Your Neighbor's Saving Energy; Why Aren't You?

We all know carpooling is good for the Earth. So highway departments build high-occupancy vehicle lanes and companies offer prime parking spaces for employees who share rides.

But carpooling is unlikely to save the environment. It's too hard.

So say scientists who have studied how people confront environmental and energy challenges. Carpooling, they say, has low "plasticity" -- that is, people are unwilling to do it -- so its "reasonably achievable emissions reductions" are low, as well.

Unfortunately, that is not how U.S. policymakers see it.

"We tend to fund efforts that appear to have, on the surface, the greatest potential emissions reductions," said Mike Vandenbergh, director of Vanderbilt University's Climate Change Research Network. "A real value is in looking not just at potential emissions reductions, but also at plasticity. Because otherwise, you'll be frustrated."

This year's Petroleum Geology Conference in London included the following item on the agenda:

Peak Oil: Advancing the topical debate over the timing of peak oil & gas

The aim of the Geological Society's Peak Oil evening meeting is to further discuss and debate the timing and impact of Peak Oil & Gas. Have we become so efficient at exploring and producing petroleum resources that we are we already there as Colin Campbell (ASPO) would argue? Or will technology solutions and a move to more unconventional deposits save the day as Mike Daly (BP) and Glen Cayley (Shell) would suggest? And let's not forget gas. Malcolm Brown (BG Group) sees a longer future for gas but will the progressive use of gas as a substitute for oil hasten its decline? Lots of questions, but do we really have the answers? Come along to the Geological Society . . . and join in the debate. Our four invited speakers will present their case, to be followed by a panel discussion.

The debate took place in the plenary session, with a change in speakers from the original announcement. BP chief geologist David Jenkins argued for the motion that peak oil is "no longer a concern," and Jeremy Leggett argued against, incorporating the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security conclusions into his case. At the end of the debate, approximately five hundred oil-industry geologists voted. Only about a third voted in favor of the motion "Peak oil is no longer a concern." The debate has been written up in November's issue of Petroleum Review.

In this post, I ask Jeremy Leggett a few questions about how he interprets his experience.

End Of Cheap Oil, End Of Road For Ruinous Lifestyle

"Every serious discussion of the environment ... is ultimately about oil, whether it specifically mentions oil or not," Owen writes. The explosive growth and general prosperity of the past century have been made possible by the "prodigious abundance" of oil; the problems of the coming century will involve "oil's increasing scarcity and cost."

Owen is not a crank or true believer about peak oil; he reports that the decline of oil production has been predicted for nearly a century. He looks at what we know for sure: However much oil is left, it's being used up at a rate of about 350 billion gallons a day; it's getting more expensive to produce; and demand is growing as China and India push ahead to repeat America's mistakes.

About two-thirds of all the oil produced in the U.S. and Canada goes to transportation, mainly cars, "a use for which there is currently no attractive fuel substitute."

And it's not just the Hummer in the driveway, Owen observes, it's everything the Hummer makes possible — sprawl and its duplication of the built environment, oversized houses and irrigated lawns, added roads, costly extension of the power grid, 100-mile commutes, etc.

This whole way of life is dependent on cheap oil. Sooner or later, cheap oil will be over. Then what?

Brisbane Times - Gasification project pilots cleaner coal energy

Cougar Energy is developing an underground coal gasification (UCG) project 10km south of Kingaroy, in southern Queensland.

UCG is the process of extracting coal from the ground through its transformation into a combustible gas for power generation. It can also be used in the production of diesel, fertilisers or chemicals.

Cougar managing director Dr Len Walker says that creating UCG syngas from underground coal seams - a technology originally developed in the former Soviet Union - produces lower emissions than black coal and is estimated to be up to 50 per cent cheaper than natural gas.

The company's manager-UCG projects John Henderson says UCG syngas is also an efficient fuel, with 75 per cent of the energy content of coal being retrieved in the UCG process, compared with only five per cent in the coal seam gas process.

Otago Daily Times - Energy planning

If there is to be one critically advantageous long-term outcome from the Environment Court's rejection of the Project Hayes wind farm it should be that the nation's energy planners - including the present Government - will be compelled, finally, to confront the need to give far more weight to size and proximity of generation facilities to the major electricity markets, particularly in the top half of the North Island.