Transportation: running out of gas?
November 30th, 2009 by Jim JustStuart Staniford has posted this chart at his blog Early Warning.
You ask, why is this interesting? Staniford in an earlier post argued that if global oil supply was flat, and if the developing regions of the world continue to grow at the rate of the last five years, then developed country oil consumption would have to decline at 4% per year. Consequently, oil efficiency would have to increase at 4% a year if OECD economies were not to shrink – and to increase by even more if economic growth is to continue in the future as it has in the past.
The situation is even more challenging if global oil production begins to actually decline.
The real significance of the concept of peak oil lies in the economic consequences – the question of exactly when global oil production peaks is in itself not particularly interesting or important. What we need to be thinking about and planning for is adopting to a different kind of economic and political environment as global oil supplies – and more importantly oil supplies available for export – become increasingly constrained and then inevitably begin to fall.
The implications for transportation planning are stark – but transportation planners are mostly oblivious to or dismissive of the concept of peak oil. With 97 percent of U.S. transportation energy based on petroleum, oil is the lifeblood of America’s economy. Staniford points out that when it comes to transportation fuel economy, improvements are not happening nearly as fast as we will need going forward
Transportation planning is based on projecting demand into the future. Will the oil required to fuel those projections be there? Transportation planning that fails to take peak oil considerations into account is disconnected from reality.