Transportation: How long can we adapt before we fall off the Net Energy Cliff?
Transportation: How long can we adapt before we fall off the Net Energy Cliff?
The problem we face is a liquid fuel crisis. Absolutely essential vehicles, such as agricultural tractors and combines, railroads, and trucks run on diesel fuel, ships on bunker fuel. They can never be battery or fuel-cell operated or electrified, nor do we have the decades it would take to build a new fleet even if there were a solution.
In 2011, the United States burned 29021 trillion BTU’s of mainly petroleum, which represented 13 billion tons of freight worth $11.8 trillion moved 3.5 trillion ton-miles:
» Trucks: 69% / 1.4 trillion miles / 9.0 billion tons
» Trains: 15% / 1.3 trillion miles / 1.9 billion tons
» Ships: 3%
Meanwhile, local and global production of oil will be dropping off rapidly:
First, there’s the decline of oil from our own and global oil fields (
peak oil production was reached in 2005), oil producing countries will export less because they’re using more oil themselves (
ELM model), America and other nations are likely to be outbid by China, India, etc., for oil exports. Second, there’s the [link:http://|net energy cliff] and the decline in the RATE of what we can get out of the ground now that petroleum is gunky and in remote places. Third, the financial system can interfere with oil production – when credit dries up after the next financial crash, the money to drill won’t be available.
Optimistic scenario: 20 years before we hit the wall
Pessimistic scenario: 1-12 years before we hit the wall
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