Uncertain Energy Future Should Drive Public Transportation Policy

Richard Haard propagates native plants at Fourth Corner Nurseries and has been developing a post-energy holocaust plan based on biomass energy with willow coppicing. He has been following the issues of resource depletion and alternative energy for many years now and spends some of his time advising remote northern communities on sustainability topics.

Editor’s Note: Testimony presented to the Washington State Department of Transportation on the topic of the proposed Foothills Transportation Commerce Corridor for Western Washington. November 10, 2004, with supporting materials, cited below.

In early November, I attended a seminar on sustainable transportation in Bellingham. There I learned that federal transportation dollars that come back to Washington state are determined by the amount of gas we consume, and that these funds are distributed on an 80/20 percent basis to highway and public transit projects respectively.

In other words we have to burn more gas to increase our federal mass transit dollars!!

In addition, I learned on review of the Wilbur Smith Associates report that the respondents to their survey on the proposed Commerce Corridor—the rail, freight sectors, etc.—used only a five- to 10-year window in their long range planning. Also I learned that all sectors use anticipation of future demand of services as the defining character for their planning.

This public mandate imposed on the legislatures and their transportation agencies is a force that is driving us to disaster. Ladies and gentlemen, we are facing an uncertain energy future. Before this Commerce Corridor proposal or a future iteration moves ahead, our government must focus on our dependence on oil and address the impacts of resource depletion on our future needs for automobile and truck based transportation in a 20- to 50-year time horizon.

Relative to resource depletion there is no modern economy that is sustainable. All depend on increasing the supply—year to year—from a limited pool of natural resources. The energy and natural resources we use, from wood through metals, animals and plant life, natural environments and even the land on which we grow food are all being used up or abused. While some resources are renewable or are so extensive as to be virtually inexhaustible, others are not. Oil depletion will be the first to bite us.

We are near the geological peak of world oil production capacity. The oil available to the world’s population is now essentially half depleted and sometime in the next 10 years the amount of oil available to the world will be less than the previous year and will continue to decline into the future until the supplies will no longer be significant. The peak in natural gas production is not far behind that of oil.

At the same time the global demand for these nonrenewable resources is increasing as China, India and other countries strive to become consumers like the U.S. and their populations burgeon. Lastly, because the energy consuming nations of the world have no will to fairly allot these diminishing resources—conflict, violence and supply disruptions will become common in the future; hence, supplies will be restricted even when there is capacity to produce.

It should be emphasized there are no substitutes for the oil on which our society has come to depend.1

A shared vision of our society is that the development of non-conventional energy sources, alternate energy technologies and increasing efficiency will provide a continuing supply of energy on which we have come to depend.

In fact, even though wind, solar, photovoltaics, oil shale, methane hydrates and other energy sources will be important for us in the future they cannot directly substitute for the value of the oil and gas we now use. For example, 450 megawatts of installed wind power capacity typically delivers 8 to 15 percent of that amount annually. It is often stated that we have a 200-year supply of coal but as a substitute for declining oil and gas there will be serious depletion within 30 years. Even the fuel available to nuclear reactors is finite and cannot come close to substitute for a 3 percent per annum decline of oil available to the U.S.1

Oil supplies over 95 percent of our global transportation needs and 40 percent of our total energy. The world economy runs on the principle of growth and industrial economic growth depends on increasing energy supplies. These impacts and mitigating actions should be considered in every Washington Department of Transportation analysis of future transportation needs.

These are some of the implied impacts of post peak oil: 2

•Worldwide economic recession,

•De-globalization of economies,

•Decline in food production capacity,

•Short-term energy price shocks, increased international tension and potential wars,

•A decline in human population of the earth.

This is why we need to preserve the South Fork, Nooksack River Valley, and why we should not industrialize this area.

Think globally, mitigate locally. We need to protect the food production capacity of our rivers and protect our remaining farmlands. We need to find a way to create and invest in business that will serve a community in a world that favors decentralization. And finally, we need to find a way to adapt as a community to the incremental increases in energy and food costs and to make the necessary fundamental changes in our lifestyles.

1 Ted Trainer, “Renewable Energy: What Are The Limits?” Minnesotans For Sustainability, September 2003, http://www.mnforsustain.org/trainer_ted_limits_renewable_energy_0903.htm Win. This very well-written and researched essay by Ted Trainer, Minnesotans for Sustainability, directly addresses the capability of our global society to transfer our dependence on fossil fuels oil and gas to renewable energy. His article, “Renewable Energy: What Are the Limits?” directly addresses very important issues such as energy returned on energy invested, actual performance of these emerging technologies in the real world in a context of extrapolating to complete dependence ultimately in a Hubbert depletion reality.

2 Mike Tooke, “Oil Peak—a Summary,” October 2004, Issue 1.7, http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/Downloads/pos.doc. This well-balanced essay written by Mike Tooke in Great Britain, for his immediate friends and family and to support his activism on local issues, has been an inspiration to me. Mike supplies us with an extensive bibliography on this topic of oil depletion in his endnotes. §