More Peak Oil Resources

If large consumers of oil increased their taxes on energy consumption and if poor nations stopped subsidizing oil products, the world’s economy would become a little less dependent on oil. More expensive fuel for our cars increases the incentives for research into alternatives.

To those who think we have made no progress in the last twenty years, you are wrong. We haven’t crossed the magic border of cheaper than oil with any alternative technology, but we creep towards it each year.

With the current exorbitant oil prices look for a flurry of activity on the alternatives front. I am backing biodiesel to make a big splash in the next few years.

Bioethanol is very energy inefficient. Biodiesel is better.

I have found ‘peak oil’ to confound many aware people (myself included). How is it that such a serious problem has been missed? The arguments surrounding this subject have taken on almost religious fervor since the 70’s, even dividing folks who actually read the ‘Limits to Growth’. This is particularly interesting from a psychological point of view, in that, even smart educated folk can deny the reasoned arguments based on actual data…. I digress.

The problem is fundamentally rooted in belief, and here we are ALL complicit (to some degree, ignorance is a poor excuse in the developed world) in our consent of this highly unsatisfactory situation. It would seem indisputable that oil supplies will become scarce in short order. It is also morally reprehensible to do nothing about it (at the very best here this is akin to spending our children’s inheritance, at worst its mass murder).

Optimists in my experience tend to respond to the issue with the well meaning espousal of the best aspects of human nature, e.g. as presented in a recent letter to the Guardian Saturday 2nd June, ‘ why don’t we just build Solar Power stations in the desert (to produce hydrogen from water), leasing the land from African nations and solving the coming energy crisis, global warming and African poverty in one fell swoop’. With a cursory understanding of the technicalities this intuitively makes a lot of sense, and surely there must be smart people who can sort this out!? Surely….

I have some scientific training and was studying sustainable technologies 20 years ago (ok I was 15, but still, I did the Math). Since then I have attempted to understand the challenges that face us. Those of you who think ‘Technology and Human ingenuity will save us’, are not seeing the sheer scale of this issue. Technologically things haven’t changed all that much in 20 years, in as much as there are STILL no candidates to replace oil, and the odds of discovering one are vanishingly small. After all oil is a rare and magical gift that was created in rare and extraordinary geological conditions.

The problem has changed in one key respect however, we now have a lot less time to implement a solution. Hydrogen isn’t the alternative to transport fuel, for a variety of reasons (clearly lost on Mr. Bush). I am sure Jim B will explain why in his coming articles. I do think that it will have application in energy storage used in conjunction with intermittent power generation technologies, a problem common to almost all sustainable power generation technologies.

Recently there was a significant project, proposal presented to the EU, for the construction of a series supper massive solar power stations in the deserts of North Africa for the production of Hydrogen. This would then be distributed via the existing gas network. This was rejected last year on the basis of cost. This is because it would have been the largest construction project in human history by a long way, which would have been nice…

Which brings us to our current predicament, there is little or no consensus politically and publicly that a problem exists. It is not in the interests of the oil producing nations to come clean about the situation due to the perceived risks of alerting the public to the world wide deception that has been taking place under their/our noses.

Left to the markets a hydrogen economy would take a long time to emerge (remember there is no infrastructure in place and the required changes are both technologically and economically challenging to say the least, oil had 50+ years to achieve this ). I also believe that this and other options are beyond the resources of all (Transnational Corporations included) but the collective effort of the rich nations of the world.

On a more optimistic note ( there is a country that is making big strides in sustainability and has over the last 10 years pursued a policy of decoupling itself oil consumption. It has succeeded in cutting imports progressively while going through a period of economic growth. Additionally this period has seen the development of its own internal energy market, production capacity (from crops) and all this from a relative developing nation. I am of course speaking of Brazil.

Bio-ethanol production from crops now accounts for over 50% of the liquid fuel consumed domestically. This in addition to being sustainable (carbon neutral) releases less toxins than petroleum when burnt and has other benefits for the engine. In fact the original combustion engine was actually designed to run on ethanol, oil hadn’t been discovered at the time.

The political reasons for this where to escape the influence of Transnational Oil companies (and their pals) and to free this resource rich country from this yolk of cheap oil. It is however the sole example (to my knowledge) of a successful transition to a less dependant model for oil consumption.

The solution to these problems is not a religious faith in technology or the apparently inexhaustible depths of human ingenuity. It is simply that we need to acknowledge that there IS a problem and actually choose to do something about it. I am still confounded as to why this hasn’t happened yet.