photo by Josh Parrish
Any of you believe it? Check out www.chrismartenson.com and take the crash course. Check out lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
Basically it’s saying that our entire economy and way of life is based on the presence of cheap oil. We have already peaked in terms of oil production but not worldwide demand. Worldwide demand for oil will continue to grow exponentially. Oil prices will skyrocket and oil producing nations will stop exporting oil once they realize the world is going to run out of it.
That will make not only our gas prices skyrocket, but the price of everything else will skyrocket also because it takes oil to transport and build everything. Our way of life is built on oil and since oil will no longer be available, our lives will be changed forever.
World wars and massive famine and depression will result.
There can be a solution to the energy crisis. It needs to be dealt with in two respects. Supply and demand.
Consumption (demand or conservation)
Over the summer gas prices rose sharply and you saw the nation cut back on its gasoline usage. Most people only changed their driving habits slightly. If we were faced with huge price hikes or even rationing, the nation could respond. This could mean drastic changes to our lifestyles, but we could prevent chaos or loss of all technology. How?
- Bicycles - The more I read about it, its not as impossible as it sounds. Many people cycle 20 miles one way to work every day. Tough? Yes. But in the face of crisis, definitely possible. Most of our energy consumption is in the form of gasoline for cars… bicycles could go a long way if everyone starts riding instead of driving.
- Plug-in hybrid cars - The technology is coming soon. Toyota should be coming out with a plug in hybrid electric prius by 2010. It will require a good number of years and a lot of motivation to force everyone into these types of vehicles, but it can be done.
- Old fashioned conservation - No more long roadtrips. The airline industry will likely collapse. Turning off the AC, not using the heater etc…
- Closer communities - People can move closer to work and closer to each other. Rather than having to drive miles to get to work, people will choose to move closer to their jobs so that they can bicycle or walk there. Rather than driving across town to visit friends and family, they can choose to live near each other. Instead of going out to eat, people can choose to eat in each other’s homes.
If our energy needs continue to grow exponentially, there is no way that the world’s resources will be able to keep up. If rather we conserve, use less energy than we do today, it’s possible for alternative forms of energy to make up the rest. We would probably need to cut energy consumption by 25% in order to have a chance.
Production (Supply)
Like everyone has been saying, no single source of energy can replace oil. There is no source of energy that is so plentiful and so easy to obtain. That is why peak oilers have been saying that our society will collapse. While no single source of energy can replace oil, if we can conserve and use less energy, then multiple sources of energy has a chance to meet our demand levels. Solar and nuclear advocates need to stop fighting. There is room in the future for both. Energy for transportation via oil currently takes up half our energy needs. By converting transportation to electricity, we would double our electricity needs if there is no conservation.
- Nuclear power - Its not dangerous and there is a huge supply of uranium. The problem is, we would need 500 nuclear power plants to power our energy grid in the United States and there are huge problems in setting up that many nuclear plants that quickly. The solution? Set a more modest goal and don’t rely on nuclear power to replace the entire power grid. Currently 20% of the electricity used in the US is produced by nuclear power. If we can up that number to 40-50%, that would be a huge boon. How to do that? New technology called molten salt reactors. This type of nuclear power plant is more easily mass produced, safer, and cheaper.
- Solar power - The problem with solar power has been cost and irregular energy production. The cost aspect will always solve itself the more the technology is used. The irregular energy production due to clouds and less sunny areas is the real problem. The solution? A new technology called concentrated solar power (CSP) uses mirrors to heat a tube of liquid in order to generate steam for electricity. This technology uses molten salt which can retain heat so that it can be saved for night energy usage. That way it reduces the irregular energy production solving some, but not all of the irregularity issues. When combined with coal and nuclear power as backup systems, solar power could be a major energy producer in the future.
- Coal - I’ve said before that I’m not an environmentalist so CO2 emissions are really not a huge concern for me as long as they remain under control. Coal is going to be needed for the foreseeable future because these new nuclear and solar technologies are still 20 years away if we begin a massive program now. What will tide us over? Reduction in consumption, the remaining oil we have, and coal.
What won’t work?
Wind. Wind, like solar is too irregular to be useful. Because its so irregular, it would require massive redundancy and a massive worldwide energy grid. Wind would require a massive worldwide wind project where we could ship wind power from Sweden to the US and vice versa depending on wind patterns. Because of line loss, this would be extremely unproductive and costly. Wind doesn’t have any new technologies on the horizon that could reduce the irregularity like solar does.
Biofuel. Ethanol, alcohol and biodiesel require us to put more energy into it than we get out of it. For example, to grow corn or sugar for ethanol, we would need to run tractors and other farm machines using oil to produce the corn. In other words, it costs way too much energy to produce way too little energy.
Infrastructure
A large component of any new energy plan would need to be shifts in infrastructure.
- Transportation needs to use electricity. Plug-in hybrid cars and electric trains.
- Larger, higher capacity energy grid. Our energy grid capacity would need to double in size in order to support all of the cars and trains we want to run off of it. The current grid is too small and inefficient to transfer electricity across the country. Flexibility will be important with energy sources like solar because it’s not available everywhere. The government needs to invest a lot of money into the grid.
- Large scale energy storage. The technology does not seem to be here yet for this so none of the current plans are predicated on this. But if inexpensive energy storage on a large scale could be developed, all sorts of alternative energy sources could be opened up including wind power.
This plan would take probably 20-30 years to implement if we act quickly and decisively. The entire nation would need to view it as the crisis it is. Oil, coal and conservation could help us through the next 30 years until nuclear and solar plants on a mass scale could be constructed. At that point we would probably need to continue our conservation efforts. Clean coal could be a part of the permanent energy structure.
If we take these steps the technology and resources are there. We can avoid World War and depressions, but I fear that there will not be the leadership in place to make this happen. We need to act quickly right now on a massive scale. Power plants take 10 years to construct sometimes. What I fear is that we will not recognize this crisis until peak oil has already passed and we are on our last leg of oil. At that point, it’ll be too late.
