China overtakes US as top energy consumer

BP research says China has overtaken US as top energy consumer after rapid growth in 2010 A new report says that China has overtaken the United States as the world’s biggest consumer of energy. Oil company BP said Wednesday that China moved to the top in 2010 with 20.3 percent of global demand, ahead of […]

Chinese Expressways vs US Interstates

The above graph compares the size of the US Interstate highway system (according to FHWA Table HM 220), with the Chinese Expressway system (according to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics Table 16-4).  Both series currently run through 2009.  The notional extrapolation shown as the thin pink line suggests that the Chinese system will exceed […]

Planning for Higher Food and Energy Prices, and their Wider Impacts

Over the years, we have become accustomed to a rising standard of living. One of things that has helped this happen is a gradually declining ratio of food costs to total personal expenditures. Energy costs have not followed as clear a trend, but are higher again now, and seem likely to be higher in the […]

Golden age of gas may be a call too soon

The natural gas market is entering a golden age on the back of increasing global demand. So proclaims the International Energy Agency, the western countries’ watchdog. But the natural gas pricing system remains, for now, largely in the dark ages. Unlike oil, the cost of natural gas varies substantially around the world. In the US […]

IEA: Use of natural gas may rise 50% by 2035

Global natural gas use may rise more than 50 percent by 2035 from last year to overtake coal as the second-most used fuel, the International Energy Agency said. “We have seen remarkable developments in natural-gas markets in recent months,” Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the Paris-based adviser to developed nations, said Monday in the report, […]

Phanton Efficency, U.S. Energy Consumption Is Well Below Peak

The US economy is consuming 2.00% less energy than its five year average seen prior to the 2008 financial crisis. Some will be cheered by this data, and indeed there are small nuggets of good news here. First, US consumption of oil—which turned flattish after the 2004 repricing—is down significantly, by over 10% since 2007. […]

How Fish Use Energy Teaches True Oil Economics

Charlie Hall, the outspoken ecologist who charges that neoclassical economists largely write fairy tales, is having a good day in Puerto Rico. The sun is shining and girls in bikinis are walking down the beach. But Hall, as usual, is thinking about how surplus energy makes the world go around and why the U.S. economy […]

China shops for Latin American oil, food, minerals

Latin America is blessed with a wealth of natural resources such as oil, copper and soy, and seeks investment and loans to capitalize on them. China needs the commodities to keep its economy growing and has about $3 trillion in reserves to burn. Those interests have come together in a burgeoning and unorthodox partnership, as […]

World’s Energy Poor See Receding Light at End of Tunnel

As the world continues to marvel at the widespread progress in modern technology and home electronics, there are still about 2.5 billion people – out of a global population of nearly 6.9 billion – who have little or no access to electricity. According to the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), the future does not hold […]

The Coming Water Crisis

Nearly three-quarters of our earth is water of which only 2.5% is fresh water, and the remainder 97.5% is salt water. Of this fresh water nearly 70% (or 1.75% of total water) is frozen in the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland. The remainder 0.75% of the total water is perhaps the world’s most important resource […]

Chevy had it right: See the USA (and its crudest places)

There’s a funny scene in the 1983 Chevy Chase movie Vacation, where the irrepressible ex-“Saturday Night Live” star, as the beleaguered Clark Griswold, is driving his family from Chicago to a prominent southern California amusement park while taking (willingly or unwillingly) the scenic route. Griswold, as the sentimental but clueless Dad who tries without success […]

A world hungry for growth will have to be fed

We have all experienced it: paying for our groceries at the supermarket checkout and staring in disbelief at how little change we’ve received. While the business sections of the world’s media focus on stocks, bonds, precious metals, oil and interest rates, these have a limited impact on most people’s lives compared with food commodity prices. […]

John Michael Greer: In The World After Abundance

Over the past month or so the essays on this blog have veered away from the details of appropriate tech into a discussion of some of the reasons why this kind of tech is, in fact, appropriate as a response to the predicament of industrial society. That was a necessary diversion, since a great many […]

Video from Slow Living Summit

Will Rapp, former CEO of Gardener’s SUpply company speaks at the Slow Living Summit in Brattleboro VT, WEdnesday, June 1st 2011. Topics include Peak Oil, clean energy, community, farming. It’s about getting ready for a non-petroleum based economy and a society that treats each other with dignity.

We’re all peak oilers now

There has been a distinct increase in dialogue around energy in the last year, and I hear a growing acceptance of the idea that we live on a finite planet and will either reduce the amount of energy we demand from this planet, or hit some version of a brick wall when that demand cannot […]

China, not U.S., key to global oil demand

What’s more important to world oil demand – gasoline prices in the U.S. that are nearly $4 a gallon, or power rationing in China? To Americans, of course, it’s the former. But to world oil markets, the latter may be a far more significant indication of where oil prices will be heading this summer. At […]

Higher break-even price for Saudi oil sets new normal

In 2003, the breakeven for Saudi crude oil was $30 per barrel. It’s now reported to be $85 and expected to rise to $110 by 2015, according to the latest MarketWatch article. n/a Now the really bad news from a trader‘s perspective: Seldom do prices trade below breakeven; and, if they do, not for very […]

China hikes electricity rates to counter shortages

China has raised electricity rates for some industrial users as parts of the country grapple with their worst energy crisis in years, despite concerns higher costs may add to inflation. Residential rates were unchanged, the government announced late Monday. It gave no details of where the changes would be imposed. The increase of about 20 […]

Food prices will double in 20 years causing mass world hunger, says Oxfam

The prices of some staple foods will more than double by 2030 unless world leaders reform the global food system, Oxfam has warned. The aid charity warned that millions more people could suffer food shortages in two decades due to a ‘perfect storm’ of ecological and sociological factors. A combination of population growth, climate-hit harvests […]

Feeding the world isn’t easy

With the world population expected to increase by almost 3 billion people by 2050, a Muscle Shoals organization will be at the forefront of ensuring farm production increases accordingly. Scientists at IFDC’s Muscle Shoals headquarters and at outposts around the world are searching for new ways to produce fertilizer that costs less, is more environmentally […]

Gasoline Gangsters Episode 22: Peak Oil in the Land Down Under

Australian peak oil production was reached over ten years ago and Australia now imports over 40% of its oil consumption from abroad. But coal and natural gas production have kept growing over the last 30 years and the nation is a net energy exporter. I went to Australia a number of years ago to figure […]

Prices at pump build demand for natural gas cars

With the future of gasoline prices uncertain, cars and trucks that run on compressed natural gas — fuel that’s about half the cost of gasoline — are getting another look. Los Angeles commercial real estate broker Ted Simpson recently snapped up a Honda that runs on CNG, which in the U.S. has been better known […]

Memorial Day cookout will cost you 29% more this year thanks to inflation

Those thinking of hosting a BBQ – even a modest one – can expect to fork out an extra $45 on food to serve a dozen guests. The total cost comes to $199, or around 29 per cent more than last year… and that’s before soda and alcohol, according to the latest data for metro […]

Peak coffee: A cup of trouble

On a mountaintop estate in the rugged coffee-making region of Quindio, Colombia, Juan Pablo Villota is at war with the weather. For three years, abnormally wet conditions have caused massive flooding in the county’s flatlands and damage to his crops. Even the road to his 40-hectare plantation gives testament to his fight: The swollen La […]

Peak Oil and the Great Recession

When in the late 1990s it was recognized that world oil production was likely to start declining early in the twenty-first century, petroleum geologists and other industry observers started talking and writing about the economic damage this event would cause. Serious economic consequences were a virtual certainty because, since the beginning of the industrial age, […]

Peak Cars, more people discover bicycles

Mass motoring has had it day. Mass cycling is around the corner. Peak Cars is as real as Peak Oil. Some sceptics believe Peak Oil is little more than a theory. However, last month, Fatih Birol, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “We think that crude oil production […]

Are China’s factories running out of power?

Why has Global Sticks, a manufacturer of wooden ice cream sticks, moving from Dalian, China, to Thunder Bay, Ontario? It’s the kind of low margin manufacturing that is never supposed to come back after it leaves North America for cheaper labour abroad. But wage costs are no longer everything they were cracked up to be. […]

The peasant revolt

Has our society become so obsessed with economic growth that people have become a commodity? Two items in my morning newspaper strongly suggest the answer to be an emphatic, shameful YES. The first is a national story about how smuggling people across the Mexico/US border has become a billion dollar business. The Associated Press story […]

Peak Oil’s Impact: College Graduations

I am now the very proud father of a college graduate (a wonderful young woman who completed her four-year curriculum in only three years—impressive!—and has now returned to the Boston area). I could not be more delighted or happier for her! Last week, I flew to New Orleans to attend her graduation, and stayed there […]

Platts China demand figures: “only” up 8.3%

China’s apparent oil demand* in April reached 38.36 million metric ton (mt) or an average of 9.37 million barrels per day (b/d), marking an 8.3% increase from April 2010 due to increased demand during the spring sowing season, according to a Platts analysis based on recent figures published by the Chinese government. Apparent oil demand […]

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