Energy Alternatives

Let us have a look at some of the alternative energy sources that have been mooted, dabbled with, researched, piloted or are actually already in use.

• Wind
• Solar
• Wave
• Tidal
• Nuclear
• Bio-fuels
• Hydrogen

Can any of these either by themselves or in combination take over from oil?

Can any of these lead us to a bright new future or are they just overrated, irrelevant and even dangerous suggestions?

 

Solar

The sun always rises. It is dependable, infinite and doesn’t cost us a penny. It doesn’t generate pollution which is hazardous to the environment or to human health; no carbon dioxide is generated.

Even in rainy and cloudy Britain the sun rises every day. In fact on a bright, sunny day, the sun shines approximately 1,000 kilowatts of energy per square metre of the land surface, (insolation) and if we could collect all of that energy we could easily power our homes and offices for free so why are we not using all that free energy?

 
Photo: State of the art trackable solar panel array in California

Basic physics

Let’s have a look at the basics. Most readers will be familiar with solar cells seen on calculators, garden lamps. Some city centre parking meters are powered by solar as are data collection stations, air sampling stations besides motorways. They are powered by photovoltaic cells. Photovoltaics, as the word implies (photo = light, voltaic = electricity), convert sunlight directly into electricity. The PV cells are made of special materials called semiconductors such as silicon, which is currently the most commonly used.

Basically, when light strikes the cell, a certain portion of its energy is absorbed within the semiconductor material. This means that the energy of the absorbed light is transferred to the semiconductor. The energy knocks electrons loose, allowing them to flow freely. PV cells also all have one or more electric fields that act to force electrons freed by light absorption to flow in a certain direction. This flow of electrons is an electric current, and by placing metal contacts on the top and bottom of the PV cell, the current can be drawn off to use externally. This current, together with the cell’s voltage (which is a result of its built-in electric field or fields), defines the power (or wattage) that the solar cell can produce.

Power = current x voltage

A typical PV cell will only absorb only about 15% of the sunlight’s energy? Visible light is only part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Electromagnetic radiation is not monochromatic - it is made up of a range of different wavelengths, and therefore energy levels.

Since the light that hits a PV cell has photons with a wide range of energies, it turns out that some of them won’t have enough energy to form an electron-hole pair. They’ll simply pass through the cell as if it were transparent. Other photons have too much energy. Only a certain amount of energy, measured in electron volts (eV) and defined by our cell material (about 1.1 eV for crystalline silicon), is required to knock an electron loose. This is the band gap energy of a material. If a photon has more energy than the required amount, then the extra energy is lost (unless a photon has twice the required energy, and can create more than one electron-hole pair, but this effect is not significant). These two effects alone account for the loss of around 70 percent of the radiation energy incident on a typical PV cell.

Losses

It might be thought that we find or devise and use a material with a really low band gap, so we can use more of the photons. Unfortunately, the band gap also determines the strength (voltage) of the electric field, and if it’s too low, then what is gained in extra current (by absorbing more photons), is lost by having a small voltage. The optimal band gap, balancing these two effects, is around 1.4 eV for a cell made from a single material.

Other losses occur as well. Electrons have to flow from one side of the cell to the other through an external circuit. The bottom of the cell could be covered with a metal, allowing for good conduction, but if the top is completely covered, then photons can’t get through the opaque conductor and all of the current is lost (in some cells, transparent conductors are used on the top surface, but not in all). If the contacts are only placed at the sides of the cell, then the electrons have to travel an extremely long distance (for an electron) to reach the contacts. Silicon is a semiconductor - it’s not nearly as good as a metal for transporting current. Its internal resistance (called series resistance ) is fairly high, and high resistance means high losses. To minimize these losses, the cell is covered by a metallic contact grid that shortens the distance that electrons have to travel while covering only a small part of the cell surface. Even so, some photons are blocked by the grid, which can’t be too small or else its own resistance will be too high.

A stationery set of cells on a static roof does not make the most of the insolation. Ideally a moveable platform on which to mount the panels to track the passage of the sun would be employed. The panels should be inclined at an angle equal to the area’s latitude to absorb the maximum amount of energy year-round. A different orientation and/or inclination could be used if one wants to maximize energy production for the morning or afternoon, and/or the summer or winter. Of course, the modules should never be shaded by nearby trees or buildings, no matter the time of day or the time of year. In a PV module, even if just one of its 36 cells is shaded, power production will be reduced by more than half.

Although the British average insolation is 1000Kw/m2 there are huge variations both in terms of geography, aspect and seasonality

Table: Annual average UK insolation

Insolation (yearly average in KWh/m2)
Edinburgh	825
London	953
Plymouth	1172

 

Seasonal variation (daily average average in KWh/m2)
Plymouth - June	5.70
Plymouth - December	0.95

Source: NASA

Other factors are rainfall and cloudy days, as well as altitude, humidity , and other more subtle factors.

The electricity generated by PV modules, and extracted from batteries if used, is direct current, while the electricity supplied by the power utilities (and the kind that every appliance in every house and office uses) is alternating current. So an inverter is needed which converts DC to AC. Some PV modules, called AC modules, actually have an inverter already built into each module, eliminating the need for a large, central inverter, and simplifying wiring issues.

Once installed, a PV system requires very little maintenance (especially if no batteries are used), and will provide electricity cleanly and quietly for 20 years with new generation PC cells now expected to last as long as 30 years. It is possible to sell surplus electricity to the power utilities by hooking up the electricity generator to the national grid via a meter which measures the amount of electricity transferred to the grid.

Diagram to illustrate roof based PV system

Energy Payback

There are some misleading or just plain ignorant claims that PV cells demand more energy in their manficature than they produce in their lifetime, making them a flawed energy alternative. These claims are untrue.

Erik Alsema, a Dutch engineer at Utrecht University has calculated that the manufacture of first generation single crystal PV cell would need an input of 600 KWh to produce one square metre of surface area, and to manufacture new generation multi-crystal cell would require 450 KWh for the same 1m2.

Assuming 12% conversion efficiency (standard conditions) and 1700 kWh/m 2 per year of available sunlight energy (the U.S. average is 1800), Alsema calculated a payback of about 4 years for current multicrystalline-silicon PV systems. Projecting 10 years into the future, he assumes a “solar grade” silicon feedstock and 14% efficiency, dropping energy payback to about 2 years.

Other recent calculations generally support Alsema’s figures. Based on a solar-grade feedstock, Japanese researchers Kazuhiko Kato et al . calculated a multicrystalline payback of about 2 years (adjusted for the U.S solar resource).

Adjusted for UK insolation, the payback period is extended from 4 years to 6.5 years. That means the energy generated by a PV cell during the first 6.5 years of its working life is needed to compensate for the energy involved in its manufacture with the remaining 23.5 years working life to generate net energy.

Domestic and industrial needs

Solar currently powers calculators and garden lamps but can it be used for electricty generation on a larger scale.

A typical UK household consumes about 4000 KWh of electricity a year. We have seen that the insolation in the UK is 1000KWh/m2 and we have seen that the conversion of solar light to electricity is average of 15%. Simple arithmetic shows that to provide all the 4000KWh a PV module covering 26.7 m2 is needed. At current prices it works out at about £18,000. Prices are falling as demand increases but the financial cost is prohibitive to most households.

Industrial scale production of electricity is unlikely. Just as we discussed with wind generation of electricty and stated that wind wa a low denisty power source the same is true of solar.

Here is an example. A typical electric train can consume anything from 36 to 60 KWh/mile. Remember the insolation figure of 150KWh/yr/m2 of PV cells or 0.41 KWh/day/m2 well it would take 87m2 of PV cells to propel a train for one mile. Put another way just to power the 19 daily trains operated by GNER on the 415 mile Edinburgh to London route would require 685995m2 which is the equivalent of 170 football pitches! Double the area if you want to power the trains on the return Edinburgh bound journey! Of course the panels are not laid out on the ground, but are set angled at an elevation to gain maximum insolation but the area gives a reasonable illustration of what we can expect to do if we want to run electric trains on solar power!

Now think of all those hundreds of trains, electric trams and buses running across the lenght and breadth of the UK and one realises that replacing oil with solar is not a starter. We haven’t even mentioned the 26 million vehicles on Britain’s roads which some might dream can be relaced by electric cars! Huge swathes of flat treeless countryside would need to be covered in PC cells (using hilly or mountainous land would reduce generating capacity, likewise the shadows cast by trees would render such forested areas useless).

The impact on the British countryside would be enormous with disastrous effects on flora, fauna, not to mention the impact on accessibility to the countryside and sacrificing perfectly good agricultural land.

Solar power is not going to help our transportation requirements in any significant way. In fact as we shall see none of the suggested alternatives can replace the usage of oil for our transportation demands.

For the foreseeable future solar will be big business for use on Britain’s rooftops where:

Conclusion

Although costly in monetary terms we do have a real candidate here for dispersed applications which use the currently unused or underused space on the roofs of British homes offices and other buildings.

One of the pledges of a BNP local council will be to install solar cells on the roof of every local council building including its housing stock. We will provide generous grants to private householders as well and simplify the bureaucracy and planning issues. The cost will be recovered by the sale of surplus electricty to the national grid.

Unless we really want to sacrifice huge areas of the countryside and perfectly good productive agricultural areas in lowland Britain the scalability of the generation of electricity is just not possible. Flat deserts with cities not too distant are the best locations for industrial scale solar conversion. California, parts of Australia, south America and north Africa could benefit from the technology but solar use in the UK is likely to stay on the rooftops.

 

Welcome to Peak Oil

Welcome to the British National Party’s Peak Oil Discussion Group.

You may not have heard of the phrase “peak oil” just yet, but you will hear and see that phrase more often in the months ahead. It is a term that is being discussed at supra-governmental level, in government departments, universities, research institutes, think-tanks and even in the media.

“Peak oil” is going to become a household term in the same way that “global warming”, “climate change”, “third world poverty” and “consumer society” filtered down from academia to the popular press and media to become everyday terms.

Peak oil spells the end of cheap oil and gas. It is the moment when 50% of the world’s reserves of these two finite fuel sources are used.

It is not about completely running out of oil or gas. There will always be some reserves remaining but the monetary cost and more importantly the energy cost of exploiting those reserves makes such activity prohibitive.

Oil is a finite resource, it took several million years to produce the earth’s oil fields, no new oil is being made and the human species is devouring those finite reserves which lay untouched for millions of years.

World demand for oil continues to rise, our insatiable demand for oil based products - everything from cheap air travel to plastics drives the exploitation of the oil reserves. With the burgeoning populations of India and China eager for rapid industrialisation the global demand is soaring.

The crossover before falling production and rising demand will cause almost immediate economic chaos, with recessions, business failures, high unemployment, trade disputes and inevitably wars to secure the last remaining oil supplies.

The consequences can be interpreted as either apocalyptic or a window of opportunity for radical change in society and how we live with Nature. It will either be seen as an end of civilisation or the heralding of a new age when we learn to live with the resources of the planet.

These pages are designed to inform and educate. It would be foolish and morally wrong to avoid discussion of the issues even if those issues are both technically difficult to master and pessimistic in their analysis.

There is nothing the British National Party can do to avert the energy crisis. We have no political power to change the way our society functions. What we can do is make our people aware of the issues, prepare them psychologically for the potential troubles ahead and where possible work with communities to ensure survival and continuity when the effects of peak oil make themselves manifest.

We will be examining energy alternatives at a community level and advising on transport, food and energy issues to allow our people to survive and function.

Hydrogen

We could involved in some in depth chemistry here. But this is a political site and not a chemistry site so we need to keep things basic for the lay persons.

Essentials

The basics of hydrogen technology are as follows.

1. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. It is found on earth in many forms but the most practical one for human use is the globally abundant water, good old H2O.

2. Sending an electric current through water splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. Every schoolchild will have performed this experiment. It is called electrolysis and for every molecule of water, two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen are produced. Energy in leads to hydrogen and oxygen out.

3. The reverse process of combining atoms of hydrogen with oxygen generates energy which can be captured as electricity, the only other product is a harmless one - water!

4. The reverse process is the basis of a fuel cell, where hydrogen and oxygen react with one another on a surface of something called a catalyst, a chemical which facilitates the chemical reaction.

5. Fuel cells have been built in laboratories and pilot units. The most common catalyst used in these pilot and experimental units is platinum.

6. The hydrogen can be produced by a variety of means but the most attractive option for a future hydrogen based economy would be electrolysis. The electricity for electrolysis would have to be generated from a renewable source in a post oil situation and the hydrogen stored and distributed via pipelines or tankers.

7. It is envisaged that fuel cells will be used to drive motor vehicles. Motor vehicles will be filled at “gas stations” in a similar way to existing petrol stations. The gas stations might be the same places where the hydrogen is produced. Arrays of solar panels on the roof of a gas station will generate the electricity to perform the electrolysis. The hydrogen will be stored on site and vehicle drivers will come along and refuel their fuel cell driven cars.

Clean, pollution free, sound very neat doesn’t it, except for a few major shortcomings.

Lightest element

First off, because hydrogen is the simplest element, it will leak from any container, no mater how strong and no matter how well insulated. For this reason, hydrogen in storage tanks will always evaporate.

Hydrogen is very reactive. When hydrogen gas comes into contact with metal surfaces it decomposes into hydrogen atoms, which are so very small that they can penetrate metal. This causes structural changes that make the metal brittle.

Perhaps the largest problem for hydrogen fuel cell transportation is the size of the fuel tanks. In gaseous form, a volume of 62,880 gallons of hydrogen gas is necessary to replace the energy capacity of 20 gallons of petrol. The arithmetic doesn’t look good so far.

However demonstrations of hydrogen-powered cars have depended upon compressed hydrogen. Because of its low density, compressed hydrogen will not give a car as useful a range as gasoline. In addition compressed hydrogen fuel tank would be at risk of developing pressure leaks either through accidents or through normal wear, and such leaks could result in explosions.

If the hydrogen is liquefied, this will give it a density of 0.07 grams per cubic centimetre. At this density, it will require four times the volume of gasoline for a given amount of energy. Thus, a 15-gallon gas tank would equate to a 60-gallon tank of liquefied hydrogen. Beyond this, there are the difficulties of storing liquid hydrogen. Liquid hydrogen needs to be stored at -253 C. That is colder than the surface of planet Pluto!

Refrigeration costs

Beyond this, there are the energy costs of liquefying the hydrogen and refrigerating it so that it remains in a liquid state. No studies have been done on the energy costs here, but they are sure to further decrease the Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) of hydrogen fuel.

A third option is the use of powdered metals to store the hydrogen in the form of metal hydrides. In this case, the storage volume would be little more than the volume of the metals themselves. Moreover, stored in this form, hydrogen would be far less reactive. However, as you can imagine, the weight of the metals will make the storage tank very heavy.

The basic problem of hydrogen fuel cells is that the second law of thermodynamics dictates that we will always have to expend more energy deriving the hydrogen than we will receive from the usage of that hydrogen. The common misconception is that hydrogen fuel cells are an alternative energy source when they are not. They are a form of energy storage - a big difference!

Because of the second law of thermodynamics, hydrogen fuel cells will always have a bad EROEI. If fossil fuels are used to generate the hydrogen, either through the Methane-Steam method or through Electrolysis of Water, there will be no advantage over using the fossil fuels directly. The use of hydrogen as an intermediate form of energy storage is justified only when there is some reason for not using the primary source directly. For this reason, a hydrogen-based economy must depend on large-scale development of nuclear power or solar electricity.

Therefore, the development of a hydrogen economy will require major investments in fuel cell technology research and nuclear or solar power plant construction. On top of this, there is the cost of converting all of our existing technology and machinery to hydrogen fuel cells. And all of this will have to be accomplished under the economic and energy conditions of post-peak fossil fuel production.

Further reading

For those readers who want to find out more about the underlying chemistry and physics of fuel cells and hydrogen should have a look at the following:

http://www.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/education/abcs.html

 

Wind Power

The most talked about alternative and one which is being rolled out across the British countryside.

Proponents of wind turbines claim that wind represents a free, unlimited source of energy. It does have its attractions.

Advantages

It’s clean. Wind power does not produce dangerous waste, nor does it contribute to global warming because it generates no carbon dioxide.

It’s abundant and reliable. The UK is the windiest country in Europe and the resource is much greater during the colder months of the year, when energy demand is at its highest. Technology is being developed to store wind power as hydrogen which can then be used to power fuel cells in power stations and in vehicles.

It’s affordable. The first offshore wind turbines in the UK are producing power more cheaply than our newest nuclear power station.

It works. Denmark already gets 20% of its electricity from wind power. A turbine can turn when wind speeds are just 9mph.

It creates jobs. The wind industry could bring thousands of new jobs to the UK, many of them using offshore engineering skills used by the declining oil and gas industry. If offshore wind were developed to supply just 10% of the UK’s electricity, then 36,000 jobs could be created.

It’s safe. Unlike nuclear power stations, wind turbines are unlikely terrorist targets. The rotors are automatically shut down when wind speeds reach in excess of about 60mph.

Opposition to wind turbines on Britain’s hills and coastlines on the basis of “spoiling the view” is subjective. What some might see as brutish industrialisation of the hilltops, others see elegant, graceful and powerful monuments to Man’s ingenuity and harnessing of nature’s bountiful gifts. A study by the RSPB also debunked the myth that wind turbines kill large numbers of birds. The available evidence suggests that appropriately positioned wind farms do not pose a significant hazard for birds. However, evidence from the US and Spain confirms that poorly sited wind farms can cause severe problems for birds, through disturbance, habitat loss/damage or collision with turbines.

Wind and likewise solar energy suffer from four fundamental physical issues which prevent them from ever being able to replace more than a tiny fraction of the energy we get from oil. These issues are:

a. lack of energy density,
b. inappropriateness as transportation fuels,
c. energy intermittency,
d. inability to scale.

Energy Density

Density refers to the amount of energy per unit of volume of an energy source. Oil is a very, very dense energy source. Coal is quite dense per unit of energy, but much more bulky than oil. Unfortunately, solar power has very low relative energy density. Density, is often, but not always, associated with the energy profit ratio, the ratio between how much energy you get for how much you expend to get it. Generally, speaking, the higher the density, the higher the energy profit ratio. Oil energy profit ratios were well over a 100 to 1 in the early days of the oil age, that is 100 units of energy gained for every unit expended to get it. Oil has slipped to about 20 to 1 for most old discoveries now and to around 8 to 1 for new discoveries which are getting harder and harder to extract and are of lower quality (i.e., lower energy density). Compare this to 4 for nuclear power, 2.5 for biodiesel, 2 or more for wind, and slightly more than 1 for solar. Oil and coal (about 10 to 1) continue to be favoured because of this ratio.

To put this into perspective, the Rye House power station at Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, generates 715 MW of electricity from natural gas coming in from the North Sea. Built in the early 1990s it is a very efficient producer of electricity. Output from the station is enough to meet the daily power needs of nearly a million people - almost the population of Hertfordshire. To produce the same amount can you guess how many wind turbines might be needed. 50? 100? 1000? Based on a typical turbine output of 0.70MW the actual answer is 1020! According to Scottish Power the Black Law turbine farm in South Lanarkshire will be the biggest onshore project in the UK. It will contain 62 individual turbines and cover an area of 24.5 square kilometres. Our theoretical 1020 turbine farm would need an area of 403 square kilometres or roughly an area 11 miles by 11 miles - 25% of the land area of the entire county of Hertfordshire!

Transportation

Over ninety percent of our transportation fuel comes from petroleum fuels (gasoline, diesel, jet-fuel).

Unfortunately, solar and wind cannot be used as industrial-scale transportation fuels unless they are used to crack hydrogen from water via electrolysis. The electrolysis process is a simple one, but unfortunately it consumes 1.3 units of energy for every 1 unit of energy it produces . In other words, it results in a net loss of energy. You can’t replace oil - which has a positive EROEI of about 30/1 - with an energy source that actually carries a negative EROEI.

Assuming away this not-so-minor problem, where are we going to get the energy, capital, and time necessary to replace a significant portion of the following:

1. 700 million oil-powered cars traversing the world’s roads;

2. Millions of oil-powered airplanes crisscrossing the world’s
skies;

3. Millions of oil-powered boats circumnavigating the world’s
oceans?

On top of that, we need to completely overhaul/retrofit the multi-trillion dollar infrastructure responsible for the fuelling and maintenance of numbers one through three.

Intermittency

Unlike oil and gas, which can be used at anytime of the day or night, solar and wind are dependent on weather conditions. This may not be that big of a deal if you simply want to power your household appliances or a small scale, decentralized economy, but if you want to run an industrial economy that relies on airports, airplanes, millions of miles of highways, huge skyscrapers, 24/7 availability of fuel, etc., an intermittent source of energy will not suffice.

The energy produced from solar, wind, and other green alternatives can be stored in batteries, but battery technology is woefully inadequate for the scale of our problem.

Scalability

The problems of using a low density energy source such as wind was demonstrated above. Not even the most enthusiastic wind turbine proponent claims that all of the UK’s electricity requirements will be satisfied by wind, but by way of illustration, we showed above that the electricity requirements of 1million households and businesses in Hertfordshire could be met by turbines covering a 11 by 11 mile plot. What of the UK’s 60 million residents? What size farm would we need? A 24,180 square kilometre plot equivalent to the combined size of Cumbria, Northumbria, Co Durham and North Yorkshire!

Conclusion

Great for powering the electricity requirements of caravans, isolated homes and small communities but its low energy density makes it impossible to provide anything other than a tiny fraction of the UK’s generating capacity.

Opportunity?

We are faced with a situation in less than a decade, of rising oil prices which will rise so high that many of us will be forced to abandon our petrol and diesel fuelled vehicles.

Transportation of all goods and freight will be effected. The cost of everything from groceries to imported clothes and toys and medicines will be higher, in some cases prohibitively so. Electricity generation will likewise be effected as natural gas becomes an expensive and unattractive fuel for electricity consumption. Some aspects of the lives of all of us are going to change.

It might be a time of apocalyptic events but if there is enough awareness of the issue, certain preparations made and a psychological adjustment to a world without oil, then such a change in world events may be a time for tremendous opportunities. These are just some of the situations which might arise and which present themselves as new opportunities.

Travel and transport

It will be travel and transport that see the biggest likely upheavals. Oil accounts for 90% of UK transport, the remaining 10% is accounted for by electric trains, trams and underground trains.

A daily commuting trip of 100 miles will be prohibitively expensive, even filling up a car for a cross city trip of 5-6 miles will no longer be cost effective. Things will change.

Commuters will initially be inclined towards greater use of public transport but as even the cost of using trains and buses starts to rise then individuals will be forced to make key life changing decisions. Working from home or working closer to home will be options. Walking or cycling to work with the knock on health benefits of keeping fit may be appropriate for some. There is much talk of fuel cells replacing petrol driven engines.

Centralised society

A society which feeds information and power down from the top is an energy intensive arrangement. It requires a large bureaucracy, huge databases and all the technology that is needed to keep those databases up to date. It requires efficient communication between executive, legislative and judicial branches. It requires streamlining and standardising everything from police procedures to the national curriculum. Remove the energy powering these complex centralised behemoths and they cease to function just as flicking the power switch on a computer stops it working.

Power is returned to the end user, the consumer and the citizen. Town councils which throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries ran efficient and effective administrations with considerably less influence from Westminster and Whitehall will be the decision making bodies of the future.

Wider still, a centralised Euro empire with its hub in Brussels will never be able to function. The bigger the empire, the greater the infrastructure, the greater the usage of energy to maintain that infrastructure. The project to enslave all sovereign peoples of Europe in a Soviet style European Union will never come to fruition. The peak oil crisis will be welcomed by all patriotic people of Europe and decision making will be repatriated to the lowest appropriate level

Environment

One thing is for sure, the countryside, the wildlife and human health should benefit enormously from an oil crisis. Most of the UK’s 31 million vehicles will not be going anywhere. As the price of crude rises, pump prices will follow suit, pricing all but the very wealthy or very determined or very criminal off the roads. There will be no need for new motorways, no new town by-passes, saving for prosperity our native woodlands, meadows, heaths and downland. Agri-businesses will not be spreading artificial fertiliser on our farms, nor will they be applying pesticides. Water courses will be improved and all manner of flora and fauna will once again thrive. Endangered species of butterfly, newts, orchids and birds will have a reprieve following years of decline, a consequence of industrialised farming which has destroyed habitats, killed with pesticides and fouled the waterways. Human health will benefit as well.

Health

People will still die, suffer from ailments and contagious illnesses and even if energy demanding organ transplants may not be possible, overall human health should improve. Those diseases and conditions that have resulted from decades of conspicuous consumption will become a thing of the past. Obesity resulting from the mass consumption of junk food and factory processed food will yield to healthier eating habits and more exercise as consumers walk and cycle rather than depend on cars.

Cancer has been seen as a scourge of modern living. Those chemicals which have given us fizzy drinks in plastic bottles, banana flavoured milk shakes without ever have been within a mile of a real banana, barbeque flavours and provided industry with lubricants, catalysts and feedstocks for the past 60 years have left their legacy in the food chain and the environment.

Post-oil more people will know exactly what they are eating. They will either be growing food themselves in their gardens, allotments or they will see the market gardener, the orchard grower, and the pig farmer tending to their crops and animals. They will be buying from a butcher or a greengrocer who has seen the items from farmgate to shop shelf. They will once again be involved in the natural cycle of planting and harvesting, birth, maturity and death. Without pesticides and artificial fertiliser, all food will be by default “organic” putting an end to the duality of food marketing. Organic food will quite rightly be available to all on a level economic playing field unlike the current situation where foods labelled as organic are paradoxically more costly than non-organic foodstuff.

Stress- the modern psychological condition resulting from overwork, commuting, dealing with deadlines and never ending demands for improvement will give way to a slower pace of life, a lifestyle more in keeping with the human mind and human time scale.

Family life

Post-oil means post mass production of processed foods. Someone, male or female will need to cook a family meal. Instant microwave TV dinners will give way to properly prepared and cooked meals mostly using ingredients locally grown and harvested with the minimal of processing. Dinner will be a family experience, just as it was throughout our nation’s history before the advent of cheap oil. Sitting around the evening dinner families will be doing what families have always done since Man began to use fire to cook the kill.

Instead of being dependent on a centralised State bureaucracy and a Nanny State parents will take more interest in bringing up their own children and children might be inclined to take more care of their elderly parents and grandparents. Without the same degree of reliance on complex health and rescue services individuals will assume self-responsibility for their own actions. The extended family will once again assume its place as the foundations and building bricks of a healthy functioning society.

The new economy

Big financial institutions will try and keep a lid on things but the cycle of economic growth fuelled by debt will come to a crashing devastating halt. The fall out will be of world shattering consequences but change will make available new opportunities and human needs will necessitate new forms of economic activity.

The Danes are well in the lead with their wind technology and a radical approach to ownership has been adopted. The first turbines were erected by guilds or co-operatives, which required member-owners to live within 3 kilometres of the site. The guilds eventually organized as the Danish Wind Turbine Owners Association, which became a powerful political force. Today, 100,000 Danish families own wind turbines or shares in wind co-operatives. Although the rules have been relaxed following pressure from the big utility companies a stakeholder in a wind turbine or wind farm is allow ownership of up to 30,000 kWh per year by any person who lives or works in the borough or who owns a house or other property there.

If Denmark can lead the way with wind farms then there is no logical reason for such co-operative enterprises to exist in other areas of activity; food production, manufacturer of bicycles, printing presses, house building, craft workshops and countless other goods and services.

Small businesses benefit

People will still need to eat, drink, clothe themselves, fill their homes with both the essentials and the nice things that make a house a home. People will still need attend to their personal hygiene and amuse themselves when not working. But the things that people will buy will need to be sourced, manufactured and sold locally. Mass transportation of Chinese made cotton T-shirts will not be possible. In fact unless we return to using sail or steam (coal driven) ships, cotton from the US, Egypt, India will not reach Albion’s shores, so alternatives will be needed.

Massive new business opportunities will exist for small enterprises, individually owned, family run and co-operative ventures. Mass production will be unfeasible and businesses will source primary raw materials locally, turn those materials into finished products locally, sell locally and employ local people.

A massive renaissance of traditional crafts and cottage industries may take place. Wood turners, leather workers, blacksmiths and stone workers may be struggling to keep up with demand. A restructuring of the education system will be necessary to provide training in new skills and old crafts as demand for graduates in sociology, media studies and peace studies will be even more unemployable than they are now.

Differences

Because mass transport of goods will not be possible and because local raw materials will be sought for various activities, there will be an end towards the trend of standardisation.

Recent news stories bemoaned look-a-like Britain. Market towns from Falkirk to Exeter have town centres that are virtually indistinguishable from one another. 10 years post-oil, we will see the end of the dominance of High Street chains; goodbye to the golden arches of McDonalds, goodbye to Gap, so long to Starbucks and cheerio to Comet and Currys.

Houses will be built using materials locally sourced. Bricks and mortar will not longer be appropriate or possible in all of these islands. East Anglian houses may see brick walls with Norfolk reed thatch while while Welsh builders opt for slate roofs and stone walls.

No new skyscrapers and towering office blocks will be built. Everything will be conducted at a more human level and in a more human time scale. Because flying will be next to impossible people seeking to recharge their proverbial batteries will look to holiday closer to home. Parks will be seen as valued places of retreat, even if only for a few hours; their pavillions and monuments restored and plots carefully tendered.

Global warming stops.

If global warming is caused directly by the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which has been generated by the burning of fossil fuels, and there are strong arguments which assign the blame to carbon dioxide and equally strong arguments which disprove this conclusion then the release of carbon dioxide by burning oil and gas will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as renewable alternatives are sought and used. It may be too late to undo the damage which some have attributed to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over the past few decades, but the process will be brought to a halt. As more land around the planet gradually returns to natural vegetation over a period of centuries the carbon dioxide levels will return to a pre-oil boom level. Readers of this page will not reap the benefits but our great great grandchildren probably will.

Conclusion

Change is inevitable but one person’s apocalyptic view of the same situation could be interpreted as an opportunity by another. Britons are resourceful, innovative and can be pretty bloody minded in a crisis. We can knuckle down, roll up our sleeves and get on with life even without all the labour saving devices, the shopping malls and the twice year trips to the Med or Florida.

Comments

We welcome your feedback. Whether you think this is a lot of hype and propaganda or are genuinely concerned, send us your questions, your suggestions and your comments. We will publish a selection of material submitted. Your material should be posted in the comments section relating to each page in the Peak Oil Category of this website.

 

Apocalypse?

It is the worst case scenario anyone can possibly imagine.

The extraction and processing of the finite fuels, oil and gas, are at the root of our industrialised and technological advanced society. Take the cheap oil and gas away and everything that is built on the availability of cheap, unlimited fuel collapses. Our complex, highly structured, regimented society depends ever more on the use of technology on complex logistics to ship goods around the world to meet consumer demands. Take away the power for that new technology and the world falls apart. What can we expect when we can no longer afford oil, when we can no longer run natural gas burning power stations, when the wheels of the UK economy literally grind to a halt.

Stranded

90% of all today’s transportation systems depend on oil. There is no other commodity which could replace oil (in the form of petrol or diesel) as a fuel to drive the millions of cars, freight vehicles and trains on Britain’s roads and railtracks. In fact the very roads themselves actually come from oil. 26 million tonnes of asphalt were produced in the UK in 1998 for use on British roads. Asphalt is not employed to make all road surfaces look dark grey but has been widely adopted as it is easily laid and rolled to give a smooth surface, enables easy drainage/run off, minimising skid risks, acts as a noise dampener and allows for coloured paints to be applied as road markings. No oil - no asphalt; no asphalt - no smooth water-proof road surfaces.

Perhaps more importantly aviation cannot be fuelled by any other source. Given the time and the money electric trains could replace all the diesel fleet of trains, given the time and money electric trams could replace conventional diesel driven buses, but no commercial aeroplane can possibly be run on any alternative fuel. So as oil becomes more expensive, budget airlines will cease to exist. Those two foreign holidays so many Britons consider as their “right” will become much more expensive.

Shipping all that food, all those electronic consumer goods from Korea and Taiwan, those cheap T-shirts and toys from China depends on oil. While shipping is far less energy consuming than aviation, those giant container ships are diesel and fuel oil guzzlers. Without a cheap supply of diesel and marine fuel oil Johnny doesn’t get his latest animated piece of plastic at Christmas but then millions of food aid recipients in the Third World will literally go without their daily bread and butter.

How will you get to work? In fact will you have a job to get to? What happens when there is a fire in your home, office, factory? Will the local authority have the money to put fuel in the tanks of the fire tenders, will the health board have the money to pay the exorbitant cost of what small amount of diesel or unleaded to fill up the tanks of the ambulances, the GP’s cars and the motorbikes of the paramedics? Will the police arrive in time to catch the burglars who have broken into your house while you were asleep? It is not like the “old days” when a patrol car could be dispatched but in a world where a gallon of petrol costs more than a weekly wage, the constables have a fair distance to walk or cycle from the station.

Famine

Every nation on the planet benefits from the advances made in dramatically boosting crop yields. Wheat and barley harvests in East Anglia are now nearly double what they were 50 years ago. Western nations have a food surplus which are used to either trade with other nations or given away to the starving of Africa, parts of Asia and Latin America. While some increase in crop yield can be attributed to selective breeding and fluctuations in climate, most of the increase in crop yield has arisen from the use of oil! Oil is not of course used directly on crops but pesticides are and many pesticides are derived from the processing of crude oil. Those pesticides are sprayed from booms attached to tractors and tractors use diesel which comes from the processing of crude oil.

The other major input in the crop production process is artificial fertiliser. This is made from ammonia which in turn comes from petroleum or natural gas. This artificial fertiliser is applied to Britain’s fields using the same diesel burning tractors mentioned above.

The bags of fertiliser and the chemical drums of pesticides are likely to be made of plastic and again plastic packaging needs oil.

The UK remains one of the leading chemical producing countries and exports millions of tonnes of both fertiliser and pesticide around the world - aboard diesel driven ships!

Away from the farm, the contents of the typical British/American/Western European larder are likely to have been harvested, distributed, processed, packaged and redistributed through supply chains of wholesalers, supermarkets and delivered to one’s nearest retailer by gas guzzling vans, artics or train. Keeping those perishable items chilled requires expensive refrigeration. Refrigeration units are energy demanding pieces of kit and depend upon oil or gas to generate the electricity to power them. What’s more the source of the refrigerant; the chemical mixture that is pumped around and around the coils in the refrigeration kit, is also derived from either oil or gas.

Without oil there would be considerably less inorganic fertiliser production, almost no pesticide production and a radical change in the distribution of those types of fertiliser and pesticide that are not dependent on crude oil. It means an end to cheap processed foods, an end to apples being shipped in from Chile and South Africa during a British winter, an end to Egyptian strawberries being available for Christmas desserts.

More significantly it means a drop in crop yields, which will lead to higher food prices in the west and less food aid to donate to the Third World.

Poor

The world’s wealth in the 20th century and opening years of the 21st century has been created by debt. A business with a good idea and which could show growth would seek a loan from a bank. That the bank never had the cash to lend to the customer but merely extended credit to the customer is not the point. The customer could get the credit needed to buy the equipment, rent the factiry unit, pay his wages and as long as his sales grew he was happy, the banks were happy, the staff were happy and his own customers were happy. But when growth stops and show no signs of recovering, the banks pull the credit, the customer cannot pay his suppliers, pay his rent, pay his wages and his business suffers. A simplistic overview but it does show that in modern economics growth is needed for businesses to survive. It should not have to be like that. After all we can all think of the self-employed window cleaner who does say 20 houses a day at £5 a time and takes £100 in cash a day. He cannot grow, he might have to work the extra hour or take someone else on to assist but he makes a reasonable living from doing what he does. That is human scale economics. The same applies to most self-employed people, small businesses and others who do not need to resort to the banks for credit. The big businesses need growth to satisfy firstly the big banks and secondly the other element in this the instituional investors, speculators, pension funds and insurance funds.

War

President Bush lies when he says he has sent teenage recruits from Iowa and Idaho to Iraq in order to create a safe democratic country now devoid of the tyranny of Dictator Saddam Hussein. Bush is not planning a war with Iran just so that the home of the once great Persian Empire will embrace American style democracy. Bush’s Troops do not continue to occupy Afghanistan just so the people there can grow opium poppies without being troubled by the Taliban. These three countries are key players in the oil based geo-political landscape.

“We now have the second largest oil reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia,” Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh announced last July (2004).

He said that discoveries in the country’s south western deserts showed the Islamic Republic sitting on 132 billion barrels of proven reserves, a jump of 17 billion barrels.

BP puts Iraq in 3rd place for proven crude reserves with 115 billion barrels.

America is currently blackmailing nations to support its continued occupation of Iraq. Non American troops are being dispatched to the troubled region in exchange for oil deals.

Afghanistan has very little oil, it has some gas worth having but its great wealth lies in its strategic position, capable of carrying a much debated pipeline from central Asia to the Indian Ocean via Pakistan. America’s foreign policy does seem to indicate that the Whitehouse knows fine well about “Peak Oil” and that American troops are being deployed to safeguard the world’s oilfields. China’s current demand of 7 million barrels of crude a day, rising to 8 million barrels a day by the end of the decade is likely to spark off hostilities with competitive countries, principally America. Tensions are rising in Nigeria and noises are coming from the Oval Office about fighting the war on terrorism in the region.

Strange is it not that the places where “terrorism” abounds are precisely those places which have bountiful amounts of crude! Perhaps Uncle Sam will descend on Africa’s largest oilfields to protect the Nigerian infrastructure from “terrorism”. America is facing a sustained backlash from angry Muslims in Iraq. It will likewise face the same challenge in the more populous Iran and if it tries to take on the emerging superpower of China the backlash might lead to full scale military activity.

When the smaller poorer nations of the world cannot get their hands on the black stuff to help feed, clothe, transport and employ their own burgeoning populations are they going to wait for aid to come, wait for outside assistance and hope the price of crude falls once more, are they going to remain quiet and just on with things or are they going to fight their neighbours to seize whatever energy resources it can?

Pestilence

We quite rightly place great pride in the advances in medical science in the past 50 years. The risk of catching a deadly disease in a dirty hospital aside, which is more a political issue than a health issue, in the UK we have greater longevity, are less likely to succumb to the diseases that plagued our grandparents and can rely on our medical services to rescue us, treat us and give us all the medicines money can buy to prolong our active lives. How do you keep the donor organs at the right temperature? How do you power the magnetic scanners which are used to detect tumours, keep an eye on growing babes in the womb?

And what of those petrochemically derived pills and medicines, the analgesics, antihistamines, antibiotics, antibacterials, sedatives, tranquillisers and those plastics in all disposables used for maintaining sterile conditions; specialised plastics used in heart valves; common items such as isopropanol (rubbing alcohol); polyethylene and poly-vinyl acetate used in tubing, sheeting, splints, prostheses, blood bags, disposable syringes and catheters?

We take our water supplies for granted. Fresh clean potable water comes out of the tap whenever we ask for it. An awful lot of oil went into getting that water to the tap. Reservoirs need to be maintained, pumps need electricity, the water treatment works need a lot of electricity, to get the water in the first place needs concrete pipes, concrete is manfacutred using a lot of oil. The pipes have to be delivered by truck to the building sites, the trenches are dug using oil fuelled diggers and so it goes on. Water isn’t just for drinking. It is used to flush the loos in milions of homes, offices, schools and hospitals. Unflushed human waste is pretty unpleasant, not just the stench. Can you imagine the huge potential for the spread of some pretty nasty diseases; there is going to be a big demand for treatment of cholera, dysentry, gastro-enteritis, hepatitis.

Oh and the rats…with crumbling sewers and a lack of “fresh” human waste passing through the sewers yes the rats will have a wonderful time as the emerge from the sewers looking for the titbits that keep them breeding. Rats carry Weil’s disease which gives rise to flu like symptoms and leads to heart failure if not treated. It wasn’t the rats that caused the outbreaks of bubonic plague in the middle ages, it was the fleas that the rats carried, but when you are dying in agony as the lymph nodes in your neck, armpits and groin have swollen to the size of a walnut you will not be too interested in the method of carrying the disease! A good strong cat might be a useful pet and possible life-saver!

Without oil we all go back to a time of greater hardships; uncontainable epidemics, hospitals which cannot be heated or air conditioned, no rescue helicopters or airlifts, no mass produced vaccines or painkillers. Death comes closer to those without oil. How are we going to cope?

Vulnerable

The entire complex centralised societies of the west are wholly dependent on cheap fuel. Those surveillance cameras on every High Street, inside every rail station and public building are there to help deter criminals, make commuters and everyday shoppers feel safe and in the worst case scenario, if someone is attacked, mugged or murdered then well there is the camera footage to help identify the culprit and provide evidence in any trial. A database of fingerprint images and DNA samples of hundreds of thousands of criminals exists, easily accessible by any authorised police officer. Well perhaps….

Apart from the token bobby pounding the beat (in pairs of course…21st century society is far too dangerous for a lone police officer to go out on patrol) those police cars - from the humble patrol Astra to the gas guzzling Range Rovers, the favoured vehicle of traffic cops, they need oil and lots of it. Starve a constabulary of petrol and diesel and how are the officers going to deal with the local teenage louts…..the corporate fraudsters…the drug barons whose fortunes will increase as society falls apart and the weak, lonely, the redundant, the business failures and atomised seek solace in bootleg alcohol and whatever mind numbing substances they can lay their hands on? Of course there is always the Army, but an army these days drives rather than marches, can a few score thousand professional soldiers keep the peace on British streets?

A mass attempt by the populace to storm a food distribution depot close to the M62 might be dealt with by a few hundred armed infantrymen, but if the scene is multiplied across two hundred depots in twenty counties and a further hundred High Streets and a score of coastal ports as desperate, genuinely desperate fathers, older brothers and husbands try and grab whatever food, medicines, drugs, alcohol for their crying, malnourished offspring siblings and family members. What if the working class storming the food distribution depots are the brothers, sisters, cousins of the twenty-something infantrymen armed with SA80s? Will the well trained British squaddie really fire on his neighbours, friends and family?

The cities will be dangerous places, conventional policing will be unable to contain the armed gangs who will control “their” areas. The wealthy can try and hide behind armoured gates and security systems, can establish their own armed gangs or buy protection from an armed gang. What of the rest of society? Even in today’s oil booming consumerist society there are no go areas for unarmed police officers, housing schemes who are in thrall to the local “Mr. Big” often a pimp, a drug dealer and fence. If the police are not there to help, just who is going to look after the law abiding residents? Do we take the law into our own hands or do we all become easy prey to the armed gangs of pimps, drug barons and organised crime rings?

The nights will of course be darker, the local councils will not be able to afford the cost of electricity to power street lamps. The nights will be quieter too, as millions of exhausts are silenced, lying rusting in driveways and gardens across the country. Fewer people will frequent the city centres, those that do risk assault, attack and even murder. Living in a city is a real health hazard in a world without oil.

Conclusion

A darker, hunger filled, more dangerous existence. That is one possible view of life after oil, but does it really have to be this bad? Could there be some upside, some silver lining on this particularly gloomy looking cloud?

It might be apocalyptic but it might just be a time of opportunity for those that are aware, those that are prepared and those that can adapt. Don’t have nightmares and see for yourself just what opportunities might open up.

 

The Politics

If peak oil is an issue surely it is best left for the energy experts to resolve and the BNP can concentrate on more immediate matters?

Such a question is commonly heard at branch meetings and read in emails and letters sent into the web team and other office holders.

In response we need to be clear about some basic issues. The BNP is not going to achieve political power in Westminster or elsewhere, beyond perhaps a few town or district councils in the next 10-15 years. The current corrupt system will not allow the BNP to win anything more than a token presence in councils and perhaps one or two other elected chambers around the country. However the corrupt system is not going to manage to silence the growing number of Britons who are rightly concerned, fed up and disillusioned by the betrayal of our economy, our communities, our culture and our way of life.

That disillusionment sometimes turns to anger as we saw in the hauliers dispute back in 2000. With petrol prices due to rise yet again, and politicians working behind the scenes to stop the cost going over the psychological £4 a gallon mark, there will be much more manifestations of disillusionment and anger in the years to come. It will not just be hauliers and farmers, but legions of others; employees who are on short working weeks, self-employed tradesmen finding it hard to pay for their fuel, the mums who cannot get a doctor to call on their sick children, the young couples facing repossession of their houses because the cost of living is spiraling out of control. As oil prices rise, it will be millions who suffer, millions of ordinary people who are just trying to get on with their lives, millions of ordinary decent people will be forced into states of anxiety, depression, fear and anger.

The BNP is making peak oil a high profile issue for a number of reasons.

1. The press have portrayed the BNP membership as knuckle draggers, poorly educated, unsuccessful losers who blame minority groups such as blacks/asians/gays/communists (delete as appropriate) for their situation. The fact that our current Chairman, Nick Griffin received a degree from Cambridge University and that more than two-thirds of the Advisory Council have university degrees seems to have missed the assorted hacks, editors and broadcasters who rail against us. We are a party of clever, resourceful and deeply motivated and committed individuals.

We have to work harder than our political opponents to convey the reality that the BNP is made up of thoroughly decent Britons who have a great deal of combined grey matter, are highly resourceful, successful people in their own lives and that we can be trusted to generate some stunning policy ideas to regenerate this country and demonstrate responsible leadership on this and other issues.

2. We are the only political party making this an issue at the moment. We are leaders in this issue just as we have been the ones leading the debate on immigration and asylum. It is because the BNP exists and because the BNP has been seen to win votes from Labour because of our tough stand on immigration and asylum that Labour are now trying to be seen to be tough on asylum, even to the extent this month of ensuring the high profile deportations of distressed asylum seekers back to the murderous hands of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. When we were talking about immigration, 15 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago we were ignored, pilloried and condemned. We still are polloried and condemned but not ignored. Immigration is high on the list of voters’ concerns and the other parties are now playing “catch up” to the BNP.

3. We are not a single-issue party. While immigration and asylum are important issues, we have no desire to be seen only as the “anti-immigration” pressure group. The BNP has a serious mission to undertake - we have to secure political power in this country within the next 40 years otherwise there will not be a Britain. We must have policies that will work, policies that will cover every aspect of human activity and the complex society that we will be running. We need to find, recruit, train and assist spokesmen and women to develop, to refine and to disseminate these policies on health, education, energy, transport, governance, law and order as well as immigration, Europe, and defence.

4. When the BNP does win political power Peak Oil will not be something that we can postpone. It will be happening at the very time that we come to power. In fact it may well be an important catalyst that helps us to win political power because we are the ones talking about it now, the voters might not like us pointing out that the wolf is approaching the chicken coop but they will identify us as the ones who kept speaking about it back in 2005, bringing it to their awareness and understanding.

Voters take to new ideas, even radically new ideas when the system that they have trusted, worked with, admired and felt comfortable with falls apart. We are going to make a lot of noise about Peak Oil because it is yet another example of how the current political process has failed the people of this country, how the short-sightedness of most of our corrupt, incompetent and downright traitorous politicians is very shortly going to create one awful mess and we rightly identify those individuals, those systems, those institutions that have been responsible for that collapse.

Key Statistics

A guide to some of the units used:

• 1 KW = 1 kilowatt = 1,000 watts (1 kw is roughly one bar on a domestic electric fire or the equivalent of nearly 17 x 60W light bulbs)
• 1 MW = 1 megawatt = 1,000,000 watts.
• 1 m2 = 1 square metre = a square with both width and length of 1 metre.
• Crude oil production and consumption is measured in barrels.
• 1 bbl = 1 barrel = 35 UK gallons = 42 US gallons
• (the difference arises because while both a US and a UK gallon is made up of 8 pints, a US pint is made up of 16 fluid ounces compared to 20 fluid ounces in the UK).
• 1 mbbl = 1 million barrels. The UK consumption of crude is almost 2mbbl per day.

A definition

When an article refers to “oil fuelled” or “oil driven” vehicles the term does not mean the vehicle itself runs on crude oil, but is actually running on a derivative product such as petrol, diesel or aviation fuel.

When the term “post oil” is used, it does not mean a situation which is completely devoid of oil. Instead it means a situation which acknowledges some crude oil reserves do exist, are being, or are capable of being, extracted but the cost of extraction, processing and delivering a useful component of those reserves (such as petrol) is so prohibitive that such undertakings are rare, isolated and not continuous.

Oil reserves (conventional crude oil)

There exist two significantly different estimates of the amount of conventional oil that may ultimately be extracted from the Earth. These estimates were made by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and separately by industrial/academic experts.

The USGS estimates that there are approximately 3000 billion barrels of conventional oil (Bbo) that may ultimately be extracted. Because the world has already consumed approximately 1000 Bbo, that leaves approximately 2000 Bbo as the remaining conventional oil.

The industrial/academic experts (such as Colin Campbell, Jean Laherrere, and Ken Deffeyes) estimate that approximately 2000 Bbo may ultimately be extracted. As above, because the world has already consumed approximately 1000 Bbo, that leaves approximately 1000 Bbo as the remaining conventional oil.

(Colin J. Campbell and Jean Laherrere, “The End of Cheap Oil”, Sci. Am. 278 (3), 78-83 (1998). )

Table: Reported reserves of top ten countries (January 2002) Conventional crude

 

Rank	Country	Reserves (mbbl)
1	Saudi Arabia	261,750
2	Iraq	112,500
3	United Arab Emirates	97,800
4	Kuwait	96,500
5	Iran	89,700
6	Venezuela	77,685
7	Russia	48,573
8	Libya	29,500
9	Mexico	26,941
10	Nigeria	24,000

 

(Source: Z magazine)

Some sources claim that Canada has the world’s second largest reserves. This is incorrect because it measures what are known as “tar sands” a highly dispersed form of oil which some aurithorities have calculated will need more energy input to mine and refine than can ever be generated from the oil itself. It is classified under non-conventional reserves.

Oil production (conventional crude oil)

Table: Reported production rates of top ten countries (January 2002) Conventional crude

Rank	Country	Production (mbbl/day)
1	Saudi Arabia	8.528
2	United States	8.091
3	Russia	7.014
4	Iran	3.775
5	Mexico	3.560
6	Norway	3.408
7	China	3.297
8	Venezuela	3.137
9	Canada	2.749
10	United Arab Emirates	2.550
(11	United Kingdom	2.540 )

Total world annual: 28,180

(Source: Z magazine)

Oil consumption (conventional crude oil)

The US is the world’s single biggest consumer of the black stuff burning nearly 20 million barrels a day. The UK consumes less than one tenth of this but we still have to import crude to meet our demands because the North Sea fields are in decline.

Table: Reported production rates of top 20 countries (January 2002) Conventional crude

Rank	Country	consumption (mbbl/day)
1	United States	19.993
2	Japan	5.423
3	China	4.854
4	Germany	2.814
5	Russia	2.531
6	South Korea	2.126
7	Brazil	2.123
8	Canada	2.048
9	France	2.040
10	India	2.011
11	Mexico	1.932
12	Italy	1.881
13	United Kingdom	1.699
14	Spain	1.465
15	Saudi Arabia	1.415
16	Iran	1.109
17	Indonesia	1.063
18	Netherlands	0.881
19	Australia	0.879
20	Taiwan	0.846

 

Total world daily: 75.988

Total world annual: 28,460

Transport in the UK

The number of licensed vehicles in Great Britain has more than tripled over the last four decades. In 1961 there were under 9.0 million licensed vehicles. By 1981 there were 19.3 million, and by 2003, 31.2 million. Private cars accounted for an increasing proportion of this total - 59 per cent in 1961, 77 per cent in 1981, and 80 per cent in 2003.

(Source: HM govt. DFT)

 

Current UK power production

There are around 23 large coal fired plant (some of which also burn some gas or oil), 17 nuclear plants, 8 large oil plants and 11 new combined cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) and several others. Large in this context means over 100MW. (The percentage of generation by fuel type in 1995 was 48% coal, 23% nuclear, 17% CCGT and open cycle gas turbines, 9% interconnectors and 1% oil and the remainder hydro and the new renewables).

 

Resources

A selection of documents, presentations and multimedia to help viewers gain awareness of Peak Oil issues.

AC presentation - PDF

A layman’s guide to peak oil, delivered by Lee Barnes to a meeting of the BNP Advisory Council in Wales during June 2005.

AC presentation pt 1- Video

Footage of Lee Barnes’ talk on peak oil, delivered to a meeting of the BNP Advisory Council in Wales during June 2005

AC presentation pt 2 - Video

Footage of Lee Barnes’ talk on peak oil, delivered to a meeting of the BNP Advisory Council in Wales during June 2005

AC presentation pt 3 - Video

Footage of visual presentation to the BNP Advisory Council on the definition of peak oil with the help of half a dozen plastic cups

AC presentation pt 4 - Video

Footage of visual presentation to the BNP Advisory Council on the definition of peak oil with the help of half a dozen plastic cups

Peak oil animation - Flash

An easy to understand Flash animation produced by Powerswitch - an informal association of energy specialists

Paris peak oil conference reveals deepening crisis - PDF

Reprinted with permission, Michael C. Ruppert and From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com, PO Box 6061-350, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413. 818-788-7891. FTW is published monthly, annual subscriptions are $50/year.

Articles that have appeared on the main BNP site.

Lee Barnes - Era of Oil Wars has begun PDF

Lee Barnes - Stormclouds gather PDF

Nick Griffin - A world without oil - PDF

Nick Griffin - The inevitable collapse - PDF

Articles that have appeared in main newspapers in recent months.

Ditch the car, we’re running out of oil - ABC AustraliaDemand Destruction - Al-Jazeerah

Report says oil production peak not coming anytime soon - CBC (Canada)Maybe a rebound - CNN

 Running on empty - Dallas Morning News 

The black stuff has world order over a barrel - GuardianWhen the wells run dry - Guardian

Coming oil crisis feared - Guardian

A Crude Awakening- Peoria Journal Star

High oil prices are here to stay - Times (London)

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