Peak Oil - Transition to Sustainability

 

My church has embarked on becoming a green sanctuary which means that we are striving to develop a sustainable life style for our members as individuals and as a faith community. We are beginning this endeavor by taking an audit of our environmental impact, and subsequently we will commit to activities that we feel will put us on a path to sustainability.

 

My formal education and career have been in agricultural engineering where my technical society, The American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, has the mission of providing engineering and technology for a sustainable world. For those who know me personally, know I live my life to some degree in accordance with this mission. I am parsimonious. My wife says cheap. So I am comfortable and to some degree relish thinking about how I can do with less.

 

I have lived through the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s. I was the energy czar for my company during that time period. I was the guy everyone complained to when we turned the temperature down in the buildings. I remember at the time thinking about our need to import oil and how that left us vulnerable as a country. I also remember thinking about how much energy 15 million barrels of oil really was.

 

It is in this context that I attended a one day Petrocollapse conference in Washington D.C. recently. The world of energy has changed significantly over the last 30 years. From the thoughts of leading edge speakers at the conference, we no longer have the luxury of another 30 years to make the transition to a world with diminishing supplies of petroleum. We are at or near the point that we have produced half of all the oil on earth -- hence the title peak oil. From here on, oil will be less abundant and more expensive to produce. Presently the world uses approximately 80 million barrels of oil a day. The United States uses approximately 20 million of those barrels.

 

Is this a serious issue? You bet it is. When the world’s largest user of petroleum, the US Department of Defense holds a conference called, "Energy: a Conversation about Our National Addiction" and funds research into how we can convert coal to liquid fuel, it is serious. It is no accident that we are fighting a war in Iraq and making friends with countries like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. The most cited resource at the Petrocollapse conference was the Hirsch Report which clearly outlines the situation and the challenge ahead.

 

During a break in the conference I asked a perfectly normal, approximately 60 year old, woman sitting near me why she was attending the conference. She said that she and her husband and three adult children and their families were going to buy property in North Carolina or Tennessee and move there and start a sustainable family community. One of the speakers, Diana Leafe Christian, described several intentional communities that have been established for environmental reasons. So some people are thinking about this issue and are taking it seriously.

 

It seems apparent if we continue on our present course we have two things to look forward to, 1. Global economic collapse or 2. Global oil wars. Neither alternative is acceptable. We must change course. The most appealing global alternative presented at the conference was a proposal by Richard Heinberg to have the countries of the world agree on an Oil Depletion Protocol. In brief the protocol calls for the following:

·        No country shall produce oil at above its current Depletion Rate, such being defined as annual production as a percentage of the estimated amount left to produce;

·        Each importing country shall reduce its imports to match the current World Depletion Rate, deducting any indigenous production.

 

The present calculated world depletion rate is calculated to be about 2.5 %. So for the United States, because we are a producer as well as an importer, we would be looking at a trying to reduce our oil consumption in the range of 3 % per year. In 20 - 25 years we would need to use half as much oil as we do now. So this is a serious commitment.

 

Could we do it? As an engineer I am up to the challenge. Again what is the alternative? Even if we are off in the predictions of peak oil by 20 years, we need to start now. Some might ask the question of why we should be the first to bite the bullet. The answer is those who develop the methods, products and services and reach sustainability level first will be the winners.

 

So what can we as individual engineers do?

• We can get informed. Check it out and see if I am on target.
• We can keep the situation in mind in every design and work decision we make.
• We can tell others.
• We can make changes in our personal lives.
• We can communicate our views to our elected officials at the local as well as at the national level. It appears Senator Lugar understands the looming crisis.

 

There is one real life experiment that has been going on for 16 years that we can learn from. In 1990 Cuba lost 50 % of its oil imports with the fall of the Soviet Union. In Cuba this time is called the “special period.” They have survived, but it wasn’t easy. In the process, however, they have realized how vulnerable a country is when it is so dependent on foreign oil. They are continuing to work at becoming completely self-sustaining. We should learn from them.

 

As engineers I think we have the obligation to provide the leadership for this critical endeavor.