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Top ten recent developments in the Triple Crunch log (2006-present)

  • 8 February 2010:  Richard Branson and other UK business leaders warn of oil crunch within five years. “The next five years will see us face another crunch – the oil crunch. This time, we do have the chance to prepare. The challenge is to use that time well. ….Our message to government and businesses is clear: act. Don’t let the oil crunch catch us out in the way that the credit crunch did.” There are signs that the UK government is already beginning to listen, and move away from the narrative given on peak oil by BP, Exxon and the Saudis. JL: “[We are] in regular contact with government; we have reason to believe their risk thinking on peak oil may be evolving away from BP et al’s and we await the results of further consultations with keen interest.”
  • 4 February 2010: Petrobras CEO says oil capacity, including biofuels, will peak in 2010 and drop rapidly, at 5% pa. A 1 December 2009 presentation Jose Gabrielli gave in Sau Paulo is translated on The Oil Drum. In it, he says that the world needs oil volumes to replace the equivalent of one Saudi Arabia every two years to offset future world oil decline rates …just to keep production constant at less tham 90 mbd. That makes two major oil CEOs who do not think global capacity can reach 90 mbd. The other is Total’s.
  • 4 February 2010: Tony Hayward sees peak demand before peak supply – beyond 2020. “I personally – and BP – have never believed we will see peak oil because of supply. We always believed we would see peak oil because of demand. There will come a time – I believe it is beyond 2020 – when because of the changes in the energy portfolio, because of the drive for energy efficiency, because of the introduction of biofuels, demand for oil will peak.” It seems BP shareholders will have to be increasingly wary that their management is getting this megarisk wrong, in the light of thinking in Total, Petrobras and other companies.
  • 11 January 2010: Demand for oil is increasing so fast Saudi Arabian exports are likely to be constrained, analysts fear.  Domestic consumption jumped 16.4 per cent year on year in August because of an unprecedented surge in the burning of crude. Inefficient power plants and shortage of gas led the reasons.
  • 19 December 2009: Copenhagen Climate Summit ends in what most view as failure. A day by day log of the summit, as told in blogs for the FT, starts out with qualified optimistm, and ends up with a contribution to the blame game.
  • 18 November 2009: Incoming EDF boss says French nuclear industry isn’t working, needs a complete rethink. Henri Proglio, who takes over as executive chairman in a few days, tells the French daily Les Echos he wants to “have a French nuclear industry that works. That means that we have to rethink the whole industry”. He criticises the multi-billon euro reactor contract in Abu Dhabi and says the creation of Areva was a “mistake”, and that EDF should have a stake in Areva’s reactor business.
  • 9 November 2009: IEA whistleblower claims key oil reserve figures in World Energy Outlook are distorted. The un-named senior IEA official, who fears industry reprisals if he goes public, tells the Guardian that the decline of existing reserves is being underplayed, and the prospects of finding more overplayed, in order to stop panic buying. He claims the IEA knows the world can never reach 105 mbd production. “Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources.” An ex senior IEA source added that a key rule at the organisation is an “imperative not to anger the Americans” and that “we have [already] entered the ‘peak oil’ zone. I think that the situation is really bad.”
  • 1 November 2009: UC scientists table plan for 100% renewable energy by 2030. The 11.5 TW needed might best be attained as follows: 5.8TW of wind (51%), as 3.8 million 5 MW wind turbines and 720,000 0.75MW wave converters; 4.6 TW of solar (40%), as 1.7 bn 3 kW rooftops, 49,000 300 MW CSP plants, 40,000 300 MW solar PV plants; and 1.1 TW (9%) as tidal, geothermal and hydrelectric plants. The paper offers a marvellous vision, and also considers materials constraints, economics, and of course the downsides of the conventional alternative.
  • 8 October 2009: UKERC report on peak oil concludes that there is “a significant risk of a peak before 2020.” “….Although there are around 70,000 oil fields in the world, approximately 25 fields account for one quarter of the global production of crude oil, 100 fields account for half of production and up to 500 fields account for two thirds of cumulative discoveries. ….The average rate of decline from fields that are past their peak of production is at least 6.5%/year globally, while the corresponding rate of decline from all currently-producing fields is at least 4%/year. This report comes the UK’s premier energy research institute. The government has so far ignored the warning by the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security. Will it be able to ignore this one too?
  • 17 September 2009: Recent oil discoveries not likely to head off supply crunch, analysts tell the FT. The clutch of new finds in Brazil, Sierra Leone, and the Gulf of Mexico won’t come on stream quickly enough to head off the crunch forecast before 2014. It will take many opinions like this to shift the dominant denial-rooted view: that the recent discoveries have “disproved the peakists.”
  • 5 August 2009: UK Government review of energy security virtually ignores peak oil. The author, former energy minister Malcolm Wicks, says of energy security generally - on page 1 of 119 - that “there is no crisis.” The government would say they consulted their own industry experts. But I have talked to two of them, and they tell me that they were barely consulted at all. See FT op-ed 9th August for my response in the FT, with the ITPOES chairman Will Whitehorn.

See the thematic pages on this site  (oil, coal, solar, nuclear, CSR, investing) for more detail and further comment, and the Triple Crunch Log for many more developments, from 1 January 2006 to the present day, spanning all subjects relevant to the climate-, financial-, and energy crises.


Latest writing in the Guardian

My blogs on the website of a British national daily, including occasional op-eds, span the triple crunch: the financial-, climate-, and energy crises (2006 – present).

  • 23 January 2010: Growing, growing, gone. Review of Tim Jackson’s book, “Prosperity Without Growth,” supporting his view that capitalism in the form into which we have allowed it to evolve is killing economies and ecosystems alike. Re-engineering of the system is essential.


Latest column in Sublime magazine

My columns from the first sustainable lifestyle magazine span the triple crunch, with the re-engineering of “dysfunctional 2007-style capitalism” as a recurrent theme (2008 – present).

  • 1 February 2010: We’ve got the power.. A month in the life of the nuclear industry. A good fiction writer couldn’t invent the problems they have.


Latest writing in other media


Latest at Solarcentury

The company I founded, and am chairman of, aspires to be a big player in construction-integrated solar energy - designing, manufacturing and installing our own products to turn buildings into power stations - and to do it for a purpose: making as big a difference as we can in the fight to abate climate change.


Latest at SolarAid

The charity Solarcentury founded with the first 5% of our profits (in 2006) hopes to play a major role in replacing every kerosene lantern in Africa with solar lanterns and other lighting devices assembled and sold by young African entrepreneurs, who we train. We now have fast-growing operations in four African countries. Our patrons include Cate Blanchett and Ian McEwan. The Times chose us as one of its Christmas appeal charities in 2009.


Latest in video

The US branch of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil has shot two seven-minute videos summarising the the threat of premature peak oil and posted them on You Tube. They include statements from the former head of exploration and production at Saudi Aramco and the former chief petroleum engineer at BP that ought to make anybody currently relaxed about oil depletion and think again.