Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources

Peak Oil Concerns Now Mainstream: Christian Science Monitor, Citigroup

Richard Ha writes:

The further some things recede in the rearview mirror, the clearer they become.

Concepts that were new and cutting edge at Peak Oil conferences several years ago are now mainstream.

I want to introduce you to the Resource Insights blog, which we have added to our list of blog links at right. You can always click over to it from there.

This was posted a couple days ago (that’s my emphasis there in its final paragraph):

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2012

This is the fourth of a six-part series introducing readers of The Christian Science Monitor to concepts useful in understanding the Resource Insights blog. Selected posts from Resource Insights are now appearing regularly on the Monitor’s Energy Voices blog. To read the previous installments of this series click on the following: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
It is with trepidation that independent petroleum geologist Jeffrey Brown has watched global oil exports decline since 2006. With all the controversy in the past several years over whether worldwide oil production can rise to quench the world’s growing thirst for petroleum, almost no one thought to ask what was happening to the level of oil exports. And yet, each year a dwindling global pool of exports has been generating ever greater competition among importing nations and has become a largely unheralded force behind record high oil prices.

Even though the trend in oil exports has been evident in the data for some time, the analyst community was caught by surprise when a Citigroup report released earlier this month forecast an end to oil exports in 2030 from Saudi Arabia, currently the world’s largest oil exporter. Read the rest

If the Citigroup report is right and Saudi Arabia will stop exporting oil by 2030, then we in Hawai‘i are in big trouble.

Our solution, the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative, anticipates 70 percent freedom from fossil fuel by 2030. That is to be achieved by 40 percent renewable energy and 30 percent energy efficiency – which means that 60 percent of our energy will still depend on fossil fuel.

But there may not be any oil we can afford then. And actually, we probably won’t be able to afford oil way before 2030 – even, say, 2020? That’s only eight years from now.

There are other views of the future that are just as persuasive. Richard Heinberg and others talk about the end of growth in this video:

In this scenario, oil prices may fluctuate in a relatively narrow band, going from expansion when oil prices dip and contraction when oil price rise above, say, $115/barrel for any extended period.

That is the reason we formed the Big Island Community Coalition.

We all feel the same urgency. The Coalition anticipates driving Big Island electricity prices to be the lowest in the state, in a timely manner. This protects us from whatever happens with oil prices.

We started with the desired end result, and worked backwards:
  • Protect Big Island families from rising electricity rates
  • Make the Big Island more food secure
  • Raise our standard of living relative to the rest of the world
  • Give working homeless better options
  • Help Big Island businesses become more competitive in the O‘ahu market, as well as worldwide
  • Prevent having to export our children, our most precious resource, by having jobs available here on the Big Island
To get the above desired results, we need lowest cost electricity. So our focus is clear. Read more about the Big Island Community Coalition.