If we are to build roads which are designed to fit the numbers of vehicles that are expected in thirty or forty years from now, then it is right to ask whether we will have enough oil to power our vehicles when the roads have been built. Unfortunately, it seems that the roads engineers consider many things, but how to run our vehicles is not one of these. If the oil runs out as quickly as the world’s scientists are now predicting, it looks like just when Ireland has its latest motorways built, there may be nothing to fuel the vehicles which are intended to travel on them.
So, how long can the oil last?
Reports from The Sunday Business Post, October 27th, 2002.
Energy conference battles for future plan
According to Dr. Colin Campbell, a petro-geologist, just under half of the world’s total endowment of oil and gas has been extracted already, and that output will begin to decline within the next five years, pushing prices up sharply.
Together with a French colleague, he has convinced the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris of their case.
The IEA now sees the world’s increasing appetite for oil being met from unconventional sources such as tar sands. It is also expected that apart from renewables, nuclear energy will play a large part in the future energy supply mix.
Energy famine looms, warn world scientists
One of the key driving elements behind the conference (organised by the foundation for the economics of sustainability) is the fact that many businesses are assuming there will be a plentiful supply of cheap energy in the future.
According to Richard Douthwaite, one of the conference organizers, Ireland also made that assumption a few years ago when it decided to start building an extensive road network.
But the validity of the assumption needs to be checked. Commercial and economic survival could depend on it.
One key question is how rapidly the world’s reserves of oil and gas are running out.
Figures published earlier this month by the Association for the study of Peak Oil (Apso) suggest that by 2050 humanity will have to learn to manage on roughly half the oil from all sources that we use today.
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Apso is a world network of scientists interested in determining the date and impact of the peak and decline of the world’s production of oil and gas due to resource constraints.
This scientific group, from Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Britain, maintains that only a limited amount of oil will be supplied from tar sands, and this will not be enough to halt the overall decline in oil stocks.
Apso’s estimates for gas show that total world gas production will increase very little after the next decade, and will start to decline rapidly after 2040.
This scenario contends that as oil and gas grow scarce, coal will again become the dominant fossil fuel. But burning coal releases much more carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases than oil or gas.
Its use will most probably be limited in the future in order to prevent further climatic change. The Economist magazine recently featured coal on its cover, labeling it ‘Environmental Enemy Number One’.
“It will be left to renewables and possibly nuclear energy, not only to fill the gap left by the decline in oil and gas output, but also to provide the energy required for economic growth and an increased human population,” said Douthwaite.
“The question will be: can enough renewable energy sources be developed in time?”
Olav Hohmeyer, another speaker at the Thurles conference thinks not.
Hohmeyer, a professor at the University of Flensburg, led a group that produced a report in 1998 which showed that even if the development of renewable energy systems was supported as an urgent priority by decisive, well-coordinated action by EU governments, only 35% of the EU’s 1998 energy consumption could be met by 2050.
The main problem was finding the equity to invest in the capital equipment required for renewable energy production. The group also found that this was the limiting factor with nuclear power.
If this study was correct, said Douthwaite, an energy famine seems inevitable.
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