Electricity

Are cities sustainable in a post-peak oil world?

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-Depletion of Key Resources: Facts at Your Fingertips
-Cities, peak oil, and sustainability
-Reconsidering Cities
-Peter Newman: The Crash, Peak Oil and Resilient Cities
-Where do we go from here?

There is (offshore wind powered) light at the end of the tunnel!

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I went on a visit of the port site in Zeebrugge where the foundations for the Belwind offshore wind farm (the financing of which I worked on) have been stored before their installation and wanted to give you a glimpse of the kind of logistics that entails and what kind of problems can happen (and how they are solved).

ODAC Newsletter – Jan 22

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Oil prices dropped this week on rising US inventories, a strengthening dollar, and news of a further crackdown on credit in China. Speaking from the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi this week, Richard Jones, Deputy Executive Director of the IEA predicted that there would be little price volatility in 2010 as existing supplies and stock build ups would balance demand.

Making society forecast-proof

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Because forecasts of abundant fossil fuel supplies far into the future have been embedded in public policy and business planning worldwide, we have made our entire global society dependent on getting these forecasts right. If they turn out to be too optimistic, then we could all be in for serious trouble. Since long-term energy forecasts–and really any long-term forecasts–are difficult if not impossible to get right, perhaps we should consider making society forecast-proof insofar as that is possible.

Death of rationalization

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In former times slaughterhouses, bakeries, breweries and dairies were small, numerous and more or less evenly distributed across the country. Today they are big and located in only a few places. They are hubs with many long transports going to and from them. This is a consequence of the relationship between the cost of energy versus the cost of labor.