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Pastimes : The California Energy Crisis - Information & Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DavesM who wrote (276)	5/6/2001 10:13:44 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Respond to of 1715

In 1978 the US consumed 18.9 million barrels of oil per day. It dropped to 15.2 million barrels per day by 1983. Today the US consumes about 19.4 million barrels per day. US lower 48 crude oil production peaked in 1970. Global crude oil production will peak sometime between 2010 and 2020. The estimates vary but the peak is in the not too distant future. Building more refineries doesn't make any sense. Increasing our oil consumption will advance the already short window of opportunity we have before world oil production begins to diminish. It takes decades to implement new sources of energy. Nations will go to war over oil. The truth is we are SHORT all forms of energy!! There is plenty of potential energy. We just have to convert it into a useable form and make it available. The US has lots of coal and clean coal technology is available. However the GROWTH should be in green renewable sources of energy. Maintaining the existing production rates of oil will be challenge enough. Wind power and solar thermal are here now and can compete in the existing market. Solar voltaic is on the near term horizon...biomass. And conservation through higher efficiencies is a huge source of supply...fuel cells...efficient lighting(and resulting lower air conditioning costs)...high MPG hybrid cars...ground source heat pumps... any disruption in production (fire, or flood), prices of refined products will spike - much like electricity prices. Agreed...but the answer isn't building more refineries. We need to tap the efficiency barrel. We need to move peak oil production further into the future. We have the efficiency technology we just need the will...we need leadership. Building more oil refineries and increasing oil production over existing rates is a short term solution. In the not too distant future it will lead to economic collapse and war. re: the market does not build in excess capacity. It wants to be lean and mean...just in time. There are "peakers" which only are supposed to fire up when the grid is short. In fact, I believe that the amount of time that peakers are allowed to run are (or were) limited by law. The independent power producers will build enough peaker plants for normal times. A significant loss in baseload capacity can not be made up with peaker plants. We can do a lot better than that. If you had the choice...would you buy juice from self supporting regulated LADWP and their energy planning with excess baseload capacity at 10 cents +/- per KWH or would you opt for market juice from a peaker plant at 50 cents per KWH? The difference is a $100 per month electric bill vs a $500 per month electric bill. Zeuspaul