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It's probably impossible to talk about this subject without discussing Jevon's Paradox. The problem with technological innovations that increase our energy efficiency is that, at least in some cases, they tend, in time, to increase our aggregate consumption of energy.
In round numbers worldwide we are consuming--from nuclear + fossil fuel sources--the energy equivalent of a billion barrels of oil every five days.
I assume that I presently have the world record for the most pessimistic estimate of remaining Saudi recoverable reserves (on the order of 40 Gb of oil). In any case, from nuclear + fossil fuel sources, we burn through the energy equivalent of about 40 Gb of oil every 200 days. Ponder that thought for a moment.
IMO, we are looking at a long period of food/energy inflation combined with auto/housing/finance deflation.
I don't think that there are any "solutions," but the most sensible plan I have seen is the following:
(1) Energy consumption tax, to fund Social Security/Medicare, offset by eliminating the Payroll Tax;
(2) Crash wind/nuclear program;
(3) Crash Electrification of Transportation (EOT) program, as outlined by Alan Drake.
As Alan has pointed out, EOT worked in the past.
If we increase our total amount of useful energy collected from solar, wind and geothermal sources (and at least for a while, nuclear fission), I don't think that is intrinsically bad.
I agree with your solutions.
I just finished doing a back-of-the-spreadsheet model of filling the global post-peak oil shortfall with electricity. Of course the uncertainties in such a model are enormous, but I'm satisfied that it shows something approximating reality. The executive summary goes something like this:
"If we want to replace any significant proportion of the oil energy we'll be losing with electricity from sources other than coal, we'd better get innovating in a big way, because the curves from PV and wind aren't going to come anywhere near the probable depletion curve at the rate we're going."
With innovation, as with simple capital projects, we face a timeline problem. Ideas take time to implement and more time for the implementations to have an impact. Even if you take the cornucopian view that we're generating all the good ideas we need right now, it will still take time to put them into practice.
All the post-peak decline models that seem realistic to me say we have until 2020 or so before things get really crunchy. That means we have 15 years to hatch our bright ideas, transform them into technology, cost-engineer them so that people other than Bill Gates will benefit, and diffuse them into the economy. All in an environment of ever-tightening energy supplies and increasing geopolitical disruptions.
Faced with that, I'm inclined to say that what we have right now is all we're going to get in the near term. To paraphrase Disgraced Donald, we will to go to war with the innovations we have, rather than the innovations we want or wish we had...
model of filling the global post-peak oil shortfall with electricity
Does your model also adjust for creating H-C chains to ack as a feedstock for all the stuff 'we' are used to having?
we'd better get innovating in a big way,
One minor problem - any energetic source used to power some form of 'electricity harvest' has the potential of being used as a bomb. So if 'we' create a "Mr. Fusion", such a device strikes me as a tool for destruction. Given how well humans treat other humans, Getting what one wishes for might be bad for habitation on the planet or the planet itself.