Energy Body Wants Brakes On Fuel Consumption

[chlamor]

Energy body wants brakes on fuel consumption

By Adam Porter in Perpignan, France

Thursday 24 March 2005, 18:09 Makka Time, 15:09 GMT  

The International Energy Agency is to propose drastic cutbacks in car use to halt continuing oil-supply problems. Those cutbacks include anything from car-pooling to outright police-enforced driving bans for citizens.

Fuel "emergency supply disruptions and price shocks" - in other words, shortages - could be met by governments. Not only can governments save fuel by implementing some of the measures suggested, but in doing so they can also shortcut market economics.

An advance briefing of the report, titled Saving Oil in a Hurry: Measures for Rapid Demand Restraint in Transport, states this succinctly."Why should governments intervene to cut oil demand during a supply disruption or price surge? One obvious reason is to conserve fuel that might be in short supply.
 
<snip>

Sweeping proposals

Then more radically the idea of going further and cutting public-transport costs by 100%, making them free to use. Car-pooling, telecommuting and even corrections to tyre pressures are also suggested.But the most hardline emergency proposals come in the form of drastic speed restrictions and compulsory driving bans. Bans could be one day in every 10 (10%) or more stringently on cars with odd or even number plates. They would be banned from the roads on corresponding odd or even days of the month (50%).

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/655B03B0-32C2-4BF7-A3E8-F7EFD8144333.htm


The report says public transport
should be made free to use

[TahitiNut]

1. Impose wartime rationing. Put minimum wage workers at all the pumps.

Limit SUV, Humvees, and Honda Prius' to the same limited amounts of gasoline.

[Barrett808]

2. A huge turnaround for IEA, if true

These guys, until very recently, were in the Cornucopian/Optimist camp re Peak Oil.

[salin]

3. Who or what us the International Energy Agency?

They don't seem to get how beholden many govts are to energy co.s. Interesting read, but if we wont't even pass incremental cafe standards...

[bpilgrim]

10. they came into existence in Nov 1974 after the first oil shocks of 73/74

http://www.oecd.org/LongAbstract/0,2546,en_2649_34669_34471286_119817_1_2_1,00.html

the procedures for dealing with global and member state shortages are spelled out in here...

International Energy Program (IEP)
http://www.iea.org/Textbase/about/IEP.PDF

though we are a member of this international body i wonder if the neoCONs will comply?

peace

[indepat]

4. Don't count on US doing anything that might even slightly dampen profits

of the oil and gas industries.

[Zhade]

6. ...or impose restrictions on "me, me, me!" America.

Plus, our public transportation SUCKS. If it didn't, I'd sell my car today!

Hell, I still might sell it anyway.

[NEOBuckeye]

9. Sure wish I could.

I'd have a ton of extra money to pay off the rest of my bills if I didn't have to pay for the car, gas, insurance, plates & plate tags, not to mention maintenance. Isn't it amazing to consider how much of an economy has built up around the automobile?

Regardless, I'd still prefer a system of light rail, high-speed trains and renewable fuel-powered buses. Peak Oil wouldn't even be on the radar right now, if only we had held to this path decades ago.

[Zhade]

11. I hear ya.

NT!

[NEOBuckeye]

8. The US and its' Oil companies will not have a choice.

It's called reality. And it doesn't give a damn about oil and gas companies, or their power-maddened, profit-addicted executives who believe that they can continue to pump oil out of the Earth like there's no tomorrow.

There will be a tomorrow. It just won't include the United States as we know it today. We can either adapt now, or reap the whirlwind when it comes. And it will come.

[mhr]

5. Energy Flows In The US Economy - Oil And Otherwise - For Perspective

[chlamor]

7. Quite a revealing chart

The waste and line loss is staggering. I knew it was high but this really shows how much energy goes off into the ether.

It would be interesting to see the other side of the flow to see how much energy it takes to get to the energy and then look at that in comparison with total amount of energy used. Might be zero. Western Civilization spinning its wheels and running over alot while going nowhere.

[Barrett808]

13. Hey, do they have the 2002 chart in exajoules?

I could only find the 2001 chart in exajoules.

[4dsc]

12. Start with turning off the lights

Have you ever flown over a city at night and marvalled at how well lit the place is?? I bet the US could save tons of oil by simply turning off the lights.. But then the utility companies would start complaining they weren't making any money. Then the oil and gas companies would complain they weren't making enough money because they were selling less gas and oil..

http://www.energybulletin.net/4834.html

Good read here..

When oil is gone, civilization will be stupendously different. The onset of rapid depletion will trigger convulsions on a global scale, including, likely, global pandemics and die-offs of significant portions of the world’s human population. The “have” countries will face the necessity kicking the “have-nots” out of the global lifeboat in order to assure their own survival. Even before such conditions are reached, inelastic supply interacting with inelastic demand will drive the price of oil and oil-derived commodities through the stratosphere, effecting by market forces alone massive shifts in the current distribution of global wealth.

If the US economy is not to grind to a halt under these circumstances it must choose one of three alternate strategies: dramatically lower its living standards (something it is not willing to do); substantially increase the energy efficiency of its economy; or make up the shortfall by securing supplies from other countries. President Bush’s National Energy Policy published in March 2001 explicitly commits the US to the third choice: Grab the Oil. It is this choice that is now driving US military and national security policy. And, in fact, the past 60 years of US policy in the Middle East can only be understood as the effort to control access to the world’s largest supply of oil.

[megatherium]

14. Oil isn't used to produce elecricity;

coal, natural gas and nuclear are used to produce electricity. (I think oil is used to produce some electricity but only a small fraction. Coal is 50% and nuclear is 20%; hydroelectric and natural gas are most of the rest.)

[starmaker]

16. thanks n/t

[anarchy1999]

15. I'm sorry, all I could do was laugh at this post. It is serious, but why

now? "Sweeping proposals??" I'm so sorry, I sat in the gas lines in the '70's. I am so sorry for us all.