The Oil Drum | Peak Oil and Community Solutions Conference (Sunday)

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

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Joseph Somsel on September 28, 2005 - 6:03pm

So Saturday you hear about an 80% die-off of the human population and are offered guidence from Castro's Communist government on adapting to reduced oil. On Sunday you hear about a series of communes and the replacement of the nuclear family.

Now you're talking about spawning a passionate political movement.

Communists, communes, radical politics and now sex.

I'm telling you guys, John Q. Public is going to think you're starting a CULT.

Seriously, the transition post-peak will involve the commitment of massive amounts of private capital. So far, I haven't seen anyone on Oil Drum that would trusted with the that kind of money. You need to get away from the survivalist mentality and focus on how one can help within the existing social and political frameworks.

Thanks to Stuart for providing an honest and insightful reporting of the conference.

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billyt on September 28, 2005 - 6:12pm

yeah you have a point, who the hell wants to live on a farm and ride on horseback after having tasted the convenience of petroleum and the fruits of cheap energy and techno-gadgets like the i-pod-mini.

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Southsider1 on September 28, 2005 - 6:13pm

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

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

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

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

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

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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Stuart Staniford on September 28, 2005 - 6:22pm

"Seriously, the transition post-peak will involve the commitment of massive amounts of private capital." I agree. I guess the capitalists are behind the ball, here though. Whenever they get together their conference, I'll go to that one too.

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Cameron on September 28, 2005 - 6:46pm

Massive amounts of private capital investment or not, PO is on its way. So probably is much more labor-intensive and small-scale agriculture. Changing energy bases have a way of changing everything else about a culture, as Heinberg pointed out, whether people want to or not, are cooperating or not, etc. It behooves us all to try to help make the transition as humane and as intelligent as possible. Let's hope for a 7% per annum depletion rate, or less! No Matter what our wishes might be, a steep depletion rate will be rough. Camus spoke once of "the benign indifference of the universe." Some people would argue with the inclusion of "benign", but few --looking at the history of civilizations-- would argue with the notion of "indifference". Myself, I like the addition of 'benign'. It points out that there's no malevolence at work here, only realities.

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Rick on September 28, 2005 - 11:42pm

Joseph-
I think that The Oil Drum community is a pretty balanced and thoughtful group of people. Suvivalists would scorn us. It's fine to reject the Yellow Springs ethos if you wish--many of us do.

Your posts are big on critique. So far as I know, nobody here is seeking venture capital, and we're not putting up business plans for your trust or approval. We're trying to work out the ramifications of a very, very thorny problem.

Peak oil is the mother of all problems, and it's not a left or right issue. There are lots of things that can partially mitigate the effects, but as of now there are no clear and technically feasible solutions. There is an absolutely enormous gap between what we can do, and what we need.

I agree the the closer we get to solutions that employ existing social and political frameworks, the faster they will diffuse. Right now, TOD is heavily focused on assessing the situation, which has not yet been properly done. We are short on solutions, but they will be developing as the issue becomes clearer.

So, what are your solutions that will attract private capital and solve our woes?

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Joseph Somsel on September 29, 2005 - 12:08pm

Rick, you asked for my plan? OK, I'm throwing down, dude!

Here's my suggestion on how to fuel our electric power system for four years:

http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=1108

I would also point out that the US nuclear power industry has just burned up its 10,000th Russian nuclear warhead. Just 10,000 more to go and then we can start on their plutonium bombs. Today, 10% of our nation's electricity is fueled by those Russian warheads.

In the longer run, we'll see expanded electrification fueled by a much bigger fleet of nuclear power plants. More coal too but already nukes are cheaper! Transport fuels will come from "unconventional" sources - Gas-to-liquids at first, until stranded natural gas is gone (20 to 30 years) then increasingly nuclear-assisted hydrocarbons such as tar sands, oil shale, etc. Hydrogen from nuclear would work but I'd think that if we aren't greenhouse gas purists, then nuclear-assisted coal to liquids is more convenient.

Our cost of energy will go up, and the huge capital requirements for the transition will depress our global economy to some degree but it can be done. And not by some aging hippies in a backwoods commune! The least they can do is stay out of the way.

Just don't expect some magic solution. Energy is all about physics and there is nothing, NOTHING, out there at this moment. Cold fusion is as good as it gets.

My fear is that my great-grand children will someday ask me "How come you didn't build more nuclear power plants when you had the chance."

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Frustrated PR Person on September 29, 2005 - 1:34pm

You said "Transport fuels will come from 'unconventional' sources". Transport fuels are the key weakness here. The unconventional is already being rejected, because there's not enough refinery for the sour, heavy oil, which is just mildly "unconventional", compared to tar sands!

I wonder if it's possible to take a honest look at the cost of going to rail for ALL long-distance transportation in the United States, and bikes and buses for all local. The remaining liquid fuels need to go to agriculture as we transition to a local food production regime. Compared with the cost of the current heavy vehicle on open road paradigm, an ultra light-weight rail system might offer the best medium to long-term solution to local shipping and transporation.

Rail currently offers the best "mass-to-energy" ratio, meaning it's the most efficient way of moving mass over land - as long as it's utilized. Empty passenger cars offer little gains.

Rail can be electrified, which is THE most flexible energy transport method. Electric rail vehicles don't care what the source of their energy is from - nuclear, coal, wind, solar.

Too bad no one thought of this before.

Oh... they did.

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Joseph Somsel on September 29, 2005 - 2:22pm

Hey Frustrated!

We're on a "Peak Oil" blog but an equally important issue is "Peak Natural Gas". We've already peaked on North American natural gas and the price is going through the roof - $13.91/mmBTU yesterday at Henry Hub. Gas fuels 20% of our electricity so the price of electricity is on the increase as a result.

We're rushing to build new liquefied natural gas terminals so we can import the stuff but there growing competition for the gas from Gas-to-Liquids which will convert the gas into very high quality diesel fuel which will sell for a higher profit. Hence, LNG won't last long, given what we know about the resource.

I agree that transport fuels are the most visible and most sensitive issue right now but a cold winter this year might see delivery shortages and old folks dying in their cold, unheated homes.

I'm also a rail fan and love those long-haul Amtrak routes. Electrification of the rails should increase but that's capital intensive. Here in California we voted for a high speed rail route between San Francisco and Los Angeles (maybe San Diego too.) However the environmentalists are holding it up by preventing it from directly connecting San Jose (more people than SF) by blocking a route through a dippy state park.

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Mad Oilman on September 29, 2005 - 12:12am

That's kind of how I interpreted this summary. A lot of thoughtful people performing social experiments in sustainability.

I'd like to know more about these alternative fuels. What are they?

In two wonderful Letters to the Editor in Oil & Gas Journal the past 4 or 5 weeks, the alternative fuels canard was swiftly crushed.

Biodiesel? Let's use the entire US crop of soybeans and corn (petroleum supported yields no less).

7 DAYS of US consumption from the entirety of these crops.

Methanol? Taking harvestable forests, growing patterns, and annual per acre yields from tree farms (there goes the paper and lumber industries) and generously using the BTU content of wood as a fuel instead of using the diminished BTU content of the methanol conversion, this quick and dirty analysis determined that wood could sustain at most 7% of US electricity demand.

Granted, these are truly 'back of the napkin' analyses, but they are quite conservative in their inputs.

And political movement? Good luck.

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Greko on September 29, 2005 - 3:05am

For methanol you can look here:
http://www.iags.org/n052404t3.htm

For biodiesel from jatropha you can look here:
http://www.uni-hohenheim.de/~www480/docs/gf030224/jatropha-biodiesel.htm

For BtL you can look here:
http://www.choren.com/en/

For biofuels in general you can look here:
http://www.biorefineryworkshop.com/speakers.htm

Biofuels will be part of the solution, not the solution.

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wkwillis on September 29, 2005 - 2:19pm

Most wood is scrapped, most of the rest is used for paper, most of the rest for lumber, and all of it is recyclable into fuels. It would be more expensive than thirty dollar a barrel oil, but perhaps not more expensive than ninety dollar a barrel oil. Looks like we will find out someplace along the oil price curve.
On the other hand, synfuels put a limit on oil prices, so maybe we won't. It costs almost as much to build a pyroligneous plant or a lysing plant for wood as to build a coal based synfuel plant, so it's really coal price limited.

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helium3 on September 29, 2005 - 3:05am

I suspect that many "Peak Oilers" are reluctant to "focus on how one can help within the existing social and political frameworks" simply because they believe that it is just that "framework" that has led us to this point. Perhaps if you could provide further clarification as to what you mean? Should we write our congressmen? She would we pen letters to the editor of our local papers? Perhaps put up placards on our lawns?

No one really knows what's going to happen after the peak. Perhaps nothing, and perhaps a great deal. If nothing happens, then we're all sort of wasting our time worrying about this. If a "great deal" then working within the current "framework" may not do us a lot of good as we watch that framework disintegrate around us. Pascal's Wager seems to apply in this case, I would think.

But seriously, if you can suggest some ways to work "within the framework" I'd love to hear them.

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reno on September 30, 2005 - 9:23am

Funny you should ask about writing your congressman as I have done just that twice and to date have not received a response. I'm still waiting..

Not to mention, I once subscribed to the largest Yahoo peak oil group and found it interesting for a while. I ask a few question and usually received many responses until the day I ask if anyone had written their congressmen.. Not ONE response! It was y2k all over again.. Interesting

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