>>...solar and wind ... cannot be poured into your tank anyway<<

While solar and wind can not be poured into a gas tank, solar can be used to offset electricity demand through solar collectors for home heating and hot water. The resulting savings in electricity can be used to power an electric vehicle (EV). All this without increasing the need for more utility generators.

A typical sedan will go approximately 3 to 4 miles on a kilowatt hour of electricity. If 90% of us commute less than 30 miles, then we are talking about 10 KWhr which should be easy enough to save through home solar installations.

A while back, I roughly calculated that if the output from a PV array were fed directly into an EV, The payback at 15% efficiency was about 8 years. This is without any government subsidy. The trick is to be able to directly refuel your EV from solar.

After Gustav gets through with the Gulf infrastructure, and gasoline prices climb, EVs operating at 2 to 3 cents a mile will be looking good. The good news is that a number of conversion shops are starting to spring up and a number of new and old car companies have EV and Plug in Hybrid EVs (PHEV) on the way.

Conversion shops are started where someone asks their mechanic if they would convert a car or truck to all electric. Amp Mobile Conversions (http://www.ampmobileconversions.com/) was started this way. In other cases a person picks up a copy of "Convert It" by Micheal Brown and Sheri Prange and does it themselves. When successful, the person is sometimes asked to do one for a neighbor.

Companies such as IBM and Cisco are putting in electrical outlets in their parking lots for free for employees who drive EVs. If you drive an EV, ask your employer if you can plug in or if they would install an electrical outlet for you.

Do you even understand where the word Fossil comes from?

Hint, it doesn't come from any step in Ethanol production.

Not advocating nothing here, just making sure idiocies don't spread out too much.

Eh, life is not sustainable for inevitably you die.
Sustainability is a red herring.
You use what you got.
When it runs out you find something else.

If you want to build intricate, delicate societies predicated on sustainable supply of anything, you got heap big problems in your basic model.

You are all looking for the perfect world where nothing challenges your comfort and desires.

Spewing pessimistic excel scenarios? lol.

And yet you feel the need to attack what's going on here on this forum? Hey, at least we can type and (presumably) find the United States on a globe. It gets much worse...

Curiously, I think most of the posters here are far too optimistic...

I see a massive systematic extermination being carried out on a global scale against the entire species. Everyone's bodies are infected with a hundred different industrial chemicals, swarming with genetically modified bacteria, and being bombarded by ungodly amounts of electromagnetic radiation. But of course it's all just a random set of coincidences and unintended consequences. There's no malice in this! Like I said, I think most of the posters here are far too optimistic...

Dear Luisdias,

If you would like to express an opinion that's listened to, try not to start it with insults. Not only is it impolite, it tends to put off the folks who would normally be interested in what you have to say. That’s because when you start with insults, folks will tend to write you off as a person who just yells but doesn't have anything concrete to contribute. I find quite a wide range of opinions expressed here and calling them names just won't fly with folks who are using mathematical models as the basis of their work. If you can point out a flaw, then do so.

And just to restate it here in simple terms, there are three basic issues that this Blog seems to concentrate on (Mind you, I'm just a reader):

1) When will world oil production peak?
2) How steep will the roll of be? (The minimum forecast is 2 % to 4% per year)
3) What will we do when it happens? Or stated another way,
Will natural market forces handle the situation or do we need to act together?

That’s it. And as a result they are called Pessimists, Malthusians, Crisaholics, Doomtards and quite a variety of other names I won’t bother to repeat. And for some reason, these three questions create enormous emotional reactions folks like you who (I’m guessing) feel that the market will always handle any situation. And that’s despite the fact that there are many historical examples where it did not: The Great Chicago Fire, The 1917 Flue Pandemic, Wall Street Crash & the Great Depression, WW1, Pearl Harbor & WW2, Korea. The Cold war, AIDS, False SEC filing & Enron’s collapse, 9/11, Katrina and other natural disasters, etc.

As far as EROEI, historical data shows that in until the last few decades, oil companies only had to spend 100:1 to 30:1 of the oil they got out of the ground to produce more, all processing and infrastructure included. Unfortunately, industry wide, EROEI is now heading for 4:1 or 25% of the total (Heavy sour crude, Oil shale, tar sands, outer continental shelf oil, etc.) and production costs have skyrocketed from $1 to $15/bbl to as much as $90/bbl or more & oil's price has risen over $100/bbl 20 years before the optomistic organizations said it would (EIA, IEA, CERA, etc.) That’s an enormous change and, according to folks like you (I'm guessing again), peak oil is still decades away.

How will this affect our industrial society, which is used to only spending 1% to 3% on production and $15 to $30/bbl? You can rail that its nothing to worry about, but if you were a business manager and your production cost increased by a factor of 7 while output fell by 22%, your boss would absolutely expect you to run the numbers to see what both the short and long term effects were.

That’s all the folks here are doing. If you can prove them wrong, they would be thrilled. So try an analytical approach rather than personal attacks, and you will find many willing listeners.

NOTE: CERA and IEA, EIA and other optimistic organizations have stated that the minimum roll off in world oil production will be around 2%. For each 1% roll off, the U.S. energy lost is equivalent to building 16 1GW nuclear power plants each year (7.6 Gbbl x 1% = 76 million bbls/year. 1 GW NPP = 4.5 MMbbl/year). This would consume all of the NPP’s that Senator McCain has proposed to build over 20 yeas in just three, and require 3x as much money annually as Senator Obama has proposed, hence the condern.

Giddaye Luis,

I'm one of the few Joes-in-the-street that stumbled across all this around a year ago (curse that film, "A Crude Awakening"!!). Quite simply, the notion that fossil fuels are a finite resource had never occurred to me until then. And as I've discovered, very few in my immediate circle of family, friends and colleagues had thought about it either.

So I've been asking basic questions here - I'm a little lazy on the reading front - all the while crossing my fingers and grumbling that the Big Boys (and Girls) have plenty of time to sort things out. The replies were for the most part polite - dare I say, patient! - but always helpful.

The thing that clinched it for me was the exponential growth thing (thanks Rethin and Sea Dragon), the possible doubling of energy consumption over so many years, which I'm sure you're aware of. That China, India and the like must at some point stop growing!

However, my personal frustration remains... "Sustainable Growth" seems like such an oxymoron; when will MSM realise this? Will I ever be able to talk about it with the immediate circle?

Regards, Matt B
Concerned Dad of three great kids - 9, 11 and 13 - who are shown none of this sort of stuff in school. Indeed, the wife teaches years 9 to 11 math/science; again, what's available to eventually replace the 85mbpd current consumption in the future is NEVER discussed. BAU forever, hey?

Thanks. I think we are all looking forward to it. I hope Leanan gives you permission to do a guest post.

Oh, so you are referring to EROEI, which is actually a response to BillJames comment above.

That is fairly standard math, no calculus needed

So the last term becomes a factor that you can lop off the right-side of the curve with. That is if E stays relatively constant and if renewables don't figure heavily into the mix. Therefore if E=2.0, then you only get 1/2 of the production you would expect from looking at the left-side of the curve, which may have had an E of 10 perhaps.

Calculus would likely come into play if you wanted to ramp E down slowly as we get farther into the future. This is not too hard to do, but we would need a good model for how E varies over time.

Naa, I like bashing stupid ideas too much.

It did, thanks.

Ace,

thanks for the weblink. But I think the future demand development, whose steady growth was taken for a long time, needs much more research. I might for example imagine that the potential oil price of 250 USD per barrel will be traded with a considerable decrease in consumption. Just like what is happening now with US transportation. Until now economists used fairly constant rates of price elasticity and only distinguished between short and long term values. But things are probably more complex and include sort of "tipping points" at certain price levels - just like in climate science.
Imagine for example that at a certain oil price level flying becomes more expensive than going by train (this is probably happening now), so - depending on the connection etc - people increasingly shift from plains to trains. Altogether there is not a distinct tipping point but rather a "shifting area", as each sort of activities, industries etc is more or less sensitive to price shifts.
It would be interesting to model this behaviour - with the recent shifts there should be probably plenty of data to calibrate the model.

You forgot the last "And" points.

And people started car-pooling

And companies started to use electric vans

And cars eventually stopped using oil

And at last someone will wake up one day and think, "wait, wasn't there a funny site that claimed that the end of oil was gonna be the end of civilization? Jeez, what a joke!"

Ye - someone talks trash but cannot back it up with anything other then ridicule.

My suggestion - ignore. Its a waste of electrons.

If someone tells you that according to the Mayan calendar, the world is going to end in 2012, you say "that's fucking ridiculous". If someone answers you asking, "okay, then whats your pick", you politely say "I don't know". It won't stop being ridiculous, though.

All true clifman. What tends to make the situation even more unbalanced is the nature of the decline curve of the unconventional NG plays that are beginning to dominate domestic drilling. As I mentioned, it's the NPV (net present value) that drives these plays. NPV calculations take into account the time factor in a well’s productive life. The very high initial flow rates with the following steep decline rates generate a great NPV. I spend $1 today to earn $1.30 NPV. Works every time. But most of the players in these trends are public companies. While the market loves to see the good profits they demand to see growth in the reserve volume base. As a public company drills these wells their base grows rapidly but it will also drop rapidly due to the decline rate. This will not be tolerated by Wall Street. Thus these companies will be forced to drill even more such wells to make up for the decline. And that's not a problem because the NPV says it’s profitable. But I can also promise you that if NG prices drop for a bit and the NPV says you're now making just $1 (and maybe even a little less) for each $1 you spend, the drilling will still go on at an accelerated clip. So now, you’re not making much profit and EROEI is crappy but the wells must continue to be drilled.

This isn't a hypothetical. Back in the late 70's a Texas oil company (UPRC) effectively committed corporate suicide by drilling over 600 PROFITABLE oil wells. Same profile: high initial rate with steep decline. The stock shot straight up but then they ran out of locations to drill. Reserve base nosed dived and the stock went into the toilet. And every CEO and president of every public oil company out there knows this very story quit well. I've worked on projects where the company knew for certain they would loose money but went ahead so they could meet Wall Street's expectations....at least for those next few quarters.

Interesting. The site wasn't working yesterday for Bakhtiari's pages. Good thing it's working again!

I don't think elasticity helps. We are basically on the verge of explaining the entire oil production cycle w/o invoking elasticity. I know that bothers many economists, but who needs them anyways. So if we want to maintain a plateau, we just compensate by increasing the extraction rate. At some point the extraction rate will get absurdly high, and that's when the drop starts. google 'the overshoot point' for more info.

A Growing Global Power Crisis Looks to be Greater Economic and Political Danger Than Oil
Posted: September 2, 2008

How many stories have you seen about high oil and gasoline prices? Now how many have you seen about global electricity shortages?

Lost in all the attention oil is receiving, reports from around the world indicate that 100 or more countries may be suffering, many acutely, from shortages of electricity. Given who is in trouble, both the economic and the political danger of this growing global power crisis are starting to look greater than oil’s. China and India, two of the biggest engines of economic growth, look to be in serious trouble. Pakistan and Afghanistan, hotbeds of terrorism, are routinely plunged into darkness. South Africa’s mining industry is vexed. Even some countries that can afford high oil prices don’t have sufficient electricity to run refineries.

While not facing shortages, many developed countries on whose consumers the world economy depends are increasingly facing what is called “fuel poverty,” a combination of rising electricity and home heating oil costs. The problem is already acute in Great Britain and is starting to take hold in the United States. It may be only a few years before the U.S. faces both fuel poverty and electricity shortages, veteran Wall Street utility analyst Dan Scotto recently warned in an exclusive series on EnergyTechStocks.com.

http://energytechstocks.com/wp/?p=1507

Given that forecasters such as the International Energy Agency expect that the world is going to need to roughly double its electrical generating capacity by 2030, the fact that parts of the world are today critically short of power suggests that it may already be too late to fix the world’s power crisis. At best, its advocates say, energy efficiency is capable of reducing that global demand for additional power by about 50%. Even if developed at record pace, renewable power facilities could probably contribute only a small percentage of what’s needed by 2030, its backers freely admit. Thus thousands of traditional power plants must be built, a process that could take several decades, especially if nuclear power is in the mix.

But even if enough plants could be built in time, there likely wouldn’t be enough fuel to run them. While most new plants likely would run on coal, a worldwide shortage of coal already is causing China to idle some 50 of its existing coal-fired power plants. With its hydropower from the Himalayas drying up, India, even with its push for more wind and solar power, faces a rapidly-rising need for coal that will only make the global shortage of coal that much worse.

http://energytechstocks.com.previewmysite.com/wp/?p=1647&preview=true

If nothing at all is done to improve implementation of nuclear technology, and vast improvements which we largely have not got any detailed idea of how to do were to happen to renewables, then the situation might bear some resemblance to that which you suggest.

You mention replacing oil, the vast majority of that is used for transport, and if most of that is done with electricity and batteries you only need a fraction of the energy needed for oil.

To use some more realistic figures, the US has about 1TW of installed electrical capacity, and around 460GW per hour is the average use.

The really difficult thing with present renewables is to provide base load, and you would have large additional costs from both building additional transmission lines and providing back-up and storage.

The latest reactors are often up to 1.6GW in capacity, and currently around 100GW is produced from around 100 reactors.
Replacing those reactors with twin Areva reactors would provide around 300GW of power, effectively the whole of the base load, and not use substantially more sites.

More expensive energy also means that conservation can play a much bigger role than you have indicated.
For instance a vast amount of energy is used for space heating.
Air source heat pumps can increase the efficiency of this by 2.5-4 times, so you can stay just as warm or cool whilst using far less.

To cover briefly some of the other points you raise, fuel supply is only a problem if no measures are taken at all to improve them.
For a start the cost of uranium is a fraction of the overall costs, so it would not be problem to pay a lot more and use less rich ores, including sea water extraction.
Secondly re-processing as is done in France would provide a lot more power.
Russia has successfully run a breeder reactor for many years, and new reactor designs are available which multiple fuel efficiency many times.
Thorium use is also being developed in India, which would give you four times the resources of uranium.

Reactor costs in the States are high due to there being built on a one-off basis and having their specifications changed mid-build by a plethora of regulatory authorities.

To sum up, the issues you raise are real if nothing at all is done to overcome them.

With half way decent administration then nuclear energy can do what it is good at, base load provision, and most of the problems with renewables are much reduced as they can be used what they are good at, for instance by the use of soalr power for peak use in hot climates where air conditioning causes use to peak.