Can U.S. Stop Using Oil by 2050?

Adam's Apple

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Apr 25, 2004
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Can the U.S. Stop Using Oil by 2050?
By Scott Burns for Money Central
April 8, 2005

Yes, says visionary Amory Lovins. So long as we get serious about improving energy efficiency. The cost? $180 billion over 10 years.

Nearly 30 years ago Amory Lovins took on the utility industry. The industry was predicting a high-energy future filled with nuclear power plants. Lovins called the utility forecasts "the hard path" because they committed us to producing ever more energy. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Lovins suggested an alternative, "Soft Energy Paths."

Lovins pointed out that the least expensive, safest and most secure energy we could acquire wouldn't come from more drilling and more nuclear power plants. It would come from using energy more efficiently. Rather than the hard work of raising the bridge, he suggested the easier work of lowering the water. All we had to do was to make cars, trucks, houses and buildings more energy efficient. That, he wrote, would eliminate the need to build more nuclear power plants and to search the planet for new sources of hydrocarbons.

Lovins -- ridiculed as a dreamer at the time -- was right. The conventional wisdom was wrong. Energy efficiency in the next decade reduced our oil consumption so fast, it broke the pricing power of OPEC and crushed oil prices.

Now, working with a team from his Rocky Mountain Institute and with the support of the Department of Defense, Lovins has a bolder idea: Apply energy efficiency to end our dependence on oil. Not just foreign oil, mind you, all oil. In the process, we can revolutionize (and save) our automobile industry, create a million jobs, strengthen our economy, end the flow of oil money that funds terrorism and win enduring national security.

In "Winning the Oil Endgame," Lovins shows us the path to reduce our oil consumption. How much? How fast? Think about these figures:
We could reduce the amount we import from the Persian Gulf by 2015.

We could use less oil by 2025 than we used in 1970.

We could import no oil at all by 2040.

We could use no oil at all by 2050. More impressive, much of this can be done simply by getting back on the efficiency-improvement path we were on when we responded to the first and second OPEC oil price shocks in 1973 and 1979.

for full article
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P113797.asp?GT1-6359
 
Adam's Apple said:
Can the U.S. Stop Using Oil by 2050?
By Scott Burns for Money Central
April 8, 2005

Yes, says visionary Amory Lovins. So long as we get serious about improving energy efficiency. The cost? $180 billion over 10 years.

Nearly 30 years ago Amory Lovins took on the utility industry. The industry was predicting a high-energy future filled with nuclear power plants. Lovins called the utility forecasts "the hard path" because they committed us to producing ever more energy. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Lovins suggested an alternative, "Soft Energy Paths."

Lovins pointed out that the least expensive, safest and most secure energy we could acquire wouldn't come from more drilling and more nuclear power plants. It would come from using energy more efficiently. Rather than the hard work of raising the bridge, he suggested the easier work of lowering the water. All we had to do was to make cars, trucks, houses and buildings more energy efficient. That, he wrote, would eliminate the need to build more nuclear power plants and to search the planet for new sources of hydrocarbons.

Lovins -- ridiculed as a dreamer at the time -- was right. The conventional wisdom was wrong. Energy efficiency in the next decade reduced our oil consumption so fast, it broke the pricing power of OPEC and crushed oil prices.

Now, working with a team from his Rocky Mountain Institute and with the support of the Department of Defense, Lovins has a bolder idea: Apply energy efficiency to end our dependence on oil. Not just foreign oil, mind you, all oil. In the process, we can revolutionize (and save) our automobile industry, create a million jobs, strengthen our economy, end the flow of oil money that funds terrorism and win enduring national security.

In "Winning the Oil Endgame," Lovins shows us the path to reduce our oil consumption. How much? How fast? Think about these figures:
We could reduce the amount we import from the Persian Gulf by 2015.

We could use less oil by 2025 than we used in 1970.

We could import no oil at all by 2040.

We could use no oil at all by 2050. More impressive, much of this can be done simply by getting back on the efficiency-improvement path we were on when we responded to the first and second OPEC oil price shocks in 1973 and 1979.

for full article
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest/extra/P113797.asp?GT1-6359

I'm assuming what is meant here is using no oil for energy ?
 
dilloduck said:
I'm assuming what is meant here is using no oil for energy ?

Since the thrust of his article was about transportation, I think that's what was meant. By learning to use the energy available to us more efficiently, we would need no oil by 2050.
 
I saw a story on a local man that runs his truck on re-cycled vegetable oil.
He says he can convert any diesel to run on it.
I don't know about mileage, but it's a renewable resource.
 
Mr. P said:
I saw a story on a local man that runs his truck on re-cycled vegetable oil.
He says he can convert any diesel to run on it.
I don't know about mileage, but it's a renewable resource.


Would it cut into our food supply ?
 
dilloduck said:
Would it cut into our food supply ?
I have no idea how veg oil is processed...So I don't know..but my guess would be, if we used it for fuel, there would be growers dedicated to just that..not a primary food source.
Although the by-product could still be used somehow i would think.
 
Mr. P said:
I have no idea how veg oil is processed...So I don't know..but my guess would be, if we used it for fuel, there would be growers dedicated to just that..not a primary food source.
Although the by-product could still be used somehow i would think.

Just curious--since we have X amount of arable land I would hate to endanger our food supply and our ability to feed starving people .
 
I'm all for alternative energy, and the development of energy efficient utilities, housing and transportation. I think anyone impeading that effort at this point should be tried for High Treason. I just gased up my truck, and it cost me $50 freakin' dollars. "Regular" gas here in Reno is $2.59.9 a gallon. I'd love to be able to tell the sons a bitchin rag heads to DRINK their fucking oil.

In the same breath though, I'd sure miss driving my internal combustion engine vehicle. I'd hope that there'd be enough gas left around to drive my hotrod on the weekend or something.
 
more solar power usage needs to be encouraged. If the US decided to make it an goal each year to develop and use sloar energy then reliance on oil could be slowly be reduced. I think that a need for oil will always exist. Just think...in Northern Alberta there is more oil there that all the rest of the proven reserves....its just difficult to extract.
 
Wolfe said:
more solar power usage needs to be encouraged. If the US decided to make it an goal each year to develop and use sloar energy then reliance on oil could be slowly be reduced. I think that a need for oil will always exist. Just think...in Northern Alberta there is more oil there that all the rest of the proven reserves....its just difficult to extract.

The dinosuars roamed "all" of the earth for MILLIONS of years. In effect, you could probably find oil damn near anywhere.

I think America is sitting on more oil than we'll ever know. I think America is waiting for the "A"rabs to "run out". Watch the fuck out then if you're a rag head...
 
Pale Rider said:
The dinosuars roamed "all" of the earth for MILLIONS of years. In effect, you could probably find oil damn near anywhere.

I think America is sitting on more oil than we'll ever know. I think America is waiting for the "A"rabs to "run out". Watch the fuck out then if you're a rag head...

Yeah, I'm not really informed about this, but isn't there supposed to be a huge load in alaska?
 
The Middle East does not have two thirds of world oil reserves, as the oil industry claims, but only two thirds of one type of reserve. According to the US Geological Survey, the Middle East has only half to one third of world oil reserves.
............

greater reserves exist in the Athabasca tar sands and other unconventional reserves that push actual world reserve life well out into the 22nd century. These are not as cheap as Middle Eastern reserves, but they are not prohibitively expensive either. Nor can all of the unconventional oil be recovered. Estimates range from 15 percent upwards. On the other hand, there may be a number of these unconventional oil fields in other nations -- Russia and Madagascar also have heavy oil fields.
http://www.radford.edu/~wkovarik/oil/
 
It's my inderstanding that we have refining problems here as well because of environmental group lobbying. We have plenty of oil, just not enough refineries to process the oil.

I do believe most people would happily use solar power, hybrid cars etc, if these things were made in such a way as to save the consumer money on their energy bills, and if hybrid cars were made economically enough to be affordable to buy, own, and use, and as long as they had the power to be family safe in avoiding accidents. I am surprised many more companies have not invested money for research and production in these areas. Likely oil company lobbying has something to do with that.
 
Bonnie said:
It's my inderstanding that we have refining problems here as well because of environmental group lobbying. We have plenty of oil, just not enough refineries to process the oil.

I do believe most people would happily use solar power, hybrid cars etc, if these things were made in such a way as to save the consumer money on their energy bills, and if hybrid cars were made economically enough to be affordable to buy, own, and use, and as long as they had the power to be family safe in avoiding accidents. I am surprised many more companies have not invested money for research and production in these areas. Likely oil company lobbying has something to do with that.

I agree on all accounts---if they were ANY vehicle that ran on ANYTHING just as ecomically and efficiently as an internal conbustion engine, people would be happy to drive them. I just don't think that science has the answer yet but when they do, investors will by jumping on board like fleas to a dog.
 
There are workable solutions to this problem, and it would be appropriate for the federal government to work with the private sector to try to find the answers. For this to happen, our elected representatives will need to have a fire lit under them. If our elected reps got the amount of mail, telephone calls, e-mail, etc. on this issue that they did on the Terri Schiavo case, I'll bet we would see some serious activity on this matter. Just keep in mind that the one thing those in Washington are more interested in than anything else is KEEPING THEIR JOBS.
 
Adam's Apple said:
There are workable solutions to this problem, and it would be appropriate for the federal government to work with the private sector to try to find the answers. For this to happen, our elected representatives will need to have a fire lit under them. If our elected reps got the amount of mail, telephone calls, e-mail, etc. on this issue that they did on the Terri Schiavo case, I'll bet we would see some serious activity on this matter. Just keep in mind that the one thing those in Washington are more interested in than anything else is KEEPING THEIR JOBS.

True...I'd answer the "?", Can U.S. Stop Using Oil by 2050? Like this...Hell yes, but will we?
 
The city I live in, Denton, Texas, just switched its entire trash pickup fleet to biodiesel. Biodiesel is a type of fule made with our trash they pick up every week. Ingenuity like this can only increase with more research and creativity.
 
menewa said:
The city I live in, Denton, Texas, just switched its entire trash pickup fleet to biodiesel. Biodiesel is a type of fule made with our trash they pick up every week. Ingenuity like this can only increase with more research and creativity.

And certainly there is money to be made for such ingenuity, always a good incentive.
 

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