Efficiency Policy, Jevon’s Paradox, and the “Shadow” Rebound Effect
Posted by Prof. Goose on April 26, 2007 - 10:36am
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: efficiency, jevons paradox, rebound effect [list all tags]
This is a guest post by Jeff Vail.
Is the push for greater energy efficiency a good policy choice to address energy scarcity after Peak Oil? Here’s a bold answer: NO, at least not in a vacuum. Efficiency is not a standalone solution, but part of the much more complex problem of reducing total energy consumption that must address Jevon’s Paradox and the Rebound Effect.
Jevon’s Paradox tells us that when we increase the efficiency of the use of a resource, we initially decrease the demand for that resource, but that ultimately this lower demand reduces price, which causes a “rebound” of increasing demand. When applied specifically to energy efficiency, this is commonly referred to as the “Rebound Effect.”
Here’s a real-world example. Let’s magically double the average fuel economy of America’s cars and trucks. Gasoline demand would drop immediately by 50%. This would affect the supply-demand equilibrium of gasoline, reducing its price significantly. However, with dramatically lower gas prices, many people would choose to drive more than they had in the past—this is the “rebound,” where some of the energy savings provided by gains in efficiency are negated by the corresponding effect on energy prices. Clearly, a 50% drop in gas prices won’t result in the average American doubling their driving, as would be required to completely negate the efficiency gains in this scenario. Even if gas was free, there would be some limit to how much we would drive. So this “rebound effect” doesn’t negate the entirety of energy savings due to efficiency. Studies suggest that it erases perhaps 10%-30% of the gains.
If Jevon’s Paradox, via the “rebound effect,” only negates 10%-30% of gains from improved efficiency, then efficiency appears to be a very viable policy option to reduce energy consumption, right? Not so fast. Jevon’s Paradox and the Rebound Effect are models that create snapshots in time of the operation of a highly complex system—it is important that we approach this problem with the entire system in mind. Consider the cascading effects in the energy-consumer system: when you save energy because of improved efficiency, you also save money. What do you do with that money? Chances are that most or all of it is spent on goods and services, and that these reflect energy consumption in some form. Whether you spend your savings on a trip to Hawaii, a new coffee table, or merely a plastic bauble, that expenditure reflects energy consumption. The exact form of energy consumed, as well as the relative quantity of energy consumed compared to energy initially saved via an improvement in efficiency is difficult to quantify, but in aggregate these two may be roughly equal. This is the “shadow” rebound effect. The “direct” rebound effect—that is, the increase in consumption of the same energy resource through the same process that experiences an improvement in efficiency—may be only 10%-30%, but it is possible that the true rebound effect approaches 100% when this “shadow” is accounted for.
Does this mean that efficiency is an invalid policy choice? No: true conservation, the goal of efficiency policy, can be achieved, but this represents a far more challenging policy dilemma. It is relatively simple, for example, to legislate higher CAFE standards. But what happens with the money saved on gasoline? It is quite a policy challenge to ensure that the energy saved by CAFE changes doesn’t simply go to another use of energy. One solution—the one that I am proposing—is that monetary savings from efficiency legislation is offset by an energy tax that is then invested in a manner that minimizes its energy consumption. Options for this offset fund reducing existing spending deficits, encouraging social pressure for absolute conservation, or my personal choice, funding efforts to design for quality of life using less energy—what I have called the Design Imperative. But selling this policy combination—CAFE increases paired with gas tax increases, for example—is a much more difficult task.
My intent is not to discourage the push for energy efficiency—quite the opposite: energy efficiency is a key part of addressing the challenges posed by Peak Oil, but ONLY if it is paired with measures to address both the direct and shadow rebound effects. There are valid arguments to focus on efficiency first, because it takes time to develop the technologies that create efficient energy use. However, we must be careful not to present efficiency as a standalone panacea, but rather to spur debate of systemic solutions of which efficiency is a key part.
**Thanks to Bart Anderson from EnergyBulletin for his critique of a draft of this essay.
I have spent 10 seconds considering the solution to the "rebound effect", so forgive me if there are multiple holes in my argument.
Increased efficiency can be driven by taxing consumption of the efficiency target, in this case energy. The tax should be rise year on year to sustain the efficiency drive, thus not adding to consumer spending liquidity
The tax should be hypothecated with yields being directly invested into sustainable renewable energy schemes (ie not ethanol).
It's a non-starter in the US since not a single politician has the gumption to entertain such a tax, and would not be voted in if they did.
In my opinion, the only thing that GW Bush could do to somewhat alleviate his (non-negotiable) place in the Presidential Hall of Infamy would be to exercise his veto to implement a gasoline tax now.... it won't happen
I think you point to some very valid political difficulties in getting any kind of 'energy tax' passed by the US Congress--though I still think there may be enough support to make it happen. It IS, however, already happening, or quite likely to happen, in many individual states, Europe, etc. The real problem that I think the "shadow rebound effect" concept raises, however, is what to do with the the funds raised by that energy tax. If the goal of the energy tax is to subsidize one form of energy use over another, to redistribute income, or to fund some building project, then it seems valid to me. However, if the goal is to reduce overall energy use, then it must be spent with great care (or not spent at all--reduce deficit spending, for example).
The problem is essentially the problem of the velocity of money. When a government spends the tax revenue raised by an energy tax, they create (roughly) the equivalent velocity of money in the economy as would the consumer spending that money--either way it leads to energy consumption, regardless of whether one purchases products or services. The result is that it doesn't lead to energy conservation, just redistribution of energy consumption.
Spending money on a truly sustainable, renewable energy scheme will result in energy consumption (required to build the scheme, plus the resultant velocity of money bouncing through the broader economy), but it will lead to reduced non-renewable energy consumption in the long run (assuming the EROEI is actually greater then 1:1 after the bootstrap effect is taken into account). So this is probably a good solution, though perhaps politically impractical as you mentioned. Other notions, such as using the gas tax to fund road construction, only redistribute our energy consumption, and don't conserve it, due to the "shadow rebound effect."
Jeff,
You phrase the question... Is the push for greater energy efficiency a good policy choice to address energy scarcity AFTER Peak Oil?
The push for greater energy efficiency may have had a much more profound impact before PO, and much less of an effect after PO.
Consider some of the countries that end up in a bidding war for oil once shortages develop- Japan, China, U.S., and European countries.
Since the economies, agriculture, and stability of these countries depend on oil- they will use any advantage possible to obtain oil.
AFTER PO is widely recognized, it would be in the best interests of the other bidders for global oil, for the dollar to collapse in value. This could easily be accomplished by Asian countries selling bonds, and refusing to buy more.
The U.S. is so much more dependent on foreign financing, that in a Post PO (or PO aware) world, structural change will become tremendously more difficult as we can no longer borrow at reasonable interest rates to finance mega-projects.
Leaving aside the fact that a geologically-limited supply of a product cannot have the sort of rebound consumption effect you're thinking of (it's physically impossible; the only question is how much of what gets made from the fixed supply, and how much is investment vs. immediate consumption), you mistake the role of tax policy in shaping activity.
Behind that claim is two faulty assumptions:
The effect of a stiff fossil-energy (or carbon, or petroleum) tax would be to make the various alternatives (including efficiency) relatively cheaper. People would invest accordingly. Economies of scale would change the economic landscape further away from favoring the now-discouraged commodity.
The outcome of greater efficiency is to encourage two trends:
The whole collapse scenario is predicated upon an inability to maintain production of goods and services. Postulating that greater efficiency in that production will also lead to collapse is just silly.
"You assume that every dollar of products or services embodies the same amount of energy. This is so wrong, it's nearly risible."
I don't think this is wrong at all. It's commonly *assumed* to be wrong, but I have explained at length why I think it is this assumption that is wrong: http://www.jeffvail.net/2006/11/energy-payback-from-photovoltaics.html
I think think the actual mistake is in the two trends that you see as the outcome of greater efficiency:
1. Greater production (work, actually) from existing supply keeping up with declining production. This certainly seems valid for a while. However, there are fixed limits to how efficiently you can use a resource (100% efficiency, which won't be reached). In the end, this becomes an EROEI issue. Is the true, non-bootstrapped EROEI greater than 1? IF so, is it continually increasing? If not, it still runs into diminishing marginal returns and won't "cut it" for a hierarchal society based on growth.
2. More goods and services due to increasing competitiveness of renewables--this, too, runs into the "finite world" issue, and does nothing to address the diminishing marginal returns problem as the ultimate cause of collapse.
I'm not arguing that greater efficiency will lead to collapse per se. What I am arguing is that focusing on greater efficiency without considering the ramifications of efficiency-only policy within the greater system will distract us from addressing the fundamental causes of collapse.
If I hear you right,we need to put a cap on growth or nature will do it for us. We need to put a cap on all sorts of things, including energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, water use, other resource use, mineral use, and population. The economy needs to operate within those constraints.
Efficiency should just be one means to an end, not the objective itself. What has efficiency brought us in the automotive sector? Bigger and more powerful cars that are more efficient. Within the sector itself, I agree that the Paradox is operating quite nicely.
The problem is we always want more and just use efficiency as a way to help get us there. Once we set a goal for the same or less, solutions begin to present themselves.
You only analyzed photovoltaics, which have the lowest EROEI of all the options. Among the flaws of your analysis:
Forget PV for a moment. If you can show serious problems with the proposition that a sustainable energy system is impossible in the USA (as an example), I'd like you to go over my "Sustainability" essay and show me exactly where I went wrong. Do note that I assumed a lot less liquid-fuel production than the maximum possible (I devoted about 2/3 of the carbon for sequestration), and even if technologies like the DCFC turn out to be duds there are backup paths which will yield a European-level energy consumption.
Let's suppose that I put a wind turbine on a 1/4 acre pad at the edge of a cornfield. This is a 126 meter diameter rotor, spaced 4 diameters on-center crosswind and 10 diameters downwind to the next machine. Total land area blanked by the turbine is 63.5 ha (157 acres). Total blade weight is ~54 tonnes, of which perhaps half is derived from resins (the other half is glass fiber). Assume fatigue lifetime of 20 years.
If 80% of that land is cropped in maize every other year at 150 bu/ac/yr grain and 2.5t/ac/yr stover, the land will produce 157 t/yr of stover. If the stover can be converted to e.g. bio-oil at 70% mass-efficiency and the bio-oil to resins at 20% efficiency, each year's stover can make 22 tons of resin. This compares favorably with the 27 tons of resin required to replace the rotor after 20 years (1.35 t/yr).
This is a recipe for rapidly increasing production (80%/year growth potential) from renewable supplies. It would be able to yield both food and energy with more than 90% of the non-food products (both energy and chemicals) available for other consumption. In short, it grows like a plant.
Even 14% efficiency from biomass to a resin product seems to be no obstacle to rapid growth. The key is that there is some efficiency level where the cost of renewable material and energy inputs stops being a limiting factor on system growth.
As for keeping up with declining production, let's assume a 2%/year compounded decline in fossil-fired electric generation (2005 figure: ~2000 billion kWh/year) and a 40%/year compounded increased in wind generation (14.6 billion kWh/year in 2005). The fossil-fired decline runs about 40 billion kWh/year/year, while the wind generation increases about 4 billion kWh/year in 2005, 8 billion kWh/year in 2007, and 32 billion kWh/year in 2011. The increase in wind exceeds the decline in fossil in 2012, and then it's uphill until the inflection point of the logistic curve is reached — perhaps another decade.
Annual wind energy potential from the continental 48 states is estimated at about 1.2 terawatts average (~10,000 billion kWh/year) from the continent, and about 900 gigawatts (~7500 billion kWh/year) from the continental shelves. This is sufficient to supply all current end-use energy consumption.
Please show me where those limits are in a renewable-energy scenario (don't forget to assume 25%-efficient PV at $1/watt within the next 20 years), and why they'd lead to a collapse instead of a "climax forest" scenario.
Ris·i·ble /ˈrɪzəbəl/ Pronunciation[riz-uh-buhl]
–adjective
1. causing or capable of causing laughter; laughable; ludicrous.
2. having the ability, disposition, or readiness to laugh.
3. pertaining to or connected with laughing.
4. cant of the orotund flatus
Who are you to decide how this planet puts to best 'effect' it's biomass? Sorry poet, but I find that sort of thinking the reason we are in this sorry state. We tear up the floor boards of our house in order to heat it.
When I said "the world", I meant the human portion thereof. If we're producing stalks, leaves, trimmings, slash, pulp and other material that we essentially throw away, we might as well change our methods to get the most out of them.
While the analysis in the link was aimed at PV, the relevant point here is that it lays out a methodology for calculating EROEI--a "price-estimated EROEI." I state quite clearly that it is an imperfect methodology, just one that I think is better than current methodologies, which ignore a huge percentage of energy inputs to a given product.
The truly laughable notion is your assertion that wind has an EROEI of 80:1. That's greater than any other form of electricity generation--If there is so much wind potential, I wonder why we don't rely primarily on wind in this country? How much do you have personally invested in wind developments?
The bottom line is that, even if we accept your wildly optimistic projections for wind and other renewable energy production, this does nothing to address the fact that we have an economy predicated upon continual growth situated on a finite planet. But advocating wind energy is where you want to place your effort, more power to you...
Beyoned energy returns of 40 or 50 it just doesn't matter. First your analysis becomes sensitive to rather small things so you can start fudging the numbers without really lying, so either hydro or nuclear or wind have the highest energy return depending on which day of the week it is.
Second, and this has been hammered home many times, energy return isn't the sole determinant of economic competitiveness of electricity generation. For example, if wind had twice or three times the energy payback it would still require quite a bit of excess capital for dealing with intermittency, from HVDC lines routing between different generating regions to pumped hydro storage.
Sure this is something we'll have to deal with... in several centuries. We aren't close to tapping out the energy potential of the solar flux or the radiative capacity of earth of roughly 10^16 watts. One might reasonably surmise that we'll address this by moving a substantial amount of our industry off planet by then.
If you can't tell me what's wrong with the source, what do you have to argue with? I admit that 80:1 is extreme, but other sources claim EROI of 17-39.
Why shouldn't it be? It's got zero energy expenditure per unit of "fuel".
Rural areas once did, until the REA brought grid power to most of the nation and destroyed the market for wind turbines. Note that the wind industry was put out of business by a government-subsidized competitor.
I don't know. Most of my money is in mutual funds, and I have no idea what their particular investments are.
Which means the oil situation (heck, everything about fossil fuels) is irrelevant to your thesis, so why do you bother to post on this site?
In closing, an analogy: An individual shark lives based on continual growth in a finite ocean. Sharks have been around for about 420 million years.
If energy production stays constant or even becommes larger but shifts from oil, natural gas and coal to nuclear power, biomass, hydro, wind power, etc we get a solution to the peak oil problem. Peak oil is not about absolute level of energy production, its about fossil fuel.
Combine that with savings and we get the best possible response.
And if the poorer regions in the world developes faster then the rich regions as is happening via globalisation we get a future that is very humane. Of course as long as we dont fuck up in the investments, savings and statemanship areas and get a fight over dwindling resources.
Localy I am advocating large investments in efficiency and production to get to live in a country that can outbid most other regions and export lots and lots of non oil based and CO2 neutral resources that the rest of the world needs.
Consider some semi-real life examples.
Let's assume a family of four with more money than brains, and they each have a H2 Hummer, driving 10,000 miles per year. Yahoo puts the total cost per mile at about $1.50/mile (inclusive of depreciation + maintenance + insurance + fuel). Total cost per year about $60,000.
Yahoo also puts the cost of driving a Civic at about 50 cents per mile, at 10,000 miles year year.
These cost estimates were probably made at about $2.50 per gallon.
Let's assume that gasoline goes to $5.00. The combination of vastly higher deprecation on the Hummers and higher fuel prices would probably push the cost per mile to somewhere north of $2.00/mile. The Civic would probably go to about 60 cents per mile.
Assuming that that our family of four magically got rid of the four Hummers and acquired four Civics, a big assumption, their total cost of driving 40,000 miles per year would go from $80,000 to $24,000 (all at $5 gasoline). Even if we compared the annual cost of four Hummers at $2.50 gasoline ($60,000) to the cost of four Civics at $5.00 gasoline ($24,000) they would be way ahead.
IMO, what we need are permanently higher energy consumption taxes, offset by cutting or eliminating the Payroll Tax.
Westexas: I agree with your recommendation to raise energy taxes and negate the impact on poor and middle class by using them to replace the regressive payroll tax. My point here is this: let's not justify this by arguing that it will save energy. That family of 4 will save $56,000 a year. My guess is that they won't stuff it in a mattress--they'll spend it at Wal-mart, or to go to Hawaii, or other things that will use an equivalent amount of energy when one accounts for the total effect of that spending rippling through the economy. This tax MAY redistribute some of that energy consumption away from liquid fuels and toward other (coal, nuclear) sources, temporarily alleviating the liquid fuels crunch, but the result may actually be greater GHG emissions. At the least, it will give us a false sense that we, as a nation, are really doing something to address our overal energy consumption, and that may prove to be the most damaging effect when it comes to a real, "total energy" crunch--the populace may see this as "the boy who cried wolf."
That's why I suggested hypthecation of the tax to be spend on sustainable renewable energy projects (wind, solar, pump storage, Engineer Poet schemes http://ergosphere.blogspot.com/2006/11/sustainability-energy-independenc..., etc)
I agree. I have forgotten the exact numbers, but as our fuel efficiency in the US has climbed, total miles driven have climbed even faster.
You can see it with the example I cited. For the $60,000 that the family was spending on four Hummers driven 10,000 miles per year per vehicle (at $2.50 per gallon), they could pay for 10 Civics driving 10,000 miles per year per car, even at $5 gasoline.
I've put it this way: "We have to kill consumption before consumption kills us."
So at the end of the day with our current economic system your only going to really save energy when its not increasing.
This makes sense. My opinion is our current economic system cannot be retrofitted to work in a energy constrained world since the whole system is designed to optimize consumption.
I don't see band aids regardless of their nature is effective.
The only way out is to make holding money more valuable then spending it which mean relentless real monetary deflation and resource price inflation. The price of finished goods and services would be balanced on the two apposing trends.
This means going back to a world with little credit available. If you don't deflate in a resource constrained world you tend towards hyperinflation and currency collapse.
Resource price inflation tends to make holding the resource more valuable while monetary deflation causes the opposite.
The outcome of the two conditions is that efficiency is the real wealth. Since using less resources saves money and monetary deflation makes saving this money a good bet.
The real economy (physical goods) will shrink to probably a tenth of what we have today if that excluding base food production. Food would make a large part of the total economy at that point say 50%. Services based on renewable resources or knowledge would be the growth area along with recycling and production of longer lasting repairable goods.
This is not the world we live in now. My guess is hyperinflation before we flip to a sustainable economic model but we won't be able to transition our current one.
Sure what you say is true about a gasoline/diesel tax, but if you want to reduce GHG emissions you might as well just tax GHG emissions. Since TOD is focussed on a looming liquid fuel crisis, we're talking about a liquid fuel tax. (Personally, I'd rather tax liquid fuel use via a GHG emission tax.)
I used to be big on Jevon's Paradox, but then I tried to apply it to a reduction in tobacco use via a tobacco tax.
As the price of energy increases along with the cost of all goods and services, the amount of disposable income will decrease. The Hummer family may spend the savings at Wal-Mart, but the average family will consume less energy because they can't afford anything but the necessities.
And if that (I'm assuming lower working class family of four) in the civic can't pony up that extra 10 cents then they will have the opportunity to do that part of the ride on shanks mare and enjoy that added benefit: robust peasant vigor and thereby reduced health costs. Of course they will likely lose their jobs for tardiness and as well lose those fantastically reduced payroll taxes which I imagine would be a lot along the lines of the last tax 'cuts' for the insolvent. %;-) = 0
LESS - that's the answer.
Fat chance.
cfm in Gray, ME
'Efficiency is not a standalone solution, but part of the much more complex problem of reducing total energy consumption' -
This was also written in 30 seconds, but efficiency leading to the reduction of consumption is a standalone solution, when so defined.
The problem is the difference between absolute values, like the energy needed for industrial processes such as melting metal or silica, advances in technology like food preservation such as freezing or canning, and the energy we consume for our own comfort - whether heated/cooled houses, or entertainment.
I don't think the problem is as much Jevon's Paradow, as something else - what is the minimal amount of energy required to keep an industrial society functional? The amount required for agricultural societies can be quantified in a number of ways (sunlight for crops, workers required for harvesting, energy required in building storage for surpluses, etc.) based on historical and ongoing experience - the minimum standards for industrial society are still unknown.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_society
The minimums I get from this limited definition are:
1. mass production
2. minimal population involved in agriculture
1 might possibly be preserved (after all, the English had to shut down the Indian cloth manufactures to protect their own factories), but 2 is largely linked with the fossil free lunch of which we are nearing the dessert.
I think it is possible to have sustainable agriculture that requires 1/2 or 1/3 of the population, using todays knowledge and a carte blanche to set up social experiments. If the climate doesn't go haywire..
Ridiculous. Agricultural production will simply outbid synthetic oil for production; Even at $10.00 per gallon its cheaper than people.
Even if magic space bats make oil burning impossible, technology is whats advanced, not mere advent of fossil fuel... You'll have beasts of burden pulling modern machines in the fields before you have people reduced to pre-industrial working conditions full circle.
Put the rest of the pieces together, Dezakin. Who is going to buy this expensive food? How are they going to pay for it? What about those that cannot afford this food? Are they supposed to just crawl off in a corner and quietly die to appease you?
Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
People, as they allways have. They'll pay for it with labor only people can do, which isn't agricultural farming. It might be working on machines that assemble sneakers, answering telephones, or performing menial labor for the landowners. But they wont have any value as farm labor just because they wont be nearly as productive as machines and will be much more expensive.
In this century, the only reason why people cant afford food is politics.
Build the strawman, twit.
Ah, the ever faithful ad hominem attack. Got anything more constructure to say?
In a world of reduced petroleum flows, what energy source is going to keep all these people working to produce widgets (that strain other resources) to be consumed so that they can buy this more expensive food, Dezakin? I am really interested in an answer, if you have one.
Ghawar Is Dying
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Dr. Albert Bartlett
If you're building strawmen, its just about as constructive. In your protests you're not only being a twit but a hypocrit.
No you aren't. They've been discussed at length many times. In the short run there's tar sands, heavy oils and the other unconventionals. In the medium term theres coal liquefaction and the like. In the long run theres nuclear power, wind, and solar. When you need liquid fuel its only a matter of chemistry and energy, and for the processes that absolutely need it the premium wont be excessive.
Ah, the ever faithful ad hominem attack.
There are indeed some impolite people here at TOD - but thankfully not many.
It's a shame that those who get a thrill from being abusive don't stay over at peakoil.com
Dezakin, While visiting a friend in the Dominican Republic I noticed he had 10 Haitian workers clearing land with machetes. I asked why didn't he get a small tractor and reduce his labor cost. He told me to do the math. The total cost of all his workers was $60 per day. I ran the numbers and there was no way he would be better off with a machine. Labor is cheap and machines there are expensive to buy operate and maintain.. In my opinion there are two errors in the assumptions you make dismissing agricultural manual labor after peak oil. The cost to manufacture, maintain, and operate those machines will rise dramatically. The cost of manual labor will drop dramatically.
Just look to the third world to get a preview of a post peak world. You will not make accurate prognostications relating to the present.
Hi Dez,
Love your opinion, I live on a large city lot 10,000 sq ft. and on that lot produce almost all of three adults green groceries (fruit and vegetables)in my spare moments. If you count my labour at a current subsistence level of 12 to 15 dollars I break even. I do it mainly for the organic benefit presently. Anyway love your opinion but don't think too highly of how you arrived at it ....by airplane I would assume.
Anyone want to talk about rerouting the energy flow via a horribly oppressive luxury tax along with a subsidy for progressive forms of transportation?
You're comparing your cost of production against a mechanized producer? No.
Dezakin,
Apologies, that reply directed to you was meant for treeman.
Your probably right short term but I think longer term the shift will be away from manual labor.
First the farmer in your story is considering buying a tractor the American way instead if he joined a co-op that had one or two tractors he could easily schedule the time to use it and come out ahead of using manual labor. Or higher a private tractor owner who could come in cheaper.
Next consider the tractor itself they should be maintenance free and practically bullet proof its a failure of engineering that they are not. Tractors are primarily designed for the wealthy markets and maintenance is a big part of the revenue flow so their is a definite balance between costs/parts etc thats maintained post peak I'm sure the momentum would move towards equipment that never breaks down and if it does it can be repaired.
So I think looking at how the third world does things today with considering the fact that they are not actually supported in their use of technology is not a correct approach either. Once you consider post peak the only market for technology will be the third world (All countries will be significantly third world) then we will see engineering begin to address their needs.
My idea of a post peak tractor is one with the following parts.
1.) Wheels can be rebuilt like advanced retreads.
2.) Engine is a solid oxide fuel cell that can handle
liquids and compressed gases with potentially a thermal
unit for solid materials either mounted or near by.
Battery pack option also.
The power motor is a rebuildable brushless motor.
3.) Gears should be replaced with fluid based converters
get rid of metal gears.
Don't know if this is possible but and google for this post I found out that the lowly o-ring was not invented until 1937 so I suspect that we can and will create tractors that can replace human labor post peak one thats the only market.
http://www.strategy-business.com/press/article/06403?gko=8b829-1876-2060...