The UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security report
Date submitted: 30 October 2008
There isn’t any shortage of oil, but there is a real shortage of the cheap oil that for too long we have taken for granted. During the 20th century, cheap oil - $20 – 30/barrel in today’s terms - allowed the internal combustion engine to replace the steam engine and sparked a transport revolution that fostered and fed the innate human desire to travel. We loved it.
Today’s high prices are sending a message to the world that words alone have failed to convey, namely that not only are we leaving the era of cheap energy but that we have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. For once what is right is also what is expedient - we know that we have to stop burning fossil fuels because of the irreversible environmental damage they cause, and now it may be cheaper to do so as well!
The problem is that in the developed world our power and transport infrastructure is based almost entirely on fossil fuels. With the best will and the best technology in the world this will take decades to change.
Today’s high prices are sending a message to the world that words alone have failed to convey, namely that not only are we leaving the era of cheap energy but that we have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. For once what is right is also what is expedient - we know that we have to stop burning fossil fuels because of the irreversible environmental damage they cause, and now it may be cheaper to do so as well!
The problem is that in the developed world our power and transport infrastructure is based almost entirely on fossil fuels. With the best will and the best technology in the world this will take decades to change.
In the pages that follow you will read the views of some of those closest to the oil industry. In the past these views might have been regarded as heretical. But they are not and their warnings are to be heeded.
First report from the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security (pdf)
More Information: http://www.arup.com/_assets/_download/490896E6-19BB-316E-403A2233D407A411.pdf
