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Well, we all know that driving less will do alot to ease the blow of a reduced liquid-fuel source.
Next thing we'll have to do is find a way to curtail usage in the electrical, products, and agricultural fields.
Organically grown veggies/fruits and organically raised livestock could ease some of the agricultural pains.
The Reduce-Reuse-Recycle method could ease the supply strain brought on by the production of general goods.
And I'll probably be curb-stomped for this one, but switching to coal-fired plants in some areas would somewhat soften the blow as far as electrical supply is concerned.
Many of us have our own unique way of approaching and solving the problem.
Perhaps we could all get together and brainstorm a peaceful, non-Mad-Max, approach to a potential catastrophe.
One things for damned sure though, I stopped going to peakoil.com because of that.
It went from problem-solving, to "which clan will you be part of for the next 2,000 years."
No one said peak-oil would be pretty, but I don't necessarily believe we'll end up in a Neanderthal-like, state of affairs either.
If I bored y'all, you know where to aim the warheads.
Whoa man....one step at a time. The gasoline market is completely separate from the electricity market.
While prices for gas are skyrocking because of oil demand, electricity prices are staying quite steady, and are very affordable in most of the US.
I agree we're probably in a peak oil situation, and everything should be done to reduce oil use, but almost none of the oil we import goes into producing electricity. We certainly don't need to favor coal plants all of sudden because oil is through the roof. There is almost no relationship.
My $.02 on this is that we need to begin to connect the two markets as one. We need to use more of the electrical grid to charge Plug In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) on our roads. That way we're using less oil and more of what puts electricity into our wires--which is increasingly coming from wind power. It's the cheapest renewable energy by far and now 25 states have laws forcing utilities to produce an ever rising percentage of their power from renewables. So for once, wind and other renewables can begin to play a role in our transportation sector.
Oh yeah, and we can ride our bikes too.
I'm an editor for an energy magazine so I know what I'm talking about.
(that's a dude inside the front end of a wind turbine's generator)
Yeah basically the electric power at night goes begging to be used. There's a large surplus at night that needs to be used. Powering down and powering back up giant power generating plants each night is not the way to be most efficient. What is needed is a power curve that is mostly flat. Big way to do it is to have plugin hybrids that are also plugged into the home. If the hybrid is plugged into the smart grid/home it would help flatten that power generating curve. This in turn will make the whole power plant last longer, lower maintenance cost and become more efficient.
My contribution to the grid? Use quite a bit less than the typical user.
More plug-in electric hybrids = more coal fired power plants.
Coal is far dirtier than gasoline and would contribute far more to global warming if used to power our cars. And, how do we get that coal? We remove entire mountain tops in Appalachia in an extremely destructive process. Coal (and nuclear) are a non-renewable resources, so anything based on it is non-sustainable.
Also, the fuel consumed to propel a 3000 pound vehicle is only part of the energy that goes into the auto-based transportation infrastructure. There are roads, parking lots, auto shops, auto delarships etc. to maintain. Look around the city - how much land is dedicated to auto transport? There is the manufacturing of cars and tires. The decommissioning of cars. Whith any type of auto-based transit system, these costs are there.
"More plug-in electric hybrids = more coal fired power plants."
Sure you could say that, you also could say it will be more plug-in electric hybrids = more nuclear plants. I like to think it will be far more solar generating points, large and small. Almost every house having panels, the ability to generate clean energy in the hands of anyone that wants to be a provider. The electric grid is there. The government can build a tax system built on how clean your electric production is. A distributed energy producing system would be far more robust, far more competition. The markets would open for innovation and stride for a cleaner and more sustainable society.
Yeah we live in a car depend society that needs to change, but there's tons and tons of resources that have gone into building what we have to today. This isn't going away easily, if ever. Hopefully we'll scale down at about the same rate as we scaled up to what we have today. It would be nice to dream that we would scale down faster, but it's wishful thinking.
I really don't understand the "peak oil" scare. Do people really give a fuck if we run out of crude oil? Or is it something else? Are we dipping into the Laws of Thermodynamics again? Smells like conspiratorial bs again.
User1,
"More plug-in electric hybrids = more coal fired power plants."
Powering our transportation system off wind and solar power sounds great, but can it be scaled up to power 200 million cars? Currently all renewable energy sources represent a fraction of a percent of our energy consumption. Producing solar panels and wind mills is a very energy intensive process. We are already are facing an electricity crisis because much of it is dependent on natural gas which has already peaked in this continent and is in decline.
Yes, it's a good idea to invest in renewable sources to power and localized energy to power our water pumps, filtration, lighting and keep our economy limping along as we ride down the petroleum slope.
It is not a good idea to add a new consumer of electricity as we enter into an age of inevitable energy decline. There is no other energy source that has energy return on energy input like petroleum. Also, there is no other energy source with such a high energy density as petroleum. The bottom line is we will have an energy reduced future.
It would be nice to dream that we would scale down faster, but it's wishful thinking. If we can't scale down quickly, nature will scale us down, and not on our terms. So, we must aim for something that'll avert disaster - whether or not people think it's politically viable.
On over population:
Good point on overpopulation. It is estimated by scientists that this planet can support a human population of 1 or 2 billion. Of course the amount of population that can be supported is in decline as we are in a period of mass extinction, rapid deforestation and global warming.
thinkpeace
"we are already are facing an electricity crisis because much of it is dependent on natural gas which has already peaked in this continent and is in decline."
The hereinabove statement is false. I am third generation energy industry (both blue collar and white collar) oil & gas, wind, water, coalbed methane, etc. and deal with these issues all the time around the US. I would be more than happy to talk about them to the extent of my knowledge when I have time.
I stand corrected, if non-conventional sources are included, natural-gas is not yet in decline.
Even so, there is a boom in new coal-fired power plants proposed for production. This implies that natural gas (which burns much cleaner) will not be able to meet the demand for electricity production.
Actually wind energy is coming closer and closer to being able to compete with fossil fuels in regards to energy returns. The trend is that they are coming together and one day the curves will pass each other. Solar energy is the same story. Lots of innovations are happening in regards to solar energy. It's far from a matured industry. BTW, the first solar panel ever made still can produce electricity.
Why does everything have to be viewed as a one to one relationship when replacing fossil fueled cars? I stated above that we have to scale down. We need to scale down and be more public transportation dependent. It will be a looooong time before we see the end of personal transportation, if we ever will. There will always be someone that can afford to have this option. Hopefully some day soon, other parts of our society will see themselves being catered to in regards to transportation needs that doesn't revolve around a car.
Personally I think the price of fossil fuels will dictate the direction taken by the world's population. Sadly there will always be other nations that will take the cheaper route to being more productive.
"More plug-in electric hybrids = more coal fired power plants.Coal is far dirtier than gasoline and would contribute far more to global warming if used to power our cars."
In some parts of the country, yes. But not in California which signed a law around a year ago that requires that all new energy contracts that utilities sign with generators be as clean as that of a modern day natural gas plant. In other words, it's deliberately designed to exclude coal. No new power contracts for electricity in California will come from coal (and this includes power deliveries from out of state where some of the dirtiest coal plants exist). And in other parts of the country, it's getting harder to get new coal plants permitted (high profile recent example in Kansas).
Also, since the cost for natural gas is going through the roof, there's a real push afoot to get more renewales contributing to the electric grid for pure cost reasons. It's not just because California requires it through a separate green mandate, but because it's increasingly cost effective. All over parts of the country, utilities are keeping natural gas in the pipes while the wind blows through wind farms and then ramping up the gas again once the wind dies down.
I'm all for letting the various technologies compete because we're already seeing wind prove its worth just on a cost basis. And if it can start to play a role in the transportation sector, that's offsetting some oil use. Sure, it's small but it's something.
Last year the US say 2400 MW of wind come online and this year it's expected to bust 4000 MW.
And another fun stat, if you were broadly invested in all the wind companies that are publicly traded (and it's not a lot) you would have seen a 300% return on investment on FY 2006.
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