"Blueprint For An Oil-Free America"

[ComandanteCero]

Pretty interesting article about the possibility of eliminating oil dependence by 2050 (without implementing taxes or regulating the market, or any kind of massive federal policy)... seems to have some mixed effects on what might happen to how cities are structured.....

http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0920-21.htm

U.S. Can Eliminate Oil Use in a Few Decades

SNOWMASS, Colorado - September 20 - Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) today released Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profits, Jobs, and Security, a Pentagon-cofunded blueprint for making the United States oil-free.

The plan outlines how American industry can restore competitiveness and boost profits by mobilizing modern technologies and smart business strategies to displace oil more cheaply than buying it. Winning the Oil Endgame proves that at an average cost of $12 per barrel (in 2000 dollars), the United States can save half its oil usage through efficiency, then substitute competitive biofuels and saved natural gas for the rest -- all this without taxation or new federal regulation.

"Unlike previous proposals to force oil savings through government policy, our proposed transition beyond oil is led by business for profit," said RMI CEO Amory Lovins.

"Our recommendations are market-based, innovation-driven without mandates, and designed to support, not distort, business logic. They're self-financing and would cause the federal deficit to go down, not up."

Winning the Oil Endgame shows that by 2015, the United States can save more oil than it gets from the Persian Gulf; by 2025, use less oil than in 1970; by 2040, import no oil; and by 2050, use no oil at all.

"Because saving and substituting oil costs less than buying it, our study finds a net savings of $70 billion a year," Lovins said. "That acts like a giant tax cut for the nation. It simply makes sense and makes money for all."

The RMI study focuses on cars and light trucks (SUVs, pickups, and vans). These vehicles account for nearly half of projected 2025 oil use. The report demonstrates that ultralight, ultrasound materials like carbon-fiber can halve vehicles' weight, increase safety, and boost efficiency to about 85 mpg for a midsize car or 66 mpg for a midsize SUV.

"BMW has confirmed that carbon-fiber autobodies weigh only half as much as steel and have exceptional crash performance," said Lovins. "The resulting fuel savings can be like buying gasoline for 56 cents a gallon."

Winning the Oil Endgame also predicts that to fight better and save money, the Pentagon -- the world's largest oil buyer-will accelerate the market emergence of superefficient land, sea, and air platforms. A more efficient and effective military can protect American citizens instead of foreign oil, while moving to eliminate oil as a source of conflict.

"A fuel-efficient military could save tens of billions of dollars a year," said Lovins, who served on a Pentagon task force studying this issue.

"As our nation stops needing oil, think of the possibilities of being able to treat oil-rich countries the same as nations that don't own a drop. Imagine too our moral clarity if other countries no longer assume everything the United States does is about oil."

The RMI report says that by 2015, more efficient vehicles, buildings, and factories will turn oil companies into broad-based energy companies that embrace biofuels as a new product line. Winning the Oil Game demonstrates how cellulosic biofuels (wood-based rather than from starchy or sugary plants like corn) can replace one-fifth of current oil use, more than triple farm income, and create 750,000 agriculture jobs.

"Europe produces 17 times more biodiesel than we do," Lovins said. "The EU has shifted farmers from subsidies to durable revenues, and now oil companies compete to sell their petroleum-free fuel."

Winning the Oil Endgame demonstrates half of U.S. natural gas can be saved at less than a fifth of its current price. Two-thirds of that figure comes from saving electricity, especially at peak times when it's inefficiently produced from natural gas. This step alone could return natural gas to abundance within a few years, cutting gas and power bills by $55 billion per year. Recommended policy innovations include:

Revenue-neutral feebates -- rebates for buyers of efficient cars, paid for by fees on inefficient ones
Low-income access to affordable mobility -- a new nationwide initiative to buy efficient cars in bulk and lease or sell them to low-income drivers at terms they can afford
R&D investment incentives and temporary loan guarantees to help financially weakened U.S. automakers retrain and retool faster
Temporary federal loans guarantees to U.S. airlines for buying very efficient new airplanes, provided that for every plane thus financed, an inefficient one is scrapped.

"For the first time, our report adds up the new ways to provide all the services now obtained from oil, but without using oil -- which will save us $70 billion a year," concluded Lovins. "Forging the tools to get our nation off oil forever is the key to revitalizing industry and farming."

About RMI and Winning the Oil Endgame Rocky Mountain Institute, located in Old Snowmass, Colorado, is an independent, entrepreneurial, nonprofit organization engaged in research and consulting. RMI fosters the efficient and restorative use of resources to make the world secure, just, prosperous, and life-sustaining.

For more information, please visit http://www.rmi.org . This peer-reviewed RMI study is based on its five coauthors' 70 years of combined energy experience, mainly in the private sector, and on extensive industry input. The Pentagon and diverse foundations and private donors funded the research. RMI's thoroughly documented 329-page report is introduced in forewords by former Secretary of State, Treasury, and Labor George P. Shultz (an ex-Marine who also chaired the Bechtel Corporation) and by oil geologist and former Shell Chairman Sir Mark Moody-Stuart. The report, its executive summary, and its technical backup can be downloaded free from http://www.oilendgame.com

[Tosspot]

Same shit, different day...here's why:

As usual, they did not mention once another glaring fact, that one way to reduce our oil dependency would be to throw out our asinine and draconian Euclidian single-use zoning laws that conduce sprawl, car-dependency, and thus oil consumption. Until any of these "experts" comes to this scintillating epiphany, I will not be impressed by any of their findings.

And these "expert findings" illuminate something else too: the fact that we still have a long way to go in terms of grappling with the coming energy crisis/peak oil/depletion. The honchos are still tossing out ideas predicated on the idea that we can just simply continue this veritable drive-thru utopia ad infinitum into the future whether oil runs out or not, regardless of the mess it's made of our built environment, our cities, and our lives.

No one seems to grasp that, just perhaps, we won't be doing nearly as much driving fifty years from now, and that regional economies will once again have to flourish in order to offset the rise in oil prices and/or depletion. Gone will be the day of the three-thousand mile Caesar Salad. We will have to undo the damage that the Wal-Mart-inization of our economy did to local and regional economies in the first place, since Wal-Mart's supply chain is predicated on a cheap oil bonanza in the first place.

No "expert" I've heard from acknowledges these stark facts, which tells me we're far from thinking outside the little boxes that are our minds on this issue.

[ComandanteCero]

That's what bothers me. On the one hand it's good that there wouldn't be as many gas emissions in the air. On the other hand it can be used as a way to knock out many of the arguments for t.o.d. (that's transit-oriented-development) that "bottom line" people like seeing. I think there are many other strong incentives on why not to continue sprawl suburbia that are oil independent. I'll leave the arguments against sprawl suburbia for another thread, but just as an example one could still argue that even if we get rid of gas it still does not reduce car dependency (i.e mass/alternative transit is not an equally convenient option for the majority of the population) thus continuing the car companies' agenda of keeping everyone in need of a car. (there are also all the traffic nightmare visions that a car dependent transportation system entails). It's interesting that this report is getting so much media coverage. Why isn't there an alternative report that shows an alternative vision for reduced oil consumption through alternative transportation and development patterns? I'd like to see something like that come out. Granted this is a positive step, but as tosspot says it definitely doesn't address many other possible alternatives for reducing oil consumption and dependence, and we need that if we want to decide what kind of cities we develop into in the future.

[bahua]

Like so many things, this is an issue that is, at its core, a taxation issue. Development occurs nowadays, based on two things: everyone drives, and we don't have to pay for wasting land. The heavy reliance on personal automibiles can be dramatically reduced in all cases, eliminated in most, with the institution of a land tax, and the abolition of sales, income, and especially property taxes.

[Tosspot]

Comandante,

There's probably no other side of the issue presented because the news media is famous for blatantly disregarding alternative viewpoints. Noam Chomsky wrote about this in Manufacturing Consent, about how basically only certain narrow views get presented for discussion.

And you bring up a good point about how the car lobby has a vested interest in seeing to it that we maintain this ridiculous and wasteful car-dependent single-use zoned lifestyle.

Voting won't do a damn bit of good, the auto lobby probably has both Bush and Kerry in their back pocket, and I know this by a soundbite of Kerry saying it's perfectly okay for people to keep driving their SUVs until doomsday, as if this car culture will never come to an end. Neither one of the candidates, outwardly anyway, has a bloody clue on how to steer this nation towards responsible energy policy. That, or as I said, they're bought off by the various lobbying interests. You know, they do say a people get the leaders they deserve.

Anyway, it's nice that I've finally found a place where I can say these things. You wouldn't believe the amount of morons over on that stupid Channel 5 message board. As soon as you so much as insinuate that their precious little car-dependent 'burbs are part of the problem they piss and moan and start railing to have you banned.

[bahua]

You can't change something like oil dependence with direct policy. You have to make it make sense not to drive, and not make sense to drive. In New York, the people and the government aren't specifically anti-oil. Not at all. But, the people there rarely drive their own cars, if they have them, because it doesn't make any sense, in the face of horrible traffic, easy mass transit, and expensive ownership of cars.

A move to go oil-free has to work, to work. I know that sounds odd, but it's based on the fact that you can't force people into these things. They'll just move away. You have to make them want to leave their cars at home, or maybe even forsake them altogether. There has to be density. There has to be a good, well-funded transit system. There has to be(this is huge) a multibillion dollar overhaul of our current system of the production of electricity, and that alone could take as much as fifty years.

To set this all moving, there has to be a way to encourage responsible, productive development, that also punishes wasteful, sprawled development, through basic economic principles. Such a method exists, and is possible, but everyone is so daunted by our problems that no one seems interested, or just plain doesn't believe that oil dependence can be avoided.

The first step is believing. The second step is making the economy work for you, and against unhealthy, unnatural things like sprawl, blight, and poverty.

[staubio]

Interesting that we engage our military, the largest single oil consumer in the world, to go around the world and protect our oil supply interests. That speaks pretty powerfully to our attitudes and the challenges on finding a real solution.