Demand Reduction
Petroleum Demand Reduction
Around the world, the heaviest use of oil by far is for transport. Of that transport, the heaviest use is made in land transport. Of that land transport, the heaviest user is the private car in urban areas. In Australia's case, people driving their private cars around in our cities use more than half of the petroleum used in land transport. This is where the greatest economies can be made.
As already mentioned, cars have already been made far more fuel-efficient than they were in the '7Os. Unfortunately, that progress has recently been put into reverse in the United States, where despite the fact that more models of fuel-efficient vehicles are now being produced, the people are not buying them. Instead, they are going for four wheel drives and heavy recreational vehicles. Fuel consumption in American vehicles is actually going up, and, of course, they are driving more.
One of the most exciting developments now is that of the 'hybrid car' and fuel cell technology. Both these vehicles use petroleum, but in much reduced quantity per kilometre. The two technologies represent the most fundamental shift in motive power in cars since the introduction of the first cars with internal combustion engines.
These technologies are not just expensive Research and Development Department playthings. All the major car companies in the US, and many in Europe and Japan are developing and introducing these technologies at a cost of billions of dollars, and they should hit the road in large numbers over the next few years. Chrysler claims that they expect to cease production of conventionally powered cars. There are already over 8000 hybrid cars running around Japan, and in Sydney, believe it or not, there are two hybrid buses, made in New Zealand of all places, being operated successfully by the State Transit Authority. They operate out of the Ryde depot, so some of you may have ridden on them.
It is interesting to see the genesis of these technologies, and the stated reason for their introduction. Neither of them are entirely new. Diesel electric railway locomotives are simply very large hybrids, and they have been around for decades. Fuel cells have been in existence for some time too, but not in the miniaturised versions necessary to power cars. The stated reason for the introduction of these technologies now is that the car companies expect stringent emission standards to be introduced by governments in an attempt to mitigate global warming, and they want to be in a position to implement those decisions and not get caught on the hop.
The hybrid car has a few variations, but the basic principle is that it has a very small petrol, diesel or gas motor, tuned to run at a constant rate, without the need to accelerate or slow down. Because it is small, and because it can be designed to run at an inflexible, optimal rate, it produces only about half the emissions. That small motor drives a generator which in turn powers a battery which then powers the electric motors which actually drive the car. The battery is also recharged overnight in most cases, and even the energy produced by braking is captured and fed back into the battery.
Fuel cell technology was first developed and introduced for the space program. The challenge has been to reduce its size and cost. Good progress is being made, and prototypes have been produced. These vehicles, though they use petroleum, do not burn it. Instead, they combine the hydrogen and carbon molecules in the fuel (the hydrocarbon), which produces electricity in a process which is the reverse of electrolysis. They produce no emissions at all apart from a little water vapour. Both of these technologies have the capacity to give considerable help to the mitigation of global warming.
But, without wanting to seem terribly cynical, we should consider whether mitigation of global warming is the real reason for the introduction of hybrids and fuel cell driven cars. Consider the following. These technologies, as well as causing less or no harmful greenhouse gas emissions, also only use about half as much fuel as thrifty conventional vehicles. They are to be introduced at just the time that oil prices are likely to rise, when there will be both a need and a strong market for them. They both continue to use petroleum product, and thereby keep all the same petroleum infrastructure in place and the same vested interests happy. An oil company is likely to be just as content to sell smaller quantities of expensive fuel as it would be to sell larger quantities of cheap fuel. The hybrid technology is not new, it could have been introduced ten years ago, but now is the time chosen.
We can be forgiven for asking ourselves how often we hear of companies spending billions of dollars to conform with environmental regulations which have not yet even been written in most places, and which are meant to deal with a problem controversially predicted to occur about fifty years from now. I am not arguing that global warming is not occurring, it's just that I would not normally expect the car companies to put such arguments.
If we assume for the moment that at least part of the real reason for the radical change of drive mechanisms in such cars is to mitigate the effects of world oil depletion rather than mitigate global warming. If that is the case, then we should also try to get an idea of the risks in the investment made in their production.
It's no secret that the world is facing major economic uncertainties at the moment. Interestingly, some of that uncertainty can be laid at the feet of cheap oil prices prior to the last year or so. Higher oil prices right now, if sustained, would do much to pull Russia, Mexico and some of the South American countries out of their present difficulties. Anyway, if the world economy goes off to the funny farm before the introduction of these new cars, there will be a drop off in demand for petroleum, which will make petrol relatively cheaper. At the same time, there would be high levels of unemployment, and depression in the price paid for labour.
Under these circumstances, no one would buy the new cars because there would be no real saving, and they would not have the money to buy them. When, after some unknown period of time, the depression lifts, demand for petroleum will increase before sufficient employment and higher wages flow through to the general population. It's all very murky, but it might mean that the initial economic rally after a supposed economic crash would be short lived.
It may be that hybrid cars and fuel cells are the 'solution' to the coming oil crisis that will be favoured by the powers that be in the industrialised world. As pointed out, however, it is not a cure, it's a remission. Because of the growth of transport overall, both through more vehicles being bought and more kilometres being travelled by each of them each year, the economies made possible by these technologies will soon be wiped out.
A More Durable Demand Reduction Strategy
For a more durable solution, we would need to introduce these technologies in tandem with other measures, which would require more difficult societal changes. These are the development of better public transport alternatives and better land use in cities, as well as tele-commuting and other means to reduce the need to travel.
As an illustration of what public transport and land use planning has the potential to achieve, it is interesting to look at the examples of Los Angeles and Holland. It may be surprising, but greater Los Angeles and Holland have about the same population and about the same land area. After the Second World War, the public transport system in Los Angeles was bought by a loose consortium which included General Motors and other companies allied in some way to the motoring industry. They shut it down and lobbied the Californian government to get heavily into the construction of freeways, which the government obligingly did. Unsurprisingly, this led to gross expansion of urban sprawl, which accounts for Los Angeles having the same land area as Holland.
Holland retained its excellent public transport systems. Its cities did not sprawl to anything like the extent of US cities. Today, Holland uses one seventh of the energy used on transport as Los Angeles, because they work closer to where they live and they don't drive there so much. The funny thing is, Dutch commuters get home from more quickly than Los Angelinos, who are still stuck in the traffic congestion that the freeways were supposed to have cured. I suppose somehow people in Los Angeles can convince themselves that they are rugged individuals while they are stuck in gridlock, unlike the Dutch travelling together on public transport, or, for God's sake, cycling.
So, more durable solutions to the coming oil crisis are possible. But while government and industry pursue only technical innovations in private vehicles which keep the present oil industry infrastructure in place as a supposed solution, and while those solutions are not being introduced explicitly, instead disguised as a response to global warming, we will not actually implement a durable solution. And in the end, of course, we come back to the uncomfortable fact that eventually, our stock of oil is actually finite, and a time will come when economic growth will stop and we will all have to accept a more frugal lifestyle.
Looking a little into the future, it becomes apparent that many of our present activities are unsustainable. Let's at least stop digging the hole into which we are about to fall even deeper. At present, we are doing this by building more and more facilities for private motor vehicles, without much thought as to what will power them in the long term, let alone their effect on the air, global warming, the economy or our environment generally.
It's unlikely that any single strategy will get us out of this mess, but it is possible that a combination of strategies might make a coming economic crash less catastrophic. Better town planning, more responsible pricing of all petroleum products, alternative fuels, the development of public transport systems and fuel-frugal drive mechanisms for essential road vehicles will be a good start.