edu again 3935

Take into consideration that this comes from an economist who has reliably predicted 5 of the last three recessions. :-}

On the serious side; the fact that the oil price could rocket right up into the $70's per barrel and stay there in a normal peacetime scenarion was pretty unthinkable; until it happened. The was a trebling of the price of the single largest commodity traded on earth.

But this only marginally affect people's behaviour. With such a low price elasticity it will soar a lot higher. We are supposed to react to this price hike by using other sources of energy.

We are at or near the peak of the production curve for petroleum; but only around 1.5B people participate in the consumption of the bulk of it. Another 1B people will want to, and have the economic means to parttake in this pretty soon, with another 1B waiting in the wings. It is pretty obvious that we will be stretched thin to increase petroleum production by 25%; and dubling it is out of the question. That will bid up the price of hydrocarbons to insane levels; unless alternatives make their way into the market.

We are also not making plans for the remaining 2.5B people on the planet.

Depressingly, the likely alternative is coal. That will hurt us badly. The only option I see is nuclear energy.

That will take some leadership.

If we make the realisation right away that we will need to produce around three times as much energy as today to make the world economy go around in 2030 we can make some changes.

The two major uses of generated energy is for transportation and electriciy. Oil is almost alone in the transportation field, using somewhere around half of oil production. Most of the rest of the oil is used for electricity generation; making around 11% of world wide electricity.

Now, we want to scale this up a factor of three. First, we need to release hydrocarbons for transportation. That includes the liquid gas, which can be made into auto fuel pretty easily. There goes 25% of our electricity; but we only make around 2.2x the auto miles. We will have to be inventive to fill the gap. Hybrid cars can make up some of the gap; but will put futher load on the grid.

Hydropower projects already underway will increase hydropower by around 30%, but then we have maxed out the limits.

This leaves nuclear and coal. Coal currently generate 39% of electricty, nuclear 16%. They will have to absorb 260% of the current market. If anything near that is done with coal we will doom the planet with CO2 emissions. They will increase 4-fold.

Which leaves nuclear. To get anywhere we must increase nuclear output 15 times. Even with extensive reprocessing that will put a severe strain on uranium reserves.

Time to buy wasteland using a geiger counter as your guide!

-- mrr