The Oil Drum

But can a utility company make money distributing such a small power load to lots of people over a vast spiderweb ?

I was told, some years ago, that providing service (excluding billing) cost the utility about $9/month/customer in an urban environment.  Adjust for inflation, and this might be $12/month for the first kWh.

OTOH, cooling in a super efficient refrigerator* can be done daily and a small PV (perhaps w/o batteries) can do the trick to keep one's beer cold and milk fresh.

*Take a chest freezer, with top opening and very good insulation and set the thermostat at +2 C/35.6 F.  About 100 kWh/year.  Saw an Australian example on-line.

There are, apparently, a lot of existing technologies that can be used to distribute and condition power much more effectively and reliably than our current systems do (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.07/juice.html). However, these require an up-front investment and continuous reinvestment, which our deregulated energy companies are disinclined to do; they are busier watching quarterly profit-and-loss statements than figuring out how to deliver "nine-nines" (99.9999999) reliability.

As Amory Lovins points out, the end use is what matters, and focusing on end-use efficiency is a much better post-peak strategy than trying to push more energy into a system with huge transmission losses and inefficiencies. I just bought some more compact fluorescent bulbs to replace the last incandescent bulbs (I wonder why they are still being sold!); if they (as advertised) consume a quarter the electricity of the equivalent incandescent, then I can decrease my electrical consumption for lighting by 75% with no loss of amenity. And since there are are such huge losses in electrical generation and transmission, increasing efficiency at the point of use translates into huge "upstream" savings.

I was reminded of this by Tainter's comments at the "Peak Oil and the Environment" conference; I transcribed a section that caught my attention:

...[A high-gain system] yields high return on effort, and is typically so large as to seem inexhaustible. There is little incentive to conserve, and it would be counter-productive to do so. The resource is used profligately. And so the pesticide sellers treat the farmers the way we treat pools of petroleum; their strategy is to use and discard. In contrast, the resources in low-gain systems are scarce, and must be used conservatively. There is pressure for efficiency. Low-gain systems are often paradoxically impressive for their complexity of organization. The reason is that each unit of production in a low-gain system generates only a small surplus. To accomplish work, these small surpluses have to be aggregated.  This requires many channels to transmit the surplus energy, and correspondingly complex organization.

When I read Tainter's work, I wonder whether he distinguishes between "complex" and "complicated" systems. A number of system theorists do:

A complex system is a system with a large number of elements, building blocks or agents, capable of interacting with each other and with their environment. The interaction between elements may occur only with immediate neighbors or with distant ones; the agents can be all identical or different; they may move in space or occupy fixed positions, and can be in one state or multiple states. The common characteristic of all complex systems is that they display organization without any external organizing principle being applied. In the most elaborate examples the agents can learn from past history and modify their states accordingly. Adaptability and robustness is often the byproduct. Part of the system may be altered and the system may still be able to function.

...

What is complex and how does it differ from the merely complicated?

The most elaborate mechanical watches are called très compliqué. They are, as their French name implies, complicated. A Star Caliber Patek Phillipe has 103 pieces. A Boeing 747-400 has, excluding fasteners, 3x106 parts. In complicated systems parts have to work in unison to accomplish a function. One key defect (in one of the many critical parts) brings the entire system to a halt. This is why redundancy is built into designs when system failure is not an option (e.g. a nuclear submarine).

The stock market, a termite colony, cities, or the human brain, are complex. The number of parts, e.g. the number of termites in a colony, is not the critical issue. The key characteristic is adaptability. The systems respond to external conditions. A food source is obstructed and an ant colony finds a way to go around the object; a few species become extinct and ecosystems manage to adapt.

(Northwestern Institute of Complex Systems)

It seems that there are circumstances in which being more complicated -- i.e. the global system of oilfields, pipelines, terminals, tankers, refineries, etc. -- brings diminishing returns, but where greater complexity could create greater adaptability and robustness, i.e. dispersed generation by a great number of simple and solid-state renewable energy sources, networked through a super-reliable and efficient electrical grid.

I recommend Kevin Kelley's Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic Work as a good introduction to how complex systems work. On the darker side, the Global Guerillas site explores how complicated systems are vulnerable to deliberate infrastructure distruption.

I don't have any links, which is why I said it was my impression. I did try a bunch of sources but could get good data.

I do know that across Asia, the region that I live in, things are getting better.

I don't think that says anything about peak oil one way or the other. Natural gas shortages should limit generation at some point, but I have seen no indication of that happening. Peak oil (or even expensive energy) reducing government's ability to maintain infrastructure also does not appear to be a factor.

I am VERY unsure that exploitable renewable resource base follows the same distribution as oil & gas fields; and even less sure that the forces for exploitation follow the same curves.  Solar PV may show a step function if a much better cell is invented, for example.

Not that they are useless, but no panacea for electricity... except maybe solar with decent technology.

Brief example:  If I owned an ice-cube company in a hurricane prone area, or in Phx, I would be begging my banker to loan me the money for gensets and big water storage tanks.  Otherwise, when the local grid is disrupted, instead of making ice and maximizing profits, but most importantly saving lives, the owner is helpless as he just watches his limited JIT inventory melt away or sold off in a panic, with no prospect of making more.  Deaths soon follow.

Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

It would certainly produce some significant problems if 7% of generating capacity disappeared overnight.  Even then, however, grid management authorities would have contingency plans to put into effect.  Peak Oil, however, wouldn't mean eliminating that 7% of generating capacity overnight.  Instead, it would get slowly priced out of the market.  The effects of this would depend on whether it was replaced by other sources (e.g. coal, renewables) or whether it wasn't.  In either event, the results would be relatively marginal.

For the overall results of Peak Oil, the effects would be considerably more severe.  They would still, however, be much more manageable than the doomers think.  Certainly, "business as usual" would be impossible.  That much is certain.  The doomers, however, can't seem to conceive of any alternative besides catastrophe.  In reality, there are many other possible outcomes & most of them are a good deal more probable.

First of all, the effects of Peak Oil are going to come on fairly gradually.  I'll grant that there are reasons to be apprehensive about some of the major oil fields that have been pushed really hard with horizontal wells & water injection.  Even if these field collapse in the near future, however, there are the many hundreds of other large fields (not to mention the thousands of smaller ones) which will be depleting at a more moderate rate.  Any steep decline in the next ten years would, therefore, be followed by more gradual decline after that.  This is very important in assessing the speed at which the world will have to adapt.

Second, there are many ways in which oil use can be made more efficient.  This would not run into Jevons' Paradox, because the increased efficiency would be driven by rising prices and, while it would make the higher prices more affordable than they would otherwise be, would be highly unlikely to make it more affordable than before the price rose.

Third, Peak Oil will abolish the wastrel culture (a.k.a. consumerism), though possibly not at first.  It is quite possible that some people will, for example, continue to drive SUVs out of bravado or as a status symbol ("I'm rich.  Watch me drive my big SUV around.  I light cigars with $20 notes, as well.")  Most people, however, will recognise that spending half your pay packet on petrol is, as we say in Australia, "a mug's game" and adapt their behaviour to the new reality.  SUV sales are already a long way below where they were a year or two ago.  As the price climbs, the shift away from them will accelerate.  In a fairly short period, the accumulated behavioural changes by the majority will lead to a much more censorious attitude to those people who continue to waste the oil that everyone knows will be needed tomorrow.  There will certainly be a lot of pain in the transition, but while extreme examples like Phoenix may very well be abandoned, most other cities will adapt.

Fourth, the political credibility of the established elite in the US will be destroyed totally by Peak Oil.  The space will be cleared for new forces to emerge.  Some will be both crazed & depraved (imagine your favourite radio shock jock as a doomer), but most would embody the humanitarianism that still animates most of the North American people despite the inhumane society in which they live.

Fifth, Peak Oil doesn't equate to Peak Energy.  That will be later.  Peak Oil will result in a lot less geographical mobility, but not a great deal of other sacrifice once the transition is made.  Food production, the favourite topic of the doomers, can be done a lot on a lot less energy intensive basis than currently in the US - & it is, in every other country in the world.  Further, the response to Peak Oil will be the learning experience which will enable humanity to cope with Peak Energy.  We will cope with Peak Energy by developing a society based on sustainable energy sources and keeping our manufacturing activities down to those that satisfy actual needs, rather than thoughtless desires.

Sixth & last, population is not the bogeyman that so many doomers think.  Global population, even at current trends, is scheduled to max out at 9 billion in about 2050.  Birth rates are falling in almost every country and some countries are already in total population decline.  Russia, for example, is in free fall.  So is much of Eastern Europe.  Japan has reached peak population this year and will fall from now on.  The rich industrialised countries, the ones with the greatest per capita oil consumption, will collectively have little or no population increase from here on.  India & China, which are both industrialising at a rate of knots, won't have the same oil consumption because they won't have an oil intensive legacy suburban & industrial structure.

So yes, Bob, we are smarter than yeast.  You're an example.  And, once Peak Oil breaks the spell of consumerism, so will most other people be.

San Francisco's Municipal Railway has five light-rail lines as well.