You are probably already planning to cover this in some detail but:

Energy consumption: Where does our energy go?

Production, conversion and transportation energy involved for various energy forms. How much energy does a refinery use per barrel of oil? How much energy does a natural gas line use per MMBTU-mile?

Embodied energy: How much energy is required to make an aluminum can, or a blow-molded PET bottle, or to bring a day's worth of water for one person from the Colorado River to Phoenix, or create enough anhydrous ammonia to grow a bushel of corn, or feed an American for a year, or build a typical U.S. house/car. How much energy do we throw away in the trash or flush down the toilet?

Resilience

One of the key issues in energy, and particularly future scenarios, is the resilience of the system - the ability of the system to bounce back from upsets and get back to working again. The opposite is, of course, the fragility of systems where interruption escalates the scale of the problem, or where there are so many interdependencies that feedback effects pulls the whole down forever.

In fact, in general, the devil is in the system effects rather than the point resources - so I think you owe it to your readers to give it some coverage.

Hi Robert,

It sounds like a very comprehensive book. There is a lot to cover, good luck.

I was thinking along the lines of a chapter on the importance of electricity, especially storage and transmission. In a utopian world we would have intercontinental transmission lines that could spread wind and solar power from large farms in the best locations, therefore eliminating one of the weaknesses of renewables, intermitancy of production.

Overall, though, electricity by itself will be the main form of energy use in a future fossil fuel free world, so IMVHO it deserves it's own chapter.

Robert, I am looking forward to reading your book!

So there you have it. What does it look like I am missing, and what suggestions do you have? What messages do you think is important to convey to the general public?

It seems to me you have it all pretty much covered already. However with regards the messages that should be conveyed to the general public, the number one message in my mind would be that the future will be nothing like the past! We are all going to experience profound changes to what has passed for business as usual in the past few decades. Past performance (with regards 'progress') is no longer any guarantee of future results! We will all need to change our expectations of what progress means.

Best hopes for a new paradigm of a more equitable, sustainable and humane civilization.
Happy New Year!
Fred

what about the issues concerning economic growth based on fossil fuels vs growth based on renewables? basically how our economic system ties into our energy system

Robert,
I'm really looking forward to this book. I have a great admiration for the way you can describe your points in very plain language, but thoroughly, and without dumbing it down. Good luck with the next few weeks!

My hope would be to see something on the Inleaf (term?) or just inside the jacket on the 'first glance' page that helps to draw attention with a compelling highlighted point from Chap 6, PEAK OIL- threats to civilization, and these underappreciated ramifications of an energy descent. Maybe it would be a simple hypothetical paragraph that tells a story of a fairly innocuous shortage or confluence of a few shortages. Maybe it would, conversely show how we've only managed to avoid many recent disasters or patch them up with the quick application of a lot of cheap energy (Fukushima, etc), but only just barely, and if Fukushima or Katrina, etc had come in conjunction with a serious Diesel Crunch (or pick your shortage, etc), the outcome could have been FAR worse..

Anyway, hopes for a simple, initial Hook to help people who think we're on nice, fat ice.. or that there's always an innovative rescue ship waiting in the wings..

Best,
Bob

I suggest a chapter bringing it all together (chapter 15?), especially the timelines for events and solutions, and the system dynamics of it like I tried in my post

9/11/2011
System Dynamics peak oil, financial and CO2 debt, ME geopolitics
http://crudeoilpeak.info/system-dynamics-peak-oil-financial-and-co2-debt...

Hi Robert,
It is so meritorious that you are writing a book on this subject. I would like to encourage you to promote the nuclear options. In particular the relatively low tech sub critical Thorium fission options. These technologies offer the possibility of burning the refuse from earlier Uranium based fission technologies, and also to provide a pollution free unlimited energy future. You can not make a bomb out of Thorium, period. It is sub critical. To produce power it needs to be excited by external sources which can be turned off and on as required.
Good luck with your book. Cheers Juan.

RR,

Good luck with your publication and sales.

Thermodynamics.

People sometimes look at me as if I'm crazy when I proclaim that the job of every engine on Earth is to create hot air.

But it's true.
Energy is not a forever static thing, but rather a flow.
It starts in a highly concentrated form, most often inside the nuclear fusion reactor we call our Sun and then it entropically dissipates into outer space. Think of the Sun as a mountain top and think of energy as water that flows down the sides of the mountain in the form of rivers.

Our Earth is like a tiny pebble in one of those rivers.
It receives the energy flow on one side and it must dissipate the energy flow from the other side.
That outflow side is made of hot air, more specifically the outer layers of our atmosphere. There is no other outflow mechanism.

If that outflow is impeded, then the rate at which we humans can use the flow (a.k.a. Power equals units of energy flowing through per unit of time) is impeded.

The GHG's that cause Global Warming also cause a slow down of the rate at which we can usefully use the energy flow that passes in and out of our 3rd rock/pebble from the Sun.

People may laugh it off as an inconsequential tertiary factor.
They laugh until the day the nuclear power plant is shut down because the river is too warm (and/or too small in quantity or rate of flow) and cannot be used to sufficiently cool off the power plant condensers located at that spot.

Please try to include the estimated nat gas consumption required to fully cook out the canadian oil sands' production estimates--I've seen some numbers that show 5 mbpd of oil production will require something like 1/3 of the total canadian nation's current gas production- in other words we rob peter to pay paul. Yergin's latest book completely ignores this.

Robert, when the oil production is well into decline and no one is no longer denying that the peak is well in the past the question on everyone's lips will be: Where is OPEC? With all those vast reserves they say they have, why haven't they just ramped up production and gotten us out of this mess? Then, slowly, it will become apparent that all of that oil they claimed they have, for all these years, is just not there. It never was there.

And that, Robert, will be the number one story in the post peak world. It will be the shock felt around the world. Everyone will be bitter because no one told them. Of course they will blame OPEC for vastly over reporting their reserves but they will also blame the government. With all the intelligence agencies, people will say, they should have known.

Ron P.

I would suggest looking into the Hirsch Report. This report was requested by the DOE and outlines what will happen if there is an unmitigated peak in worldwide oil production. The report covers almost every aspect of world energy. The report is strongly worded and the information it contains grabs the readers attention.

I would be glad to review your material. Having published many technical books, of which the most recent are "Offshore Safety Management" and "Process Risk and Reliability Management" (Sutton Books), I understand what you are going through.

I am currently working on a very early draft of a book entitled "Peak Engineering"; it discusses the potential role of engineers in a Peak Oil world (some thoughts on this topic are at my blog (An Engineer's View of Peak Oil). Maybe this topic could be mentioned in your book.

Who is your publisher? I am surprised that things are moving so quickly. My experience with book publishing is that, no matter how good a writer you may be, follow the advice of your editor very closely. Also, it is very important to take time to check all the details, particularly internal cross-checks and external references regardless of the pressure to get to market.

Finally, what is your publisher's policy regarding selling the chapters in ebook form?

Good luck with this project.

Robert, this is excellent news! The outline looks good; I'd second the comments already made about including some discussion of energy consumption, and of thermodynamics -- it's embarrassing how few people grasp that latter. Other than those two points, though, it seems solid to me.

If a cover blurb from me would be of any help at all in marketing, BTW, I'd be happy to provide one.

Hi,

If you need some one to do a complete check on the book, contact me. This is what I am doing for living: I am reviewing publication for a research chair in energy. I can check your whole book in a few days.

Yvan Dutil, Ph.D.

Solar, solar, solar - supplying/replacing domestic energy uses with solar.
It seems glaringly obvious to me. It is beyond centralized control and centralized profit taking, so research will never be funded.
My 2 cents worth.
(edit) solar on the roof - obvious - imho

Looks like a good book! I enjoy your articles.

I second a brief discussion of embedded or embodied energy, since many seem to be unaware of this concept and the flow of energy in the form of products and services. Some "green" buildings use very high embodied energy materials, but are only judged based on how much energy they use after being built. I like to think of a metaphor of rivers of oil flowing from wells throughout the world in the form of these products and services. The power embodied in this system is staggering.

A discussion of the subsidies to the fossil fuel industries ingrained in our energy policy would be good, to balance the attack from a few in the fossil fuel industry on subsidies to alternative energy technologies. Not that there is anything wrong with these subsidies. It is clear they aid production of energy for society. But we need to subsidize other sources at a similar, or greater, scale.

I would guess you plan to discuss the difficulties of attempting to attain the current energy flow from fossil fuels with alternative energies in the “Due Diligence” chapter. I think that is very necessary, but at the same time I think it should be pointed out that in the long term we have no choice, so we had best put maximum effort and ingenuity into developing and deploying these while fossil fuels are still available to supply the energy to do so. I used to say “cheap” fossil fuels, but I think we have already blown that chance. I think it would also be good to point out that energy used today is energy unavailable to our descendants tomorrow in this effort and increased cost for what energy remains, limiting the technologies that can be economically developed.

A look at what types of industries we could support with reduced energy flow (power) from alternative energy sources would be good. For example, how might it affect the scale of energy-intensive industries such as steel, aluminum, and mining? I disagree with the statement made by some here that we cannot produce solar power technology without oil. We can have electricity and solar furnaces to produce the materials and parts that are required to produce solar pv and transport them for example, but not at the scale possible with fossil fuels. To me the main effect of fossil fuels is energy constrained society. We can have many of the same things we currently have, but not in nearly as much abundance. Because the energy sources will be much more dispersed, it seems small local industries will be necessary to produce things in many places on small scale to reduce the intensity of power required, as well as the power required for transport. We will need to reduce the complexity of infrastructure because it requires too much energy to maintain. I think quality of life will depend greatly on how much we shrink the human population.

Some like to wave away our difficulties by saying technology guided by the magic hand of the market will find solutions. It might be pointed out that many of us who make our living developing technology are not nearly as sanguine. As they say in investing "Past performance does not guarantee future success".

As you are asking, there are a couple energy related items I'd be interested in seeing explained in more detail, which I believe could also add to the general understanding.

The first is related to "energy infrastucture build-out"; i.e. the long process in a society of developing the related skills and businesses necessary to bring an energy source into common use. In specific, I'd be curious about two technologies, modern solar and wind, which appear to have arrived at their "young adulthood". Regarding these, I'd appreciate seeing in a way understandable to a non tech mind on how these particular technogies have evolved over the past thirty-five years or so, i.e., what breakthroughs were made or not made, and what barriers there are to future advances.

The second item refers to the question of nuclear waste from atomic plants. My understanding is that no country has figured out what to do with it; it would be nice to know that I am misinformed.

You might review the commentary at this website, if you haven't already seen it :

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/observations-engineer

If you find that interesting, there are a few more similar insights if you review my total commentary history on TOD.

A few paragraphs from the total history for instance :

If you stop to think about it, what really runs the world is energy, and not money. Maybe the current economic situation could be best understood if I were to explain things in layman terms considering one specific example. If someone lives in the desert in Phoenix and wants a piece of corn how exactly does he get one? Well in reality, he is dependent on a far off farmer in someplace like Iowa who has enough gasoline to run his tractor to plant, fertilize, and harvest his crop. Then a truck driver needs enough gasoline to deliver the corn from Iowa to Phoenix. If there were no gasoline, then it would be very, very, difficult for someone in Phoenix to get any corn from Iowa. Even if you could print billions of new dollars in Phoenix, it wouldn’t get you any corn without a tractor running on gasoline in Iowa. This is an example taken to an extreme but it just goes to show that the world economy runs on and depends on energy and that even printing huge sums of money won’t necessarily solve a problem. It only stands to reason that if any changes to available energy sources occur then there will be changes in other parts of the economy too.

Our economy is a system, and one of the biggest inputs to this system is oil production as it is our prime energy source. Outputs of this system are jobs, cars, planes, food, electronics, and in general all consumer goods. One of the things they teach us in engineering is that if there is a change in the inputs to a system, then there will be a change in the outputs of the system. It’s very simple cause and effect. Engineers are very good at system analysis and it is very well understood since the math and computer models used are very well developed and very well proven. Electrical circuits are viewed as systems with inputs and outputs. Typically, electrical energy of a certain frequency and voltage are viewed as inputs and then the output are analyzed such as work done, etc. If the energy source in an electrical circuit reduces in power and voltage, then the work performed by that circuit is reduced. A light bulb may burn less brightly, or an electric motor turns more slowly. Since oil is a form of energy and used as an input to a system, just like electricity is a form of energy and is an input to a system, it would seem to reason that electrical engineers would have a natural understanding about possible effects due to a change in the input. If oil inputs to the world economy are reduced, then less motors will run, less plastics will be made, less fertilizers and pesticides produced, etc.

From an electrical engineering standpoint, lets consider a typical energy driven process. Lets say that you build an electrical circuit with a sinusoidal alternating current as the input, and add some resistive/capacitive/inductive network that it connects to that uses that energy to make outputs (heat, or light, or kinetic (otherwise known as work)). The science and math are so well universally understood that one doesn't even have to build the circuit to determine exactly what the outputs will be. A SPICE computer program can compute exactly how much work will be output from the different parts of the circuit at any given point in time. If the circuit is actually built and operated per specification at any location (north pole, equator, etc) or at any time (1776 or 2011) the same outputs will occur. Now if you increase the input energy source over time, it can be shown that the energy outputs will be increasing as well, which is very akin to growth. But if you decrease the energy input source over time, then the energy outputs will then decrease, which is akin to contraction.

Chapter 09 – Better Energy Policies

Here I focus on several ideas that will help move countries away from dependence on imported oil – and ultimately fossil fuels in general – while also making sure supplies are adequate during the transition. I talk about fossil fuel taxes, drilling proposals that fund alternative energy and mass transit, and the need for an Open Fuel Standard.

combined with

Chapter 15 – The Road Ahead

This chapter isn’t written, but will be my assessment of what lies ahead and which pathways offer the most promise for mitigating the energy crunch.

Hard to know how to pitch this sort of thing. A modified BAU or some root and branch rethinking of market economics? How we deal with the mass psychology of political ideology.

How clear or how subtle does one introduce notions of large scale mandated change? Or is it really possible to nudge the system around so that it produces the desirable? Perhaps some insight on what sort of triggers can enable change? It was clear than the imminent disaster of the collapse of Lehmans enabled the use of measures totally alien/abhorrent to many in the political classes. Do we have to wait for catalyzing events? You could argue the devil is in the detail but I am less sure now. The technical aspects of the problem are pretty well understood by the energy technocrats.... who ultimately need empowerment to come up with the solution(s).

There has been a lot of material published on resource constraint issues... how much success?

Hello Robert, I've much appreciated your posts at the Drum and look forward to the book. I would hesitate to offer suggestions on a topic you know far better than I, but here were my initial thoughts as a prospective reader.

1) The title "Power Plays" suggests to me a book at least partially about the financial/investment outlook of the different energy industries in a PO world. If I picked up the book at the store (based on that title) and it didn't have a chapter related to investing I would feel cheated and might just put the book back down.

2) I'm very interested in PO, but am completely turned off by the conflation of PO with AGW and thus seeing chapter 5 on Global Warming in the table of contents I would sense a bit of a bait and switch going on----which I might try to resolve by then turning to chapter 9 on policy to determine if the author really intended to give me useful information on PO or was just using it as a platform to preach a collectivist political ideology. If I felt the author ascend to his pulpit in chapter 9 it would be 3 strikes and I would put the book back down for sure.

My purpose with these comments is not to debate the merits of AGW or political ideologies--just providing feedback from one segment of your readership on potentially polarizing subjects.

Smaller notes: 3) Chapter 13 seems superfluous after chapters 11 and 12. 4) I've read some of your posts with topics similar to ch. 10 on due diligence and think that is one of your strengths to be emphasized. 5) Ch. 6 is the meat of the book. All of the substantive ideas after ch. 6 hinge on the reader buying PO. Maybe it deserves two chapters. I would envision a chapter on the historical facts--Hubbert-US peak, specific field/country peaks, the discovery curve, other resource peaks--whatever was relatively irrefutable historical fact, followed by a second chapter on the refined hypotheses of PO that have been generated based on these observations, production rates, decline rates, current discoveries vs. 1960's or whatever is current/forward looking, but less factual.

That's my two cents. You're a clear writer and look forward to the book--thanks for doing it!

Mr. Rapier - The first chapter about options needs to be about energy conservation. Since a smooth transition is now nearly impossible, energy conservation is the most important thing we can do to buy time, both personally and collectively. Folks who don't like nuclear, fracking, or industrial wind, can stop being part of the problem by contributing to excess demand. At home,we have cut our electricity use from 4700 kwh per year down to 1500 kwh per year, by swapping out our light bulbs to CFL and LED bulbs, cutting out the dryer, unplugging appliances when not in use, and using a laptop computer. We further reduced our propane use by 48% with a instant hot water heater. Studies show that Europe is a similar quality of life, but uses 1/3-1/2 of the fossil fuels we do in the US. We can do this! If people turn reducing their energy use into a game, it is fun. Also, at a time when we all feel at the mercy of big impersonal forces, energy conservation is empowering.

Looking forward to seeing your book. I will follow Yvan's lead and offer to proof read. If you can send whatever you have soon, I could get it back to you in a few days. After school starts (end of Jan), things will get a bit more hectic but I could probably still get it back in a couple weeks.

Don't let the denialists sensor your bit on GW. The two issues are inextricably linked--source and sink.

And I would second the point above about energy conservation, or even 'doing without.' Most of what we have to do is use much, much less energy. If you cut energy use in half, and then in half again, and maybe even one more halving, you suddenly get close to what might reasonably be provided by renewables.

In the final chapter, you might consider a broader view--what have we used all that energy for? Has it really made the world better? Even if all that energy came with no GW consequence, what have we made of our world? Look at extinction rates and habitat destruction...Add GW in and it is clear that we have been ladling poison down our children's throats to accumulate crap that doesn't even make us happy.

We need to really get a wake up call, a firm look in the mirror of what we have done and are doing.

On top of that, facing the hard reality of the connection between energy and political power--asking the world to turn away from ff is asking the powerful and power-hungry to walk away from the very thing they crave most, the thing that defines them--power. That doesn't mean give up, just that we shouldn't be surprised that it has not been easy to get the powerful to even think about voluntarily moving away from these sources of energy.

Again, best wishes.

Maybe in chapter 6 you cover this, but I would be very explicit. Discuss our assumptions of Business as Usual and how they all depend directly or indirectly on cheap energy. Then spell out how these assumptions fall apart when energy gets expensive or in short supply. The reader, if they are not already attuned to the issues your book addresses (in which case you are speaking/writing to the converted), needs to have the consequences explicitly (as best you can) described. My own area is health care and the health of populations and I see major problems arising in how health care can/cannot be delivered, and how the health of populations will decline, and consequently the great need to promote public health and the maintenance of the social determinants of health so as to maintain ones health. Because, if you get sick, life may get awfully nasty.

I look forward to reading the book.

Don Spady

As bicycle advocate living in the Los Angeles area, one of my biggest frustrations in the offerings of most peak oil literature, is the lack of acknowledgement of bicycles as a low cost viable transportation alternative. Both in urban areas, and suburbs which are not excessively sprawled beyond repair. So many trips in America are under 5 miles, and even under 2 miles, that are still being driven. Incredible amounts of oil consumption could be reduced by fixing up some old bikes and painting some lines on the ground to give cyclists some space and peace of mind, without billions in costly infrastructure or new technology required. Cities like Portland Oregon and New York have set bicycle ridership gains onto nearly exponential growth curves by making investments that are peanuts compared to the transportation spending on other modes.

Even in Los Angeles, a mega city known for sprawl and car culture, there is a vibrant, active, and growing sub-culture of bicycling for fun and transportation, and plans are being made to allocate more space for bikes all across the region. I often feel there is assumption among peak oil writers that Americans could never seriously consider bicycling for transportation, but I think that is underestimating Americans, particularly generation Y that is already giving up cars in large numbers, and ignoring the success stories in cities and neighborhoods that have at least made token gestures to bicycle lanes and facilities.

The most recent CicLAvia event in LA, where 10 miles of streets were closed for cars, 100,000 people came out to enjoy those streets on foot, by bike, by skateboard, or any other way to roll without a motor, and many were struck how easy it was to get from Hollywood to East LA on a bike without all the cars in the way.

When bicycling is used as a means of connection augmenting mass transit, it enhances both modes of transportation, with the bike able to solve the last mile problem of rapid transit systems, and rail and bus services adding range that may be cumbersome to many people on a bike. I believe there is incredible power in investing bike network connections to transit centers, and offering bike share or rentals near major transit hubs.

I would love to see someone writing in the peak oil scene at least give some kind of acknowledgement that bicycles exist and are a good idea given our energy outlook.

The table of contents ... listing the chapters ... seems to be quite comprehensive. Good luck. Will consider a purchase upon publishing.

Congratulations on rising to this challenge! I have been telling my college students that they will need to become the Next Great Generation, and quickly, and they are shocked to be spoken to as if BAU won't go on forever. Your efforts probably will be an important part of the process.

Chapter 11 on the Race to Replace Oil should treat electrification of motor transport in depth, since analyses indicate that the scale needed to replace fossil liquid fuels with liquid biofuels is unattainable. See for example
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/print/article/2010/06/biofu...
or T. Patzek, Chapter 2 "Can the Earth Deliver the the Biomass-for-Fuel We Demand" in D. Pimentel's "Biofuels, Solar and Wind as Renewable Energy Systems: Benefits and Risks"
It does look as if liquid biofuels will be essential, however, as a bridge to buy the time for tech innovation and infrastructure development to make electrification feasible, as well as to provide for uses like aircraft where liquids are irreplacable. Maybe start by saying something about the 50+ Chinese companies now developing/building electric cars...

I recommend taking a look at Lester & Hart's Unlocking Energy Innovation
http://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Energy-Innovation-Low-Cost-Low-Carbon/dp...
L&H postulate 3 waves of innovation necessary to transform the energy system, and they argue for specific and substantial changes to the policy framework, without which the waves will be unable to develop. Such systematic views of the policy scene are rare, and this may help organize all the moving parts of your argument or challenge you to propose your own alternative view.

Above all, I hope you don't argue that we simply can't afford to invest for change - that economic argument is fundamentally self-defeating and provides no hope for the future. If you intent is to inspire, you need to model the change you advocate.

Hi Robert,

Are you referencing the DOD Joint Operating Environment 2010 study where they are pointing to a liquid fuels crisis in the not too distant future? Page 29 is an eye opener:

"By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the
shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 MBD."

Reference: www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2010/pa031510.html

Matt Simmons and T. Boone Pickens were/are pointing to a liquid fuels problem. Matt was championing Maine wind turbines to generate ammonia and T. Boone is championing Natural Gas as an automotive fuel.

One idea to keep in mind is that solar hot water (SHW) can be used to power an electric vehicle INDIRECTLY. SHW can save 3100 kwhr/year. If you drive 310 times a year, that's 10 kwhr/drive or a distance of 30 to 85 miles depending on type of vehicle (pickup to iMiev [PR material]), driving and road conditions, etc. The SHW can pay for itself using the difference in price between gasoline and electricity. Payback is anywhere from 3 to 10 years depending upon the cost of both.

TBTB side tracked us with hydrogen/fuel cells. There were too many technical problems that had to be solved. Compressing hydrogen to 5 tons/square inch into specially wound tanks that could rupture in vehicles that weigh 1.5 tons was one of them. Not being able to operate below -4 degrees Fahrenheit (-20 degrees Celsius) was another. I counted another 7 major obstacles that had to be solved including removal of minute amounts of CO from reformatted Natural Gas that would eat at the PEM membrane.

I would echo the comments by norlight and dohboi on conservation, but add that in the Politics/Road Ahead nexus, there needs to be a discussion of "quality of life". Given that the consensus is clearly that we will have access to less, reframing an energy glut as a negative will be a useful anchor for the acceptance of the information you provide. This approach is that presented by Kunstler, Astyk, and much of the Transition movement literature.
Best wishes.

Robert: It is not clear what is your message you are trying to leave with readers of the book?

I see two key messages, namely 1) oil supplies constrain economic growth and are likely to be even more constrained over the coming decades, and 2) Global warming is a long term threat to civilized existance and needs to be addressed _now_ by moving away from fossil fuels.

In that context:
1) the scale and cheapness of oil supplies in contrast to renewable-based liquid fuels needs to be communicated; as well as some sense of the longer term potential (difficulty) for alternative liquid fuels to provide a replacement for likely declines in oil production. Not sure if this comes in the intro or after the alternative sources of transportation energy are discussed.

2) The book should communicate the scale of resources (capital costs, material, etc.) that are required for replacing fossil-fuel-based electrical generating.

For both of these messages, one needs to underline in $$ terms (order of magnitude) why public policy is needed to implement what might be plausible but much higher costs replacements for 1) oil, and 2) fossil-fuel-derived electricity.

Good luck!

I'll be very interested in whether and how you deal with regionalization in the final chapter. I think it's particularly important with respect to the questions around electricity -- regionalization seems inevitable given the difficulties of intercontinental and even transcontinental transport, plus difficulty of storage. Different regions will face different problems of both scale and available resources. "Natural" regional boundaries -- the split between Eastern and Western Interconnects in North America are an example of such boundaries, I believe -- may not match up well with existing political boundaries.

US and Canadian political dynamics should be "interesting". In the US, financial and political power is centered in the BosWash corridor, which is quite poor in energy resources relative to its population. In Canada, such power is largely centered in Ontario, with the rich energy resources considerably to the east and even farther to the west. Whether the political centers can hold if they are too dependent on distant resources to keep the lights on is, IMO, a reasonable question to ask.

You should mention the decisions that have given the US its extremely high oil consumption rates - the decision to build the US Interstate system (with the resultant decline in passenger rail), the decisions to build freeways (notably in California) instead of maintaining urban and interurban rail systems (and the resultant decline in them), the generic American resistance to taxes, with the resultant low fuel taxes and high fuel consumption (compared to high-tax European and Asian countries).

You might also talk about the restructuring of American cities around the automobile, with the result that the concept of the "walkable" city has disappeared and modern suburbs are now thoroughly unwalkable - locking people into using automobiles whether they can afford them or not.

As far as replacements for oil, you should mention the two biggest ones -coal and natural gas. Despite the fact that the environmentalists hate coal, it is the choice that has been made by the most highly populated countries on earth - China and India, and that has inescapable consequences for the rest of the world. Natural gas is widely available, but hard to transport and store, so it requires a lot of planning infrastructure, which is not going to happen by accident.

As far as the road ahead goes - you might discuss how this is obstructed by the rise in oil consumption by the developing (esp. BRIC) countries, and their increasing demand on limited global oil supplies. This is going to make life extremely difficult for the developed countries who are counting on widely available supplies of cheap oil to maintain their lifestyles. The result may be that middle class people the developing countries end up with a better lifestyle than people in the US.

Hi Robert, My neighbor are Amish, conducting their farming through animal conversion of plant energy reserves. Corn grain is a mainstream energy source(ethanol), so all grains(oats) are thus harnessed to the wheel of industrial energy production. Acres in hay production could be diverted to grain production, thereby linking forage production to oil as well. Pimentel from Cornell published years ago on this topic. I wish you would treat ther EROEI of solar powered agriculture in your book.
The Amish operate a collectivist society within their ranks and are highly self-reliant. I have noticed, however, they are ever alert to opportunities to get a little money from the English(us). I think they are hooked on oil as we are and will suffer oil depletion despite their avoidance of car ownership and electric lights. Thanks, Kim Shaklee

Conservation/energy efficiency should be given some prominence. In the Pacific NW, the regional power planning agency (www.nwcouncil.org) treats conservation as a resource that, on a levelized cost basis, is the cheapest resource in its 20-year 6th Power Plan.

Another topic dear to my heart is food production's reliance on fossile fuels. For instance, the greenhouse gas emission from meat production surpasses that from transportation.

Dear Mr. Rapier,

You may want to mention the RET (radiant energy transfer) technology in your new book. This revolutionary technology can dissociate water vapor into hydrogen and oxygen economically and competitively with fossil fuels. You may obtain more information about the physics and chemistry of this technology from their website: www.genesys.co.

Good Luck!

Robert,

Your background is in biomass, so you tend to focus on that. That makes sense - why not leverage your strength? But, here you're writing a general book on energy, and you need to de-emphasize biomass.

So, as said above, Chapter 11 on the Race to Replace Oil should treat electrification of motor transport in depth, and make biofuels secondary. Biofuels will be needed, especially as a bridge, but as you know they can't be the main solution. The primary solution will be Electric Vehicles, either in the form of electric rail for freight, or personal EVs (probably with liquid fueled range extender generators on board to provide the 10% of miles that are long-range, as with the Volt).

Please note that EVs are already cheaper than ICE vehicles over their full lifecycle, and there are no real obstacles to ramping them up to replace ICEs. The only obstacles historically have been resistance from legacy industries that wanted to hide the external costs of oil and prevent competitors from achieving economies of scale.

Similarly, personal EVs should get more much emphasis than mass transit (or changes in urban design). Mass transit is great (I love and use electric rail every day), but it is very slow and expensive to build and operate, and very inconvenient for passenger traffic for most uses and places. EVs will be the primary solution for passenger travel.

The organization seems somewhat confusing.

For example ethanol(one chapter) is a subset of biomass (another chapter. And biomass is also included as a subset in another chapter (renewable energy).

Perhaps it might be helpful to organize around two distinct but interrelated energy policy domains/choices - land use & transportation (oil, natural gas and hydrogen, electric cars) and centralized electric power (fossil, nuclear and large-scale renewables) and on-site (decentralized) energy systems.

chapter 11 the race to replace oil
Surely you need to discuss what role PHEV and EV will have on reducing oil demand and how quickly that demand reduction could occur in a world of liquid fuel rationing.

Here are some ideas, maybe you can use any of it:

Re Chapter 11 biofuels: many of these are experimental. A new development is Salicornia plants (glasswort; lives on indeep brackish/saltwater so not such a burden on fresh water supply) but I don't know how well established that is.

Re Chapter 15 energy and politics: There's a field of study called "Technology Assessment" which concerns itself with how to convince large established industries to switch their production process to a different (say, more environmentally friendly) one. The owners of the chemical industry aren't stupid but need a very long "lead-in" time to build e.g. an extra naphtha cracker.

You can also throw in religion: from the concept of "stewardship" of resources to the psychological difficulties of adapting to change.

I found John Michael Greer's "The Long Descent" chapter 2 "the stories we tell ourselves" extremely clearly written and relevant. Especially paragraph "Listening to the Space Lizards" on p. 65 (PLEASE don't be put off by the paragraph title, chapter title, book title or author's business!). Even here on the Oil Drum these important psychological factors aren't often discussed clearly.

Dear Robert

Very best wishes for the timely completion of what looks like a great book.

I have two suggestions

1. It would be most valuable to include, in the last two chapters, your insights on the psychology of Peak Oil, as our collective pschological response will make a huge difference to what we actually do, as opposed to what we could do. For those with a background in physical science/engineering, such as myself, it is comfortable to consider the numerical, physical, chemical and engineering aspects of peak oil, alternative energy sources, climate change etc. However even died in the wool rationalists shrink from the probable consequences of peak oil and fail to make appropriate personal responses. Sadly most of us are ignorant,in denial, indifferent or paralysed and so do nothing significant. Those with power: politicians, economists, leaders of commerce and industry who could make a difference by big changes and the billions of the less powerful who could make a difference by billions of small changes, let's be honest, some of us talk about changing things, but few of us do much. Why not? Peak Oil challenges our world views, our core beliefs, the American dream, our lifelong experience etc etc. To break an addiction you need to have BOTH effective alternatives to the drug AND powerful psychological motivation to change. Please give as much of the second part of the remedy as you can.

2. Ok. Here's the second suggestion. Please quantify the possible contribution of alternatives to oil in an accessible way. Professor Davide Mackay made a great stab at this in his book: Sustainable Energy - without the hot air - see http://www.withouthotair.com/

Looking forward to your book.

Peter Hendra

I noted the distinction between running out of oil and running out of drilling crews, rigs, and chemicals needed to drill enough new low flow wells to replace the old high flow wells.
If you are replacing a depleted 10,000 barrel a day well in Saudi Arabia with 100 new 100 barrel a day wells in North Dakota, you are going to need so much capital equipment, etc, that it can exceed the local logistical support.
There is an equally important distinction to be made about our ability to build new electrical supply. Since we will have to reindustrialise with the technology, infrastructure, and industrial production complex we currently have, not the one we would like to have.
Our railroads are fairly close to capacity now and are unlikely to be able to double the amount of coal hauled in less than five years. We are also unlikely to have the ability to build the components to make PWRs in less than five years, though I presume we can buy or otherwise acquire the technology now current in terms of stainless steel pressure vessals and high speed centrifuges.
When the dollar collapses, the crisis that took such a long, slow, time to build up will unwind in months, weeks, or perhaps days. We will need to replace the embodied energy and materials with what we have on hand. Forget exports, we don't even net export food, since we need to import the fertiliser and other agrichemical inputs for our present production.
Which means we will build concentrating photovoltaic in the Southwest and gas cooled fast neutron reactors in the Northeast simply because we can start building them almost immediately, unlike conventional electrical production facilities. It doesn't matter than they are more expensive, it matters that they are less expensive than sitting around doing nothing for five years.

I would like to comment on your timetable for the book. I appreciate your contributions to the TOD and you are clearly capable of writing such a book, but a book is just the text from its introduction to conclusion and once it is in readers' hands, it has to speak itself; your expertise and knowledge cannot help readers understand what you are upto in the book. A book, especially one which makes a strong argument, has its own internal dynamics. It has to be balanced, the narrative has to "flow", it must be easy to read and your arguments need to be clearly spelled out. In addition, you also state that you have written 180 pages and you still have 70 pages to write. Even if you had already finished writing all those 250 pages, I would say revising your text would take at least two-three weeks.

I don't know if you have asked any friend or colleague to review the book, but considering that you are calling for TOD reader feedback while you have 12 days before the deadline to submit the book to the publisher, it seems to me that it would be better if you asked for an extension.

Lastly the sensitivity due to greenhouse gases may be underestimated by a factor of 3. We may already have locked in a 4 degree C change at 390ppm. http://www.apollo-gaia.org/Climate%20Sensitivity.pdf Whilst the methane plumes in Russia suggest we may have past a tipping point http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/shock-as-retreat...

How to partially immunise the economy from peak oil. I agree with the above posts on electrification and also saving energy. Buildings are a source of major energy utilisation, there is lots of room for energy saving via retrofitting. I also believe Integrated Fuel reactors (IFR')s may well be part of the solution. Changing the roading in cities and subburbs for bycyclists and pedestrians, that is building footpaths and bicycle ways, shortcuts between gardens so that it is no longer necessary to walk around by the automobile route.

Post war transport in the UK and Frace used light delivery 3 wheel vans and small motors on bycycles.

We could electrify transport within and between cities. Trolley buses and trams were common in almost all cities in the past. Some cities retained them. The new induction technology for electricity supply instead of overhead wires is promising.
The movement of goods can also be done by trolley trucks. Bulk slow transport by electrified canals. Rail or water transport replacing much trucking.

Whether there is sufficient energy within the climate change constraints for widespread use of personal ev,s is uncertain. Farms and rural areas could use/produce biofuels or use steam or external combustion, stirling engines, for motive power.

Electricity produced by IFR's almost completely burning almost either Uranium or later Thorium may be part of a solution, alternatively manufacturing /transport done whilst renewable enregy available.

An issue which needs to be discussed is the energy requirements of infrastructure maintenance.This is in addition to embodied energy, implied future energy expenditure.

Lastly the sensitivity due to greenhouse gases may be underestimated by a factor of 3. We may already have locked in a 4 degree C change at 390ppm. http://www.apollo-gaia.org/Climate%20Sensitivity.pdf Whilst the methane plumes in Russia suggest we may have past a tipping point http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/shock-as-retreat...

I think the key to your book will be final the yet unwritten chapter. What are the possible scenarios for the future?
What choices will make the future less miserable than it might otherwise be? Is there a future after oil or are the doomers right?

"If all the books on energy were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion." -
-- adapted from a quote by George Bernard Shaw

I've reviewed the comments and of course your book outline and it will be a good book. Here are some additional items you might want to write about in the chapters that discuss the big picture. If you omit them, you run the risk of letting people think that the future is going to be more or less like the past just with different energy sources. But of course it won't be. Not even close.

First, there is simply no way that we are going to have the money to replace the existing energy infrastructure with the alternatives you mention within the next 50 years. We may replace 25% or maybe, if we are lucky, 50% but not much more. Realistically, the money will be diverted to maintaining the existing infrastructure as it crumbles. We will perform financial triage with many, many things competing for the same pot of money. As Greer points out, we are moving from Abundance Industrialism to Scarcity Industrialism and that will have far-reaching effects:

Second, it's not at all likely that we will be able to run an industrial society on the replacements we have available to us. The massive amounts of power required to perform some of our larger industrial operations require access to nuclear energy (currently only 6% of the world's primary energy supply, and is very, very capital-intensive) or fossil fuels. What are the implications of living during the waning days of an industrial civilization?

Third, the world's political systems will likely change away from democracy as unemployment continues to increase (because our economy shrinks as energy is removed from it).

Polybius wasn't the only thinker who noticed the stages of government that a civilization goes through but he wrote it concisely:
1. Monarchy
2. Kingship
3. Tyranny
4. Aristocracy
5. Oligarchy
6. Democracy
7. Ochlocracy

Ochlocracy in this case is "mob rule." From the wikipedia entry on anacyclosis:

Accordingly, democracy degenerates into "ochlocracy", literally, "mob-rule". During ochlocracy, according to Polybius, the people of the state will become corrupted, and will develop a sense of entitlement and will be conditioned to accept the pandering of demagogues. Eventually, the state will be engulfed in chaos, and the competing claims of demagogues will culminate in a single (sometimes virtuous) demagogue claiming absolute power, bringing the state full-circle back to monarchy.

It's not hard to see where the demagogues are already starting to gain adherents in the U.S. and Europe. Right now they appear to be more on the conservative side of the political spectrum but historically the Left is certainly no stranger to producing demagogues! Soon it will be Left and Right demagogues dueling it out.

We discuss some of these risks in our paper Global Oil Risks in the Early 21st Century, Energy Policy (PDF).

Naturally, you may choose not to mention these bigger picture items but in my view they are relevant if you want someone to have what I believe to be an accurate view of our likely future. If you choose to write about these topics, be prepared for the people who have no feel for history or the enormity of the challenge ahead of us (i.e. the transformation of a worldwide, fossil fuel based energy system while capital is scarce and governments are doing their best to keep the unemployed people, especially young men, from rioting) to call you "a pessimist" and a "doomer", etc. but this will become common-enough knowledge soon so you won't be so far in front in just a few short years. It's remarkable how few people challenge me now when I say I run a company that prepares people for the coming Great Depression. More often than not they ask how I do that rather than call me a pessimist and disengage from the conversation.

-André

Robert - Didn't see you mention upgrades to the power grid. This is one of the main recommendations by the IEEE USA national energy policy committee http://www.ieeeusa.org/volunteers/committees/epc/ and even Amory Lovins in his new book "Reinventing Fire." http://rmi.org/ReinventingFire These upgrades will be critical if we are to turn the grid into more of a self organizing system capable of handling diverse energy sources as well as demand side management.

jim

One of the most overlooked concepts in discussions of energy policy is that of ENERGY QUALITY pursuant to that laid out by H.T. Odum in his many publications, some written over 40 years ago.

The concept that there is a hierarchy of energy that starts with dilute BTUs (as from the sun), to sugars in a plant, to wood, to coal, to electricity, to light, to education, and ultimately to technology itself is one that sheds great light on our energy predicament. A BTU at the upper end of this spectrum costs/requires many BTUs of those at the lower end of this progression. Technology, which most consider to be a man-created wonder independent of energy cost, is in fact fossil and sunlight energy upgraded thousands and even millions of times. And it requires an enormous and unending stream of the lower quality BTUs to maintain those higher quality energy forms. Thus it is highly questionable if we will be able to "fix" our energy problems via technology when the base of our energy pyramid withers away through depletion of the richer, more concentrated fossil fuels.

Energy returned on energy invested - after energy quality has also been accounted for in the analysis- is the key to understanding where our energy future is taking us, and what will actually be the energy solutions that will be viable.

"why energy is important in our lives".

If you can, as succinctly as possible, instill in your readers the bedrock understanding that energy is not merely important (we are, as a race, moving slowly towards that understanding) but indispensable: literally the sine qua non of life, then you will have established a vital truth--and a reason to continue reading.

If you feel that you have really nailed that first chapter, then it would be an excellent ebook promo , teaser, and giveaway. A professional copywriter might be helpful here, to refine your prose.

Second, have you asked Al Gore for advice? He's learned a lot about educational/advocacy publishing in the past 30 years and a few words from him might speed your thinking..

All the best!

"I think the open questions will be around the life-cycle costs (which I don't think we can know until people start to replace the batteries in their Volts and Leafs)..."
Oh no, we will know before that when those of us (hundreds) who converted cars to electric using LiFePO4 cells two to four years before the first Leaf or Volt hit the streets start to replace them.

I don't understand the need to publish the book so quickly. Is the publisher trying to catch the current wave of high oil prices and Middle East unrest?

By rushing it, you're bound to include or leave out or use words that you'll regret after the book is published. In my opinion, the slower you write, the better the book, and such an important book deserves to have lasting value.

Congratulations and good luck!

Regardless of where Biomass fits in, I hope you include ecological costs as well as fuel for food considerations. Deforestation for oil crop and cellulose could be hugely destructive, especially acute in troubled times.

Any speculation about potentially positive black swans? We talk a lot about "bridge solutions" but what's on the other side?

I was watching the Senate hearing on future of energy two years ago on TV. There were CEO of seven major oil companies at the hearing. One of the senator asked Exxon representatine " if we do every RIGHT for the next 10-15 years as far as solar, nuclear, wind , hydroelectric .. are concern, our dependence on oil will be dimished what percentage? He paused for few second and answered senator 25- 30% at best. that answer surprised the senator.

Robert
Look forward to your book.

recommend well to wheels comparisons. I did not see mention of Hydrogen or Electricity - and the constraints of batteries and car stock turnover.

Politics is still pushing "hydrogen" cars, but the "infrastructure" in not available. Solar thermochemical hydrogen is actually getting closer to competitiveness. See
http://www.toyota.com/esq/articles/2011/Low_Carbon_Hydrogen.html Dr. Alan Weimer
Long term, I see solarthermochemical hydrogen becoming competitive. I still think liquid fuel is needed for the transition.

China is pragmatically pushing methanol from coal (which have the challenge of competing with methanol imports from natural gas.)

Electricity sounds wonderful - cars don't run on electricity - and batteries are expensive/limiting - especially with China having cornered 95% of the markets is now rapidly cutting back on "rare earth" exports.
Thus "peak oil" of liquid fuels being the limiting constraint.

Note especially Brown & Foucher's paper on Available Net Exports - (but then you were there, heard it first hand, and know much more about that than I do.)

Note that Bolivia requiring that development of its lithium must include producing the batteries in country.

Regards

PS if you are looking for the history on fossil and renewable methanol, see:

David L. Hagen, "Methanol: Its Synthesis, Use as a Fuel, Economics and Hazards." Univ. Minnesota, December 1976, 180 pp., 608 Ref., ERDA/NTIS Publication No. NP-21727 (A NTIS best seller for 3 years)

Re: Chapter 11

Since nearly 75% of oil is used in transportation and oil will be the first of the non renewable energy sources to see a peak, substitutes for motor fuel should be discussed. I think mention of short term switch to natural gas for trucks and cars should be included with the caveat that the conversion of existing fleet and building of fueling stations is very costly, beside range of NG fuel vehicles being a problem. Also mentioning that biodiesel for trucks brings limited benefit since EROEI is around 3 or 4, but it is a better use of farm land than growing corn or even switch grass for ethanol. Main problem with biodiesel as I see it is the high cost of soybeans as world export market for food grows with climate change reducing crop output in many nations.

Best solution for transportation's future lack of oil and liquid fuel is switching to more efficient modes like rail that can be powered by electric renewable energy.

Congratulations, Robert!
Here is one item high on my list; one that I have wanted approach for some time:

OPEC and large exporters not in OPEC can clearly play a huge role in how our transition plays out, and these nations tend to have some big items in common:
1) Subsidies that lead to an encouragement of internal consumption
2) Tacit or explicit subscription to the notion that they had better not rock the boat too much, or else demand for their product will decrease, and maybe even be replaced by other products
3) Price controls can’t work to the petroleum exporters advantage

Some of these nations are already tackling item 1, such as Iran, and the results look surprisingly encouraging. Iran has been reducing their subsidies for internal consumption significantly, and my family there has reported lower pollution levels, as well as eased traffic volumes. This also seems to be reflected in their consumption numbers, looking at the data browser.

Item 2 is arguably a false notion, and adherence to the notion that OPEC nations must toe the line on keeping exports flowing at current rates to me seems like so much horse pucky. As you already know, I have worked to generate even a limited-scale replacement for petroleum in a tiny geographic area, and it is very, very difficult.

Item 3 is almost certainly also false. It seems clear that OPEC could indeed impose a fixed price for oil, with a scheduled escalation clause, and that in addition, this would enable the majors a stable operating environment in which to undertake long-term planning and resource stewardship.

Hence, I would like to see us send a message to these large exporting nations that includes the following:
• Working to decrease subsidies for internal consumption is in the best interest of petroleum exporters and the world as a whole
• There is no danger what so ever that petroleum importers will find a replacement for petroleum
• Even in the face of severe economic downturn, OPEC can still get their price, and choosing to do so is in their interest and in the interest of the world as a whole
• Price controls with scheduled escalation will give stability and enable resource stewardship in a way that will never be possible if we rely on economic principles of a free market

Regarding politics around carbon policy, I'd like to see it noted just how much oil producers have to lose if they are taxed with the cost of sequestration or carbon offsets.

Producers' ability to just pass on the cost to consumers is limited, because oil prices are set by supply and demand. By definition, producers are already charging whatever the market will bear. Any increase will encourage people to use less or switch to non-FF alternatives. So the carbon taxes / cost of permits largely comes straight out of the producers' profit margins. Even worse, by hastening the transition to non-FF alternatives, it brings closer the day in the not-so-distant future when their remaining reserves become worthless.

Carbon tax or cap-and-trade policies are daggers aimed straight at the heart of companies owning or holding long term leases on oil reserves. Executives of those companies would be remiss in their ficuciary responsibilities to the company if they were not funding PR professionals to orchestrate covert campaigns against the AGW consensus. Their duty is to the company shareholders, not to the public or to scientific truth.

That observation, however, suggests the tack that advocates for regulation of carbon emissions might take: the producers must be enticed to diversify. They must become stakeholders in the business of sequestration and carbon offsets. Then what their production divisions pay in carbon taxes will return to them in payments for the activities of their sequestration divisions. Sequestration and offsets would ultimately extend the value of remaining reserves. They would lessen the incentive to drive alternatives to total replacement.

Chapter 2: Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Power
Is this chapter "The history of major thermal power sources"? Would you want to split-out Nuclear into a chapter separate from the chemical fire sources? Its history is brief. Its politics and technology, different.

Chapter 7: Nuclear
Is this "The uncertain future of nuclear" chapter? If Fukushima figures prominently... The chapter's name needs help.
(There could be included a very brief look at the history of fusion with inertial confinement, elctrostatic confinement (Philo T. Farnsworth), and magnetized target as some present efforts. Or this could be part of the separate nuclear history chapter proposed above.)

Chapter 9: Better Energy Policies
"Here I focus on several ideas that will help move countries away from dependence on imported oil"
Suddenly the book only talks about one arm, the transportation path, of energy flow in a country? Is "Better Transportation Energy Policies" more exact? For, under better policy in general, I would expect to see the matter of lighting and insulation discussed. For the static installations arm, residential in particular, installing insulation is a cheaper way to make more power available than is building more capacity. Many of the remaining chapters do deal with the energy flow in the transportation side of things. There is no chapter on peak coal nor mention of limited uranium.

This is a great graphic of energy flow:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/LLNL_US_Energy_Flow_2...
Google image search: U.S. energy flow

There are others, including a low-carbon version.

These graphics make plain the two main energy paths: Oil for transportation and everything else for buildings.

Chapter 11: The race to Replace Oil
The electric car moves transportation from the oil energy path to the "everything else" energy flow path.
Nothing replaces oil in that it is simply pumped out of the earth. Everything else takes more effort and is of a smaller scale. People are breaking plastics down into liquid fuels, for example.

Chapter 13: The Role of Biomass
This chapter is a chance to have some fun. In terms of transportation, biomass is one of the most commonly available ways for a tinkerer on the farm to make his engines go. There are no liquid chemical processing steps involved in making woodgas. In world War II, woodgas cars and farm equipment conversions numbered in the hundreds of thousands. A whole cottage industry sprang up making 2" wood cubes for fueling them. In central California, there is a walnut farm that makes electricity from walnut shells. There are lots of historic images, old stories, and user manuals. Check out the first few minutes of this old Cary Grant movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n72_SldAKpU&feature=related
A cautionary tale, if nothing else.
_____________________________________________

The use of fossil feedstock and energy in the production of food is not mentioned specifically.

An important message is that no more oil, gas, coal, or uranium is being made. Economies based upon them must eventually decline. Everything else is Solar, Lunar, or other forms of Nuclear: Hydro, Tidal, Geo-Thermal, Bio-anything, Wind, Fusion...

Another point, but a mega-downer, is the seemingly direct correlation between the rise of the fossil fuel economy and the rise of population.

Leave your readers hopeful.

Chapter 01 – Overview

First and foremost, I would start with a review of exponential growth, and what that means in the context of a limited resource. Mention the Rule of 72 as a handy rule of thumb. By the end of the book the reader should be clear that the kind of exponential growth we have enjoyed for the past decades is simply not possible going forward. We have seen our last doubling of population and petroleum use.

You should include an overview of how modern agriculture converts fossil fuel to food. This might also be a good place to distinguish between the various types of energy we need - mechanical, electrical, heat, mobile/stationary, etc. Different energy sources are best for different needs. Highlight how tough it is to match the utility of diesel.

Chapter 03 – Renewables

I suggest you should include a brief description of the size of land area and equipment needed to generate one megawatt from each source. I find that most folks have only the faintest grasp of how diffuse most types of renewables really are. Normalizing everything to one megawatt allows easier comparison. Also mention the fact that renewables require nearly 100% of the investment up front before they start producing any return. Finally, I would discuss intermittency and storage options.

Chapter 04 – Energy Production

This should include material flows in and out per MWh. Discuss ash disposal and industrial uses such as concrete amendment. CO2 intensity per MWh for each type.

Chapter 06 – Peak Oil

Be sure to note that discoveries not yet made are already included in estimates of remaining oil. We are already counting on them. Most folks are not aware of that tidbit.

Chapter 07 – Nuclear

I hope this includes a review of the prospects for advanced nuclear reactors. A successful rollout of the Bill Gates funded effort by TerraPower to install instrinsically safe Gen IV breed-burn reactors in China could be used as a wedge to kick start construction in the moribund US nuclear industry.

Chapter 13 – The Role of Biomass

You might discuss the prospects for direct burning of biomass in vehicles. Of all the biomass proposals, a modern steam engine burning biomass is by far the most efficient and practical way to convert sunlight into shaft horsepower. Also discuss the basics of soil science, and why we can only harvest so much per acre without strip mining the soil.

Good luck, and I look forward to reading your book.

I think you should frame the book with one particular aim in mind:

"How do I convince people who really don't want to be convinced?"

I would steer well clear of Climate Change as a topic. It's not your main focus and the readers can already associate with it anyway. Also, you don't want to hand ammunition to your opponents.

If you ever touch on a solution that could be painted as "socialist" (and oh my that's a wide brush these days) then it had better have a rock-solid argument under it which transcends ideology.

I would be wary of scaring away the audience too early on. e.g. demonstrate that a problem exists before claiming that conventional free market forces are unlikely to fix it. Start with irrefutable propositions and go from there, frightened people will refute anything they can in order to hold on to the only idea that they understand.

(I suddenly recalled this: http://www.xenu.net/archive/infopack/16.htm)

Dear Robert,

I haven't thouroughly read through every comment. It may also limit accessebility of the book, but I think it is essential to include the intricate relationship between ever growing energy inputs and our growth based economic system, i.e. we need to grow our energy use to grow our economy and to serve debts, which have been used to grow productivity.

You may well have to extend this to the law of residing horizons and apply this to the potential for nuclear power (and other alternatives as well), having long construction time, high front-end expenses during a prolonged period of credit contraction, pretty poor Eroei, and the dangers of knowledge decline by the time we get to dismantling (not to mention nuclear waste).

May want to mention how dependent alternatives in general are on a fossil fuel based infrastructure.

Maybe mention NH3 as an alternative liquid fuel.

Cheers & take care.

Good luck Robert.

If you were writing a book about transportation would the aviation chapter dwell on the crash of an old Boeing 707 or DC 10, or even the modern Airbus that went down near the equator when all three pitot tubes froze up and the copilot pulled the nose up into a stall, or would you focus on future prospects?

Gen III reactors with passive protection systems that rely on gravity would have handled the extreme conditions at Fukushima well.

An unforeseeable breakthrough may well change everything, but in the absence of that I believe the source of energy that replaces fossil fuel, by being cheaper cleaner and safer than fossil fuel, will be a family of Molten Salt Reactors, starting with the simple uranium burner developed at oak ridge in the 60’s-70’s followed by LFTR and fast breeder MSR's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI&feature=player_embedded

http://www.thoriumenergyalliance.com/downloads/TEAC3%20presentations/TEA...

http://www.viddler.com/explore/ThoriumHammer/videos/1/

A conceptual design for a full size plant was created in 1980.

http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/ORNL-TM-7207.pdf

This technology will likely be developed by China and sold worldwide. They sent a team to Oak Ridge to see the equipment and they have access to all the data developed in the U.S.

http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/

I take it by the lack of mention, that you do not think there is a large future for fuel cells?

Robert,
I suggest you add a chapter as "oil not as a fuel" to talk about the utility of oil in petro-chemistry, to make all those plastics and fibres, which is vital for maintaining our digital infrastructures. And oil is needed to make fertilizers, which is quite important for international food safety. Reduced access of oil might mean alternative transport strategy for the rich nations, but PO induced fertilizer production instability and related food shortage is a life and death question for poorer countries. Such constraint might shape the future of international relations.

Sincerely,
Coldhot3

Mr. Rapier - I rarely post here, but I've read your material and think that you do a good job presenting balanced, fact-based analysis. I applaud your courage/effort to write a book. Congratulations on the contract the the endeavor!

I offer a few suggestions for you to consider:

1. Consider using the word "Peaking" (with the "ing") in the title. Peak oil is becoming over-used, it has a lot of emotion tied to it, and it seems to designate a point in time. A subtle change to be sure, but "peaking" hints that the specific time of peak is unknown and perhaps will be a plateau for some time.
2. A key point for the less knowledgeable reader is the fact that fossil fuels were deposited over hundreds of millions of years and our draw-down rate will exhaust the supply in hundreds of years. I believe the concept of "formation vs. draw-down" is important.
3. Chap 3 - Renewables. If fossil fuels are the earth's energy "savings" or "deposits", renewables can be considered the earth's "income" of energy from sunlight on a recurring basis. So, the concept of "drawing down savings" vs. trying to transition to only living off "income" is one that might resonate with less-knowledgeable folks.
4. Chap 10 might be out of place and may disrupt the flow. It might be best as a final chapter with guidelines for the reader to take forward when making their own assessments.
5. Chap 12 - I wouldn't focus too much on "blend wall" as that is mostly a U.S.-centric topic. It is important due to current engine manufacturers warranties, etc., to be sure, but just wouldn't give it too much play. Chap 12 should probably be a sub-section of Chap 11.
6. Chap 11 - highlighting the technologies that convert other fossil fuels to "oil" such as CTL and GTL might be worthwhile, only if to show how it only converts one form of fossil energy into another

I didn't read all of the other comments above so as to not "bias" my inputs, but I imagine you'll get good feedback here. Again, congrats on the effort!

KGW

Robert

I like the book - good luck with it.

I'd love to see a chapter on game-changing technology. Of particular interest to me is the continuing attempt to harness fusion power. There are many government funded projects in this arena, although I think enthusiasm is decreasing for these hot-fusion processes.

Of more interest, although less concrete, is the continuing work on "cold fusion". Last year Rossi, an italian engineer, demonstrated a 500 kW cold fusion reactor combining hydrogen and nickel to create copper at room temperature. Although this is still controversial, I believe it is solid enough to at least get a footnote in your book. It is either a very sophisticated scam, or a real breakthrough. In the second case, it could be a game-changing new technology which disrupts many of the current attempts to manage our energy future.

Good luck with the venture!

Jordan

Robert,

To echo the many comments above. I am thrilled that you are doing this. I hope that it seriously contributes to Peak Oil awareness and perhaps to less profligate energy usage. To add a few possible suggestions to the many excellent ones above is a daunting task but I will give it a shot:

1) You are probably already covering Jevon's Paradox in your book but the RESPONSE to that problem is very challenging indeed. Your energy conservation chapter would need a cogent commentary on that apparent contradiction (i.e. that Jevon's Paradox more or less invalidates the utility of energy conservation as a means of reducing oil usage by efficiency gains)

2) You might mention (at least in passing)some of the farther out possibilities for new energy sources (e.g. Thorium reactors-already mentioned above, power satellites, wind power "towers" of several hundred-thousand feet high, and maybe even cold fusion - at least as an example of something is very unlikely to solve our liquid fuel problem!)

3) A review of the physical impossibility of continuous exponential growth in energy simply because of heat issues (there was a very fun posting on that issue recently - i.e. what happens if the world increases energy usage by 3-5% per year for 500 years, etc.)

4) I echo some of the comments above about the IPCC assumption of continuous exponential growth ("BAU") in energy usage and its predicted effect on global temperatures. If your whole thesis is about peak oil and the impossibility of continuous exponential growth in energy usage, it would be quite inconsistent to repeat the IPCC's (almost certainly) erroneous assumption that CO2 emissions would increase exponentially (i.e. for the next 100 years) caused by exponential growth in energy usage that would continue to (at least) 2100. In any case some (or many) of the predicted effects of continued exponential growth in CO2 are modeled very poorly, including drying out of continental interiors, tropical temperature increases (as modified by cloud formation and evaporation responses to increased heat fluxes) and the onset of the next ice-age. Furthermore, existing observed temperature and other responses are not modeled well, I.e. it is very uncertain overall and I think it is somewhat inconsistent with your peak oil message. If I can offer a suggestion to either omit or downplay that issue, I believe that it detracts or at least distracts from your core, very important message on Peak oil.

More than my 2 cents worth. I will CERTAINLY be buying your book. Please share the information on how to purchase it and perhaps you can lean on your publishers to give TOD members a modest discount!!

GOOD LUCK!!!

IWylie

Thanks all for the great comments so far. Keep them coming. I am taking notes, especially when I see a comment repeated. One example is of the thorium reactors. As of yet I don't have anything in there on that; I will probably write something up in the next chapter I am doing which is The Race to Replace Oil. There are a number of good comments where I have missed something important that I can either go back and cover with an additional paragraph or a sidebar.

This was exactly my intention; to make sure there were no gaping holes.

Also, a word on climate change since there have been many comments here on the subject. I think I have handled it in a way that will be palatable for all readers. I simply explain what it is, why there is any controversy, and why the problem has largely shifted to developing countries. I show the data; I don't preach that we must solve it or die, or that deniers are idiots, or that it is a fraud. I simply cover factual information.

As an example, I explain what the greenhouse effect is. Nobody on either side of the debate can deny the science of the greenhouse effect; after all we can see it first hand in a greenhouse. I explain the role of greenhouse gases. But then I explain why some people voice skepticism. I don't take the position of a skeptic; rather I say this is why some people are -- which is another factual statement.

So I think I manage to cover the subject without either side thinking I am a fanatic.

Here's my perspective on nuclear:

1) nuclear power is wedded to nuclear weapons - I think that's the fundamental cause of the opposition from European Greens in particular, whose activism was shaped during the cold war in which short-range nuclear weapons were pointed directly at them. Until that link is broken, that opposition will be strong. Thorium shows some promise of breaking that link. It's worth noting that Thorium wasn't pursued originally precisely because it was much less useful for weapons.

2) nuclear power is slower and more cumbersome to build, as long as it it built in very large and risky projects. Modular manufacturing shows some promise of fixing that problem. Until that problem is fixed wind and solar will be faster ways to reduce FF consumption.

3) Diversity of supply is good.

As a risk-mitigation strategy---i.e. there are unforeseen problems and uncertainties in our computations--- we ought to be doing both.

Nuclear has the obvious advantage that there is clear empirical evidence that it can scale up to sufficient capacity to support a modern industrial society with little extra help. There is no such example with wind, and all industrial societies generate the overwhelming majority of their electricity with plants which look much more like nuclear w.r.t. intermittency in generation than they do like wind. I would argue strongly that wind and solar are indeed low risk, but they aren't zero risk.

Further, diversity is cheaper:

if we want to, we can rely solely on wind and solar for new electrical generation, and eventually we could phase nuclear power out. The problem with big enough scaleup to replace coal (what I think is most important) is that such costs do increase somewhate with higher wind penetration.

With nuclear, at least if done sensibly, there are some economies of scale (up to some point) in standardization and production.

Dear Robert,

Not enough time to read all the comments, but I would suggest an aditional chapter (And I can help if you like)

Oil (and Liquid Fuel) Free Transportation.

Four major types - walking & bicycling, Urban Rail (and electric trolley buses), electrified railroads, and electric vehicles.

A statistic to show the systemic impact of urban rail "within living memory".

Arlington County VA - Sales 288 gallons/capita/year
Fairfax County VA - Sales 388 gallons/capita/year
Rest of Virginia - Sales 645 gallons/capita/year.

Arlington & Fairfax are among the 15 wealthiest counties in the USA.

Arlington took a full TOD approach to DC Metro, Fairfax has massive bus service + Park & Ride lots.

And Arlington managed to get through 2011 without a single murder I read yesterday.

I just finished up a chapter on the future of freight in the US recently.

Another point. France

Build 1,500 km of trams in every town of 110,000 & larger 2010-2020 22 billion eiros

Build 200 more km of Paris Metro (2 million more daily passengers) almost doubling total length & ridership. 20.5 billion euros 2013-2025

Electrify "every meter of French railroads" and "burn not one drop of oil" 2006-2025. No cost published that I have found

I use a multiplier of 5.75 to find comparable American efforts.

Increased % urban trips by bike from 1% in 2000 to 6% in 2010 (goal was 10%). Majort additional efforts 2011-2016, etc.

Urban growth boundaries are standard in France

TGV construction speeded up (about x3 vs. per-2000 rate).

% of freight by rail has a goal of doubling (by 2020 ? memory).

All of the above efforts will reduce French oil use (about -1.x% per year since 2001, likely to accelerate 2011+).

In an oil supply emergency, French transportation oil use can be shifted to available, and viable oil free alternatives.

Can Americans work with the Speed, Efficiency and Determination of French Bureaucrats ?

Best Hopes,

Alan

Good Work Robert. I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO YOUR BOOK. A thought occurred to me... Have you looked at country and time specific oil and energy consumption? IE., say per capita oil consumption, what would be the minimum oil consumption that our economy could tolerate and so forth. One example: Switzerland in WW 2 had an oil consumption that was 0.25% of current US per capita, of .064 bbl/day PC. My notes show wartime Switzerland consumed 5000 bbl/day. Today Switzerland has about 7 million folks consuming 275,000 bbl/day or .039 Bbl/day per capita. I show the US using.064 bbl/day PC. I think that means SW is consuming 16 times as much oil PC as it did in WW2. Ultimately Switzerland will get back at some point to that level as will the US. The US consumes about 19,000,000 bbl day. 1/4 of 1% of current consumption would have us using 47500 bbl/day....hmmmmm....It wasn't that long ago that the US was using 47500 bbl/day, the late 19th century...at those consumption levels we would have a far different economy, a far different country......I throw up this disconnected factoid as I try to imagine a world without much oil....which probably is not that far away, almost certainly this century.

Dear Robert, looking forward to getting your book.
I think that liquid biofuels may have a bigger place in the future than you think but I hope they will be developed sensitively.
There is a lot that has to be done over the next few years particularly for the heavy transport sector where there is no viable alternative to the quantity of liquid fossil fuels now being used. We have destroyed our rail and tramway heritage. A lot of the built environment only suits motorised transport.
The airline sector has been working hard to develop the use of liquid biofuels, such as Jatropha oil etc. The energy invested for the energy returned does not really matter provided that it does not cost too much and the energy returned is in the form of a liquid fuel.
It is very difficult to know what will pan out over the next few years with the liquid fuel sector.
There are several possible outcomes:
That the repeated “oil shocks” will destroy the wealth in the economy so that needed investment in the de-carboning of the economy does not take place. Similarly the money will not be there to mitigate the increasingly severe environmental effects of past fossil fuel burning. The world economy will contract and the increasingly difficult extraction of all commodities from lower grade sources will simply not take place due lack of spare cash for investment.
This will lead to not only a zero growth economy but a negative growth economy. The creation of money by lending it into existence will no longer be possible because the growth necessary to repay the interest on the money “leant into existence” will not be there. Possibly usury will eventually be banned by law (again!) and we will revert to an economy where interest is not paid on money on loan. (This is still the case in some Muslim countries).

The QE resorted to by USA and the UK is one way to try to keep the amount of money available for investment from falling.

Although economists do not agree, energy-particularly liquid fuels are the lifeblood of the economy. Without blood we die – without liquid fuels the economy dies. If the cost of transportation fuels rises and rises then we will be in big trouble with our globalised “just in time” food and other commodities delivery systems. Just in time becomes just too late. 3 days-from-disaster.

I have been taking a keen interest in electric vehicles and there are some very interesting developments. The battery technology has been developing in China and is making leaps and bounds. Interestingly, this is probably because the big players (oil companies, car manufacturers, governments who depend on fuel taxes) cannot stifle developments in China. This may be a get out of jail card for those wise enough to realize.

The way I see things developing is that the middle class in USA, UK Ireland etc. will increasingly become smaller so that we will be left with the super rich and the poor. If this is allowed to go too far then some very interesting times will come to pass. Ownership of property and wealth in the final analysis depends upon society agreeing on who is the owner. As the native Irish discovered when their lands were taken by force, suddenly they no longer were the owners. Similar has happened in Russia and in France after their revolutions and indeed in large parts of what was Eastern Germany after the 2nd World War.

So if things continue as they are liquid fuels will become more scarce and expensive. All sources of liquid fuels will be tapped without mercy - needs must when the devil wants to drive.

The International Energy Agency will authorize further reserve releases.
Eventually this will not work and rationing of liquid fuels will begin under the rules agreed in a 2005 IEA conference.

As diesel is essential for transport and agriculture this will be most severely rationed.

Those who can afford new cars (few) will get electric vehicles. The others will drive fewer and fewer miles.

The economy and jobs will contract and contract thus the loss of the middle class.

Not a very nice scenario and I hope books such as yours will help to prevent it coming to pass.

Hi Robert

We had some brief communication when I was doing my Masters degree (Sustainability Science) and I quoted some of your work, especially in the Resource Economics and Energy sections of my course work.

Looking over your subject headings I would presume that the nexus between energy and the economy is covered throughout the book as relevant. However it may be worth highlighting in Ch 9 or elsewhere. The key point (for me) is the impact of oil prices in the economy and with peak oil on us, even though this has not been recognised by "the establishment" the impact of the oil price on the economy nevertheless is the point at which the impact of peak oil is delivered to us. At one level this is easy to understand as an affordability problem. The impact more generally and its function as a limiter on growth is less well perceived and probably should be the key message from your book. Professors James Hamilton and Charles Hall have both written on this topic.

Hi Robert,
Looks like the publisher Gods are breathing down your neck! I'd like to add two suggestions to the many useful ideas that have been put forward:

Since you've chosen to cover such a wide range of ideas in your book it must of necessity target a general audience that often lacks the basis for understanding the implications of Peak Oil, and likely draws its understanding from the delusional ideologies bandied around by the ruling elites and the popular press.

Given that audience, I suggest that the first and most important concept to present is the mathematics of exponential growth. Cris Martenson has done a superb job of integrating this concept into his Crash Course Chapter #3 (http://www.chrismartenson.com) and (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY) If I were writing a book with the scope of ambition that yours has, this would be my opening chapter.

The next thing I would do is book a flight into Mexico City. As you circle toward landing ask yourself how this artifact of the fossil fuel age can conceivably evolve into an environment that is fit for sustained human life in the few years available as the cheap and concentrated energy contained in oil is withdrawn. Apart from the technical problems inherent in relying upon dispersed and intermittent renewable energy sources, the scale of infrastructure redevelopment necessary renders the transition inconceivable without catastrophic downsizing. And famine, banditry, armed struggle, and societal collapse are not the best climate for creating an new technical infrastructure.

Amory Lovins tells us he has the answer in his recent book, REINVENTING FIRE. With his typical attention to detail and technical logic, Lovins makes the argument that all we have to do is start picking the low hanging fruit of efficiency, and that will lead us to the path to sustainability. His vision (and the economic success of his institute) garners the support of Bill Clinton and the presidents of Shell Oil Company, Exelon, and the US Navy. Lovins bases his vision for the future upon a totally delusional theory of Economics that holds that economic decisions are based upon cost benefit calculations performed with real information inputs, and that corporations seek long term profitability and have financial structures and planning horizons that maximize that goal. The notion of a Free Market far more closely resembles a religious belief than any set of behaviors that exist beyond the level of the corner lemonade stand.

In the real world, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Halliburton CEO's purchase the political actors and judicial system in order to structure it for their benefit, gamble with high risk short term plays in the derivatives Casino, and make decisions in a time frame determined by quarterly window dressing to maximize their personal bonus compensation. Expecting this evolved form of (vampire) capitalism to make the long term decisions that humans must make if they are to transition to a sustainable existence on the Earth is madness.

1. My quick scan didn't reveal anything in your outline regarding hydrogen as an alternative to convert electricity into a fuel for automobiles.

I know hydrogen is poo-poo'd here on TOD, but when you can take a very clean 25:1 EROEI source such as wind and go through the lousy conversion factors of hydrogen by hydrolysis and still come up with 8:1 EROEI that's better than a very dirty process such as converting kerogen marls to oil at what - a 3 or 4:1 EROEI? At best? And I firmly believe hydrogen is more viable the BEV's, since H2 gives performance (read: weight and range) closest to our present ICE oil fueled vehicles.

2. You should go through the Minnesota Wind Integration Study to dismiss some of the myths about wind, (spinning reserve backups are required - mostly wrong, actual backup capacity required is very region specific depending on what their worst case scenarios are)and also explain how if the source area is spread out, the variability diminishes rapidly.

3. I hope that when discussing the cost of solar, you also mention the VALUE of solar in terms of the cost of running peaker plants, and how the solar production generally coincides with the highest demands.

Look forward to buying my own copy of the book. Should I invest in coffee futures for the next two weeks?

It's hard to tell from the short chapter descriptions but it sounds like you start from an assumption that BAU is possible but with some different energy mix. I don't think that's right, at all, and, if you do have that assumption, this book will do a lot of disservice to the human experiment. If I'm wrong, you somehow do weave into the book that energy, whilst extremely important, is just one of the problems we face (most of the others being environmental, plus debt) that together form a predicament. And predicaments don't have solutions, only responses.

So, I'm not sure what this book is intended to do. We will be forced into radical changes of lifestyle by reality. Energy choices need to be approached from a different tack. How should we be living in order to have sustainable societies? What options do we have within the axioms of sustainability? What is the minimum energy we'd need to live that way? How should we be producing that minimum energy?

I would give it a thought about having a separate chapter on Energy Storage. Speaking about storage, I would add methanization of hydrogen to the portfolio of options. It allows the use of the vast existing infrastructure (for an efficiency price).

In the renewables chapter I would emphasize that some renewables are intermittent, but all are predictable on a useful time scale (be it months, weeks or just days) and can be managed intelligently with inverters and software.

Perhaps this has been suggested earlier but one of the obvious tools we need is an accounting practice which includes what economists call the externalities. The externalities and their non-inclusion in accounting practice is what allows our corporations and governments to make the economic argument for extraction. If you can exclude from your argument factors and events which would put your profits or job creating abilities at risk and if you can convince a majority to accept your parameters, as has been done so successfully in recent decades by the neo-conservative movement, you have created a strong barrier to any attempt to reformulate the parameters.

But it must be done. To allow Coca-Cola to flood the planet with empty plastic containers without responsibility for them once sold is simply no longer tenable. But strangely enough the current economic paradigm says this is just ok.

So it seems to me that any work on alternate energy must include a section on methods to measure its full effect against that of the status quo. We can talk eagerly about "renewables" but there is a cost to everything we humans do and renewables, like ever other energy activity humans undertake, will have their effect on our natural world. Photovoltaic cells require material, energy and labour to produce and eventually recycle or destroy. A calculation of this cost against their benefit must be made but it cannot be done using the restricted model of accounting in general use today. There is already too much of a "pollyanna" mentality surrounding renewables to allow us to make a balanced judgment on their use and effect on our ever threatened environment.

We will only know what we are doing if we can do our best to measure our effort and results. We may indeed discover that some of our vaunted renewables cost more than we previously thought.

Quick point regarding a tie-in between load balancing and carbon sequestration. Several of the more scalable options for CO2 sequestration have characteristics that would allow them to serve as massive dispatchable loads. Implemented on a large scale, they could easily soak up surplus power from wind, solar, or nuclear when a surplus was available, and shut or throttle down when supply was low.

My currently favorite approach to sequestration uses electrodialysis to produce fresh water + hydrocloric acid + caustic soda solution from sea water. The caustic soda solution is dispersed into the ocean to counter acidification and raise uptake of CO2. The HCl is neutralized by leaching through crushed rock. The leachant contains metal cloride salts, some of which have commercial value.

By allowing the grid operator to control the scheduling of the rock crushers and electrodialysis cells, the plant earns extra revenues for ancillary services to the grid.

I think you might include a Thermodynamic discussion with regard to biofuels as discussed by Krassen Dimitrov on this site some time ago.

Possible topic: How growing domestic use and shrinking exports of OPEC and other oil producing countries will affect the total oil available for importing countries.

Robert

I'm a bit late to this but:-

Ch. 4. Andre has mentioned this - the infrastructure asset and regulation lifecycles - the length of time it takes to back out of bad policies. Probably best in Ch. 4.

Ch.1 or 15. Consumption, cribbing from Vaclav Smil, that all past predictions of energy consumption have been overestimates, by between 50% and ten times once you go fifty years out. Either Ch. 1 or Ch. 15 (or both).

Ch. 8 - Threats: Global divergences: The demographics of the developed world (aging populations) versus the developing world (burgeoning populations). (Perhaps already covered under "emerging countries", but I thought I'd check.)

Also Steven Kopits's idea (presentation to House subcommittee) that Chinese car ownership is reaching the knee of the curve. (Also at Stuart Staniford's blog, Earlywarn.)

Ch 8. A discussion of Export Land concepts [Edit: and examples], especially demand side: 2% population growth plus 3% income growth plus 2% from policy favoring value-added petrochemical production equals 7% per year growth in exporters' own consumption.

Nuclear: Have a quick look at Tom Murphy's latest post on nuclear ( http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/ ). Ten minutes might gain you an idea or two...

Ch. 15 The coming global gas glut, and how that could lead into a policy trap.

Reorg: Chapter 14 (history of policies - how we did it) falls more naturally before chapter 9 (how to do it better) IMHO. Both of them would be better placed straight after the Due Diligence chapter (how to avoid doing it wrong).

Possibly: place part of the Corn Ethanol chapter after Due Diligence as a case study, another part in or after Ch. 14, and the rest after the Better Policies chapter - providing concrete continuity through the theory. (Or is that too textbookish?)

Best wishes!

Much is made of energy sources, fuel switching, e.g., nuclear, alternatives, fossil fuels, renewables. This is fine but does little to improve the human condition. Our modern consumer society has serious problems in understanding conservation of energy. Example: Buildings are a huge energy drain and simply applying what we have learned during the past thirty years can enable freeing up enough energy to meet the needs of many millions of people. The study of energy use in buildings is "Building Science" and many followers of TOD already know this. Our failing is to widely apply the science to existing buildings and capture the embodied energy present in these structures while reducing energy inputs to a bare minimum.

Net Zero, PassivHaus, EQuilibrium House, R2000, LEED and Living Building Challenge are just a few programs targeting new construction that strive to create the nega-watt concept of energy conservation. I believe it was Amory Lovings who coined the term "nega-watt" to describe his conservation power plant idea which is that saving watts avoids construction of additional generating capacity. When applied to our wasteful U.S. culture the savings impact is huge. If such targets were to be applied to a maximum weatherization effort of existing buildings we would see a great evaporation of hardship around the globe.

One of our Company's favorite saying is that "it doesn't matter which energy source you select, but only that you use very, very little of any option." This is true, it works around the planet and it allows residents of such structures a wonderful amount of free time to consider really important social concerns instead of struggling to meet an unrealistic energy demand/cost/burden.

We should all think in terms of how much time/materials we want to dedicate to just heating/cooling/conditioning our built environments. I once consulted with a group of restaurant owners concerning their high energy usage. I encouraged them to consider how many meals they wanted to have to sell each day just to pay their energy bills. After meeting on my recommendations they undertook an expensive but reasonable thermal, mechanical and electrical retrofit of their existing buildings and maximized their profits after a three and a half year payback. They were able to increase the quality of their meals and offer a more comfortable dining atmosphere all without significantly raising prices. And, they were able to easily compete with other businesses at reduced expense due to their overhead/utility savings.

Payback, or amortization is where most engineers and architects become hung up. Present day energy costs are not realistic, we know this. Building Science takes the guesswork out of predicting future energy use. Declining energy resources with steadily increasing energy costs make the net zero goal a known quantity. No longer is guesswork involved in predicting future energy use in buildings. And, it's simply the right thing to do!

Don't know where these thoughts fit your book, but here's what comes to mind:

(1) I don't suppose you have some easy to digest diagrams? Sometimes only a couple of data points presented pictorially can have alot better emotional impact that pages of graphs alone. I'm thinking of the twinkie analogy in Ghostbusters - some representation of the size of our daily oil consumption vs. the size of the latest crop of new oil finds, the bakken, prudhoe, etc, etc. That chart that shows earth, then ss, then galaxy, then cluster, supercluster, etc. comes to mind also as an example in astronomy - those big billion barrel and tcf numbers are impressive on paper, but not when you draw them to scale next to our consumption. Seeing things in perspective is priceless.

(2) my #1 vote is for plenty of space on ANE and GNE. One of the keys in my mind to comprehending why things appear to be BAU when it's pretty easy to see overshoot on paper.

(3) Rockman's perspective on reserve replacement vs. share price has also been instrumental in deflating the shale bubble in my mind as well. Also importance of rate of extraction vs. absolute quantity (i.e. bakken). Oh, and kerogen is dirt, not tar sand, si?

(4) Spelling out the price inelasticity of oil supply & demand curves is sure a fun exercise, and a real fine companion to the ANE discussion. Better also touch on demand destruction as well, I think the intersection of things is really the key to rectifying the struggle between the numbers and the talking heads when it comes to peak oil. No demand desr. and oil might easily have cleared $200/bbl already, no? Then you toss in ANE, and you see that there's probably going to be a price spike anyway, or maybe a stairstep, but neither way is it looking pretty.

(5) Kudos to garyrides and those others who accent the quality of life aspects in powerdown (not that I expect [i.e.] medical care to be included in the plus list). I adore my fuji 21 speed, and I've lost 20 lbs since I've been riding regularly, and the spiritual benefits of an hour of real light, sky and air (even in a city of 1 million) every day I will now never voluntarily relinquish. I've been seeing an exponential increase (from near zero- best hopes for a few more doublings) in bikers here since Lehman; I'm sure that's not a unique experience about the country.

I look forward to the book. For your chapter 15 "The Road Ahead", I would leave the reader with the message that there will be no top down solutions. If anyone is holding out hope that leaders in government, or industry, or academia will conceive and deliver solutions to this predicament they will be disappointed. Leaders in our society do not rise to the top telling people what they do not want to hear. There will only be bottom up solutions. Everyone must use their own ingenuity to bring their energy consumption in line with what is sustainable. This is ultimately a message of hope. But it requires that you save yourself, not be saved by some external techno-wizardry. We have made a fetish of specialization, such that people are afraid to be assertive outside of their narrow slice of expertise. Deference to "experts" is highly over-rated. Take control of your destiny. It is a scary concept. Action. Empowerment. Survival.

About :
Chapter 09 – Better Energy Policies

Here I focus on several ideas that will help move countries away from dependence on imported oil – and ultimately fossil fuels in general – while also making sure supplies are adequate during the transition. I talk about fossil fuel taxes, drilling proposals that fund alternative energy and mass transit, and the need for an Open Fuel Standard.

And :

Chapter 14 – Energy and Politics

This chapter covers the history of energy policy in the U.S. over the past four decades, and why that has resulted in such a high level of dependence on imported oil.
-------------------

Do you also cover related foreign policy ? Relationship between US 1971 peak and first oil shock ? The kind of "cover up" that has been going on regarding the reality of US peak, for instance :
http://petrole.blog.lemonde.fr/how-the-global-oil-watchdog-failed-its-mi...

Comparison between US gas tax and other countries ?

It looks like an ambitious overview. I'll look forward to reading it.

You asked for comments:

1. I'm sure you'll include sufficient quantitative information so that the various options can be put in context. E.g., how much oil replacement is obtained by riding bicycles? From using low-power light bulbs? These sorts of options can only be evaluated at a policy level when the magnitude of the contribution they make can be compared both to other options and to the total energy flow through the system at present.

2. Don't neglect the capital investment. If current capital investment cannot be fully depreciated, what effect does that have on the economy? What are the realistic infrastructure replacement limitations? Along the same lines, do some options require government infrastructure support, e.g. a decision to construct a continent-wide hydrogen pipeline network?

3. When discussing politics, it is not just the USA that matters. Energy is fungible, albeit imperfectly, in world markets. What are the global implications?

Hope these comments help.

After reading some of the comments posted in response to this article:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/oil-price-skyrocket-iran-closed-142205272....

I think that the vast majority of Americans are a complete lost cause, there is nothing that will change their minds if it goes counter to their ingrained beliefs. Not even the best written book will ever make a difference to these folk.

Geothermal may not be a renewable. If one means the 50 degrees a few feet down or the use of a lake as a heat sink - those temps are influenced by solar load.

But tapping the deep core temp? Given Man's willingness to take and take it'd be a shame to make to core solid due to temp drop. Such is not my problem, nor the problem of anyone I'd know. But what a way to screw Humanity - take away the magnetic field.

Elesewhere:
Since solar has done most of the heavy lifting at our place for over 15 years,

Most of the 'energy resources' listed ARE from photons and are therefore solar. The photons captured may be far older than Humanity (oil, coal) or may be only a few Human generations old (some wood, peat), a few years old/less than a year (various crops), a few weeks old (wind, water cycle) or may be far quicker than it took to type this or read this (PV).

So the Sun does almost all the heavy lifting.

And under solar, do not forget solar heating. Solar batch hot water is 'popular' in China and used to be the "thing" in California. Solar hot water and an instant on hot water heating lets Americans wash like they are used to, yet is still a 'reasonable' target.

You might wish to play with eMergy or even further out the idea of Watts as "money". Imagine where you make a decision to buy X as an 'opportunity cost' of being cold in winter or an hour powering the HD TV. ((I'll let you track down "the 'Lectro" money idea.)

On Biomass - you may wish to knit together an undercurrent of "Humans and their creations are flawed" along with 'if Humans try to bioengineer a "solution" it could end poorly for the biosphere'.
http://www.donabee.com/health/klebsiellaplanticola.htm

Good luck with your book

Robert,

I agree with other posters emphasizing a chapter on efficiency, or how energy is used. I'd be happy to revise any graphics from my google Knols for use in your book.
http://knol.google.com/k/energy-global-warming-and-electric-bicycles#
http://knol.google.com/k/speed-costs-power#
http://knol.google.com/k/residence-time-of-momentum-energy-and-other-con...

Also, regarding how energy is accessed, a detailed discussion of nuclear technologies would seem most pertinent. The intelligence of our energy security strategy is best illustrated by considering the irony embodied in the depleted uranium round. A single such round contains about 300 grams of depleted uranium. Roughly speaking, the energy available in this mass would sustain a single person at a western standard of living (10 kWth) for an entire lifetime. Just because it also happens to be dense and pyrophoric, we expediently throw it at our enemies in order to maintain access to the more easily burned stuff.

We have several practical designs for reactors capable of utilizing the fertile uranium 238. These advanced reactors are safer, may burn slower, are often smaller, are more proliferation resistant, and far more sustainable than current light water reactor designs. Unlike hypothetical nuclear fusion powerplants, ground for these reactors could be broken today.

Best of luck with your book.

Not sure what you've going to include in the climate change chapter, but I see that only one comment mentions sea level rise.

You're no doubt aware that the current IPCC models don't account for the nasty positive feedbacks such as melting ice and methane. If Jim Hansen is right that all the globe's ice melts, we'll have about 70 feet of sea level rise. My house is 60 miles from the Florida coast but only 28 feet elevation. My office is at 70 feet elevation.

Point is that even much less sea level rise will require abandonment of trillions of dollars of infrastructure and response to mass migration.

Robert-
Have you examined if our current economic system of capitalism is compatible with a resource challenged future?

In your nuclear section I recommend informing readers of uranium supply and other minerals that may replace it. There is also the societal aspect of living in a disposable society with declining energy reserves

Hi Robert, Happy New Year, when the book is finished anyway.

A humble suggestion: is there time for an appendix of basic energy information? Briefly compare barrels to tons, amount of diesel/gasoline per barrel of petroleum etc. Something like the BP conversion table in their annual Global Statics report?

For the general non-technical reader a simple explanation of KWhr, vs power station output, btu equivalents of petroleum, gas etc.

I personally should have learned most of this in school, but never returned to college after doing avoiding the draft via the AF in the 60s.

Hi Robert! Exciting project for you, and for us! Well done.

In painting pictures of decline scenarios there is a persistent tendency to discuss how it will work across the entire global oil producer/consumer set as if each producer, refinery, distributor and consumer will react to the market forces in the same way on the downward journey from the peak.

This is not how it will work. Instead the experience for each participant will be unique to the individual circumstances. If you are a small producer feeding the Alaska pipeline (say), then regardless of the scale of your reserve if the total flow through the pipe line falls below viable levels, then your oil will be shut in.

If you are running an old field and its not economic then you seal it off and abandon it. Like happened with a 60,000 bblpd field off Nigeria recently. That light on the production map (big enough to supply half my countries needs) just shut off, it didn't follow a sweet exponential curve to nothing.

If your refinery cannot process the lower grades of crude from enhanced recovery or deep water fields, then (as happened recently in France, and in China) you cannot afford to upgrade due to the slim operating margins, so you cut your losses, shut the gate and that capacity is lost.

If you are a global supplier (say BP) and you have orders for more oil than you can supply, how do you allocate what you have? On what basis? On whose say-so?

The top ten more militarily and economically powerful oil-importing countries (China, Japan, Germany etc) are forging stronger ties with more producers than the remaining 160 other importing countries. So when supply cannot meet demand it is the other 160 smaller countries who will have no means to 'take' the oil they need, and they will get less, then they will get none; and no one else will care. There is no United Nations Charter on the Uniform Distribution of Available Oil.
http://oilshockhorrorprobe.blogspot.com/2011/10/when-might-new-zealands-...

So the end-times of oil (and many other resource) exports will be characterised by a few more powerful countries sustaining their imports to meet their needs, and many other countries finding they have little or no oil supply at all.

Without oil societies will simply pass through a brief period of population adjustment (a few weeks for most), followed by the reestablishment of rather primitive living conditions for the remainder.
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/19919

I suggest that you must refer to this 'lumpiness' in the post-oil experience, because a field at a time, a refinery at a time, a country at a time, the end could well be very abrupt, and (with the law of averages) much sooner than at least half the world expects.

Robert,

You might want to spend some time discussing markets.

Market critics need to be reminded of the virtues of markets: they're decentralized and can start working very quickly; they process an enormous amount of information into a simple price signal; with time to work, and with proper regulation they're extremely powerful, increasing supply, reducing consumption and implementing alternatives and substitutes; and they prevent the shortages, hoarding and misallocation of investment that can come from price controls, subsidies and rationing.

Market enthusiasts need to be reminded of the failures and shortcomings of unregulated markets: they don't include externalities like pollution (including climate change) and security concerns ($2T oil wars, anyone); price signals can take time to bring a response (i.e., short-term elasticity can be very low, and capital expenditure and turnover takes time); and poor consumers are affected by ability to pay.

Pigovian taxes (like a carbon, or fuel tax) are a marvelous compromise between the extremes of stifling regulation and the excesses of unbridled big business: they use price signals to direct investment where it needs to go.

If your book does nothing else but convince people that high oil prices are here to stay, and that they should move from short-term non-responses to long-term aggressive adaptation, you will have succeeded.

Ambitious project. As it is crunch time for you I will suggest you make sure your telling of the story in the two chapters below compliments rather than conflicts with itself.

Chapter 09 – Better Energy Policies

Chapter 14 – Energy and Politics

The final chapter 'Chapter 15 – The Road Ahead' will have to rehash some of the same material, keep the perspective in the wrap up as fresh as you can.

Good Luck