Plan C: The Conserver Option Curtailment, Cooperation, Community

1
Plan C The Conserver Option Curtailment,
Cooperation, Community

• Third U.S. Conference on Peak Oil and
  Community Solutions
• Yellow Springs, Ohio
• Presented by
• Pat Murphy, Executive Director
• Community Solutions
• September 23, 2006

2
Reality Continues

• Colin Campbell (ASPO) continues to count the days
• Opponents confuse by ignoring conventional
  distinction

3
Another Discovery Tick

• April 2006 Association for Study of Peak Oil
  Newsletter

4
The USGS Remains Silent

• Hirsch (DOE) Dept. of Army show real government
  view
• Similar situation with King Hubbert and Vincent
  McKelvey

5
We Do Have a Plan

• Over 5 years old Energy Policy Plan
• Knew about Peak Oil when written
• Many dislike it but its a plan
• Largest investment Military approach
• Control Middle East oil and gas
• Secondary Investment Energy
• Long Term Investments since 1970s
• Solar Surprise Bezdek Wendling
• Popular view needs reanalysis

6
Military Likely Resources Conflict

• US hostile to many oil nations
• Iran may be invaded could lead to World War
• Russia and China rearming Russia gas turnoff

7
Unequal Energy, Income, PollutionBasis for
Resource Wars

• Population
• US5,
• OECD Lite10
• ROW85
• Ratio
• U.S./ROW8
• OECD-l/ROW4
• Result15
• Burn ½ energy
• Have ½ wealth
• Make ½ CO2
• HxCy CO2

8
World Now Understands WealthEnergy

• Everyone is a capitalist now
• Political approach unimportant
• Democracy or Dictatorship
• India or China
• Its economic growth
• And energy consumption
• Cold war returning
• Shanghai Cooperative
• Differences are resource control, not ideology
• Energy Wars are likely
• U.S. military budget is over 500 billion yearly
• 50 of world arms expenditure
• U.S. giving nuclear support to India to counter
  China
• China built 12 submarines last year tested
  missile

9
Non-Military Energy Investments

• Funding Proposal 2007 Advanced Energy Initiative
• Huge private investments GE 148B (wind), Sharp
  24B (PV)
• Arthur Daniels Midland Cargill 110B (bio-fuels)

10
Climate Change Adding Urgency!

• My personal epiphany of 2006!!
• CO2 2.6 Fuel Burned (weight)
• 2005 IEA report
• Issue not when oil is half gone
• Economic contractions
• Paradigm shift
• We dare not burn remaining oil
• Nor the coal, tar sands shale!
• Why dont we see this?
• We are bewitched!

11
Technology Faith Americas Danger

• U.S. belief in technology is strong
• Religion of all religions
• Doctrine of substitution implies there are no
  growth limits
• This belief sets national policy
• Two major Plans A B
• Both count on technology
• Opposing positions - maybe

12
Energy Plan A Fossil Fuel-Based

• So called non-renewables
• Business as usual
• Develop tar sands, oil shale, nuclear
• Top priority is clean coal
• (Bury CO2 in ocean and land)
• CO2 from coal 2x natural gas
• Corporate/government view
• President Bush, CEOs of Exxon, Cargill, GE, GM,
  Ford

13
Energy Plan B Non-Fossil Fuel-Based

• So called renewables
• Environmentally oriented
• Develop wind and solar
• Nuclear being debated
• One priority is bio-fuels
• Burning of food
• Assumes new transportation options
• Mass transit, fuel cells, PHEVs
• Al Gore, Lester Brown, Carl Pope, Amory Lovins,
  James Lovelock
• Many solar and wind companies

14
Energy Plans A B Common Points

• Fuels or new sources (A or B Technology) will
  save us
• Plan A Clean Coal, Tar Sands
• Plan B Switch Grass, Wind and Solar
• Nuclear power supported by both to some degree
• Lots of overlap between two e.g. GE
• Biggest wind turbine company
• Biggest power plant (coal, gas, nuclear) company
• Agreement Nations 1 goal
• Increase economic growth by increased energy
  consumption
• We dont have to consume less energy just
  different energy
• Technology is the answer

15
But Can Technology Save Us?

• This is a belief issue it is not at all obvious
• Technology more efficient/innovative machines
  burning fuels
• Could technology exist without fossil fuels
• Will it continue when fossil fuels are gone?
• There are high energy and low energy technologies
  
• Cars, planes, power plants
• Bypass surgery, most drugs, better golf clubs
• We have yet to consider a high tech low energy
  world
• Recent energy technology breakthroughs are not
  impressive

16
Comparison to Past Projects

• Popular mantra for Peak Oil We need a .
• (Manhattan, Apollo, Marshall Plan) Project
• Time lines
• Manhattan Project 12 years
• Apollo Project 9 Years
• Marshall Plan - 11 years
• Recent uncompleted energy projects
• Hydrogen Economy 33 years
• Fuel cell discovered in 1843
• Nuclear Fusion 40 plus years in development

17
Two Examples One Old, One New

• Hyper car H2, fuel cell
• 30 years of overstatement
• Always fundamentally flawed
• Takes more energy to make H2 than it creates
  ignored
• Popular with Plan B advocates
• CO2 (Carbon) Sequestration (aka CCS)
• Gives us Clean Coal
• Dirt (toxins) legacy to our children
• Popular with Plan A advocates
• (And Al Gore)

18
Green Solution H2/Fuel Cell Facts

• 1843 Fuel cell invented
• 1904 Wind power generates hydrogen
• 1965 Fuel cell built in Space program
• 1973 Nixon Project Independence (H2)
• 1993 Ballard makes first FC bus (800 M)
• 2002 Two FC cars arrive in California
• 
  
  
  
• 2006 A few hundred vehicles out of 750,000,000
• Price is around 1,000,000
• Still dont know where the hydrogen will come from

Wind/H2 1904
19
1999 Technology Projections

• Daimler Chrysler pledged 100,000 FC vehicles/yr
  by 2005
• Invested 350 million in Ballard Power Systems
• Ford Invested 420 million in Ballard
• Toyota committed to fuel cell well before 2002
• GM promised fuel cell cars in 2004
• All hype Nothing has come of it except
  prototypes
• From Amory Lovins Natural Capitalism (1999)

20
New Option Clean Fossil Fuels

• CO2 Sequestration A potential holocaust for all
  life
• Remember nuclear waste ocean dumping?
• Nuclear waste still around and increasing in
  volume

21
The Sequestration Challenge

• Bury 12 trillion pounds of CO2 annually
• Put in earth and oceans
• Contain it for 1000s of years
• Tests have placed trivial amounts
• Canada land site, Norway sea site
• CO2 has stayed for 10 years
• Government and corporations unlikely to wait for
  proof
• Future Gen project test 2012 at earliest
• Like nuclear industry, private industry will not
  be liable
• Repeating the nuclear experience but more
  dangerous
• Bequestration better name than sequestration
• Legacy for our children an uninhabitalbe planet
  

22
Major Corporate Backing

• Princeton University's Carbon Mitigation
  Initiative (CMI)
• 20-million dollar from British Petroleum and
  Ford
• MIT Carbon Initiative funded by energy and car
  corporations
• American Electric Power, American Petroleum
  Institute, Aramco Services, Chevron, Electricité
  de France (EDF), EPRI, ExxonMobil, Ford Motor
  Company, General Motors, Marathon Oil, Peabody
  Energy (Coal)
• Public excluded
• Dear Mr. Murphy,Thank you for your interest in
  the MIT Carbon Sequestration Initiative.  At this
  time, the prospectus is only available for our
  corporate sponsors or potential corporate
  sponsors.  -- Mary

23
Plans A B Lead to Plan D Dieoff

• Based on legitimate despair
• Lack of confidence in leadership
• Political
• Corporate
• Scientific
• See little hope for people actions
• Advocates are not naive
• Jay Hanson

24
Bartlett at ASPO-USA November 2005

• "How dumb could a civilization be that had a
  finite resource of really high quality energy and
  burned it all up in such a short time, leaving
  essentially nothing behind?"
• In the 5000 years of recorded history, 250 to
  300 years and the age of oil is all over. What
  kind of world will we leave our children,
  grandchildren and great grandchildren? What will
  they say of us? Will our great grand children
  say,
• "What kind of monsters must they have been?
• Representative Roscoe Bartlett at ASPO-USA
  November 2005

25
Results Arent So Good

• High crime rates
• Murders, rapes, assaults
• Record high incarceration
• Environmental degradation
• Soil disappearing
• Growing inequity
• 2005 highest in
• U.S. recorded history
• Deteriorating health
• Loss of civic engagement
• Lack of involvement
• Loss of community
• Need something better

26
Plan C Conserving in Community

• A view of only using enough
• Conserving, Sharing Saving
• vs.
• Competing, Hoarding Consuming
• Means Curtailment Cutting back
• Not token conservation
• Sharing resources now and with people in the
  future
• Needs Community
• Context for a new Way of Life
• Cooperation Principle

27
Conserving Different from Efficiency

• Efficiency increases consumption at least for
  our culture!
• Jevons Paradox more efficiency means more
  consumption
• Conservation (curtailment) deliberate attempt
  to use less
• A context where efficiency is not a basis for
  more consumption

28
Plan C Underway Since 1970s

• There are several Plan C schools
• Agrarians Intentional Communities
• CSAs Sustainability Movements
• Small Towns Voluntary Simplicity Groups
• Permaculture Organic local farmers
• Appropriate and Intermediate Technology Groups
• Response when these groups hear of Peak Oil
  Climate Change
• I wondered what would trigger the crisis!
• Share similar values
• And the values determine the technologies and
  tactics

29
Plan C Technology Intermediate

• We need technology but not the high-energy kind
• Easy to determine Plan C technology
• Visit other countries 5, 10 or 20 BOE yearly
  vs. U.S. 57
• Historys junk yards re-implement discarded
  technologies
• Locate, and use, latest intermediate technologies
  
• E.F. Schumacher Society (England), Univ. of
  Illinois
• Intermediate technology
• Does not imply going back to outdated methods
• A forward movement into new territories
• The achievement of science does not lie mainly
  in the apparatus and machinery that have been
  developed from it
• E. F. Schumacher Small is Beautiful

30
Plan C Example Cuba

• Experienced unexpected Peak
• Oil with USSR 1990 collapse
• Implemented Plan C
• 2004 same life span/infant
• mortality as U.S.
• Uses 1/8 oil U.S. per capita
• Just declared 2006 as The Year of the Energy
  Revolution
• Cutting energy 50 more
• See The Power of Community How Cuba Survived
  Peak Oil

31
Community or Personal Change?

• Two schools of thought change policy or change
  self
• Obviously both but the order is important
• Decentralization, localization, relocalization
• Do we study Yellow Springs 20 vehicles and 5
  buildings?
• Or villagers 2,000 vehicles and 1,500 homes?
• Personal experience needed to make community
  change
• May require a conserver mind set to even analyze
  options
• Most people still believe in Plan A or B want
  alternatives
• There are technical skills lacking EROEI, Live
  Cycle Costs
• Successes to date are arguable passing
  resolutions

32
Context U.S. Personal Consumption

• Food. Cars, Houses (BOE Equivalent) about half
  total
• Each of these greater than total consumption of
  ROW
• Focus on these three personal consumption
  ignore rest

33
Family Farm or Corporate Farm

• 10 calories of fossil fuels consumed per calorie
  of food energy produced
• Destroying life-giving soil
• Using fossil fuel water
• Exploitation of migrant workers
• Short life span
• Suffering of farm animals
• Increasing levels of obesity and diabetes in
  population
• Destroyed livelihoods

34
Plan C Food Tactics

• Eat less from 3,800 to 2,500 Calories per day
  (1/3 reduction)
• Fight obesity and medical costs
• Change your diet
• Avoid beverage and snack food industry
• Avoid manufactured foods dont support the
  enemy
• Dont eat industrial manufactured meat (16 to 1
  fuel ratio)
• Eat locally grown meats or dont eat meat
• Prepare and store your own food avoid freezers
• Create a garden use the energy intensive lawn
• Raising food teaches something school cant

35
Big Car or Frugal Car (or no car)

• The values of style and image
• Its not about transport
• Rest of world is frugal
• U.S. 21 mpg
• Europe 42 mpg, Japan 47 mpg
• GM Hummer vs. Honda Insight Example
• GM Hummer (10 mpg) 2005 sales 61,000 units
• Honda Insight (60 mpg) 2005 sales 700 units
• In September 2006, Honda took Insight off the
  market
• Government will not pass C.A.F.E. Standards
• Did so in 1975 Cut speed limits in 1974

36
Plan C Transportation Tactic

• Replace your car with a more efficient one new
  or used
• Dont wait to buy a hybrid
• Buy foreign cars when possible
• Force U.S. manufacturers to change
• U.S. companies make small cars overseas
• Its greed for SUV profits
• Share rides everywhere
• Set a high goal e.g. drive alone 50 less

37
Small Is Beautiful

• McMansion vs. Simple Homes
• Habitat for Humanity/Oak Ridge National Lab
  (ORNLBTC)
• Successful building of very low energy small
  houses
• U.S. houses twice the size of European houses
  (like cars)
• 2000 vs. 1000 sq. ft.

38
Plan C Home Tactics

• Live in a smaller space.
• Retrofit the home you have (60 year average life)
• Focus on building envelope floors, walls,
  ceilings/roofs
• May have to build inner walls
• Upgrade windows
• Build window covers if you cant replace windows
• Evaluate and upgrade (or eliminate) appliances
  (10-year life)
• On-demand water heater may help
• Fluorescents or LED lights replace incandescents
• Get Sunfrost refrigerator or equivilent
• Remodel for multiple tenants

39
Seem Too Simple?

• Huge change of perspective
• Wait until a Hummer gets on the tail of your
  small car
• Will your friends visit you in a lesser home?
• Can you eat healthy?
• There are many new physical skills required
• And new analytical skills to be learned
• It will take years and you will be a different
  person
• Better option that gathering more data about
  technology
• This is a radical change for America and a
  needed one

40
Community Solutions Plan C Projects

• Agraria small community in Yellow Springs, Ohio
• The basis for repopulation of the rural areas
• Houses using 1/4th energy of conventional houses
• Multi-use farming, workshops, clustered housing
• Land located dependent on funds
• Smart Jitney ride sharing system to share cars
• Specifications at communitysolution.org
• Reduce national energy use by 75
• Reduce accidents
• Rebuild community
• Common principle cut energy (and CO2) by 75

41
Community Solutions Plan C Studies

• Retrofit and Reclaim
• Refurbish 110 million U. S. residences average
  life 60 years
• Problem is to retrofit not do new green or
  eco building
• When crisis approaches, there will be little new
  building
• Consumer Energy Data Book
• Budgeting for energy not money
• Consumer is ignorant of energy
• Confused by concept and measures (gal, Cu Ft,
  kWh)
• Doesnt understand energy/money relationship

42
Wendell Berrys Reminder

• You must depend upon affection, reading,
  knowledge, skill more of each than you have
  imagination, work, growing older, patience, for
  patience joins time to eternity
• A new vision! Less is More!