The end of oil

Oil is not about to run out. However it is becoming increasingly apparent  that the supply of“easy oil”, with a high energy return on investment (EROI), has peaked. It is no good George Bush, Gordon Brown, and other western leaders calling on OPEC to increase supply. The ill-concealed fact is there is minimal spare capacity in the system. Former US Energy Secretary James Schlesinger recently concluded, “We can’t continue to make supply meet demand much longer. It’s no longer the case that we have a few voices crying in the wilderness. The battle is over. The peakists have won.”

It is not only the price of oil that is soaring. Electricity and gas bills are forecast to rise 40%. In the globalised economy food prices are also pegged to the cost of oil which provides the means of transportation and fertiliser for crops. We are entering a new era where energy is the new currency, and where an increasing number of the world’s population will suffer from fuel and food poverty. We face either rampant inflation or recession.

The Government is looking for easy solutions, and someone to blame. Boosting the oil supply seems the easy solution but is impossibility. Ministers have fallen back in love with nuclear power, but new power stations take many years to build, even if communities can be persuaded to host them and their legacy of waste. Then there is the temptation to fall back on other fossil fuels like coal, or exploit tar sands, short-term fixes that will exacerbate global warming and lead to future agricultural losses from climate induced floods and droughts. According to NASA’s top climatologist, we have less than a decade to deeply cut emissions. If we don’t, we risk climate horrors such as an irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which would lock-in a global sea level rise of up to 23 ft. (7 m).

New sources of power will have to be found. The Government is at last waking up to this fact. In a new renewable energy strategy due to be announced this week, as many as a quarter of British homes could be fitted with solar heating panels under new government plans for a "green revolution", in a move that Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks has described as "the most ambitious" such strategy that Britain has seen.  The goal is to meet the EU target of 15% of energy from renewables by 2020. Britain currently gets less than 5% of its electricity from renewables, mainly wind.  But at a time of consumer anger over fuel prices, the plan concedes that green power will cost more.

The plan will also call for 3,500 new wind turbines to be erected across the UK. Mr Wicks said the plans, which may include measures to force homeowners to improve the energy efficiency of their homes, were aimed at dramatically increasing Britain's energy supplies from renewables by 2020. "You will see this week a real determination by the government to move towards 15% of all of our energy from renewables by 2020," Mr Wicks insisted there was now a "huge momentum" in renewable energy provision and said the government would ensure that carbon emission reduction was the "core concept behind our energy strategy".

Robin Webster, energy campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said the plan was a positive step:

"Harnessing the UK's natural abundance of wind and wave power, and developing a comprehensive energy efficiency programme will create thriving new industries and generate thousands of jobs."

Greenpeace executive director John Sauven said the plans for solar panels on seven million roofs and other steps to reduce the use of fossil fuels make sense regardless of the price of oil or the state of the climate.

"We'll create jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and use less gas, and in the long run our power bills will come down. Even if climate change didn't exist these proposals would be sensible."

 Jeremy Leggett, chairman of Solarcentury the UK’s largest construction-integrated solar solution company, says renewable and efficient energy technology will have to replace fossil fuels much faster than most people currently anticipate. The reason is the combined impact of two key problems that will shape the 21st century: peak oil and climate change. As traditional power prices soar, solar manufacturing costs are falling. But solar is no panacea. We need an explosive growth in all renewable and efficient energy markets.

If we mobilise with renewables and efficiency, as though for war, we have the potential to achieve a renaissance on many fronts. If we forget climate change and go for nuclear, coal and tar sands, we will achieve the opposite. A few hundred billion tons of coal and tar sand will cause economically ruinous, and irreversible, climatic impacts.

We are entering an energy crisis that will cause profound economic dislocation. The challenge for human civilisation will be how we rebuild post-peak.