For five decades transport ministers in Europe have met to discuss and determine what is needed for an integrated transport system. Increased globalisation and international traffic has meant that it is the right time to expand the discussion on transport. As a response to this, the decision was made to establish the International Transport Forum (www.internationaltransportforum.org) as an organisation within the OECD. (Another organisation within the OECD is the International Energy Agency.) Subsequently, nations outside the OECD have been invited to become members. Today there are 51 nations included, and Brazil, India and China are in the process of becoming members.
They have decided to have an open forum once per year that is expected to become “transport’s Davos”. They have decided that this forum will always be in Leipzig. The German government is very keen to raise the profile of cities of the former German Democratic Republic. The theme for the first forum was “Transport and Energy” and it was the energy part that meant that the OECD directed its gaze towards Uppsala University and my Global Energy Systems research group.
In June last year I was invited to write a report on ”Peak Oil and the Evolving Strategies of Oil Importing and Exporting Countries”. The report was to form part of the paper for discussion at a round table conference in Paris in November 2007 (www.internationaltransportforum.org/jtrc/DiscussionPapers/DP200805.pdf). To my great surprise I discovered that only four people had been invited to write reports on the future of oil.
The first day in Leipzig consisted of different workshops and an open forum. Various people had been invited to participate in panel debates in four different workshops with different themes. To present Peak Oil, Peak Gas, etc, my research group had also been invited to an open forum. We were given 90 minutes to present our research under the theme of, “The Future of Energy Supplies”. That felt great and, above all, it was wonderful for my Ph.D. students Bengt, Kristofer and Mikael to give presentations at such an important event. The presentations will be available when we return to Uppsala on Monday June 2, www.fysast.uu.se/ges.
The second day were the high point of the forum, the discussion between political decision-makers and key people in the transport sector. Those that would like to see this can go to www.internationaltransportforum.org.
Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the United Nations IPCC, was first on stage and delivered his expected message on global warming. Numbers that are well known to many can be repeated here: During the 20th century the sea level has risen 17 cm, snow-cover on land has decreased markedly and it has become warmer. He stressed also that the climate change that we can expect can affect different parts of the world differently. In future there can be more heatwaves during summer around the Mediterranean Sea while we in Sweden may experience a pleasant summer climate. Historically it is not uncommon that we have had temperature variations but then there were so few people in the world that they could adapt and move with a moving world. If the current population in north Africa must move north due to climate change then they will find the border closed.
Yvo de Boer is the chief negotiator for development of a new Kyoto Protocol, and he stressed the importance of regulation. As an example he described the emissions regulations for industry and cars. Only once regulations were in place did we have change. The future’s climate demands consistent and universal regulation. Some more numbers: The transport sector accounts for 23% of CO2 emissions and road transport is 74% of these. Representatives of the aviation industry went to great lengths to stress that that aircraft are responsible for only 2% of the emissions and the future expansion that they envisage should only increase this proportion to 3%. In Copenhagen there will be almost no increase in emissions in future.
Pekka Himanen, a professor from Helsinki, Finland, is one of the world’s young new thinkers in economics, but it was not so much economics that he discussed but, rather, dignity. The world’s inhabitants should regard each other as a family and, of course, one should help all ones family members. For his concluding remarks he discussed the importance of the internet for the changes that must occur and that great advances in development come from concentrated centres of knowledge with elite students. The Swedish university system with a large number of universities would, in that case, be a misdirected investment.
The panel debate that followed between politicians and representatives of industry could be described with many words but I will choose the declaration from Norway’s transport minister Liv Signe Navarsete that were the most sensational. She asserted that we possibly must adapt to a future where we do not have growth but, rather, economic decline. Indirectly this is a recognition that Peak Oil is just around the corner. The price of oil was discussed and the managing director for Airbus, Thomas Enders said, (with a voice that did not quaver), that $200 per barrel would cause the entire aviation industry to collapse. No airline company could survive at that price.
The highpoint of the day was the address by Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel that, unfortunately, was in German. The real-time translation was not as passionate as one heard that she was. Her message was that we must open a new chapter for the future. She noted that there is a global shortage of energy and that everyone on the planet must have the same opportunities. Global matters must be directed by the United Nations. Angela Merkel’s declaration agrees well my concluding remarks on Peak Oil and climate:
“Climate change is current with more change to come, and furthermore, climate change is an enormous problem facing the planet. However, the world’s greatest problem is that too many people must share too little energy.”
Then on day 3 the summations, concluding remarks and thanks were given to all and personally I can state that the e-mail I received in June last year from the OECD and the International Transport Forum have meant a great deal. It was a recognition that the research that we conduct at Uppsala University is meaningful and we are now part of the game at the international level.
On the invitation to the forum it was stated that Peak Oil would be discussed, but when the panel of ministers and industrial representatives was finalised there was no place for this topic. That the vice-president of Shell, who represents the oil industry, can say that production currently cannot meet demand is to paraphrase the situation in a manner that avoids its true seriousness. That a managing director in the aviation industry can say that $130 per barrel is too expensive and that $200 will kill the industry is a cry for help rather than a recognition that Peak Oil is drawing near.
The representatives of the car manufacturers should have taken up the issue, but instead Peak Oil was tied into the discussion on automobiles with reduced CO2 emissions and the hybrid and electrical vehicles of the future together with biofuels.
The closest that the politicians came to Peak Oil was the pronouncement from Norway’s transport minister on negative growth, an expression that the representative of the World Bank most definitely dismissed on the last day.
The ones that should have taken up Peak Oil were the representatives for the IEA, the International Energy Agency, but they are not there yet. They have stated that the forecast for 2030 must be reduced but the managing director pointed to global solutions, infrastructure solutions such as efficiency gains and that, above all else, one needed better data so that their forecasts could be more certain in the future. They justify that they do not yet talk about Peak Oil by citing that the databases are, as yet, too poor.
The former managing director of the IEA, Claude Mandil, summarised the panel and, on the last day, the entire forum. The future must be global and integrated and everything will become expensive. He even said that the high oil price can be good for the future, but he saw no shortage of resources. Rather the shortage we are currently experiencing is a due to a combination of other factors.
The climate was discussed and everyone wanted to see a decrease in carbon dioxide emissions but the discussion was, if anything, that we are doing well and it is others that must make the big reductions, (or, as Pekka Himanen described it, like the story of the man that was photographed coming out from the bedroom of his neighbour’s wife but nevertheless denied that he had been in there).
I left Leipzig with the feeling that the future’s biggest question, energy and climate, lacked leadership. There is nobody who will stand up and say “I have a dream” but rather it is nightmares that are discussed. Peak Oil will, in future, become the politician’s best friend since Peak Oil will reduce CO2 emissions from oil and become a part of the solution that the politicians cannot agree on. For industry and the rest of us there will be, as usual, winners and losers and those that actively accept and respond to the Peak Oil idea will be the winners of the future.
