Matt Simmons: Water and Energy Crisis Looms on Horizon

Ocean Energy Institute founder and energy investment banker Matthew Simmons gave an hour-long keynote address at the Island Institute’s 2009 Sustainable Island Living conference on Saturday morning at the Strand Theatre in Rockland. Simmons titled his talk “The Gulf of Maine: What Lies Beyond the Fossil Fuel Horizon,” but his presentation ranged far outside the Gulf to encompass the globe.

Sporting a delicate windmill as a lapel pin, Simmons started off by reflecting on the concept of sustainability, a current buzzword among energy development experts. “More and more people around the world are beginning to wonder, “Does the globe have a sustainable strategy?’” Simmons said. “It’s all about sustainability. Sustainability means protecting or improving our living standards. And without abundant water and energy, we are not sustainable,” he said. “There’s no question that our oceans are energy’s last frontier.”

Referring to Maine’s year-round island communities, Simmons noted that by definition “islands rarely have adequate local resources to be sustainable. Iceland is the only one with sustainable energy because it has abundant geothermal resources. No others have been able to do it.”

Simmons said that the critical resources in the world’s future economy will be energy and potable water. Population growth will exacerbate the demand for both resources. “Energy is the most serious scarce resource among many right now,” Simmons explained. “In my opinion peak oil is past tense. What I’m also worried about is that peak global gas is also past tense. Black coal is heavily depleted and so we have probably now seen the peaking of fossil fuels entirely.”

“In the United States I suspect we will be at 350 million people by 2030. That number will be much larger in other regions of the world, ” he continued. Simmons noted that presently in China there are 18 cars per 1,000 people, while in the United States the figure is more than 900 per 1,000 people. Demand for automobiles will continue to rise in China as well as in Brazil, India and other developing countries, leading to further depletion of fossil fuel resources.

“The bigger concern is the scarcity of other resources, starting with water,” Simmons said. “If oil is precious, water is priceless.”

The Free Press