hollowed out mountain, a company called Thor Energy are conducting an experiment.
38:43A conventional nuclear power station is a bit like a giant kettle.
38:48Filled with uranium fuel pellets, fuel rods are placed in water.
38:54It's these pellets that generate the heat that boils the water to create steam.
39:00And it's the steam which turns giant turbines to generate electricity.
39:07The uranium fuel pellets release huge amounts of energy.
39:11But the downside is that waste plutonium is produced which is highly radioactive.
39:18The clever thing that Thor Energy are proposing to do is to use plutonium and mix this with an element
39:24called thorium.
39:26To make a new type of fuel pellet.
39:37What are the benefits of thorium?
39:41Many benefits of thorium.
39:42For the start, it's four times more plentiful than uranium.
39:45And we've probably got enough thorium on the planet to last us 10,000 years.
39:49Which means it's a sustainable fuel.
39:51But on top of that, we can take the existing legacy waste and we can use that as fuel.
39:57We can turn a liability, a real liability, into a real asset by mixing the waste that we've already got
40:04from the last 50 years of nuclear power with the thorium and then burning that as fuel as well.
40:10So we're generating less waste and we're getting rid of existing waste.
40:16This process would not only help get rid of existing nuclear waste, it would generate a staggering amount of energy.
40:26Each pellet like that is equivalent to about 800 litres of diesel in terms of the energy that you can
40:33generate.
40:34So that's a shed load of diesel in that time. And how many of them would there be?
40:38In a full-scale reactor generating electricity for the grid, about 2 million.
40:44Can't even do the maths. That's a lot of equivalent energy.
40:48A lot of equivalent energy.
40:49The future of a future, one of the energy futures, is something the size of that.
40:55That's right. Well, essentially that's the energy for a household for a year.
41:00Energy for a household for a year.
41:02Wow.
41:03Better not swallow it. I'm going to give it back to you.
41:05Then drop it.
41:06The energy of my house has just gone down that hole.
41:11What Bob has handed to me seems like a magic bullet.
41:16But there's a problem.
41:19The tests at Halden are an attempt to prove that thorium can be used on an industrial scale.
41:26Initial results are positive, but to clear thorium for use in commercial nuclear reactors will take even further tests and
41:33analysis.
41:35That will take time and investment.
41:40Meaning that thorium could take decades to implement.
41:43Three, two, one, clean.
41:49But in the meantime, our energy demands keep increasing.
41:53Globally, demand for electricity has doubled since 1980.
41:57And it's expected to double again by 2035.
42:02And Dubai is no exception.
42:08In less than a century, the sleepy fishing port has been transformed into one of the commercial capitals in the
42:14Gulf.
42:15That change has gone hand in hand with an insatiable demand for electricity.
42:23During peak times in Dubai, 60% of all electricity is used for air conditioning.
42:31And after just a few minutes in the heat, you can understand why.
42:45I don't know how good this feels. So much better. I mean, basically everywhere inside around here is air conditioning
42:51down to about 20 degrees.
42:52And that's only possible because vast amounts of oil and gas mean abundant, cheap energy.
42:58So this is the last place in the world that you expect to learn lessons about what's called the fifth
43:04fuel, energy efficiency.
43:08Despite sitting on some of the biggest oil reserves in the world, the United Arab Emirates is looking at new
43:15ways to use less energy.
43:17At first glance, the parched desert landscape just outside Abu Dhabi looks like the craziest place to build any city,
43:25let alone a sustainable one.
43:28But the vision here at Mazdar City is to pioneer a new approach in the way cities are designed and
43:34use energy.
43:39Is the architect just beautiful, isn't it?
43:42It's very elegant and distinctive.
43:44Yeah. So what's the ethos about this place and the kind of vision behind the whole thing?
43:50The whole idea is to design a city, engineer the city, so that with very little energy, you can be
43:58comfortable even in the middle of summer.
44:01And every aspect of how a city is put together, of how a city is managed, goes towards that goal.
44:09So why the emphasis on cities or urban areas?
44:12Well, that's a very good point.
44:14If we are going to be concerned about global warming, and I think we should be,
44:20cities produce between 70 and 75 percent of CO2.
44:24So Mazdar City, as part of the Mazdar ecosystem of companies, is particularly concerned about how cities should be designed,
44:34built and operated to reduce CO2.
44:41The buildings here are designed to reduce emissions by making them more energy efficient in the hot desert climate.
44:51And the people behind the Mazdar project believe this is a principle that can be applied to any building anywhere
44:58in the world.
45:02I'm intrigued by this dominating structure.
45:07It is a wind tower.
45:08Wind tower.
45:09In classical Arabian design, the idea was to catch the breeze higher up, which is cooler, and funnel it down
45:19through the structure, so that cooler air was where people were in courtyards and in houses.
45:26And traditionally, you used to cool the air by having damp cloth or animal skins with water in them.
45:35Here, we use modern technology where we can cool it with misting and it pushes it down.
45:41So if we go into the middle, it will get cooler? Is that the theory?
45:45Absolutely.
45:45Can I try?
45:46Yeah.
45:47So it's evaporative cooling, essentially.
45:49That's the science of it.
45:50That's exactly what it is.
45:52So...
45:54So...
45:54Oh, yeah, yeah.
45:55Yeah?
45:56Yeah, as soon as you get in, you feel it.
45:57Much better.
45:57Yeah.
46:02Similar tricks are used to keep the temperature down.
46:07Narrow lanes and tall buildings ensure shade.
46:11Windows are designed to break up hot sunlight.
46:20The work extends to the transport.
46:24Electric driverless cars take you from one place to another.
46:30It's tempting to be skeptical about Masdar City.
46:33Just how likely is it that we'll see things like this in London, Manchester or Glasgow?
46:39But Masdar City hopes it will inspire others to take energy efficiency seriously.
46:45And to plan homes and cities with this in mind.
46:48And Masdar's ambitions don't end there.
46:51The company is also pioneering the use of renewable energy.
46:55And not just here in Masdar City.
47:04A couple of hours south of Abu Dhabi, the Masdar project has built the biggest solar plant in the Middle
47:10East.
47:12In keeping with their green credentials, the solar plant can provide year-round power to 20,000 homes.
47:30And it's a joy to find that ironic that these solar panels, all quarter of a million of them,
47:35are sitting on top of the biggest oil and gas reserve on the planet.
47:40And that's the rub, really.
47:43I mean, it's perverse that we're so utterly dependent on those finite hydrocarbons deep beneath our feet,
47:49rather than the kind of limitless renewable energy up here.
47:55Masdar's vision is of cities that are designed for an environment and powered by renewables.
48:02And yet critics would claim that all these renewables are all well and good,
48:05but they just can't satisfy the gluttonous demands of our modern world.
48:13Nuclear, renewables and energy efficiency could all play a role in solving our future energy problems.
48:21The difficulty we face is that it will take years, possibly decades,
48:26until these energy sources exist on such a scale that they can replace hydrocarbons.
48:34In other words, it's going to take time.
48:38And time is something that climate scientists are warning us we don't have.
48:44So how can we reduce our carbon emissions while we wait for alternative energy sources to be ready?
48:52Over 60 miles off the Aberdeenshire coast, out in the wilds of the North Sea,
48:58one of the world's biggest energy producers are working on an innovative solution.
49:03Until 2011, Shell's GoldenEye platform used to suck natural gas from below the seabed,
49:10gas that was used to heat our homes.
49:13Today Shell is developing one of the world's first commercial scale carbon capture and storage projects, CCS.
49:21Ian, we're in a world that's going to need a lot more energy and a lot less CO2.
49:26And CCS, carbon capture and storage, is the one technology that's going to allow us to keep using the power
49:32plants,
49:33the heavy industry, without the CO2 emissions going up in the air.
49:37The new project proposes something deceptively simple.
49:40Use the pipes that once extracted gas, and reverse the flow.
49:49Carbon dioxide emissions from a power station would be captured,
49:53and existing pipes would transport it along 60 miles of seafloor to the GoldenEye platform.
50:06There, the gas would travel down five wells, and start to fill the reservoir that once provided us with natural
50:13gas.
50:16So is the idea that in the UK all the power stations would eventually have this, we're thinking a couple
50:20of decades down the road?
50:21I think it's probably going to be bigger than that.
50:24This is a technology that's going to be needed to be deployed across the world.
50:28It's a technology that can be applied in any country and across a number of industries.
50:33So I think the vision of local is too small. I think we need a much bigger vision.
50:38So you see CCS as an absolutely critical part of the kind of low carbon future?
50:43It's a critical part. It's all part of the mix.
50:46We're going to need almost twice the energy going forward by 2050 that we're using today.
50:51And that means the mix has got to be as broad as possible.
50:55And yet the emissions, the CO2 emissions, need to come down.
50:59And so for the broad mix, CCS is a critical component.
51:06CCS seems to offer us the chance to keep burning fossil fuels.
51:11But there are questions over its viability.
51:14Some fear that the stored carbon dioxide could leak.
51:18And others point out that implementing this on an industrial scale is possibly decades away.
51:26CCS may be a part of our energy future, but only alongside other energy sources.
51:34And one of those will undoubtedly be hydrocarbons, because we rely on them for far more than energy.
51:47It's a productive part of our energy to put it on the side of our energy.
51:53It's an extraordinary part of our energy to map out our energy to create energy.
51:54Let's go deeper and look at that.
51:59It's a little bit more along.
51:59Hydrocarbons create things we touch every single day.
52:03Hydrocarbons create things we touch every single day.
52:08They have integrated their way into so many different things that we touch every single day.
52:10facets of our lives.
52:16Modern life is utterly dependent upon them.
52:21As one oilman put it, if oil didn't exist, we would have to invent it.
52:35It seems to me that we've reached a critical junction in our story and we face a stark
52:40choice.
52:41Do we continue to feed our addiction, suck planet oil dry, or do we go hell for leather
52:48for alternative energy sources, nuclear, renewables, go from our fossil fuel past to a low carbon
52:53future?
52:54In which case, how do we make that shift?
53:04To make the switch to alternative energy sources will require serious investment and careful
53:10planning.
53:13But according to Professor Mike Bowman, no one has a realistic plan for how to make this
53:18fundamental change.
53:22We've become, as a globe, as a population, as a race, so kind of glib about hydrocarbons
53:30and taking it for granted.
53:31And actually what we need to do now is actually be very serious.
53:35We're at a really tough time.
53:37It's almost like a crossroads.
53:38And actually we need to be making sure that we're taking some of the profits from these
53:45oil and gas and seriously reinvesting it in the future.
53:49So that's having a strategy in the short term, realising hydrocarbons are here to shift across
53:55to renewables.
53:56In what kind of time period are we talking about?
53:58A decade?
53:58Gosh, I'm talking about 20, 25 years I think.
54:00But I think we've got to have a strategy now and I don't see the strategy.
54:03I don't see it in the UK and I don't see it globally.
54:06I think we've really got this place where we've got to have some energy strategies that
54:10have teeth and that have real meaning and that people understand what's going to happen
54:16as a result of it.
54:17But I think we do have an enormous responsibility for our children and our children's children.
54:24There have been attempts to come up with a global strategy.
54:29Ever since the Rio summit in 1992, world leaders have gathered to discuss climate change and
54:35what to do about it.
54:37For over 20 years we've had declarations, agreements and treaties.
54:44Despite this, there's still no legally binding international agreement to reduce carbon emissions.
54:51For some people, the time for talking has passed.
54:55In September 2014, 40,000 marchers took to the streets of London to protest against the
55:01lack of action.
55:10What's brought you out on the street then?
55:12To make people aware of the issues associated with the burning fossil fuels, clearly that
55:18is climate change.
55:19It's really kicking in.
55:21We've known about it for 15 years, but the governments didn't listen to us 15 years ago.
55:26We need a solid international agreement to reduce emissions, otherwise more people are going
55:30to die and it's going to cause a lot of human suffering.
55:32Climate change is the most important problem we have at the moment.
55:35I mean, everyone talks about economy and this and that, but I think it's our planet really.
55:42There's a really strong feeling in there that actually, as a political action, it's been
55:48a waste of time really.
55:49That ever since those world leaders all got together in Rio in 1992, that nothing's really
55:54happened.
55:55And they've got a point.
55:56I mean, levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are accelerating, they're not falling.
56:00And, you know, last year was another record high.
56:04What they're asking, what they're demanding, is something that seems quite simple.
56:08It's a cut in the level of carbon emissions.
56:16On the same day, similar marches took place all over the world.
56:21More than half a million people took to the streets in over a dozen countries.
56:25The organisers claim it was the biggest climate march in history.
56:32The next climate summit is due to take place in Paris in 2015.
56:37The protesters are demanding that world leaders actually reach a deal this time.
56:42A global agreement to slash carbon dioxide emissions in the coming decades.
56:49Collectively, these demonstrations point to one thing.
56:53A demand for change.
56:55They're expressing a fear that the lack of real progress is taking us to the point of no return.
57:02That if our politicians don't recognise the urgency of the situation, and can't agree
57:07on an energy plan with meaning, then it'll all be too late.
57:19Back in the 50s, Marion King Hubert predicted that we'd run out of oil in my lifetime.
57:25But the likelihood is, new technology will help us to continue sucking planet oil dry in order to feed our
57:33addiction.
57:38You know, in the story of oil, the question that keeps on coming up is, are we running out?
57:42Actually, that's such a known issue.
57:44The real issue is, how do we avoid burning the stuff that we've already got, the stuff we know about?
57:49The fossil fuel terms, they seem like more of a liability.
57:56They're getting harder, more expensive to get out of the ground.
58:00They're pushing us and our climate into more unpredictable territory.
58:04And with the prospect of a renewable, low-carbon future, it just seems like the writing's on the wall.
58:14You know, I may not outlive the age of planet oil, but I think my kids will.
58:21And in that sense, it brings a much more interesting question of, what will that planet look like?
58:31Lorie Taylor presents a specially archived episode of BBC Radio 4's Thinking Aloud,
58:36where he looks at the role of oil in shaping our society, economy and environment.
58:41The Power of Oil is available now on BBC iPlayer Radio.
58:44Hear, though, from the perfect prefect and the stylish Anglia to Gene Hunt's favourite, the Cortina.
58:49Iconic Motors from Ford's Dagenham Dream, next.
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