This is a good summary of Peak Oil, but the impacts of Peak Oil are worse than Mr. Dunlop indicates.

According to energy investment banker Matthew Simmons and most independent analysts, global oil production is now declining, from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time demand will increase 14%.

This is equivalent to a 33% drop in 7 years. No one can reverse this trend, nor can we conserve our way out of this catastrophe. Because the demand for oil is so high, it will always be higher than production; thus the depletion rate will continue until all recoverable oil is extracted.

Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment.

Surviving Peak Oil: We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from "outside," and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.

This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html

I used to live in NH-USA, but moved to a sustainable place. Anyone interested in relocating to a nice, pretty, sustainable area with a good climate and good soil? Email: clifford dot wirth at yahoo dot com or give me a phone call which operates here as my old USA-NH number 603-668-4207. http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/

I think there is little alternative to radical conservation and lifestyle change. Despite empty talk on carbon cutbacks we will try to substitute coal (eg to power desalination) for another decade or so until even that becomes prohibitive. A switch to compressed natural gas for heavy vehicles seems prudent and luckily Australia seems to have several decades gas supply unless it is sold off overseas or squandered on baseload generation. I expect most forms of renewable energy to have trouble scaling up because of their cost and variable output following an era when energy has been ultra cheap and reliable. There won't be hundreds of billions of dollars of capital available for squeaky clean energy sources or huge infrastructure changes. We need to set course for these changes immediately because the pain will only get worse.

The big gorrilla in the tent is not really peak oil or global warming (a.k.a.: climate change for those in deny-all). Peak oil and global warming are only $YMPTOMS of the aformentioned gorrilla.

The big gorrilla is THE DOCTRINE OF PERPETUAL GROWTH of the human population and the world economy on a HOST ORGANISM of limited space and FINITE resources. THE DOCTRINE OF PERPETUAL GROWTH has been synonymous with "progress"... but OLD COYOTE KNOSE that it's really CANCER! Let me emphasize and reiterate the term: CANCER!

Chanting and praying to dead prophets revered in outdated dogma (the bible)... or tax cuts for the rich for the $ake of the other profits will not save humanity (a.k.a.: ewe-man-unkind) from suffering an extinction event. Common sense, however, might give us an esporting chance. We are going to re-evaluate our attitude and relationship with the Earth (the host organism) or we're going to be EXTINCT!

The KNOSE knows that ewe folks out there have less than ten years to get your act together... which means abandoning tribe-all-eeego and outdated religious dogmas (a.k.a.: dog-mess). Ten years!

(hi cliff and tassie)

It's hard to credit that here in Victoria, we are still timidly playing with band-aid solutions for our 19th Century rail network. Jeepers, we ought to be creating a 21st Century rail network, while the sufficiency of liquid fuel puts that task within easy reach.

The "information super highway" is almost too obvious to mention - except we have to repeat the mantra to get it through political-financial-corporate thick skulls. While we're at it, let's send the whole woodpulp-paper cancer the way of the celluloid photograph - and good riddance!

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The geopolitical angle is not so easy to deal with though. I think it's fair to say that any mechanised military force would be scrap iron without abundant fuel.

By the rules of this century old game, the war-toys must come first. The Pentagon clowns in stupid hats can't imagine it otherwise. And let's face it, they have led the most peculiar sheltered existence in their five-sided asylum.

Eventually, it may simply be the rest of the world competing for the Pentagon's energy pool. Then what difference will it make what country you come from?

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“We must leave oil before it leaves us”.

- I really dig that -

What is so depressing about this article and in fact most other forum discussions on climate change is that we in Australia have great opportunities to change the way we use/generate energy and yet we don't!

I subscribe to an email newsletter from www.solarbuzz.com that reports news item regarding global rollout of "green energy". This is a "techie" industry newsletter but is easy reading.

Week in week out they chronicle countries around the world such as Germany, too numerous to mention US states, China etc all creating businesses, jobs and drastically changing their dependence on fossil fuel and here we are; with the greatest access to solar energy on the planet and we still wonder what we are going to do with our coal industries vis a vis sequestration etc....

Who said some decades ago that we would become the "knowledge" country?

Nice one Guy. Capitalism as we know it cannot endure declining oil production and you've pretty well nailed it. It ain't love that makes the world go round, it's the profit motive.

Once oil does become scarce we'll be forced to look at alternatives. Peter King your time will come but oh so slowly and certainly not when there's a profit to be made by doing nothing.

I'm waiting for some journo from the AFR to put in his two bob's worth. It'll come, and just as predictably it'll point out Malthus was wrong and thus so are we.

Peter K the reason that most countries are struggling to get past a minor percentage of renewable energy is the mind boggling cost especially to smooth out the peak and troughs. We need either a huge cost or performance breakthrough in renewables to be free of fossil fuels or nuclear. To take Australia's electricity production of about 46 GW (billion watts) peak let's say solar will be $5 a watt capital cost. We might want to treble that to cover for night time (no sun but less demand) and store say half of the annual daytime output as a buffer. However electricity storage for general applications is little advanced on batteries working out at about $200 per khw or $200m a gigawatt-hour. Some say batteries in electric cars could fulfill this role though that involves more expense.

Do the maths, allow for conservation but add in desalination, more trams etc and the numbers are horrendous. Maybe we could do it over 20 years assuming no technical breakthroughs but we needed to start yesterday. Despite the glaring evidence of high energy costs and climate dramas we will almost certainly leave it too late to avoid a crisis.

Agreed, we need an alternative ..

One of which is Nuclear Power, which is clean to produce and could also run Hydrogen plants to produce fuel for vehicle transport. It can also power desalination plants.

We still have to live with the waste, but we do that now with other fuel supplies, or why not lift it into space and send it into the sun. Sure we can't do that now, but maybe we could. Let's put some time into working through the problem of that waste.

It's not perfect, but what is .. at least its worth a go.

It won't produce CO2 - so keeps that side of the argument happy, if that's a problem for some folks.

All new dwellings should come equipped with own power supply. Dwellings already existing should move toward power independance. If every house in aus had 1 kw on the roof surely that must take a lot of coal out of the system.

Er hang on folks, its not all gloom and doom just yet :) Stuff
is happening!

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Dream-solar-system-HF6HW?OpenDocument&src=ea

Clearly there are cost competitive developments out there,
but they take time. But progress is happening, thanks to venture
capital, so the business community is not as fast asleep, as
you might think. Simply investing billions into r&d.

Next we have new vehicles happening:-

http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php

Tesla is showing the potential, much, much cheaper versions will
hit the stores from 2010 on, as nearly every MV manufacturing
company, is developing their version.

There is no need to reduce our living standards and there is no need to change our lifestyles because of Peak Oil. There is a need to invest in renewables but that is all we have to do.

There is plenty of renewable energy sources available in Australia not only for all our energy needs but the rest of the world if they want it.

Once you have a solar thermal or geothermal power plant built its running costs are half the cost of fossil systems (no fuel cost)

The cost of building a geothermal plant is currently about twice the cost of building a fossil burning plant but we know that every time
we double the capacity of any engineering system we drop its per unit cost by between 15 to 25%. The cost of geothermal (and solar thermal) will be the same cost as fossil burning plants within 5 to 7 doublings of capacity. We should be able to double capacity every 12 months.

Do the maths and you may be in for a pleasant surprise.

All we have to do is to keep building plants like geodynamics is doing with geothermal in the Cooper Basin and Ausra is doing with solar thermal in Arizona - both good Australian ideas and companies.

Pretty simple really.

Some details about what Ausra are doing. Sounds like it won't be
so long for them to start building here too.

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Sunny-prospects-H8TJ2?OpenDocument&src=sph

So cheer up folks :)

This excellent article recognises the key issue facing our global society today. The fact that oil production has been essentially constant since 2005 makes it highly likely the world has now moved onto a global production plateau. How long enhanced recovery methods plus new oil fields being brought on stream can continue to balance the steady decline from the larger mature fields is debatable. The current plateau may not last long, but getting the oil consuming countries to recognise how precarious the situation will go down as one of the most catastrophic failures ever.

Since no political or economic system can beat the second law of thermodynamics it won’t make any difference whether one worships the philosophy of Adam Smith or Karl Marx, or anyone else for that matter. If we have not developed sustainable alternatives to oil, or any of the other finite energy resources such as gas, coal and uranium, we, and more importantly our children and grandchildren will soon be in very deep trouble. I believe the worlds political leaders are well aware of the issue, but are unwilling to confront their electorate with the potentially devastating consequences of oil production decline.

For any chance of our children and grandchildren enjoying a future we would recognise as normal, it is essential there’s a radical change in the way we live our lives. The developed nations must initiate the equivalent of a global Marshall plan to create sustainable alternatives to oil while they still have the wealth to do so. Failure to find alternatives will eventually make the transport of goods over long distances ruinously expensive, which will in turn cripple the globalised economy. Even more importantly, modern agricultural productivity is based on the extensive use of energy for the manufacture of fertiliser, herbicides and pesticides, as well as to power today’s mechanised farming. Reverting to low energy input agriculture will result in productivity levels not seen since the 19th century, with catastrophic consequences for the 6.7 billion people living on this planet.

It really is a case of change or die !

Concerning the potential of solar energy:
The SEGS power plants, located in the Mojave desert, are often cited as a recommendation for the introduction of solar power in Australia.

354 MW installed capacity, which means that due to night time and other down time the actual capacity realised is more like 120 MW.

Australia had, in 2005, 50.6 gigawatts generating capacity i.e. 50,600 Mw or 421 times the power generating capacity of SEGS. Therefore we would need 421 of these to equal the generating capacity of Australia in 2005, they would need to be located in places that get more than 340 days of sunshine per annum, and they would still have to be supplemented by gas generation to about 10% of their overall capacity.

FPL is the owner of the SEGS - here are some comments from its own web site about solar energy. http://www.fplenergy.com/

Q. What solar facilities does FPL Energy operate?
A. FPL Energy is the larger generator of solar energy in the country, operating seven Solar Electric Generating System (SEGS) facilities in California's Mojave Desert.

“Q. What percentage of generation does solar energy represent in FPL Energy's portfolio?
A. Solar energy represents about 1 percent of FPL Energy's generation.

Q.“Why can't solar energy be used to supply all our energy needs?
A. The initial cost of constructing solar energy facilities is high, so the overall cost of solar energy is also high compared to more traditional forms of power generation. In addition, energy from the sun is intermittent and varies from region to region. Solar energy also requires quite a large area of land for installation to achieve a good level of efficiency. This would not be practical in providing for the energy needs of large numbers of consumers. Finally, no solar energy can be produced during night-time although some relatively small applications may have battery backup systems. “

I am open to consider alternative energy and solar in view of the possibility of peak oil occurring, but would these power stations not also require the input of oil-based factors of production?

Here are some facts Reality Checker.

Solar thermal installations use salt heat storage to supply base load continuous power 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Solar thermal could use geothermal wells for heat storage.

The input of energy to solar thermal plants to energy out is of the order of 1 unit of energy in to 100 out which is MUCH better than new oil fields.

The cost of solar thermal and geothermal is currently about $4500 per KW continuous. Costs decrease by 15 to 20% for each doubling of capacity for all historical engineering infrastructure developments. As the capacity is now very low it will only take about 5 doublings or less than 10% of electricity capacity before the capital cost is much lower than fossil fuel plants. Add to this the fact that renewable energy plants have zero energy input costs and so their running costs are much much lower.

Fact if you have plentiful cheap energy it is relatively simple to produce hydrocarbon liquid fuels.

Economically it is a no brainer to move to renewables with our without peak oil because there are thousands of times the number of available of both solar and geothermal sites in Australia to supply the whole world let alone just Australia - and that is with existing technologies.

We DO NOT need to increase the cost of energy to build the renewable energy plants. This is a fiction promulgated by the same people who have brought us the subprime loan crisis and a POLICY of 2% to 3% inflation of our money system.

Let us forget about emissions trading and other difficult to implement systems and just build the plants.

Froggie,

Fickle Pickle is right.

"There is no need to reduce our living standards and there is no need to change our lifestyles because of Peak Oil. There is a need to invest in renewables but that is all we have to do."

You mention night-time unavailability of solar generated electricity. At the scale of replacement by renewables that is required, solar energy is collected differently than most presently imagine. It is collected AND STORED most cost-effectively in solar ponds. These operate on a temperature inversion principle whereby solar heat is accumulated in a dense layer of concentrated brine separated from an overlying insulating blanket of fresher water by a membrane. The membrane is there to prevent convection from moving the heated brine into the fresher layer and ultimately losing the heat collected.

Hot (65+ degrees C) brine can be used 24/7 to heat a low boiling point heat exchange fluid which, when vapourised in a closed cycle system is used just like steam to drive piston or turbine engines that in turn drive generators. Solar ponds don't only handle the diurnal intermittency of solar radiation, they also handle fluctuations due to cloudy weather. Properly scaled in relation to demand, they are capable of meeting base load and peak load requirements provided the generating capacity exists sufficient to cover the peaks.

Hot water from hot dry rock well fields or hydrothermal sources is similarly used in low boiling point power plants. See: http://www.alternate-energy-sources.com/Birdsville-geothermal-power-station.html

Although the solar pond plateau temperature is not as high as that of the steam from hot dry rock wells, this method of large scale renewable energy collection is not burdened with the capital costs of establishing the well field, and is capable of being progressively implemented in association with existing coal or gas fired electricity generation waste heat recovery.

Low boiling point closed cycle generating plants would also work in a Fischer-Tropsch coal to liquid petroleum synthesis co-generation context.

The political will to do it is the only missing requirement!

Froggie,

The aim of my post was not to discuss the merits or demerits of sustainable sources of energy, but to highlight the fact that the current global political leaders do not want to confront their electorate with the fact global oil production has probably reached an undulating plateau, and that its consequences are likely to be unpleasant for us all.

In the 1970's a 5% shortfall in supply caused the price of oil to almost quadruple triggering a serious recession. If we are now on a plateau, the resultant oil demand destruction due to recession will correct the supply/demand imbalance causing oil’s price to fall. As the global economy starts to expand again increasing demand for oil, supply constraints will cause its price to increase again, which in turn triggers another recession. This cycle continues until the oil plateau ends with an irreversible decline in oil production.

If the world has failed to develop sustainable alternatives to oil when oil production eventually goes into decline we will all be in deep trouble. Since fossil based energy, in particular oil, has enabled the global economy to expand allowing the population to grow to 6.7 billion, so the resulting energy crunch will be disastrous without viable alternatives capable of providing equivalent amounts of energy.

A combination of stupidity and greed by the financial markets expanded a housing bubble that has now burst causing the current credit crunch. My concern is that this financial crisis, combined with the consequences of an oil production plateau will drain the global wealth needed to fund the massive investment needed to develop and construct sustainable sources of energy.

Australia is clearly well placed to exploit saline gradient solar ponds, however from purely thermodynamic considerations they would seem better suited to the supply of hot water for heating, since as a source of low grade heat their Carnot cycle efficiency will be low. Solar concentration systems by comparison produce high grade heat, so consequently have a high Carnot cycle efficiency making them the better option for generating electricity

I urge people to go look at http://www.chrismartenson.com/peak_oil

If you have time take a look at the rest of the "Crash Course" and you will see why our economic system is not doing as well as it should, why we have unaffordable housing and why economists like Garnaut are going down the wrong track.

The solution to renewable energy lies in an alternative direction that emissions trading goes. That is, rather than trying to get investment by increasing the price of carbon we get investment by reducing the cost of investing in renewables. See http://cscoxk.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/chapter-4-energy-rewards/ for one way to do it that will reduce emissions.

This has the same effect without unleashing inflation by creating money for unproductive purposes (emissions permits and interest). It does it by reducing the interest rate on productive renewable energy investment and by paying people to reduce consumption but invest their payments in ways to increase renewables. This creates a system of compounding investment in renewables and compounding soon "solves" the problem.

Fickle Pickle,

Many thanks for the two links; I have attached a couple of links of my own that may be of interest if you have not already seen them. These sites contain articles that can be downloaded as PDF files.

http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html

http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research.aspx?Type=msspeeches

Finally I can recommend the following book to anyone who has not already come across it.

The last Oil Shock: A Survival Guide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man, by David Strahan

Forrest, Reality checker and Fickle Pickle

Thanks for the responses and links...

Interesting.