Oil-Ternative Futures
Some important pre-inaugural reading from three authors charting roadmaps to a prosperous, sustainable, post-petroleum future
by Lee h Goldberg
Regardless of who wins the quadrennial slow-motion train wreck we call the US presidential election this November (2008), any responsible leader is going to have to bring our energy policy in line with the environmental and economic realities that we’ve spent the last eight years desperately trying to ignore. If there is any good news here, it’s that the private sector has been awake nights thinking about these matters and has lots of very useful information ready to share with a leader willing to listen. Some of the best of this thinking has appeared in the form of three highly-readable books that provide some excellent insights into the historic and economic factors that led to our dependence on fossil fuels, as well as the technologies and polices that could end it.
Whether you’re the next occupant of the Oval Office, or just one of the folks that puts him or her there, I’d consider these three very different books to be required reading before the inauguration.
I suggest you start off with A Thousand Barrels a Second – The Coming Oil Break Point and the Challenges Facing an Energy Dependent World by Peter Tertzakian (ISBN 13: 9780071468749, McGraw Hill 2006). Written from the perspective of an oil industry insider, 1000 Barrels is a lively, factual narrative of the energy use cycles that have defined the past 200 or so years of our history and uses it as the basis for outlining a strategy for a understanding what a post-petroleum future could look like.
In a little more than 250 pages, Tertzakian shows how a new energy source (such as whale oil, coal, or oil) appears inexhaustible when it is first discovered, creates a huge industry as it gains wide acceptance, and then approaches a so-called breaking point as prices for dwindling reserves rise beyond what an economy can tolerate. The author provides compelling evidence that it’s only near these break points that new technologies have a chance to gain an advantage over the well-entrenched mature energy technologies.
Taking the cycle beyond the present day, he shows how adopting combination of energy efficiency technologies and somewhat more abundant sources like natural gas can form a bridging path while sustainable energy technologies mature sufficiently to support a dynamic global economy. For the entrepreneurially-minded, Tertzakian also points out many of the business opportunities that are arising as we approach the breakpoint for carbon-based energy. Besides being one of the best summaries of the history and future of the oil industry, 1000 Barrels reads much more like an action novel than an economics textbook.
With a good historic perspective under your belt, it’s time to pick up Freedom from Oil – How the Next President Can End the United States' Oil Addiction by David Sandlow (ISBN-10: 0071489061, McGraw-Hill, 2007). Set in 2009, Sandlow uses a fast-paced novel to illustrate the political, technical and economic decisions that could be used to end America’s dependence on expensive imported fuel while bringing jobs and money back on-shore and strengthening our global security. Using a series of imaginary memos, meeting minutes, summary reports, and speeches, the book presents a compelling timeline of a committed president uniting his cabinet, the Congress, corporate leaders, and citizenry in facing one of the most serious challenges the nation has faced since WW-II.
Although the upbeat, high-minded tone of certain parts of the book might remind you more than a little of the TV series The West Wing, the story deliberately takes a non-partisan perspective, focusing on the many critical issues and tactics that even the greenest liberal and the most hard-boiled free-market conservative stand a good chance of agreeing on. The next time you take a business trip, leave the Tom Clancy novel at home and bring along Freedom from Oil. It’s a great read whether you’re flying communal cattle class on Southwest or in the situation room on Air Force One.
The last of my must-read-before-inauguration books is ]Winning the Oil End Game – Innovation for Profits, Jobs, and Security by Amory Lovins (ISBN-10: 1844071944, Rocky Mountain Institute Press). Written by the contrarian physicist-turned-environmentalist who pioneered the concept of hybrid vehicles, smart 2-way electric grids, and helped America recover from its first energy crisis back in the 1970s, the book provides a series of market-based prescriptions for a transition from fossil fuels that will create wealth and strengthen the nation in the process.
The book’s pithy abstract summarizes its message as follows:
“Our strategy integrates four technological ways to displace oil: using oil twice as efficiently, then substituting biofuels, saved natural gas, and, optionally, hydrogen. Fully applying today's best efficiency technologies in a doubled-GDP 2025 economy would save half the projected US oil use at half its forecast cost per barrel. Non-oil substitutes for the remaining consumption would also cost less than oil. These comparisons conservatively assign zero value to avoiding oil's many "externalized" costs, including the costs incurred by military insecurity, rivalry with developing countries, pollution, and depletion. The vehicle improvements and other savings required needn't be as fast as those achieved after the 1979 oil shock.
“The route we suggest for the transition beyond oil will expand customer choice and wealth, and will be led by business for profit. We propose novel public policies to accelerate this transition that are market-oriented without taxes and innovation-driven without mandates. A $180 billion investment over the next decade will yield $130 billion annual savings by 2025; revitalize the automotive, truck, aviation, and hydrocarbon industries; create a million jobs in both industrial and rural areas; rebalance trade; make the United States more secure, prosperous, equitable, and environmentally healthy; encourage other countries to get off oil too; and make the world more developed, fair, and peaceful.”
While more technical and dense than the other two books, the ideas that Lovins and his team of researchers present are so novel and exciting that your inner green-tech geek will have a hard time putting it down. The other great thing about this book is that while the hardcover edition of the book is selling for around $90 on Amazon, the Rocky Mountain Institute is more than happy to let you download an electronic copy for free from its web site.
The decisions that our next President makes about our energy policy will be one of the key factors that determine the level of security, prosperity and quality of life that the next generation will enjoy (or not). Whether or not these books make it to his or her reading list, they certainly should be on yours, and that of your elected representatives so we can all start pulling together towards a future we can live with.
After you’re done reading your books, perhaps you’ll consider passing them on to your local Congressperson or Senator. A few hundred copies of Winning the Oil End Game or Freedom from Oil on their desks might speak louder than any oil lobbyist could.
Comments? Questions? Ideas for a new rug for the oval office? Write me at lhg at en-genius.net or post your thoughts on our blog.
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