Up, up, up
Petrol prices just keep on rising: more than $1.50 a litre. Gulp. There’s just been an interesting piece on Morning Report about this issue. Westpac’s chief economist, Brendan O’Donovan, pointed out that, as prices rise, behaviours change. He’s already noticed people buying smaller cars, and there being fewer cars on the road. This is great news, because we know that petrol’s only going to get more expensive, and we all have to get used to that simple fact.
Now, the challenge for government is to provide public transport options so that it becomes easier for people to leave the car at home and get the bus or train. People often wonder aloud why taxpayers should be paying for public transport services that only some Kiwis use. Well, the simple answer is that a roading network and public transport services are both part of the basic infrastructure that any country needs to prosper economically.
And we know, as the era of cheap oil ends, that we’re going to have to move more and more away from our dependence on oil. The policies that the Greens and Labour are proposing are aimed at opening up more transport choices for Kiwis - that’s what developing public transport services and biofuels is all about.
September 1st, 2005 at 8:35 am
There are lots of low cost personal transport options available to us all!
Electric Bicycles get about 35km on 15ยข of electricity. Bicycles with 2-stroke motors get about 120km on 1.5L of petrol or suitable biofuel.
See http://www.ecobike.co.nz for a good source for these super-efficient modern vehicles!
September 1st, 2005 at 8:46 am
Actually I think there is an even simpler reason; public transport is a public good, and not just for the users of public transport. By keeping congestion down it also benefits those in cars.
Cars on the other hand are a public harm. The costs of pollution, accidents, clogging up court time, hammer attacks on truck drivers, noise, pedestrian deaths (especially children), respiratory illnesses, global warming, wars in Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan etc., habitat destruction caused by roads, oil runnoff etc. are born by .. guess who!
Not the car owners at any rate.
September 1st, 2005 at 9:24 am
I do strongly support public transport needs, and low energy options for individual transport, but being part of the food producing, rural living sector, I really do “gulp” at the price rises. It is an increasingly unpleasant burden to have to carry. Joy.
September 1st, 2005 at 9:26 am
Didn’t Jim Anderton promise a commission of enquiry when petrol was $1? Why is he silent now?
September 1st, 2005 at 9:46 am
Two-strokes: nasty noise, filthy smoke. I hope we’re not infested with little two-smokes in the next few years.
Mike Ward was just on Nine to Noon stating the obvious, in a good way though. He says that we can and should reduce our travel needs, and I agree. The extra rent I pay to live near enough to work that I can cycle in wouldn’t pay for much petrol these days.
September 1st, 2005 at 9:52 am
Biofuels are great for reducing our dependence upon imported non-renewable resources, but they won’t solve congestion or reduce the cries for new roads. A person commuting in a car takes up vastly more space than someone walking, cycling or on public transport. So biofuels (or hydrogen, hybrids, compressed air or whatever) should be seen as an option for those journeys that can’t reasonably be replaced by other means, such as delivery vehicles, rural use and the disabled.
The only long-term solution to congestion is compact urban form and high-quality public transport. It was interesting to note from the recent Urbanism Down Under conference that the Wellington Regional Strategy and WCC’s urban planners are encouraging these ideas, perhaps even hinting at a package similar to “Ride-the-wind” (see http://wellurban.blogspot.com/2005/08/urbanism-down-under-in-review-pa rt-4.html). Whether these sensible suggestions from the planners get political support at local or central level is another question.
September 1st, 2005 at 11:08 am
Just for info - The US has just relaxed fuel standards effective until Sept 15th allowing lower quality fuel to be used, with the attendent increase in pollution. Something to do with a recent reduction in refining capacity no doubt, and incoveniently just prior to the annual Labour Day driving madness.
http://www.epa.gov/katrina/index.html#aug31johnson
Oh well, at least diesel is only a buck a gallon, it will get worse…
September 1st, 2005 at 12:51 pm
Great comments page on the BBC - absolutely huge they have received so many comments for this one:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4178282.stm
The comments show lots and lots of people still in denial, they are confident that there is so much more oil waiting to be found and that there is plenty of already discovered oil in reserve and that the reserves of tar sands and shale oil are equivalent to normal oil. When will the penny drop for these people?
September 1st, 2005 at 1:33 pm
But these aren’t high petrol prices. Not compared to what’s coming.
4 years ago crude oil was $18 US/barrel, now it is $68 US per barrel.
But in the same period the kiwi dollar has soared. So we haven’t seen anything like a four-fold increase in the price of petrol at the pump.
But what goes around comes around: sometime our currency will settle back (don’t ask me when, if I could make that sort of forecast I’d be rich). And when our dollar next wobbles back down to 50 cents US - THEN we will see high petrol prices.
$2 / litre -at least.
And that’s not even making any claims about peak oil, etc, etc.
September 1st, 2005 at 5:14 pm
You guys must be billionaires - your market knowledge is remarkable. The Greens should drop property and wind for their pension fund and invest in oil futures if it is as certain as you say. Why don’t you put your money up to back up your forecasts?
September 1st, 2005 at 8:17 pm
That’s easy to answer, insider : ethical investment. A sincere investor should put their money into stuff they think is good. I’m not sure what good is produced by speculation in commodity futures. Economists have tried to explain it to me, I must be dumb, I never got it.
September 7th, 2005 at 4:10 pm
Funny you should say that - the reason people don’t invest in oil futures is that they don’t have sufficient disposable income to put ‘at risk’.
I note the latest entry in the petrol timeline at http://www.sustainableliving.info
http://tinyurl.com/72myz
quotes Colin Campbell of ASPO as suggesting governments that own their own oil and gas resources would strategically do well to simply leave them in the ground and be paid a ‘rental’ (presumably with ‘rights’) by adjacent countries without oil or gas resources of their own to leave it in the ground for the future.
The website goes on to suggest a sort of ‘reverse mortgage’ arrangement where a public:private consortium could explore for gas or oil, produce a field (if lucky) and cap it as a constantly increasing asset - more secure than bank bonds or scrip.
Its an odd concept - a bit like owning a proven gold prospect. Notionally worth a lot, but really a liability until turned into coinage in an environmentally friendly way.
Unlike gold, oil can be used productively.
But we should note that it is possible to own and trade in certified shares of physical gold bullion, rather than the mine. In a similar way, a ‘green government’ could own shares in a capped resource and slowly sell shares over time as the value rises. The capital realised could be used to invest in massive solar panelling or the like.
September 14th, 2005 at 10:47 am
The (nearly) latest entry in -
http://www.SustainableLiving.info/fading_of_the_oil_economy_timeline.h tm
http://tinyurl.com/72myz
makes the point that around 40% of new cars in Europe are high efficiency diesel. The same ‘timeline’/blog (or whatever it is) also makes the point that modern diesel engines are about as energy efficient as the hybrid vehicles, but without the issue of the batteries life/cost/disposal/raw material.
The point is, the ’sunk cost’ of producing rapeseed oil or to produce animal fat to manufacture biodiesel actually includes a lot of fossil fuel diesil energy used in tractor ploughing/rotary hoeing/fertilising/harvesting/grain drying and trucking/diesel training and factory oil/fat extraction/modification.
Has anyone done a comparative energy budget on directly using high efficiency diesel in cars vs total accounted cost of using ’second hand’ diesel + photosynthetic plant oils from biofuels?
September 14th, 2005 at 12:02 pm
When they hook up the HE diesel to the hybrid, they’ll have a vehicle worth buying for the long haul of the economics of transport. I have no doubt we could see real vehicles that reach 2.5 liters per 100K, or about 100 MPG.
That said, the question of comparative efficiency misses the mark. You are asking for measurements of different things. The car’s efficiency is independent of the efficiency of production of the biofuels.
respectfully
BJ
September 21st, 2005 at 11:31 am
True.
Seperate - but related - issues.
The question is this: can biofuels be created using LESS fossil energy (in ploughing, sowing, harvesting, transporting, pressure extracting/fermenting, refining etc) than is availablke from the bio-oil or ethanol so created?
The answer seems to be no; the caveat is that by-products of an existing industry are ‘recoverable’ (such as ethanol from milk sugar waste).
If it takes more fossil energy to create fossil fuel ’substitute’, than the enterprise is a non-starter.
Insofar as ‘high efficiency’ i.e. greatest possible number of kilometres per litre, is a money saving desideratum, than for the many lower income folk HE diesil can’t come quickly enough.
But even parsimonious use of fuel makes no great impact on depletion of fossil fuels. It is true there is some conservation of fuel; but only trivially true.
The quest resiles to what can be substituted for cheap fossil fuels.
The answer is not biodiesel. The facts seem to point to there actually being no substitute for cheap fossil fuels available now, soon, or ever.
This is highly unpalatable, but seems likely to be true.