Top companies' peak oil warning
24 Nov, 2008 11:38 am
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Send this articleLeading UK companies have launched a report, The Oil Crunch: Securing the UK?s Energy Future, warning that cheap, easily available oil is likely to end by 2013, posing a grave risk to the UK and world economy.
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It sets out a series of practical recommendations for Government, including action to grasp the significant economic and environmental opportunities from a step-change in investment in renewable energy and sustainable transport. It dismisses nuclear power and carbon capture - at least in the short term - because of the urgency of the situation.
"We need technologies that can be mobilized very quickly, like many of the renewable and efficient-energy technologies," they conclude.
Originally published in The Low Carbon Kid
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On November 9, the Uppsala University in Sweden published a report titled "The Peak of the Oil Age - The Uppsala World Energy Outlook". The report performs an analysis of the oil production forecast done by the International Energy Agency in 2008. One day before the release of the IEA 2009 edition of its World Energy Outlook report, the team of researchers notably pointed to a world oil supply in 2030 some 26 Mb/d lower than the IEA's predictions. Dr Michael Lardelli, one of the co-authors of the study, answers Scitizen's questions.
An article in the Washington Post this weekend, together with a must-read interview in The Independent, a paper I used to read regularly when I lived in London, reminded me of an observation I made several years ago concerning the similarities between Peak Oil and Y2K. Having spent a fair amount of time in my former corporate role planning for the serious outcomes the latter might have produced, I don't intend this as a slam on the former. Without rehashing the technical arguments behind either phenomenon, it's worth spending a few minutes thinking about the consequences of a growing belief that we might be only a few years away from the end of oil, as we know it. Whatever one's take on the validity of the Peak Oil argument, it has already evoked noteworthy consequences, both positive and negative.
Laurel Graefe, a senior economic researcher working for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta has written an excellent overview of peak oil, ?The Peak Oil Debate?. I consider this a must-read piece, as much for armchair oil experts as beginners, and as much for who published this as what it contains. This should be very high on your list of ?brother-in-law? documents, the ones you can safely recommend to co-workers, neighbors, or, well, your brother in law.
It is demand for oil that may peak as governments adapt to the problems of global warming, security of supply and an amplitude of market volatility that could bring economic ruin to nations and then the world. Oil-demand may be reduced preemptively to the production peak (peak oil) through more efficient vehicle technologies and finding alternative energy sources. Ultimately electricity is seen as the best "supply vector" for delivering energy to users. Probably it is a game of "tag" between reducing demand and falling supply; whichever comes first will win-out.
This is a short article on community transformation in a time of preparation for a post cheap oil future. On the face of it, post-peak oil and climate change don't share many common threads, beyond being derided as hysterical prognostications by some of their non-believers. However, climate change is finally starting to be taken seriously by some of its former nay-sayers. We shall have to wait and see whether post-peak oil will continue to be dismissed as a crackpot conspiracy theory.
The Energy Watch Group released a report last week, stating that peak oil was reached in 2006. Scitizen sought the professional view of Dr Peter Jackson, Director of the CERA (Cambridge Energy Research Associates), whose position is that peak oil has not been reached. As well, we speak to Mr Jorg Schindler, the main author and Managing Director of Ludwig-B?lkow-Systemtechnik GmbH, about the report.
The Energy Watch Group released a report last week, stating that peak oil was reached in 2006. Scitizen speaks to Mr Jorg Schindler, the main author and Managing Director of Ludwig-B?lkow-Systemtechnik GmbH, about the report. As well, we sought the professional view of Dr Peter Jackson, Director of the CERA (Cambridge Energy Research Associates), whose position is that peak oil has not been reached.
The price of oil has risen to almost $100 a barrel - a figure unthinkable from almost one fifth of that five years ago. Whatever economic reasons may be postulated for this, the underpinning cause is the fact of a decline in the resource of cheap oil. Oil is not running out, per se, but we can expect the price of oil to increase inexorably, and hence the cost of everything, since literally everything, not only fuel depends on cheap oil, including food. M.King Hubbert made a prediction of this for US oil in 1956, and his "Hubbert Peak Theory" in which oil production follows a logistic function, maximising at the point when half the original resource has been used-up (beyond which it declines relentlessly), which proved correct for the production of oil in the US in 1970, appears to apply also the world reserve of oil, which has in all probability, now peaked. A civilization (global village) that has been built on cheap oil must inevitably change, since there are no alternative technologies, including hydrogen, that can be imported to rescue it in time to replace oil. In all likelihood, it will transform into a system of small communities.
Author
David Thorpe is a prize-winning novelist and environmental writer. His book series
Hybrids - for teens and young adults - is published by HarperCollins.
He is the Director of Cyberium. He co-edits a journal...
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