"This week everybody seems to acknowledge PO. Even the petroleum exploration association.."

Unfortunately yet again Tony Hayward (CEO of BP) repeats the mantra that "where markets are allowed to work, they do generate the investment required". In other words don't put any restrictions or taxes on us.

He says "Proved reserves for oil are sufficient to meet current production for 42 years." As we know most of these reserves have not been independently audited and are state secrets in several countries, e.g. Saudi. The key point (as we and he know) is not the size of the reserves but the flow rate and he carefully avoids this.

We urgently need to reduce our CO2 emissions, see a great new video at
http://www.youtube.com/homeproject

As pointed out in earlier TOD articles Australia has huge energy resources in almost everything except oil. Relative to other countries that should lessen the impact.

Not really. Peak oil is a liquids crisis. And our cities are much more vulnerable than European cities, for example. Together with the need to reduce CO2 emissions, however, it will quickly turn into a clean primary energy crisis. So we cannot return to coal as an energy source for electric cars. Compressed natural gas is a solution but it is not pro-actively being implemented BECAUSE OF THE VERY PEAK OIL DENIAL MODE OF THE STATE AND FEDERAL GOVERNMENTS.

Priority will be to convert buses and trucks to CNG, especially for food transport. In any case we don't even have enough licensed gas mechanics to do CNG conversions for millions of cars in a couple of years.

Bio-diesel must be used in agriculture itself, if energy efficiency is high enough.

I have mentioned this here several times because the simultaneous arrival of climate change events make peak oil so much more challenging:

The Arctic summer sea ice extent curve is just going along the 2007 minimum curve
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

Tipping elements in the Earth's climate system
PNAS
"We conclude that the greatest (and clearest) threat is to the Arctic with summer sea-ice loss likely to occur long before (and potentially contribute to) GIS [Greenland Ice Sheet] melt. Tipping elements in the tropics, the boreal zone, and West Antarctica are surrounded by large uncertainty and, given their potential sensitivity, constitute candidates for surprising society"
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2538841

Dr. Wieslaw Maslowki predicted the Arctic to be ice free in summer 2013, at which point the whole weather on the Northern hemisphere will change

State of the Arctic sea ice
http://www.nwc.navy.mil/cnws/wardept/documents/State%20of%20Arctic%20Sea%20Ice%20(NPS).pdf

This may coincide with some serious trouble in the Middle East.

These are the plans of the Federal Governmentand: (I have at the same time inserted some serious questions about this very doubtful strategy)

Coal-to-liquids demonstration plant opens
Media Statement - 22nd April 2009
http://www.alp.org.au/media/0409/msrese220.php

" Linc Energy's demonstration plant near Chinchilla in Queensland is producing clean synthetic diesel and jet fuel from gas sourced from deep underground coal reserves. First production was achieved on 14 October 2008."

Question 1: How much diesel and jet fuel was produced (in barrels/day) since October last year and what were the test results when using these fuels? What were the costs in $/ltr? Did the Federal Government subsidise the demonstration plant?

Minister Ferguson said: " Australia is coal and gas rich, with hundreds of years of reserves. Technologies that convert coal and gas to ultra-clean diesel and jet fuel have the potential to replace Australia's declining oil reserves and make us self-sufficient in liquid transport fuels once again."

Question 2: How can this demo plant be scaled up? Which capacities are planned in which projects, where and by which companies? Who will finance such projects? What is the rate of decline in Australian oil fields per annum and how many CTL plants have to be built in which timeframe in order to support the Minister's statement? In which year will such self-suffiency be achieved? Suppose there were diesel shortages in 2-3 years, would there be a CTL plant ready to fill the gap?

Minister Ferguson said: "This technology unlocks energy from Australia's significant stranded and uneconomic coal reserves and has the potential to dramatically reduce Australia's dependence upon imported oil and refined products."

Question 3: How many CTL plants at which capacity have to be built to replace oil imports?

"Not only could this technology increase Australia's energy security, it produces environmentally friendly fuels containing almost zero sulphur and no aromatics and has a carbon footprint comparable with the production of conventional fuels."

Question 4: Burning synthetic fuels will release the same amount of CO2 as fuels refined from conventional oil. So if all oil is replaced by synthetic fuels as claimed above, emissions will not go down and the fuel is actually not clean from the point of view of carbon emissions, even if all CO2 from the UCG process is captured and sequestered.

"Similarly, gas-to-liquids could open up new opportunities for development of Australia's vast northwest gas resources and east coast coal seam methane resources, complementing the potential of Australia's well-established LNG industry."

Question: Why is the coal seam gas not used directly as transport fuel (compressed natural gas) instead of exporting it as LNG?

I think Aleklett is right that battery cars won't suit much of Australia.

They won't suit long-haul trips, but since the vast majority of Australians live in the major cities and towns, and have a daily round-trip of about 60km, EVs are actually well-suited. Even then, the vast majority of actual trips (not distance) is for trips of 5km or less, which suits bicycles (elec. assisted or not) perfectly.

For long-haul trips, maybe we'll just have to get the train (a far more civilised way to travel than air, fwthiw), or go without.