As I've mentioned in various writings including the diary immediately preceding this one I've examined the concept of peak oil and I find it to be valid. We've pumped the large, shallow, easily refined reservoirs and what is left is smaller, deeper, and harder to use.
I think this is a truly grim situation for our species and all of my efforts this last year have been focused on figuring out how I make myself part of the solution.
Two of the most promising things out there are the use of ammonia as a hydrogen carrier, which is the only sort of "hydrogen economy" that makes any sense at all, and rail electrification, which is rolling us back to the fine transportation network we had a century ago.
Ammonia first. Methane or natural gas is CH4, ammonia is NH3. It's an inhalation hazard and it has to be stored cryogenically but we wouldn't be the first modern industrial society under the gun who put it to work as a fuel. Iowa always has 800 filing stations – it's a fertilizer as well as a potential fuel – and there is a 3,100 mile national pipeline network. Existing petroleum pipelines can be converted if needed, existing internal combustion engines already work with ammonia after minor modifications, and in general this is an executable strategy. I'll know more in two weeks; I'm speaking at the Ammonia Fuel Network's fifth annual conference regarding our work in renewable ammonia from hydroelectric power.
Rail Electrification. We had a marvelous rail network, both local and long distance, but it was dismantled due to pressure from big oil and Detroit. Whoops. The skeleton is still there for heavy freight and some of the largest cities have mass transit but in general we've got a hell of a hill to climb to put it back together in time to be ready for the day when gasoline's geometric price progression puts it out of reach for all but police, fire, and ambulance duty.
The AIG bailout infuriates me. That $85 billion, directed to rail electrification, would convert 32,000 miles of track to double tracked electric locomotive powered usable rail. Instead it's welfare for the compulsive gamblers who made the financial mess that we're in today.
Do not bother me about high speed rail; it's a dead issue. If we execute at all we execute with medium speed rail – 110 mph maximum. Electric power increases capacity 15% just through logistics benefits and double tracking will clear the way for passenger service. Can't compete with airlines? No problem at all – airlines can't operate with fuel costs increasing geometrically, so they're no competition at all.
Executive bonuses in the tens of millions? For fired nonperformers?!?!?! I wish we could find just one million for solid state ammonia synthesis. If it works, and I do mean if, as it's a bench top process now that needs to go to pilot phase, well, it's a game changer. You pour strained municipal waste water in, power it with whatever renewable you've got handy, and you get a nice hydrogen carrier out the other side that works as both fuel and fertilizer. I call bullshit on this sort of stuff when I see it in other folks' diaries, but this one is (potentially) for real. Why is it so damned hard to get a little money to see if it can be done using much larger tubes in the great outdoors?
We're at the end of the oil age ... and we're now going to go through an annoying interim period of time and money wasting boondoggles before we come up with a set of solutions. That is if we come up with solutions. Dmitry Orlov cautions against this boondogglism in his fine book, Reinventing Collapse, which explores how the United States might collapse just as the Soviet Union did seventeen years ago.
"Bailing out" Detroit with $25 billion each for Ford and G.M.? That might be good politics but it's stone simple stupidity on the path forward. More fuel efficient cars including the highly prized (and highly theoretical) PHEV are just incremental improvements to something that isn't going to work any more. Suburbia is dead and that means all of its accoutrements are dead, too. We're walking, we're biking, we're scootering, and we're hoping the train. Implicit in this is a change in the pace of life; our ultra-tense schedules are going to unwind a bit.
We're at a time of change. We can go down the neocon path of forever war with McCain asleep at the helm while Palin pushes her theocratic agenda on the nation, or we get some responsible operators in Obama and Biden. Even if we do the right thing in November We, The People are going to have to accept that certain dramatic sacrifices are needed and make sure they're made. What we have right now is dramatic sacrifice with the proceeds being promptly directed into the pockets of those who made the mess we face in the first place.
The collapse of the finance sector, which had metastized from its historical 5% of the economy to nearly 25%, coupled with a return to the 91% top tax rate and a progressive tax structure is going to go a long way towards getting us moving in the right direction. The spectacle of fired nonperformers walking away with eight digit payouts is going to come to a screeching halt and the foolishness of calling engineered asset inflation by the name productivity are gone. We'll find in their place genuine jobs here in the United States that can't be outsourced and a rebuilding of our industrial economic base within the constraints of the renewable energy sources we have available to us.
Ammonia as a fuel and rail electrification can be big components of this renewable energy renaissance. I just hope that we have the wisdom and strength of will to drive through the changes needed to make it happen.