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http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010 ... oil-summit

Lord Hunt, the energy minister, is to meet industrialists in London tomorrow in a bid to calm mounting fears about the disruption that could follow a sudden shortage of oil supplies.

In a significant policy shift, the government has agreed to undertake more work on whether the UK needs to take action to avoid the massive dislocation that could be caused by the early onset of "peak oil" – the point that marks the start of terminal decline in global oil production.

Jeremy Leggett, the executive chairman of the renewable power company Solar Century and a leading figure in the UK industry taskforce on peak oil and energy security, said the meeting, to be held at the Energy Institute, showed a welcome new sense of urgency.

"Government has gone from the BP position – '40 years of supply left, the price mechanism works, no need to worry' – to 'crikey'," he said. "BP and others are telling us that, but you lot, Virgin, Scottish and Southern, and others are telling us something completely different. We do not know who to believe. Let's do a proper risk assessment with industry," he said.

Who wants to bet the outcome will be BAU

There are no article comments feature on the guardian site ?

I suspect the outcome will be higher fuel tax...

Haggis wrote:I suspect the outcome will be higher fuel tax...

I suspect that you are right ! and whilst I support higher fuel taxes, I would hope that our leaders make some proper long term plans for a lower energy future rather than Just raising taxes.

Electrify railways, and introduce battery powered trains for shorter routes and branches that cant be economicly electrified.
Bring back trolley buses.
Introduce battery buses.
Encourage walking and cycling.
Make more use of canals
Stop building out of town supermarkets that require a car to use them.

More use of wind and solar energy will reduce the gas and coal burnt for electricity production, but wont help much with oil shortages since very little oil is used for electricity generation in the UK.

Adam, did you catch the thing on Oil Drum about Trolly Boats? Can't find it right now, but really was quite fascinating. I was envisaging a grid type pick-up over the canal, fed from all manner of small hydro at locks, solar where practicle, boats running on internal batt's for going through tunnels etc. Water, or "ground", for one leg and the overhead "grid" for the other would get past all the old problems they encountered when boats had to pass each other, or were going in opposite directions. Dunno about electrolysis removing the hull within a year or two - but am sure there is a way around that!

Mitch.

Mitch wrote:Adam, did you catch the thing on Oil Drum about Trolly Boats? Can't find it right now, but really was quite fascinating. I was envisaging a grid type pick-up over the canal, fed from all manner of small hydro at locks, solar where practicle, boats running on internal batt's for going through tunnels etc. Water, or "ground", for one leg and the overhead "grid" for the other would get past all the old problems they encountered when boats had to pass each other, or were going in opposite directions. Dunno about electrolysis removing the hull within a year or two - but am sure there is a way around that!

Mitch.

Sounds an interesting idea, but I can forsee a number of problems, are you certain it was not an April fool ? tis the time of year for such !

Electrolysis may be avoided by useing DC of the correct polarity, this would tend to dissolve cheap and easily replaced earth electrodes, rather than boat hulls.

Canal boats are normaly driven by diesel engines of modest horsepower compared to trains, trams or trolley buses. The savings by substituting electric power would therefore be small.
Passing the return current through the water would probably render swiming dangerous.
NIMBYs would object to the over head wiring.

All this makes me suspect a joke, but you never know !

No, no - no joke, it was tried in a few European countries and America, I think, in the '20's and 30's, but they were using two wires strung on poles along the tow-path, with similar "arm" type pick-ups used on trolley busses. The big problems were overtaking, (had to uncouple the booms and re-couple when passed), and craft travelling in opposite directions, (had to run a time-table similar to single line rail, so boats only went in one direction while the returns had to wait their turn). There was no mention of anyone trying the overhead grid type thing - I just imagined it being possible, since the funfair Dodge'em Cars of my youth operated on the principle - chicken wire overhead with a conductive floor mat and wheels for the return, allowing the Dodge'em's to go anywhere within the quadrangle.

Sure, boats are really slow, but thier energy consumption is incredibly efficient when compared to lorry's, and there is one heck of a lot of freight which isn't all that time sensitive.

Mitch wrote:Dunno about electrolysis removing the hull within a year or two - but am sure there is a way around that!
Mitch.

That'll take the hairs off yer chest

The trouble with overhead cables is that the "they don't look nice" brigade'll come out in force...unless we use said cables for stringing them up first

I think this is the same meeting. Anyway, here's Rob Hopkins report on it.

"Ok, just time for another bath then"

HHGTTG

JohnB wrote:I think this is the same meeting. Anyway, here's Rob Hopkins report on it.

Well worth reading Rob's report.

Who the F--k is Lord Hunt?

This LABOUR government has got more unelected ministerial Lords and Ladies (and Queens) than any Tory government ever had.

Pigs and farmers. Pigs and farmers.

foodimista wrote:Pigs and farmers. Pigs and farmers.

As I've said before, George Orwell's book about the above was supposed to be a warning, but New Labour seem to have used it as a training manual

biffvernon wrote:

JohnB wrote:I think this is the same meeting. Anyway, here's Rob Hopkins report on it.

Well worth reading Rob's report.

Really? I'm glad he explained the stages of greif to them. That must have really helped.

Typical response from those concerned.... leave it to the market, and an admission that the gov may not be in a position to do anything, i.e. they are skint and can't do anything without the city's say so.

No growth? Sure, the city's going to leap all over that

You want the truth??? You want the truth??? You can't handle the truth!!!! The government is in the banker's pockets, as are big business. They can all see it coming, but there is nothing we can do but keep on paying the interest, and the only way we can keep on paying the interest is by going to work. BAU till it breaks. The government will use TT initiative as a way of making society more efficient. If we can do the same work in the day, and produce our own food to keep ourselves alive during the weekends, who exactly benefits from that??? Now if we were going to get the same wages for a 30 hr week so that we could make our communities resilient, that would be a different thing entirely. Someone needs to address the growth/interest issue, otherwise anything the TT lot are doing is simply helping to maintain the BAU ideal. Unless that is the TT movement all give up their jobs, declare themselves bankrupt and start living in squats.

PO and higher energy prices will mean us all working harder to meet our payments. Transition towns initiative? That will help us all to give up our leisure time in order to turn brownfield sites into food production units, so that we can keep going to work to earn the money to pay our mortgages for longer. Until the system breaks....