[Wildwell]

{This thread was split from the die-off scenario thread in PO discussion. If you have off-topic input for a thread, link to it from the original thread so as not to disrupt the flow of discussion.
MQ}
This is a liquid fuels transportation crisis, no more, no less, principally for road and particular air transport. Not an all in energy crisis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_energy_development

Nuclear is not an issue, it’s merely safety and public acceptance

At the present use rate, there are 50 years left of low cost known uranium reserves [25]. Given that the cost of fuel is a minor cost factor for fission power, more expensive, lower grade, sources of uranium could be used in the future. For example: extraction from seawater [26] or granite. Another alternative would be to use thorium as fission fuel. Thorium is three times more abundant in the Earth crust than uranium [27], and much more of the thorium can be used (or, more precisely, converted into Uranium-233 and then used).

Current light water reactors burn the nuclear fuel poorly, leading to energy waste. Nuclear reprocessing [28] or burning the fuel better using different reactor designs would reduce the amount of waste material generated and allow better use the available resources. As opposed to current light water reactors which use Uranium-235 (0.7% of all natural uranium), fast breeder reactors convert the more abundant Uranium-238 (99.3% of all natural uranium) into plutonium for fuel. It has been estimated that there is anywhere from 10,000 to five billion years worth of Uranium-238 for use in these power plants [29]. Breeder technology has been used in several reactors [30].

How about efficiency? It has been calculated that the US could be 27-75% more efficient in 20 years, offsetting any fossil fuels peak.

Solar power, if it were only affordable, has the power to fill the entire country's energy needs - using existing rooftops and other already paved surfaces. The main thing keeping solar from revolutionizing our energy system is its cost. A KPMG report, commissioned by Greenpeace in 1999, shows that for about $660 million (the cost of only 2 of the 1300-1900 new power plants proposed under the Bush/Cheney Energy "Plan"), a large-scale solar panel factory can be built which would bring the cost of solar power down by 4-5 times so that solar is competitive with existing conventional energy sources.

Mass production of solar PV can make solar cost-competitive with (or even cheaper than) dirty energy technologies. As nanosolar applications and other new technologies roll out within the next 5-10 years, this cost reduction is inevitable. Once solar is cost-competitive, there's no limit on the amount of energy that can come from distributed solar generation (and there are many jobs to be created in installing it all).

The Department of Energy estimates that a distributed solar system would involve an average of 17 square miles of PV per state. Using vacant land, parking lots and rooftops would provide plenty of land for this. They state that using the estimated 5 million acres of abandoned industrial "brownfields" sites in our nation's cities could supply 90% of America's current electric demand.

Wind power, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, can provide more power than the entire nation's electricity needs. The plains states (northern Texas up to the Dakotas) have been called the Saudi Arabia of wind. In 2001 (before natural gas got really expensive), wind was already cost-competitive with natural gas power plants in some parts of the country.

In the past 20 years, wind technology has come a long way. The cost has dropped dramatically and continues to drop as conventional power sources become more expensive. Modern wind turbines can produce more and more power (currently, the large ones can produce 1.5 megawatts each and 2-3 megawatt types are currently under testing and development).

North and South Dakota alone have enough wind energy from its highest wind speed sites to supply over half of the electricity needs of the lower 48 states. A group of 12 states in the midsection of the country have enough wind energy potential to produce nearly four times the amount of electricity consumed by the nation in 1990.

According to the American Wind Energy Association:
"Installed wind energy generating capacity now totals 6,374 MW, and is expected to generate about 16.7 billion kWh of electricity in 2004. That is still less 1% of U.S. electricity generation. By contrast, the total amount of electricity that could potentially be generated from wind in the United States has been estimated at 10,777 billion kWh annually—more than twice the electricity generated in the U.S. today."

Long term electric personal battery cars, light rail, personal mass transit and longer distance high speed maglev and conventional trains could plug the gap until technology improves.

Potentially enough biodiesel is produced to power the US farm and Railroad industries.

Tidal, biomas and waste disposal also has large potentials.

http://www.energyjustice.net/solutions/

[Ludi]

Any guesses as to when these technologies will be implemented on a wide scale, Wildwell? Will it be before, or after, oil becomes expensive? Will they be online to make up the decline?

[MonteQuest]

Wildwell,

Before I split your post to it's own thread, I'm going to give you an opportunity to show me anywhere in your post that you are on topic and contributing to the die-off scenario discussion.

[mpykalo]

It seems to me that geopolitical positioning overshadows technological development of all forms... we need only look at the context of political drive in history as a driver of advancement.
Without any real political impetus there will be no call for upstaging towards the real needs.

I think that the world ballance of power will define this process.

[Wildwell]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'A')ny guesses as to when these technologies will be implemented on a wide scale, Wildwell? Will it be before, or after, oil becomes expensive? Will they be online to make up the decline?

[Wildwell]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'W')ildwell,

Before I split your post to it's own thread, I'm going to give you an opportunity to show me anywhere in your post that you are on topic and contributing to the die-off scenario discussion.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Wildwell', ' ')You can sign up now and switch over to have your whole house powered by these merely by switching tariff.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Wildwell', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'W')ildwell,

Before I split your post to it's own thread, I'm going to give you an opportunity to show me anywhere in your post that you are on topic and contributing to the die-off scenario discussion.

[Wildwell]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Wildwell', ' ')You can sign up now and switch over to have your whole house powered by these merely by switching tariff.

[Wildwell]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Wildwell', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'W')ildwell,

Before I split your post to it's own thread, I'm going to give you an opportunity to show me anywhere in your post that you are on topic and contributing to the die-off scenario discussion.

[PeakOiler]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Wildwell', ' ')You can sign up now and switch over to have your whole house powered by these merely by switching tariff.

[jato]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')his is a liquid fuels transportation crisis, no more, no less, principally for road and particular air transport. Not an all in energy crisis.

[Wildwell]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PeakOiler', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Wildwell', ' ')You can sign up now and switch over to have your whole house powered by these merely by switching tariff.

[Wildwell]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jato', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')his is a liquid fuels transportation crisis, no more, no less, principally for road and particular air transport. Not an all in energy crisis.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PeakOiler', '
')Same here. My utility (PEC) is a cooperative, and not bound to the electric dereg laws in Texas. I cannot choose my electricity provider.

Ludi: You must be a neighbor of mine!

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Wildwell', ' ') Consumer plastic prices have been dropping for years and are far below costs in real terms just a few years ago.
.

[Wildwell]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Wildwell', ' ') Consumer plastic prices have been dropping for years and are far below costs in real terms just a few years ago.
.

[Sparaxis]

You leave out global shipping, the fundamental underpinning of globalization. Bunker fuel usage is 2.6 mm b/d (Source), and currently there are no easy fuel alternatives for propelling large ships across oceans. At some oil price, this intricate network will start unraveling, but it won't be a matter of just relocating all the manufacturing back to the country of origin, as that infrastructure--built in cheap energy days--is largely dismantled and turned into shopping centers and expensive lofts.

Since global growth is dependent on global growth in exports and trade, any reversal of that trend will have profound impacts. "Efficient" ships running on coconut oil won't cut it.

You far overstate the percentage of oil use for transportation. In the US it is 63%. In China it is 34%. That leaves big chunks of usage (chemical feedstock, irrigation pump fuel, glass making, and hundreds of other special usages) completely vulnerable to price and availability shocks.

Oil is a major energy input into coal mining--as oil goes up, so do other energy forms, since they all rely on oil in the production process.

Reductionism is a common but sometimes fatal way to "get your head around" a complex phenomenon. This is indeed an energy crisis, since all the alternatives promoted today do not increase the amount of NET energy available to us once oil begins steady depletion. And without increasing net energy, there can be no economic growth. It's just the way the structure we created works.

[turmoil]

[Peepers]

Allow me to interject myself on the transportation aspect of this discussion. Aside from cities along the Northeast Corridor, most U.S. cities have little or no rail passenger services (be they urban or intercity). Those that do, have only one or two rail transit lines, and perhaps a single Amtrak route that has just one train a day on it. That may sound hard to believe for many people in the rest of the developed world, just as it's difficult for many Americans to comprehend having any alternative to driving their cars.

The notable exceptions are Chicago, California's coastal cities, and the Pacific Northwest, which have more urban and intercity rail services. Then, there's the other extreme, such as Columbus, Ohio, a metro area of 1.8 million people that has no rail passenger transportation at all. Detroit, a metro area of more than 5 million people, has zero rail transit, but has three trains a day to Chicago. Phoenix, the nation's sixth largest city, is building its first rail transit line, but has zero intercity passenger trains. There are more cities like these, albeit smaller in population, which are devoid of energy-efficient rail passenger transportation.

To rectify this will take a massive and time-consuming investment. Just for intercity passenger rail, the cost of upgrading freight railroad lines for 100+ mph passenger trains on about two dozen corridors nationwide is estimated at more than $100 billion, according to a recent report by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Yet this multi-billion-dollar federal program does not yet exist.

That will require passage of legislation in Congress to create such a program, for which attempts each year since the early 1990s have failed under pressure from highway and aviation lobbies. This year's attempt is House Resolution 1631, called the Railroad Infrastructure Development and Expansion Act for the 21st Century (RIDE-21), which would provide $60 billion in tax-exempt & tax-credit bonds, federal loans and loan guarantees for high-speed rail and freight railroad infrastructure projects.

Assuming legislation is passed this year (I'm hopeful, but also realistic that it probably won't), engineering and environmental studies necessary for all those projects to become eligible for federal funding typically takes more than five years (and sometimes as long as 10). Then there's construction which, depending on the project, can take as little as two years but often much more (especially if the project involves difficult terrain, or is in urban areas with lots of NIMBYs and their lawyers). By that point, a minimum of seven years has passed and possibly as much as 15 -- just for 10-20 routes nationwide. And we haven't even passed the legislation yet to authorize the funding program.

On the urban rail transit side of the equation, the federal government provides between $5 billion and $6 billion per year in public transportation funding, mostly for capital construction, but some for rural transit operational assistance. A very small portion of the total goes to so-called "New Starts" -- which are dedicated busways, light-rail lines, regional commuter rail routes and subways, or extensions of existing routes. About a dozen or two New Start transit projects get funded each year in cities across the U.S. It will take a lot more federal funding to make a meaningful increase in the number of energy efficient, electrically powered urban transport services, and to introduce them to more U.S. cities that don't yet have them.

Once a decision by Congress is made to increase funding for public transit, then the same federal approvals process has to be undertaken for these projects as they are for intercity rail. It starts with a 1- to 2-year-long major investment study, followed by another 1-2 years for preliminary engineering and environmental impact analyses, and then final engineering, which can take a year or more. Then construction can begin, assuming the funding is available. That includes a 50 percent local/state share to leverage a federal New Start grant, under current federal policy. Meanwhile, highway and aviation projects require only a 20 percent local/state match to leverage an 80 percent federal share. Construction can take up to a decade, depending on the project.

One thing to remember is that, as oil increases in cost, so will the cost of constructing energy-efficient rail transit systems. While the ultimate impact will be greater efficiency over highway and aviation modes, we'll use just as much oil getting there. It's better to raise the funding now, so we can get through the federally required engineering and environmental review processes ASAP. The longer the construction horizon for these rail and transit projects remains beyond our reach, the greater the risk that we won't be able to afford as many of those projects. We need to make the funding available NOW so the construction horizon finally starts moving toward us.