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52 comments on Peak Oil and Community Solutions Conference (Sunday)

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Southsider1 on September 28, 2005 - 6:13pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
This is an excellent point, and raises an interesting question: what post-peak transition business plans would be attractive to private capital?
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wkwillis on September 28, 2005 - 6:23pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I've got the best solar power design going, but my customers are going to be electric utilities. Line focus photovoltaic is peaking power natural gas replacement only.
Otherwise you are on your own as far as gasoline and diesel replacement go. I recommend investing in coal mines and methanol/dme plants.
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Joseph Somsel on September 28, 2005 - 6:28pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
As to private investment plans, Areva, Constellation, and Bechtel have one - merchant nuclear power plants.  Of course, Areva is owned by the French government but if they want to subsidize and finance new nuclear power plants in the US, we should welcome them (cough, cough!)

For the small investor, I like limited partnerships in stripper oil wells.

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Southsider1 on September 28, 2005 - 6:50pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
There must be opportunities in real estate and development as well. Sooner or later, someway or other, the suburbs will need to be replaced with denser towns and more compact villages. While the intentional communities Stuart reported on are commendable, wholesale transformation of our built geography will more likely be driven by for-profit businesses.
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wkwillis on September 29, 2005 - 2:15pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
We don't have enough uranium for the plants we have left. Every time you open a new plant you use up fuel that would have kept an old plant going. Note that I do not say that this is a bad thing, just that it is irrevelant to total energy production.
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Joseph Somsel on September 29, 2005 - 2:54pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
That's not a winning argument.  Today, there is an estimated 50 years of known uranium reserves.  That's a LONG time for metallic ores - compare to copper, moly, etc.  And that doesn't include the recycling of nuclear war heads or nuclear spent fuel nor breeder reactors.

The Saudi Arabia of Uranium is Australia and they shutdown uranium prospecting for decades so to protect prices.

Here's a longer explanation of the market dynamics of uranium prospecting:

http://www.uic.com.au/nip75.htm

The key point is that no professional mining company is going to invest in ore prospecting when they might not be in a position to exploit it and make any money for 50 years.

Sorry, but fuel for nuclear reactors is not a constraint to a vast increase in nuclear energy production.

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52 comments on Peak Oil and Community Solutions Conference (Sunday)

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