Big Scrub Environment Centre

Sweden Shows the Way
Sweden already supplies 48% of its electricity from renewable sources (mostly hydroelectricity) and expects renewables to provide 60% by 2010 with increased use of wind and bioenergy sources. Sweden plans to phase out nuclear power and has shut two reactors since 1999.

Sweden Plans on Being The First Country in the World To Be FREE FROM OIL in 2020
Swedish Press Dec 2005
Minister for Sustainable Development Mona Sahlin has declared that Sweden is going to become the first country in the world to break the dependence on fossil energy. Sweden will stop using oil by 2020 and eventually the energy supply of the country will be based on renewable energy only.

The goal is to gradually rid the country of gasoline-run cars and oil-heated homes. This is going to be achieved through tax discounts, more efficiency in energy and by large-scale investments in renewable energy and in research. Already next year there will be tax incentives for single family homeowners to switch from oil to renewable energy to heat their homes.

Such financial incentives are already available to libraries, aquatic facilities and hospitals that want to switch to more efficient renewable energy. The expansion of distant heating continues to be an important tool in this process. The Swedish government also wants to make environmental cars more affordable. One of the ways it is doing this is by not subjecting fuel that is free of carbon dioxide to the energy tax or 10 the carbon dioxide emission tax. Environmental cars will also not have to pay the congestion tax that will be introduced in Stockholm in January and many municipalities allow free parking for such cars.

Swedish industry and the economy as a whole are already benefiting from a lower dependency on oil in an international comparison. Since 1994 the use of oil in residences and in the service sector has dropped by 15.2 TWH. The consumption of oil in industries has remained at the same level since that year, even though industrial production has increased by 70 percent. A growing number of households make use of the advantages of distant heating as well as of pellets.

Minister Sahlin's latest statement on the abolition of oil in 2020 is actually just a confirmation of a goal set a long time ago. Sweden has been a pioneer in the environmental field and has introduced many innovative measures through the years to achieve its goals.

Already in 1990 Swedes implemented a "green tax shift". Taxes on energy and on carbon dioxide emissions were raised, while other taxes, such as those on payroll were decreased by an equivalent amount. Sweden also invested heavily in its cities and towns. Municipalities receive grants to conduct long-term climate research and make investments in environment-friendly technology. Not only has this helped cut local pollution, it has also raised the level of public awareness of environmental issues.

In 1999 a unanimous national goal was established for all the country's major environmental problems to be solved within one generation, by the year 2020. The Swedish Parliament gave unanimous approval to15 national targets including a phasing out of all use of hazardous chemicals by 2020; ensuring that all lakes and watercourses are ecologically sustainable, their habitats and ecological and water-conserving function preserved; providing a safe and sustainable supply of drinking water and contributing to viable habitats for flora and fauna; pro-lection of the value of forests for biological production, while biological diversity, cultural heritage and recreational assets are safeguarded, and a healthy living environment to be provided by cities and towns where buildings and amenities must be located and designed with sound environmental principles.

There are interim objectives for each target, regional and local objectives to match, and an Environmental Objectives Council to monitor progress towards the goals. Progress is charted through 70 national indicators, which track results and verify whether the country is heading in the right direction.

Rainforest Information Centre
Box 368, Lismore 2480 NSW
(02) 66213294

ruthr@ozemail.com.au

http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/

top of page

Peak Oil
Excerpts from an article by Tim Winton:
In the past year the term 'Peak Oil' has left the confines of a small but committed community of peak oil analysts and leapt into the mainstream press. Analysts are warning that peak oil will be the defining event of this century and will rival climate change as the focus of sustainability, and that the world as we know it will change in a very short time. Peak oil, the dark twin of climate changerequires the understanding of a few unfamiliar concepts.

The first concept to understand is that our whole way of life is dependent upon cheap, abundant hydrocarbon energy sources, mostly oil and natural gas.

Not only are many things we take for granted made from oil and natural gas feedstocks, but more importantly almost everything we depend upon contains high amounts of 'embodied energy' sourced from these hydrocarbon fuels. Embodied energy is the amount of energy it takes to make something. The materials we take for granted in modern industrial economies, like concrete, steel, plastic, rubber and the products we make from them like cars, roads, factories and houses all take extraordinary amounts of energy to produce, transport and operate.

Thanks to fossil fuels, we are now living in an era of enormous energy availability, embodied into historically unprecedented amounts of material wealth.

The second thing to understand is that global oil production is about to peak and then forevermore slowly but inevitably decline.

Shortly after, so will natural gas, the only other widely available energy source comparable to oil. Up until a small group of retired oil geologists and industry analysts started publicising their work, the conventional oil industry wisdom was that supplies would continue to grow at 2-3% per year, just like they always had, for many decades to come. However the peak oil advocates are increasingly seen as being accurate.

Highly regarded retired oil geologists like Colin Campbell of 'The Association for the Study of Peak Oil' (www.peakoil.net) have taken years, accessing the best data available, to painstakingly demonstrate beyon doubt that the peak in oil production will come much earlier than expected.

What about alternative energy? Can't we just switch over to solar or wind or even nuclear power?

This is the most difficult concept in understanding the importance of peak oil. Not all energy sources are created equal. What makes oil and gas so attractive is that they have very high 'energy returned on energy invested' or energy/profit ratios. Every energy source requires an investment of some energy to make it available.

Oil has historically had a very high energy/profit ratio. Until recently, it took roughly one barrel of oil's worth of energy to make over twenty barrels available at the petrol station. This is an energy/profit ratio of over 20:1. the reason for this is that oil and gas are very concentrated forms of energy. The energy/profit ratio of oil is now dropping sharply as the biggest and easiest deposits are being depleted.

The energy profit or 'net energy' availability determines the potential material wealth of a society, not the technologies which burn the energy.

Solar energy is abundant but diffuse, and so are other alternatives like wind and tidal power. After 30 years of research and hundreds of millions of dollars spent, solar energy has not increased in efficiency by more than a marginal amount. In economic terms, if we were to switch to solar power tomorrow it would be like taking an 80% pay cut. One barrel of oil (200 litres) contains an amount of energy equal to the energy expended by 60 people working every day for a whole year. Wind and solar currently provide less than half of one percent of the global energy mix and even at record growth rates are not predicted to grow more than 10% per year.

In 2020 there will be the same amount of oil available as there was in 1985. This doesn't sound like a catastrophe; however economic growth is dependent upon energy growth. The corporate global economy cannot function without economic growth - the whole system is dependent upon growing energy availability to support growing material wealth to support growing money supply.

When oil and gas production peak, total global energy availability will start it's terminal decline and so will the global economy. as long as we can adjust our consumption then things could be alright. Studies show that people are happiest when they have enough wealth to meet their needs and a few of their wants, but no more. The challenge lies in learning to change our expectations and take on a whole new set of understandings and behaviours necessary during the coming era of decreasing energy availability.

This is where Permaculture comes in.
Permaculture is the only discipline that has been created to deal with the energetic aspects informing sustainability. From a permaculture point of view, peak oil marks the end of the growth phase of global industrial society. This is a natural part of the life cycle of any dynamic system. First there is the growth phase, and after the concentrated, high-grade resources have been used up and total resource availability starts to drop, the system starts to decline. Permaculture is about learning the principles and practices that allow us to work with natural energy flows rather than relying on fossil fuels.

Permaculture is a design science that uses the patterns of nature to mimic ecological systems. Natural systems have evolved for millions of years to maximise the energy available from the sun. If we are to live well in the post-fossil fuel world, we will have to learn to do the same.

Tim Winton is the founder of The Permaforest Trust, a not-for-profit sustainability education centre adjacent to the Border Ranges National park at Barkers Vale, NSW.
More information is available at www.permaforesttrust.org.au

Oil has the World over a Barrel
Excerpt from Guardian Weekly, July 2005
Everyone knows that oil will not last forever. The world is not going to move from current levels of production to zero overnight: there will be a long process of gradual decline. Using techniques originally developed by M King Hubbert to assess the profile of US oil production, industry experts can estimate, with a high degree of certainty, the high point of global output - or peak oil as it is known.

The world as a whole has yet to reach that point. But if the experts are right, global peak oil could arrive in 2008. Once peak oil has passed, the models suggest that stocks will dwindle over a period of three decades at a time when, on current trends, demand for energy will rise strongly. In 30 years oil production could be down by 75%.

Two hundred and fifty years of industrialisation have been built on the availability of cheap fossil fuels, first coal, then oil and gas. It is not just our cars that depend on oil, it is our entire way of life. A world without oil is bound to represent a massive economic, social and political shock. Firstly there will be a power struggle over dwindling oil stocks. Already, there are signs of a new cold war emerging as the US and China seek to curry favour with poor African countriesthat are seen to have potential as oil suppliers.

Secondly, there is a threat of economic retrenchment. Cheap and efficient transport opened the world to trade, while the manufacture of consumer goods exploded. The new energy also transformed agriculture, providing the food for a growing population that has expanded sixfold, exactly in parallel with oil production. Oil was in turn followed by gas, increasingly used for electricity generation, which brought power and light to householders throughout the world.

Now as the 21st century opens up we face the onset of the decline of the premier fuel that made all this possible, and we do so without sight of a substitute energy that comes close to matching the utility, convenience and low cost of oil and gas. We may soon be waking up to lower growth, falling populations and a reduction in living standards. Indeed, without urgent policy action, we are likely to get all three.

Peak oil is likely to be the point of diminishing returns for the entire big-economy, groth-at-all-costs, free-trade, globalised model of capitalism. Factor in a 75% drop in oil production and the current strategies for production, distribution, transport and town-planning don't look so clever. As energy prices soar, it will seem ludicrous to cart goods half way around the world. Countries that do not have their local supplies will have to pay through the nose. Protectionism will cease to be a dirty word and localisation will be all the rage.

top of page

Speculation on Oil Prices
History appears to be repeating itself. Warnings of insufficient supplies to fuel the global economic boom are being blamed for the rise in oil prices over the past six months, precisely as they were during the crisis of the 1970s. But, just as then it was revealed that storage tanks in Rotterdam were full of oil, data shows that demand today is not outstripping supply.

According to Peter Odell, emeritus professor of energy studies at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the blame for the 50 per cent increase in oil prices over the past six months lies with financial institutions betting on the direction of the price.

A report from the International Energy Agency shows that for the first six months of the year, production averaged 81.9 million barrels a day while demand was almost 1 million barrels less, at 81 million barrels a day. The market was, in fact, much tighter last year.

Even though war in Iraq stopped production last year and demand staged the biggest rise for six years, the price remained below $US30 a barrel. But concerns about terrorist attacks on Saudi Arabian installations, the political uncertainties in Venezuela and Nigeria and problems between the Russian government and Yukos are not responsible for the 50 per cent increase in prices, says Professor Odell.

Speculating on oil prices has become a good way to secure decent short- and medium-term returns, given the poor performance of stockmarkets, low interest rates and effective restraints on currency speculation.

The size of this market is borne out by the rapid escalation of the numbers of contracts made on Nymex for West Texas Intermediate crude futures. The daily number of deals mushroomed to 140,000 in the first quarter of the year, from under 50,000 in 2000. Speculative trades now account for more than 30 per cent of total trades compared with only 10 per cent in 2000, says Professor Odell. Both OPEC and energy analysts have underlined this trend over recent months. Some analysts have quantified the speculation premium on the price of oil as between $US5 and $US10 a barrel.

Despite the speculators, responsibility for the high price of oil has been dumped at the door of OPEC. But countries belonging to the oil cartel have increased production by 2.2 million barrels a day compared with the same period in 2003. This increase in volume has accounted for two-thirds of the increase in supply even though OPEC is responsible for only 40 per cent of total production.

And the costs of irresponsible speculation in the price of the black stuff is being borne by the consumer and producers. Consumers are having to pay more for an essential commodity while uncertainty about the long-term future of oil markets hits the producers. "A curb on speculative trading in 'paper' barrels is an urgent requirement if a desired return to an ordered international oil market, of mutual benefit to suppliers and consumers, is to be achieved," Professor Odell concludes.

The Guardian