The CSIRO Future Fuels Forum has released a report on surviving the increasing costs of transport energy.
The Fuel for thought is about the ways Australia (and Australians) can respond to the increasing cost of fuel, both in the short term but more importantly into the longer term future. Australia is very dependent on oil to fuel our transport – both personal and economic. It is this dependence on road transport that in the immediate future will see costs of nearly everything from fresh food to toothbrushes climb higher and higher.
Director of CSIRO’s Energy Transformed Flagship, Dr John Wright, said Australia’s transport fuel mix will substantially change in response to issues such as climate change and oil prices.
“Securing access to affordable and sustainable fuel underpins Australia’s economy and way of life and as a nation with relatively high vehicle use, we are vulnerable to the economic, environmental and social impacts of rising oil prices and rising temperatures,” he said
You have probably seen that there are predictions that petrol will reach $8 per litre in the foreseeable future, meaning the average family would be spending $220 a week on petrol. I couldn’t afford that so I know I would need to be making lifestyle choices.
Here are some ideas from the report;
Australia’s fuel mix will shift in the near term to include the expanded use of;
diesel,
gaseous fuels such as LPG and
hybrid electric vehicles,
with even greater diversity beyond 2020 that might include;
hydrogen,
synthetic fuels from coal or gas and
advanced biofuels that will not impact food production.
Yesterday i filled our little Barina – costing nearly $70, now that is crazy. So what am I doing about it. Well I rarely drive much – fortunately I live and work close to the train line, and am happy to walk where possible. For those other times I have a scooter which is an exceedingly efficient mode of personal transport. And the car – well we do our best to use it as little as possible – but these are all things done before fuel prices went up because as this report says the other petrol problem is carbon emissions.
Perhaps the most telling part of this report is the single statement;
Results such as this could be seen as a catalyst for early action on the development and roll-out of alternative fuel options, low emission vehicle technologies and infrastructure that supports sustainable transport.
So much of our future fuel resilience will come from clever infra-structure projects that allow everybody to access efficient, reliable, safe, convenient mass transport.
For a look at what the oil decline will do to society, just talk to someone that lived through the depression in the US. They were probably hit the worst. You will find that people that were on food producing land, were far better off. Rural communities that could trade goods with each other as well as labour regardless of what the economy was like. If you can, get out of the city and suburbs, get yourself a large enough piece of land in a semi rural our outskirts of a country town. Grow a much variety of produce as you can, get to know other small producers and see how you can fill the gaps. Get fit, your going to do alot of hard physical work. Stock pile things like candles, long life food, install solar panels if you can afford, swap out all your appliances for the most energy efficient you can get, number 1 appliance to have is a wood stove, preferably with a wet back for your hot water. Number two is water tanks. If you have hot and cold running water and heating and cooking without power or gas, you have the most important things. Dont throw anything out that can burn……..stockpile it…….scavenge up any junk wood you can and pile it up. Wind up flashlights, rechargable batteries and a solar or wind powered recharger……..think along the lines of anything you can keep going independantly of the power grid, and fuel supplies. Research making your own wood gas generator…….this can run your car or an internal cumbustion electric generator via burning wood. You’ll only get about 80klms per hour out of your car probably, with great pain in the arse prior to starting, and pain in arse refueling every 60klms or so, but it can provide for those essential or emergency car uses that might not be possible otherwise.
Research the “Icyball” refrigerator. These things need to be heated up for about an hour on a wood stove each day. They then provide cooling for an Ice box for the rest of the day, they will even freeze things…..no power……no gas…….nothing……just the heat off your fire to power it. If the government and society isn’t going to mitigate peak oil in time…..and it isn’t…..then mitigate it yourself on a personal level and start planning now. You can actually get to a situation where all your essentials are provided for by renewable, secure sources if you plan and research. You can have refrigeration, power, fuel…..in sufficient quantities to be comfortable if you plan and make the changes and invest in the things that you need to before the shit hits the fan. Forget about trying to maintain your lifestyle as is, ain’t going to happen. Learn to live with much less power, less fuel…….that is first…..then once you get your essential consumption down to as low as possible, it is possible to provide for that level of use via clever use of a combination of old technology, and new technology, and create a sustainable system around yourself and family. Once you have your land…..they room…..throw nothing out……..horde everything…….that old lawnmower…….keep it….you never know what that old clapped out thing might be good for…..parts for something else…..the motor might become a portable generator……perhaps running off a wood gas producer to recharge car batteries that you use to run a whole heap of things. You might laugh…….but I’ve seen it done……a lawn mower engine driving an old washing machine motor wired up to generate 1.5 kw of power at 48 volts DC charging banks 4 banks of 4 truck batteries with the power from the batteries fed through an inverter to run everything in a small log cabin……..and it worked damn well……and all it took was to start it up for about an hour a day in peak use time…..the rest of the time everything run off the batteries which were also fed by a single 100w solar panel. The wood burning gas producer burned all the small pieces of wood and chips and sawdust from his wood chopping, and his little workshop where he made forest furniture and bric-a-brac by hand tools in his little workshop.