- It seems as if people primarily learn collectively. Informing single individuals about Peak Oil or climate change and the need to reduce our dependence on oil is not likely to make them change. It is not until we start to debate the need for large scale energy systems transformation that people feel the urgency to change.

- Even if we know that we need to change in principle we may not know which exact details in our lives we can change. Telling people we need to change will not create a result. We need together to work out exactly what we can do differently, and start with the things that really matter. Most important at present is to contribute to systems change. Reducing your own oil use will have little effect, but getting one hundred or one thousand people to change theirs in a productive way is also likely to start a snow-ball effect.

- The capacity of existing systems based on renewable fuels or electric cars etc is often very limited. We need to expand these systems and make them easy to use and increasingly attractive. This can be done either incrementally by reacting to market signals, or it may be done based on national or regional strategies to transform energy systems on a large scale. The market based alternative is likely to be slow and costly, because investments in systems expansion need to be coordinated between several players. Even if we believe that market based action is more efficient, it is not the case in this case. Having too little fuel for transportation, due to “Peak Oil” is likely to lead to recession and depression that most people are likely to consider to be more costly than to invest in systems for renewable fuels and electric vehicles to avoid a large scale economic crash.

We need to drive change by developing strategies and plans for large scale energy systems transformation. Individual action will come too late and be insufficient from a number of perspectives.

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There is a need for large-scale investments in order to accelerate Global Energy Transformation and replace oil and old technologies on a large scale. This will require the dedication of large financial resources by large companies and governments.

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Peak Oil means that oil will get scarce and the whole economy, and our well being in society, are threatened by reduced production. We will not be able to maintain a global economy, economic growth, and improved living conditions for people.

We need to say instead: “We need to find a solution to Peak Oil even if it will have a very high cost to society, short term.” This is the only way we can secure the well being of ourselves and our children both short and long term. Peak Oil is a more serious threat to our economy and to ourselves than climate change will be, and Peak Oil will lead to reduced carbon-dioxide emissions over the coming years anyway. We will not be able to build plants to make oil from coal at the rate necessary to make up for the reduced oil production.

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Investors, however, look five to ten years ahead in their estimates and react to their forecasts NOW. That’s why economic downturns happen so rapidly and unexpectedly when many investors become aware of a new scenario. A German agency has written a report that seems reaistic: http://tinyurl.com/3j4gq7r

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Planned and managed transformation programs will become necessary in order to run Global Energy Transformation.

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-0216-charging-stations-20110216,0,4310432.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:%20chicagotribune/views%20(chicagotribune.com%20-%20Most%20Viewed%20Stories)

There is a need for standardization of some interface technologies, so that all batteries can be charged using the growing number of charging stations that are available.

Standardization will not hamper development. It is not the technologies that need to be standardized, but the interfaces for charging etc.

PC technologies have adhered to common standards making it possible for users to rely on the fact that computers and programs are compatible with each other over time. This speeds up development, because customers can rely on their pcs being usable for a number of years into the future, and compatible with other pcs and ancillary equipment almost regardless of age.

In the mobile phone industry cell phone companies use different standards for charging equipment. This is not a big problem, since users get new chargers with every new phone and chargers do not have to be compatible across makes or over time.

In order to electric vehicles to grow there are a number of needs that need to be decided upon:

- Standards for interface technologies and probably some other key network technologies, like fleet control systems etc.
- Smart fleet control technologies, and smart grid technologies that make it possible for electric vehicle owners to plug their vehicles into the grid when they arrive home, allowing the fleet management system to time charging of vehicles so that the bulk of charging is done at night or when renewable energy sources produce at their peak.

The electric vehicle services company Better Place will launch national systems in Denmark and Israel in 2011. This company is developing an integrated system of technologies and services that will cater to the full range of customer needs now and into the future. www.betterplace.com

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But under the stone.

Energy analysts, for lack of a better term, purport to try to penetrate the rhetoric surrounding energy, sustainability and climate change as it suits their interests and that of their clients, employers, political party and stock portfolio. Yet ironically, or even cruelly, not the interests of their children, grandchildren and all of their legacies. And often they are treated as men-of-science when they are not. Not-even-close.

The citing and criticism of individual small-scale efforts simply kick up the dust, as they intend, to obfuscate the rationale. The dust hides the stone for another news cycle, election cycle or generation, and they sleep at night in the warmth of a dwindling flame they are helping to eventually snuff. How many more political deathbed confessions will be made that show regret for failure to use their powers for good — and how it might affect the very children and grandchildren holding their increasingly frigid hands? How rewarding it would be if the lights going out spread the greatest darkness on those who could and should have found the ways to keep them on longer.

By turning over stones.

As I have been trying to inform various parties active in the debate of the managed programs that will become necessary in order to drive Global Energy Transformation, I have mostly met lack of interest and signals that tell me that this is unwanted information.

But these are not stupid people, largely, and the conclusions in “Global Energy Transformation” are mostly common sense. Even people who argue in favor of stronger efforts to transform energy systems on a large scale back away when I tell them that I have taken a look under the stone and found something immensely more complex than energy experts would expect to be there. Since when have we not been up for the challenge?

The work within the GET Institute is focused on informing decision makers about what we have found so far under this “unturned stone,” and to dig deeper and start to disentangle even more unexpected relationships, opportunities, and management needs that energy experts, politicians and many managers of energy focused companies try not to see.

And many of us see more irony. It was the turning of unknown and unturned stones that, perhaps literally, lead to the discovery of fossil fuels such as oil, coal, shale oil, natural gas and precious metals. Incalculable fortunes pulled from the ground despite the fear. And we are the worst example of of the rule of inheritors of massive wealth: it only takes three generations for the family to lose all the wealth created by the first generation…shirtsleeves-to-shirtsleeves.

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At the same time economists around the world debate the opportunity to continue to have prosperity without growth, as in the present report from a project financed by the British Government.

http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/file_download.php?target=/publications/downloads/prosperity_without_growth_report.pdf

May I ask how these economists hope to change the global economy on a large scale without presenting an idea that describes how this dramatic change is going to come about? Which steps do politicians, legislators, national banks, companies etc need to take in order to transform the present economy to one where we can have prosperity without growth? It is one thing to present an idea, another to present viable way to achieve the change that is suggested in a report.

Regardless of which large scale change ideas we as experts put forward, we need to supply them together with a viable way to achieve the suggested change. “Global Energy Transformation” puts forward a method and plan for the large scale transformation of energy systems to a reduced dependence on fossil fuels. This is complicated enough. Transforming the whole economy is one step more complex, and doing without a method or even an idea I would say is impossible.

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The first step has to be that more people start to say and write the words: “We need strategies for large scale energy transformation and government financed programs that lead he way.” Just like the American Energy Innovation Council argue.

www.americanenergyinnovation.com

I get the impression that it is more important for people to not differ in opinion even in a small way from their peers than to help secure a safe and prosperous future for all.

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In the first stage when a novel idea is put forward most people deny that it may have any merit. This is true both for experts, who defend and maintain the stability of their areas of expertise. Note that it was Samuel Goldwyn, who had made a fortune from silent movies, who is said to have uttered the words “who would want to hear actors talk?.” (In the Peak Oil debate this is when people say that oil will be abundant for a long time into the future and that oil companies will find more when they start to do more prospecting, or that new energy efficient technologies will emerge from nowhere in only a few years.)

The second step is that people start to realize that something new is about to happen, but they deem its consequences to be insignificant. Yes, the computer has some potential to make calculation more efficient, but there is only a total market of five computers. Computers will not challenge our businesses of typewriters and calculators, as the founder of IBM may have philosophized. (In the Peak Oil debate this is roughly where we are right now. Many people are aware that the global peak in oil production will arrive sooner than expected, but they fail to realize that this event will have extreme consequences for society at large. Sustainability experts that for a number of years have built expertise in climate change, or energy technology cling to the belief that these issues will remain the focal points in the debate far into the future.)

The third step is when many people start to believe that the above position in untenable and try to find a new position that resonates well with the fact that we need to transform energy sytems with extreme speed and precision, and at the same time use all available resources in the most efficient way possible.

This is the situation that we know will emerge in the near future, but we don’t know exactly when. In this situation many people who used to deny that oil production would peak in the near future will claim that they were among the first to realize both this and its implications for society and the economy, a long time ago.

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