Create a Metro Vancouver municipal party to cope with peak oil

The biggest problem with getting a Peak Oil party elected will be convincing voters that Peak Oil is a real and pressing threat. A massive education effort needs to take place that is much less shrill and less opinionated than the typical discourse at most peak oil sites.

One place to begin would be the <a href="http://mazamascience.com/OilExport/">Energy Export Databrowser</a> which allows users to peruse charts of historical trends in oil producing and consuming nations to. This type of data-based, analysis may go a long way in convincing folks who are uninclined to believe "the sky is falling".

Dear Mr. Smith,

You are right, Peak Oil is "the biggest challenge of our lifetime." The federal and provincial/state governments in the U.S. and Canada are doing nothing to prepare. What local governments need to do is prepare for Peak Oil impacts, as there are no viable alternatives to oil (according to the best scientific and government studies). Because very few people will take the time to google and read about "Peak Oil impacts" and "Peak Oil alternatives," few learn about what is ahead. Thus local governments and organizations focus on is energy conservation, not real preparations for what lies ahead. Best regards, Clifford J. Wirth, Ph.D.

Big deal. Peal oil is an economic threat to our consumeristic way of life. Bring it on!

Though there are more constructive ways of reducing our ecological footprints the running face first into a brick wall, if that's what it takes....

Your idea is interesting, Charlie. I have been looking to the municipals in 2011, wondering if I'll get involved somehow. Whatever the case, if there is a peak oil option for the ballot, I will be supporting it. Perhaps in Vancouver a peak oil party should run a candidate each for mayor, councillor, parks board and school board. I've not yet met them, but I'm hoping to meet with Vancouver Peak Oilers at a meeting of theirs sometime soon. And in the case that there's a Green slate for Vancouver, I could see it leaving room for a peak oil candidate, as you suggest.

Actually nuclear power is the alternative to peak oil. With a massive World War 2 effort to build generation 3.5 and 4 mass produced nuclear plants we'd could be off oil in 10 years. Burrard thermal could be replaced with 4 one gigawatt generation 3.5 reactors. Westinghouse in 2006 sold these to China for $5.5 billion. Cheaper than site C and almost 10 times the gigawatt hours, these nukes would eliminate BC's fossil fuel needs.

Peak oil people could best spend their efforts at least getting the city to move to a 3 day work week and a mandatory telecommuting program. Three quarters of municipal government related commuter trips could be eliminated within the year - maybe enough to clear up rush hour.
seth

To the comment about nuclear power being the solution; why? We just put ourselves in the same spot in 40 or so years when our available resources (globally) of viable uranium are depleted. Beyond that, are you thinking of once-through reactors or ones that will re-use their "spent" fuel until it is truly used up? Beyond that, nuclear plants cost more public money then they are worth and no private firm is willing to invest in them; why is that? Well, because they don't make any sense!
Beyond that, we need to learn to reduce our needs and then look at replacing our current power plants.

Nuclear is not the answer. No one source is the answer. Diversity is the answer.

Not only will uranium reach a depletion point, but it will also put us at risk for even greater catastrophes. Why put ourselves at risk when there are much safer options out there that can do the job even better, such as wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, etc.?

Seth, you said before that wind cannot be a baseload answer for our grid, and therefore we shouldn't even consider it. I had no time to respond then, as I was involved in the election, but you're wrong, and here’s why.

Wind turbines have come a long way, and technological improvements have changed the way we can use them. Turbines now have rotors that adjust their pitch to wind strength. If you take these turbines and put them across a very big section of land, like the province of BC, you could have thousands of generation sites covering a massive area of different wind flows; there will always be wind to harvest in such a large area of land.

Consider if BC Hydro or the like had all of these sites linked to a main control centre. When wind in the Lower Mainland dips, then BC Hydro can adjust the pitch up north to collect more from there, or vice versa. Over a large grid, wind can provide baseload power with no concern. On a one-site basis, you're right, wind can't. So let's have a great big grid of wind turbines linked together to provide us with super cheap baseload energy. If we can do this, and provide ourselves with even cheaper energy than the next option, why not do it?

Two things that the big companies never want us to realize are that we will never run out of wind, and turbines can provide power at virtually no cost. After just a few years a large turbine will have paid itself off at today's energy prices, and it will continue to produce power for a quarter of a century, until it needs to be either replaced or rebuilt. Rebuilt is much cheaper, still very efficient, and still with the same operational life span.

And why not choose geothermal over nuclear? Geothermal can easily provide the baseload power you were previously concerned about. And it can provide huge amounts of electricity.

And where wind and geothermal are not practical, then we apply solar, which is the most abundant of them all.

The key is that we need all of the alternative sources in place so that we have a grid that is far more resistant to the unmasked challenges of the future. When we went down this road we're on globally, we didn't foresee all the challenges that we're now facing, and so we need to consider that there'll be many more unforeseen challenges.

Looking to nature, we can learn from her that Diversity is the key.

Global supplies of uranium are such that It is unlikely that at any time in next the couple of hundred years we would ever run low. BC has enough uranium to handle all its energy needs for the millennium.

Work on generation 4 reactors is looking towards the same low mass production cost as generation 3.5's. Generation 4 reactors use spent fuel from previous generation reactors or abundant thorium and leave much less hazardous waste in a tiny fraction of the volume than do current coal or nuclear plants.

Pulse nuclear fusion technologies are looking as good possibilities in the ten year time from with Microsoft Paul Allen's Tri Alpha Energy, Focus Fusion and Polywell concepts. Los Alamos is going live next year with its laser fusion facility.

Nuke cost is almost all capital and billions are required. Asking private companies who finance at 15% to build billion dollar facilities here and there when coal plants have no carbon cost is like asking Boeing to fund a mission to Mars. Public power finance rates of 3% or so make public nuclear power much more attractive.

A massive nuclear attack on global warming requires a World War 2 type effort mass producing lots of mostly factory built reactors all at once. No private company could finance it. As well without political action, an army of attorneys would be required in North America and insurance costs based on Big Coal/Oil financed fear campaigns would be astronomical.

Still Westinghouse has begun construction in China of four 1 gigawatt plants it sold for 5.5 billion producing power at a small fraction of what BC is paying for Pirate run of the river and wind projects and would pay for Site C. Hyperion can't keep up with the orders for the 70 megawatt refrigerator size nukes it is selling for $25 million.

The risk of using very much unsafe NOT!!! options like wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, is enormous. These energies have zero possibility in stopping a Global climate collapse while nuclear can do it in the next ten years.

These technologies are fraught with problems because of their low energy densities, inability to store power, and immense cost. It would take wind farms taking up 300 square miles of land, or 60 square miles of photovoltaic cells to replace a one acre 1 Gigawatt nuclear plant. Wind Power requires 30 times the steel and green house producing concrete of a nuke per energy unit. Pitch adjusting on windmills simply increases the efficiency at a given wind speed, it doesn't make the wind happen, stop going up and down, and not stopping altogether when most needed. There is no power when the sun is behind clouds or at night.

Why not do it?? While a film industry guy with an Arts diploma dreams of linked up wind turbines across the province it is a very silly idea that any engineer would laugh at. Virtually no cost? How about three times the cost minimum of that Westinghouse or Hyperion installation. In fact it can be shown that wind power actually produces more CO2 than gas power plants alone because of the fast spinup low efficiency gas plants required to load balance the things.

Geothermal referring to electrically run heat pumps yes. Baseload power maybe but at a cost so enormous and no solution in sight for the engineering problems it presents.

Solar yes for hot water and home heating. For electric generation there is no way we could come close to the cost of US Southwest desert generation. And the power is not available in the winter when we most need here in BC.

Nuclear power plants just keep on ticking rain or shine sleet or hail matters not. They are there when you need it at a lower cost both financially and environmentally than any other technology. It can get us off oil in ten years if we wish and it can not only end the global warming march but reverse it.
seth

Where is my tin foil hat when I need it?

Reactors leaving less hazardous waste are still leaving non-disposable material to deal with, which means it will still create a problem in the not so distant future when we need sites to dispose of this stuff. What then? Maybe we can put it under your bed.

If we can avoid these nuclear issues, isn’t it just sane to do so? And what of an attack or a disaster? Do you honestly think British Columbians would ever support and risk a nuclear project in time for your save-the-climate plan to be effective?

When you speak of insurance costs and fear campaigns, are you saying there’s actually nothing to fear with a nuclear plant? If so, please explain this radical view of yours.

From today’s perspective you’re right that BC will pay a premium for wind power, but this is not a bad thing. The people of BC deem green energy to be positive, and BC is responding. Promoting what the public mandates as positive is generally what our governments should be doing.

Looking ahead, consider when a green energy system is in place for a length of time. Wind will become cheaper and cheaper every year as these turbines pay their own investment debts off. Cutting future costs further, gearless turbines can easily be rebuilt, with blades and bearings being replaced every so often, meaning turbine purchases can be limited or even eliminated in certain cases, as the life span of these old turbines can be reestablished for generations upon generations.

When purchased reused/rebuilt, these turbines become a possibility for small entrepreneurs to own for their own, supplying their own needs off the grid. This independence alone is what makes wind so much more appealing than nuclear, which can only be owned by giant corporations or large governments, which is obviously on page with your NDP union-centric bias, only it’s on page to be irresponsible expense risk to the environment. And this is why the NDP can’t manage to hold the support of the environmental community.

With smaller, diversified projects of localized energy production, the economy itself will stabilize, and green energy will contour the economy to make the perspective much different, in such a way that today’s “high” costs will be considered our greatest social investment to date. Energy is money, essentially, and when people can produce it locally, for themselves, we’ll get a sense of what freedom is about.

On what basis do you lay your claim that wind, solar, geothermal, and tidal have no possibility of stopping a global climate collapse while nuclear can do it in the next ten? Basically you’ve just made this grand claim and offered nothing to stand it on.

How does nuclear store power any better than geothermal or tidal, which are constants? Ultimately this is about producing electricity, which itself is not easily stored, be it from whatever source. Nuclear can pump out electricity at a controlled rate, and so can geothermal. You argue that geothermal is too expensive, but disregard the fact that nuclear costs are astronomical.

Wind farms covering “300 square miles of land,” as you claim, are doing so theoretically. The actual footprint of a turbine is not what claims the greater territory of a wind farm. The greater territory of a wind farm is its “wind print,” which isn’t very meaningful in the terms you’re suggesting. In other words, it’s not a helpful figure to present for how you’d have us use it.

You also present some interesting figures on steel and concrete ratios, but you apparently haven’t weighed these against the value of other public interests, such as preventing a reactor disaster, for example. If for some reason something happens to the reactor, how will those ratios look? The only honest insurance to offer effective protection from a nuclear disaster is to be smart enough that no reactor is ever built to begin with.