Peak/Plateau Oil is here: IEA Whistleblower

[JB Globe]

That is why conservation measures will never make a significant dent in total energy consumption. The best you can hope for is a slow down in the rise of consumption.

While I'd love to lower overall consumption, I should be clear that I'm talking about lowering per-capita consumption, and I do believe it's possible for us to lower that factor by quite a bit.

California is an economic basket case now which has been chasing businesses away for years because of its obsession with regulating everything. Its unemployment rate is 12% and will likely stay high until the legislators put the economy and jobs ahead of the trendy 'cause du jour'.

I think California's current unemployment rate has more to do with the overall problems experienced by the US economy, than on the state government's support of emerging technologies like alternative energy and new methods of conservation.

Local farms are great for keeping fresh vegetables at farmer's markets but most major centers cannot possibly grow the food that their population needs locally.

Once upon a time we supplied our own food, but we paved over our farmland with suburbs that aren't economically viable in the long-term. I still think that we can grow much more of our own food than we currently do.

More importantly, we need food to be grown where it is most efficent to grow more than we need to minimize energy consumption. It is also not clear that growing food locally is actually less energy intensive. It would really depend on the crop and the location (i.e. it would require less energy to ship tomatos from mexico than to keep a greenhouse warm in winter in Manitoba).

I agree with most of this, however I think imported foods that are commonplace now will become luxuries for special occasions in the future. Avocados will become something for special occasions only, because they'll just be too expensive with oil going over $200 a barrel. Again, I'm not an ideologue, I know how much energy it takes to heat a greenhouse - there are only a few places where the soil would make it worth it and you have access to cheap energy sources (geothermal) to do it. But you're forgetting about preserves to make our homegrown food last through the winter: just like our grandmothers used to do - they might not taste as fresh, but you still get all the nutrients, and if you get creative, you can make good things out of them. This would give Canadian food manufacturers a boost, and would also help out independent producers, who right now cater to a niche well-off clientele.

People will have to start buying more preserves out of necessity - because fresh food in the winter will become more expensive.

It is unlikely that such plots could be farmed economically. Also farms in urban areas have to deal with theft which makes the economics even less attractive.

I think it's quite possible - non-profit and co-op examples already exist, they sustain their operating costs by selling some of the produce, and volunteers get a certain amount free. Because you can literally drive the crop down the street to sell it, and there are no labour costs (volunteer), the overhead is very low. In Cuba for example, the Havana urban farms have the highest yields in the country.

Theft would only be a minor problem, you'd secure the perimeters of the farms of course.

There is a huge difference between managing a fiat currency system and managing energy because a fiat currency is an imaginary commodity that can be created/destroy at will. Changing energy consumption patterns takes decades and a lot of capital.

Obviously there are differences, but I think in terms of how complex each system is, they're pretty much even - if we can manage one, we can manage the other.

Saying we should 'avoid' nuclear is the same as saying we should have no nuclear given the current political environment. Nuclear needs to be promoted actively to break down the resistance created by the enviromentalists.

I don't think so, I think nukes sell themselves when oil is expensive and carbon emissions are rising - and again the only reason they rank lower on my list than yours is their capital costs.

Also, renewables are a dead end until the battery problem is solved so strategies that depend on renewables providing more than 10% of our needs are guaranteed to fail.

I don't think renewables are a dead end right now, but battery improvements will be a huge boost, and those are coming in the near future.

I don't see how that deals with the transfer time problem.

Because transit that has its own right of way is faster, and therefore has more ridership, which can support more frequent service, and therefor passengers spend less time waiting for a transfer. You also don't run into the issue of vehicles getting bogged down in heavy traffic and "bunching" (ie - no buses come for 30 minutes and then five show up, back to back)

We do not have infinite resources that would allow 5 minute frequency 24/7 on every possible bus route. The most we can hope for is 10 min frequency on major routes and 15-30 frequency on minor routes. This means tranfer time will add up.

Oh no way - we can support much more and already do in urban areas. The redevelopment plans in many of Toronto's suburbs that I mentioned before will be able to support bus routes that are comparable to urban areas. We built our way into this problem, and we're going to have to build our way out.

[madmax]

Peak oil is a much much greater risk as long as the anti-CO/environmentalist goons are allowed to set our energy policy.

Let the games begin!!!

[madmax]

The tree huggers can do as they please, but they will be paying more either way. This could very well force an entire economic paradigm shift. I will venture to say that a resource based economy is just around the corner.

I say its here.

[Riverwind]

While I'd love to lower overall consumption, I should be clear that I'm talking about lowering per-capita consumption, and I do believe it's possible for us to lower that factor by quite a bit.

By some (10%). Not a huge amount. If there was really that much 'wasted' energy then the market would have already found a solution.

I think California's current unemployment rate has more to do with the overall problems experienced by the US economy, than on the state government's support of emerging technologies like alternative energy and new methods of conservation.

California is doing much worse than the rest of the country and the increased cost of living/doing business that comes with their energy initiatives are part of the problem.

Once upon a time we supplied our own food, but we paved over our farmland with suburbs that aren't economically viable in the long-term. I still think that we can grow much more of our own food than we currently do.

Once upon a time there were only 1 billion people on the planet and living past 65 was the exception rather than the rule. We cannot go back to those 'good-old-days'. The cities we have now cannot supply their own food without transporting food over long distances.

I agree with most of this, however I think imported foods that are commonplace now will become luxuries for special occasions in the future. Avocados will become something for special occasions only, because they'll just be too expensive with oil going over $200 a barrel.

Of course. When oil hit $200 people will adapt. However, the government should not be trying to legislate those adaptations now. All it should be doing is making sure the alternate energy sources are available when the time comes.

But you're forgetting about preserves to make our homegrown food last through the winter

You are proposing major lifestyle changes that will not happen until the price of energy actually forces those changes to occur. These changes cannot be imposed before then.

I think it's quite possible - non-profit and co-op examples already exist, they sustain their operating costs by selling some of the produce, and volunteers get a certain amount free.

I doubt any of these co-ops could survive without the society driven by cheap fossil fuels. You need to remember scale is important. Things that work on a small scale are often unworkable if you try to get them to produce the volumes required to displace other production.

Theft would only be a minor problem, you'd secure the perimeters of the farms of course.

I really think you are being naive. If fresh vegetables become a luxery then an urban farm would be huge target. Look at all of the public art/infrastructure that was looted for their copper when copper prices shot up a couple years ago. There is no reason to believe the same would not happen for food.

Obviously there are differences, but I think in terms of how complex each system is, they're pretty much even - if we can manage one, we can manage the other.

The energy system deals with physical infrastructure that CANNOT be replaced at a whim. There is no way to control it the way you suggest.

I don't think renewables are a dead end right now, but battery improvements will be a huge boost, and those are coming in the near future.

So is fusion power yet it has always been just around the corner for the last 50 years. Like fusion, there are fundemental physical problems that make large scale batteries uneconomic and those problems are not likely to be solved any time soon. This means deploying renewables requires fossil fuel back ups and can actually lead to greater energy consumption than if fossil fuel was used exclusively.

Because transit that has its own right of way is faster, and therefore has more ridership, which can support more frequent service.

Transit right of ways are only practical on some routes and suffer the same limitation as trains.

You also have to remember that better service means fewer passengers per bus which means more energy consumption. This puts an upper limit on the amount of bus service that can be justified for 'energy conservation' purposes. I think this limit is much lower than what is required to eliminate the need for a car. That is why feel I non-gas powered personal vehicles have to be a big part of the move away from oil.

Edited November 22, 2009 by Riverwind

[dlkenny]

That's not the main cause. The main cause is that easily accessible oil reserves are dried up or dwindling, and the ones which are being found are in remote areas far from market like mountain regions, uninhabited areas, or in the open ocean.

Right, and that will make the product more expensive because of increased production costs. When you consider supply and demand it snowballs and makes $200 oil a realistic prospect. The oilsands are indeed a very large and mostly untapped resource but they are also very cumbersome and expensive to operate. Certainly I can agree with the comment made above about the $400 Billion annually and how that put towards science in this area could do much more good than putting it into a dictator's pocket.

I don't doubt that there is still a sizable quantity of oil to be discovered and tapped, it is estimated that Russia holds up to a quarter of the worlds oil reserves and to date the Russians have not developed the resource to anywhere near it's potential. Much of the problem is political with trade issues between the western countries and the supply (Example: Russia, Iran.). In the end, there is no doubt oil will become more and more expensive and I do agree that more viable alternatives need to be developed.

One of the options that is largely ignored is that of Geothermal energy. There exists hot spots all over the globe that can be tapped for energy production and that along with wind, solar, wave and nuclear energy have the potential to significantly decrease our dependence not only on oil but on fossil fuels in general.

[JB Globe]

By some (10%). Not a huge amount. If there was really that much 'wasted' energy then the market would have already found a solution.

Most of the energy used by a suburban household is waste - it's energy that you just don't use when you live in a well-planned urban area: from the natural gas you use in the winter to heat rooms that are over-sized or never used, to the energy used to fuel the 2.5 cars that drive long distances.

This was never a secret, even in the 50's, people knew this required more energy - they just assumed that our supply of it was virtually limitless. But even when we realized it was finite, the market continued to fuel suburban growth. Why? Because the market is not rational, because the market is a human construct and we're not rational. The suburbs are a product of the market.

That's why many suburban municipalities have adopted much stricter planning policies, because they've realized too late that commercial developers don't care about building communities and cities, they care about selling product. In the past they could have cared less if their product digs our society into a hole - they were only legally obligated to produce a profit for their investors.

California is doing much worse than the rest of the country and the increased cost of living/doing business that comes with their energy initiatives are part of the problem.

Could be true I haven't read that, from my understanding the sub-prime collapse decimated the construction industry and the states that had the largest housing booms were hit the worse: Florida, Arizona & California all had big construction industries, and they've been hit the hardest.

Once upon a time there were only 1 billion people on the planet and living past 65 was the exception rather than the rule. We cannot go back to those 'good-old-days'. The cities we have now cannot supply their own food without transporting food over long distances.

We also didn't have any of the modern technologies we take for granted way back when we had 1 billion people - I mean, the industrial revolution was just beginning back then.

Fact is, we can produce A LOT of the foods we eat locally, there is a lot of arable land in urban centres, and even more under-used arable land surrounding cities. We may not be able to produce all of it, but we can definitely do much, much better than we are now.

We may have to eat less meat (because of how much energy and land it takes to make 1 pound of meat protein vs veg protein) but we over-eat meat to the point where it also harms our physical health, so that's not much of a leap. Contrary to what some folks think, you won't whither away and die if you don't have meat at every meal of the day.

Of course. When oil hit $200 people will adapt.

They'll adapt of course. But the question I'm asking (again) is how painful and how long will this adaptive process be? We've built our economy chiefly around oil for the last 60 years if not beyond that. It will take over a decade at least to deal with $200 a barrel oil if we wait until it hits that price before we do anything about it - in that timeframe a lot of people are going to get hurt by this new reality - and we shouldn't underestimate what prolonged hardship can do to a society's very fabric.

However, the government should not be trying to legislate those adaptations now. All it should be doing is making sure the alternate energy sources are available when the time comes.

Absolutely the government should be legislating those adaptions now - because the market will only begin to adapt when the problem smacks us in our face, and if we continue to increase our consumption of energy, those alternative sources will cost us a fortune. We didn't wait until the ozone layer burned away completely to do away with CFC's, and industry survived, we don't have to wait until oil costs $200 a barrel to make efforts to conserve it.

You are proposing major lifestyle changes that will not happen until the price of energy actually forces those changes to occur. These changes cannot be imposed before then.

I don't think I said I'd impose anything, I prefer a carrot and stick approach, but as to preserves specifically? I'm for more DIY education, and supporting co-ops that do this so that there is a base to expand on when the mainstream demand arises. Because I'm concerned about industry not doing anything until the problem of finding affordable winter produce is already here - and then coming a year or two too late to help the many folks who couldn't afford the essentials for a winter or two.

I should have stated this earlier, but while the middle class may be able to dip into savings to afford things such as fresh winter produce for a while (unless it goes on too long), poor folks don't have that option - they're the ones who are ultimately going to suffer for a problem created mainly by people who are more wealthy than they are.

I doubt any of these co-ops could survive without the society driven by cheap fossil fuels.

They'd actually fare a lot better than traditional farms in a world of expensive oil. For example: the many hydro transmission lines that run through the old inner suburbs of Toronto represent a huge amount of unused land. They are literally next door to market and a large labour force. It would be cheaper in that reality to use less oil-based farming (ie - pesticides).

I really think you are being naive. If fresh vegetables become a luxery then an urban farm would be huge target. Look at all of the public art/infrastructure that was looted for their copper when copper prices shot up a couple years ago. There is no reason to believe the same would not happen for food.

The thing is though, these farms would be community initiatives and could be adapted - you could make some farms non-profit and/or for-profit, these would employ people from the community, meaning that someone who was desperate enough to steal food at least would have the option of earning a living (and generally, folks who are desperate enough to steal food are more than willing to work instead)

The energy system deals with physical infrastructure that CANNOT be replaced at a whim.

Who said anything about a conservation fee being imposed at a whim? In my mind, you'd work out an ideal amount of cash and you'd phase it in over several years. And that rate would be dynamic and would adjust to changing situations (ie - Iran shuts down gulf oil exports and we hit a crisis - then you'd cut the rate altogether). All of that cash would go into a fund that would develop conservation & alternatives.

So is fusion power yet it has always been just around the corner for the last 50 years.

Fusion was never "just around the corner" even if a major breakthrough happened today we wouldn't see a working plant for at least several decades, so false comparison.

Like fusion, there are fundemental physical problems that make large scale batteries uneconomic and those problems are not likely to be solved any time soon. This means deploying renewables requires fossil fuel back ups and can actually lead to greater energy consumption than if fossil fuel was used exclusively.

I disagree that you can't overcome the current limitations of batteries, but I actually think that the biggest leap in technology will come from next-gen photovoltaic solar panels that can grab even more energy.

Transit right of ways are only practical on some routes and suffer the same limitation as trains.

You also have to remember that better service means fewer passengers per bus which means more energy consumption. This puts an upper limit on the amount of bus service that can be justified for 'energy conservation' purposes. I think this limit is much lower than what is required to eliminate the need for a car. That is why feel I non-gas powered personal vehicles have to be a big part of the move away from oil.

Actually better service means more passengers - if people know that they can have fast, reliable service, they're much more likely to take transit than their car. Nothing is a better billboard for transit use than sitting in your car in gridlock every day and seeing buses or street cars whizing by you while passengers relax and watch youtube on their free WiFi connection (as they do on York Region's Viva bus service). The "if you build it . . ." line absolutely applies to transit so long as transit investment goes hand-in-hand with solid urban planning.

[Riverwind]

Absolutely the government should be legislating those adaptions now - because the market will only begin to adapt when the problem smacks us in our face, and if we continue to increase our consumption of energy, those alternative sources will cost us a fortune.

You seem to mixing up two policies. I agree that the government should remove regulatory hurdles that make it difficult to develop new energy sources whether they be coal, nuclear or renewable. I do not think the government should be subsidizing any power production. Subsidizing R&D is fine but if we depend on power that is only economic with taxpayer subsidies then we will be screwed.

I do not think that the government should be involved in micromanaging our lives by telling us what we can build, drive or eat. When oil prices go up the market will figure out the best mix of products. Any government that tries to guess what those products should be will make the wrong guesses and simply increase costs for consumers for little benefit.

They'd actually fare a lot better than traditional farms in a world of expensive oil. For example: the many hydro transmission lines that run through the old inner suburbs of Toronto represent a huge amount of unused land. They are literally next door to market and a large labour force. It would be cheaper in that reality to use less oil-based farming (ie - pesticides).

Farms need large plots of land to be economic. There is also is no large pool of labour ready to farm work in the city. In fact, even farmers near cities have trouble finding the help they need with out importing immigrant labour. You will also have a big problem with smell if organic (ie. cow dung) fertilizer is used. People will complain. That said, I don't oppose such measures as long the government's role is limited to adjusting the regulations to allow such use of land.

I disagree that you can't overcome the current limitations of batteries, but I actually think that the biggest leap in technology will come from next-gen photovoltaic solar panels that can grab even more energy.

I suggest you read this blog carefully before you make any other claims about the wonders of renewables. We cannot plan a future based on them. Coal and nuclear are our only options for the majority of our electricity.

This paper provides a simple analysis of the capital cost of solar power and energy storage sufficient to meet the demand of Australia’s National Electricity Market. It also considers some of the environmental effects. It puts the figures in perspective. By looking at the limit position, the paper highlights the very high costs imposed by mandating and subsidising solar power. The minimum power output, not the peak or average, is the main factor governing solar power’s economic viability. The capital cost would be 25 times more than nuclear power. The least-cost solar option would require 400 times more land area and emit 20 times more CO2 than nuclear power

Renewables have fundemental physical limitations that are not going to magically dissappear.

Actually better service means more passengers - if people know that they can have fast, reliable service, they're much more likely to take transit than their car.

Better transit always benefits the people who stay in their car the most. In any case, people will not get rid of their cars unless they can be assured of reliable transport whenever they need. i.e. a system with good rush hour buses will attract commuters but these commuters will not use the buses for other activies like shopping unless the bus service in off peak hours is really good. But it is the off peak hours when the buses run empty if they are too frequent and that would reduce the over all efficiency of the system.