Renewable energy & oil replacements are critically needed now....

Today's post: Wednesday, 8-5-2009

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both.

OR, we can massively increase our supply of renewable energy and other replacements for petroleum fast enough to avoid that problem crashing the world’s economy.

That clearly was going to become extremely important at some point.

A recent analysis suggests that we may either be at that point right now or we will be within 10 years.

Last Sunday AFP online news had this story.:

“ A disastrous energy crunch is looming because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading economist warned…..”

The chief economist for the International Energy Agency, said that as soon as 5 years from now that might stop the recovery from the current world wide recession.

As the economy recovers, demand will go up; & if he’s correct that global oil production will begin to peak in 5 years and then peak in 10 years, the price of oil, hit by both slightly lower supply or inability of supply to increase plus rising demand may cause a very sharp run up in prices.

Mr Birol said he believes that oil is running out faster than previously predicted; and peak oil production will occur in 10 years, at least 10 years earlier than previous forecasts.

He said that "….we have to leave oil before oil leaves us….”

He also said

"The earlier we start, the better, because all of our economic and social system is based on oil….”.

He said that just in the last two years it looks as if many of the world’s largest fields of oil have already hit peak production. That suggests his analysis may be correct.

So, we need to make a lot of progress fast in many areas!:

1. Clearly we continue to need a massive effort to increase solar and wind generated electricity and accelerate building plug-in hybrid and all electric cars. But this forecast suggests we need to at least triple the amount of emphasis we put on that now.

2. It certainly looks like we now know what we can do with the coal we no longer should be burning to generate electricity. We need to be using it plus massive amounts of biofuels to make substitutes for gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel fuel to keep our existing economy going until biofuels and renewable energy can do the job.

3. A separate story came out this week stating that by burning coal while trapping and storing the CO2 released and more nuclear power would lower the dollar costs of the energy source transition.

Given the very high dollar costs:

to mine coal if we stop mining it in ways that destroy the communities near where it’s mined and to do this “sequestration” of CO2;

& to fully fund enough extremely reliable security for new nuclear plants,

…I think this hope of reduced costs from these two sources is simply & totally wrong. In fact it may well cost somewhat more.

BUT, given how much new energy we need and how fast we now look to need it, the conclusion that we need to use coal while sequestering the CO2 and to increase our use of electricity from nuclear reactors IN ADDITION to massive increases in renewable energy is quite correct.

4. We clearly also need to replace gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel fuel from petroleum to keep our existing economy going until renewable energy can do much more of the job -- with the energy and cost efficient production of biofuels from algae and from non-food plant sources that avoid cutting down forests or displacing food crops.

In conclusion, his forecast, which may well be correct, means that government policy needs to do much more in this area; and the immediate potential for venture capital for clean tech energy investments is far larger than we might have imagined.