WOW - read the details here: *** U.S. Can Eliminate Oil Use in a Few Decades *** RMI's Winning the Oil Endgame Shows Businesses How to Mobilize and Profit.

What do you think?

I read through the press release, and then downloaded the 300+ page document and sat in a greasy spoon diner all morning reading it. A lot of it was over my head, but it certainly made an impact on me.

In fact, I made a giant post on my blog about it:
MY BLOG COMMENTS ON THIS REPORT

"by 2025, use less oil than in 1970; by 2040, import no oil; and by 2050, use no oil at all."

This is not a realistic estimation. There are too many company's who depend on large amounts of oil. It talks about how making processes and machinery more efficient and that will allow oil importing to decrease. This isn't all that correct either because sometimes it is not feasible cost wise to make your processes or machinery so efficient just to run less oil or fuel. Most of the time it is cheaper to just burn more oil or fuel than to update and entire plant or production facility. Companies can not just fork over the cash it takes to update everything.

"Imagine too our moral clarity if other countries no longer assume everything the United States does is about oil."

I think this is a direct refernce to the war of terrorism and am ashamed that people use the war on terror as an excuse for the US to gain more power on oil. The fact that people live in countries where they live in fear of there own leaders seems ridiculous to me. I support not only the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan but I also support the leaders who made these decisions.

I do think other forms of energy such as natural gas, solar and even wind power will be major contributors to the energy need in the future, but I don't think oil will decline as quickly as many people think. It will just become harder to get. You won't be able to just drill a shallow-level well in west Texas and out comes a couple thousand barrels. This will just increase the demand for higher skilled engineers to get it with just as much ease as today.

That's where I come in.

Gig'Em Aggies

Consider this idea contained within the document:

- Replace the large steel automotive components with carbon-fiber parts, making the vehicle lighter (and stronger!), and therefore more fuel efficient.

- Displace regular gasoline (made with oil, a non-renewable resource) with BioDiesel (made with plants, a renewable resource).

- Keep pushing/developing the technology of Hydrogen-based Fuel Cells.


I think it's possible that by 2025, a majority of new cars will run on BioDiesel, or BioDiesel + Electric (so a hybrid bio-electric engine). I also think it's possible that by 2050, we'll all be driving fuel-cell powered cars.

But I also think we won't be completely free of our oil dependency. There's gonna be plenty of things that require standard oil-based fuels.

I feel very sure alternative fuels are going to happen. But petroleum based fuels and products will be here for a long time to come. That, and the fact that there was no oil crisis in the 70's, and the US has crude oil stored away, and many wells sitting idle at the government's *request*. There is currently a big trend for drilling natural gas wells. Seems like it's the big boom of the industry. They are poking holes all over Denton county right now. New drilling rigs seem to pop up daily. Hmmmm.......
I kinda geta giggle out of some of the current commercials for ethanol and bio-deisel. They preach about renewable resources, but somebody needs to bring a screaching halt to urban sprawl so we have a place to grow crops that can be used to produce these fuels! Otherwise, it's all a wasted effort to develope and promote their use. American farm and ranch land is dying at an alarming rate. Seems the children of these farmers and ranchers have no interest in carrying on the family farm. They just want the money from selling the land, and really don't care what happens to it once the deal is done. IF all these eco-nazi's and tree hugger groups want to do the American people a true favor, then let them focus on saving our farm and ranch land. Wille Nelson can't do it all by himself! After all, should the day ever come that foreign countries ban exports to the US, we'll need a place to grow food crops as well.

I guess maybe the bottom line is, the US people utilize MANY things that are petroleum by-products. So to agree with "Electric Sheep", there will always be a market for crude oil. Our biggest enemy in the big picture of energy resources and alternative fuel development is greed and lust!