Oil

One thing leads to another. The APPGOPO report covered in the previous post refers to the first report by the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security (ITPOES) on "The Oil Crunch: Securing the UK's Energy Future", which has been out for half a year, but I hadn't come across before.

The impact of peak oil isn't hard to anticipate. It's not a volume constriction, it's a price constriction (putting aside for the moment complications like EROEI and carbon impacts). We are more than halfway through the "easy oil". If demand exceeds supply of easy oil, as it will soon once economies start to grow again, the marginal supplies will come from increasingly expensive producers, which will drive up prices dramatically. Costs of carbon and the recursive effect on prices of low EROEI from more marginal production will exacerbate the price-impact. The threat is that we won't be able to afford to do many of the things that were fundamental to our economy, not that the oil couldn't be made available for a while longer if we could afford it. But it may feel like an insufficiency of oil, there not being much difference in practice between "not enough" and "not enough that we can afford".

What won't we be able to afford? Simple: road and air transport.* These two forms of transport are almost completely dependent (99%) on oil, and conversely, the vast majority of our oil consumption (75%) goes to transport (12% goes to non-energy uses like petrochemicals and plastics, less than 0.5% goes to electricity production, and the rest goes to heat). We could relatively easily replace oil in the other energy sectors, but on the road and in the air, we are not remotely ready for the dislocation of high oil prices.

So what do this small group of corporations, who have appointed themselves our spokesmen on this issue, have to say? Their assessment of the risk is well done, but (as usual when a handful of corporations get together on a mission) the solutions they favour are not.

"Peak oil is about much more than transport" (p.28). What a surprise. A group that contains a VILE company, a solar-panel supplier, two businesses in the construction sector, a search-engine provider (???), and three public-transport operators think that peak oil means we need more government intervention in lots of areas that have little to do with peak oil. For instance, they think we need much more solar power (and support to deliver it). They think we need much more (subsidy for) wind and nuclear power (coincidentally, Scottish & Southern Energy, their VILE-company member, has substantial plans for wind and nuclear). We need massive efforts to encourage (read: support) energy-efficient construction. And, on the transport front, we need greater emphasis on (support for) bus and rail public-transport options. The latter is not unreasonable (if self-interested and marginal), and they also promote some more obvious and sensible solutions for the long-run, like increased use of electric transport options, but they have a wilful determination to ignore the technical challenges, they have no suggestion for something as key as international air transport (other than that we shouldn't have any more of it), and they have lots of suggestions for stuff that is marginal at best but which happens to be of interest to their members. 

Their wilful ignorance of technical challenges, blind optimism, and enthusiasm for the irrelevant (if not downright unhelpful) reaches its peak with their espousal of a 100% renewable-energy objective (p.6).

"The renewables industry is confident that 100% renewables energy supply is possible in 20-40 years, according to the overwhelming consensus of participants at the Tenth Forum on Sustainable Energy, held in Barcelona in April. They should be given the opportunity to prove it."

This is backed up later (p.39) by reference to a number of studies (by renewables enthusiasts) claiming to show that 100% renewables is feasible.