09111 Peak Energy

I think OPEC is about maxed out. when people talk about spare capacity in OPEC, I don't see it. I just don't see it coming through and I'm not sure it's there. And it's not just that they're greedy, but they're really producing what they can produce. — John Hofmeister, former President of Shell Oil interviewed on CNBC, February 2012

The discussion of peak oil and the general context of energy issues is in Section 3. This chapter is about designing your life to reduce your energy risks.

How will your life change as the availability of fossil fuels declines and the prices of fossil fuels increase?

Start with your monthly records of expenses.

  • How much do you spend on gasoline?
  • On energy of all kinds?

OK, now let’s double the amount you presently spend on energy. What does that do to the rest of your budget?

Double it again. Is you budget still balanced?

Now let’s assume that the price of most everything else you buy goes up in price due to the increase in the cost of fossil fuels. How far into the proverbial hole does that run your finances?

Suppose the price doesn’t increase, but instead falls, as does the price of everything else. Then your income declines because of the deflation. Maybe you lose your job because your business can’t keep going in the new deflationary economy. You have to pay off a mortgage with more expensive dollars than the ones you borrowed.

How long before you are homeless?

Everyone needs built-in energy resilience for their lifestyle.

Start with demand destruction.

Go through every activity of your life and analyze its energy footprint. Document the source of the energy for each of your lifestyle activities —

  • Fossil fuels
  • Alternative/renewable energies (passive solar, hydro, wind, active solar, tide, solar thermal, bio-fuels)
  • Mechanical energy (I have a friend who has a washing machine that can be powered by the mechanical energy of his water pumping wind mill),
  • Human energy

Ask yourself over and over —

  • Can I do this without any fossil fuel investment?
  • If not, can I do this with less fossil fuel investment?
  • What has to happen for this demand destruction (or demand reduction) to happen?

Don’t forget to analyze your annual acquisition of stuff, since everything you buy has energy embodied in its manufacture and distribution.

Passive measures are among the most productive alternatives. These options range from adding insulation to your dwelling, cross ventilation, and on to investing in a good set of layered winter protective clothing.

Next look at redundancy. Since energy is critical, you need a plan for what happens if there are problems with conventional energy grids and supplies.

So go back through your list and make some decisions about what to do if, for example, gasoline gets really expensive, or the power grid goes down or becomes intermittent for an extended period of time.

Here’s where you build in back-up structures like —

  • a wood burning stove,
  • a propane camp stove,
  • a solar oven.
  • marine battery with inverter,
  • Etc.

Go through your energy-using activities, figure out what is most critical. Design back-ups to preserve the critical functions even if the energy distribution grids go completely down for an extended period of time.

Energy Storage

It can be helpful to stockpile some stuff. Energy storages are a significant strategy we see in nature. Food and water are high on the list. Your circumstances and your needs dictate your ability to store energy in the form of fuel. If you don’t have a safe place to store fuel, you can’t store it. But if you have a safe ventilated place for storage, a tank or two of propane, a marine battery and some small batteries and solar powered battery chargers can be of significant assistance during a short-term emergency. We cook on a propane stove, and in 12 months, we use ten five-gallon tanks of propane, cooking usually 3 meals a day. We use a little more in the winter, when we bake more, and less in the summer, when we rarely bake.

Storage has its limits. We can’t store our way through peak energy. We have to create new systems and ways of living to meet these challenges.

Beneficial connections supporting energy resilience.

At the risk of being repetitious, let’s look at some of the beneficial connections integrated into a sustainable energy plan.

Start with your own personal living arrangements. Do you live by yourself or in a small family of two or three? If so, consider increasing the size of your household. More people in the household makes it more resilient in the face of energy problems.

Where do you live? Where does it locate in relation to the geographies of your life and the travels (origins and destinations) that characterize your life? How energy conservative is your dwelling? What needs to happen to make it more energy conservative? If you do not own your residence, should you work toward ownership somewhere? If not, how can you adapt your existing place to be more energy conservative? The time to move, and/or redesign and remodel your dwelling is before the energy crises start.

Where does your food come from? How much of your diet comes from within 150 miles? If you’re eating at a college cafeteria, probably not much. Fortunately, most of us don’t make a lifetime of eating out of a college cafeteria. If you are a college student, think about how you will transition your food system as you leave school.

How often do you travel? Do you travel by car, train, bus, airplane, boat? Can you learn to travel less, and be satisfied with stability in the region where you live? If not, why not?

Is a response only for your household adequate? What community initiatives can you think of that would help you cope and adapt to peak oil? As with economic and political resilience, you will be safer and in a better energy situation if you are part of a community of hope and support.

The time to get an energy plan is before the energy crises hit.

That’s why we do permaculture design.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

While looking for beneficial connections, be on the lookout for negative connections that can cause trouble. Eliminate them from your life if possible. If not, figure out how to mitigate or short-circuit any problems they can cause.