Have We Reached Peak Oil?

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We’re stuck on oil because that was rational: everything else is less useful or more expensive. But now, we’ll have to find alternatives for most of the oil-based infrastructure built up during the 20th century. The task before us is immense, no matter where the energy will come from.

Coal cannot be used to drive cars, trucks, or airplanes. It has been used by old trains and ships, which we’d have to reproduce. Coal can be liquefied, but there are only a handful of such plants, world-wide.

Imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) have begun, with special ships and a handful of port terminals in the US . A huge build-up of shipping capacity would be required. Inside the US , a pipeline can transmit only one-fifth as much energy in natural gas as in oil, so many more and much larger pipelines would be needed. And all cars would have to be modified to run on natural gas.

To replace cars and trucks with electric vehicles, the electricity could be provided by 1,000 new nuclear power plants. Within the continental US (+ Alaska - lakes) they would be spaced 60 miles apart, take 10 years each to build, and cost about $4 trillion altogether ($10,000 per American man, woman and child, on top of existing payments). This is not counting the cost of upgrading the electric transmission grid ($trillions), nor the cost of the electric vehicles themselves.

Solar panels, at current prices, would cost 10 times as much as nuclear power plants.

Hydrogen is produced using electricity, so it’s a way of storing pre-existing energy, like a battery; it’s not an energy source. The energy is recovered by means of fuel cells, no generation there either.

There are many other possibilities, but the problem is always (the cost of) building the vast generation and distribution capacity required, to replace oil, just when there will be less energy available to do that building. There is only one cheap option: Waste and use less energy. But that is not a replacement.

A 2005 report from the US Department of Energy (the “Hirsch Report”) estimated that we should begin preparations 10–20 years before “Peak Oil” occurs. I think “Peak Oil” is here and now, so that collectively, we’ve already driven off that cliff and have yet to look down. I expect that the next 20 years will inflict hardships to rival the Great Depression. But, “better late than never” with the preparations, in the hope that one day our children may yet thank us, rather than curse us, for the resources we will leave for them.