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Earthfuture.com by Guy Dauncey
How will we travel, when the oil is gone? It’s not a stupid
question, or something that belongs to science fiction.
We all take oil for granted. It’s only 146 years since oil was
first drilled in North America, but in that short time we have shaped
our entire world around it.
But pause for a moment, while I show you the numbers. The geologists’
estimates of the world’s total oil supply, laid down all those
millions of years ago, range from 2 to 2.8 trillion barrels. We are
getting through 29 billion barrels a year, and so far, we have consumed
990 billion barrels. If we carry on at this rate, the entire supply
will be gone between 2039 and 2067. In reality, it will last a bit
longer, because as soon as we enter the second half of the global
supply, sometime between now and 2015, prices will skyrocket, causing
confusion all round and slowing its use.
The rocks of the world are not creating new oil, as some would love
to believe. Even the supposedly vast Alberta tar sands, with 174 billion
barrels of oil that can be extracted using today’s technology,
will only stretch the world’s supply for another six years.
All that mess, for six years supply of fuel. The tar sands contain
315 billion barrels that are “ultimately recoverable,”
assuming advances in technology. This would supply the world for 11
years. Big deal.
Canada and the US use 27 percent of the world’s oil supply,
so if we kept all the tar sands oil ourselves, assuming the rest of
the world allowed us to continue burning oil while the planet fried,
it would still only last 24 to 40 years, pushing the “empty”
period for North America back to 2063 to 2100. This is within the
lifetime of our children. So how are we going to travel after 2075,
and for the next million years of human civilization?
But here’s the other reality we need to throw into the mix:
our use of oil, coal and gas is slowly cooking the planet, promising
misery for everyone. The most recent report from the University of
Leeds department of conservation biology warned that with the current
predicted rise in temperature, between 18 percent and 37 percent of
all land-based animals and plants could become extinct as early as
2050.
The logic is quite clear. Since we’re going to have to manage
without oil after 2075 anyway, why not start now, and avoid all the
damage?
There are three strategies that could handle our personal trips by
car and truck. The first is to plan for a 50 percent reduction in
the trips we make by car. If we made our cities really pedestrian
friendly, and designed all new development as “smart growth,”
we could make 10 percent of our trips on foot. If we made our cities
really bicycle friendly too, we could do 15 percent by bike. And if
we invested more in transit and light rapid transit, we could increase
their share of our trips to 25 percent.
We should plan on a threefold increase in fuel efficiency in cars,
reducing the fuel needed for the remaining trips by 66 percent, and
our overall need for fuel by 83 percent.
For these trips, there are three fuels we can draw on: electricity,
biofuels and hydrogen. Electric vehicles operate well, and are fine
for short-range trips. For a good BC example, take a look at the R-
Car, that uses a lightweight lithium ion battery similar to a mobile
phone battery www.r-electriccar.com
Electric compressed air vehicles may also make an appearance soon.
www.theaircar.com
Biofuels include the somewhat dirty biodiesel from agricultural crops,
restaurant fats and animal wastes; ethanol from soybeans, hemp and
grain; and compost gas from the collection of organic kitchen and
yard wastes. Zurich, Switzerland, has 1,200 vehicles running on kompogas.
www.kompogas.ch/en
To make hydrogen, we need electricity to split water, or we can make
it from sewage, algae or plants. This will need a lot of electricity,
but every home, office and factory could be twice as efficient as
it is today, using only half its current load. Trucks, buses and ferries
can run on biofuels, too. For airplanes, we’ll need hydrogen.
If we abandon the idea that every household must own its own vehicle,
and switch to community car-sharing, we could choose the car we need
according to the trip, as Vancouver’s Co-operative Auto Network’s
1,500 members do today with the 75 vehicles they share.
Zoom, zoom. We’ll still be able to travel, without oil. We might
be required to ration the electricity, but we’ll get by.
Guy Dauncey lives in Victoria www.earthfuture.com.
He is president of the new BC Sustainable Energy Association, which
he invites you to join. See www.bcsea.org
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