Well.. after almost two years since the last time I considered doing this… on June 9, 2008, I’m planning on presenting to Port Alberni City Council on Peak Oil.

This comes on the heels of last nights Council meeting where the Cities’ Climate Change Committee, of which I am a member, presented their report. It was well received, but what really floored me was the Peak Oil awareness, and concern shown quite unexpectedly from one of our Councillors. His comments spurred me to go through with the presentation right now.

My presentation focuses on a recommendation for Council to endorse becoming a Transition Town. Transition Towns were born in the UK as a grassroots initiative by citizens to propel their respective towns to address the twin challenges of Climate Change and Peak Oil by participating in community wide educational, informational and transitional events, and completing “Energy Descent Action Plans (click for one towns Plan)” for their City to follow.

I’ll be presenting a slideshow to Port Alberni City Council. You can see it below. I will also be giving them this Transition Town Primer to peruse and get to know the initiative.

I think the time is now.. oil supply fears have finally come to a head, and I think we’re on a tipping point.

And so.. I will be presenting this to Council on June 9th. Please do leave any comments you might have.

This will be the first post in a series as I work through this data.
First, full disclosure, I work at Malaspina (Vancouver Island University) in Nanaimo and live 80KM away in Port Alberni. It’s a 1 hour drive morning and night, so yes, I have a vested interest in this topic. I am also a volunteer with the Corridor Coalition, which is trying to convince government to restore the E&N to a state where it could take a large chunk of the economic and environmental load of off residents, business, and industry on Vancouver Island.

The reason i started this, what I saw this post here at the theoildrum.com doing a similar study of commuting costs from the suburbs of Sydney, Australia.

The general premise being, that those in Australia, and in North America, have very much become used to very cheap gasoline (petrol). And this has created the ever expanding suburbia and exurbia with very little investment into Public Transport (rail, bus, or otherwise) by any of the governments in question.

As fuel prices rise rapidly, this is having a serious affect on the ability of households to cope… especially since wages are not keeping up with inflation over the past 30 years, let alone rising costs of the past 5.

So, I’ve created my own version of the Sydney example. I’ve used StatsCan data on Median Household Income Updated now: After Taxes and calculated the annual cost of fuel for transport based on 225 work days (42 weeks) a year, 2 different mileage constraints (“average” 22mpg or 10.7L/100K and 55mpg or 4.2L/100KM) broken down the percentages, and plotted them by distance on a map.

The first case I’ve tried is commuters to Nanaimo. So I’m using Nanaimos Median Household Income of $42,000 to calculate the percentages.

First is the Low Mileage Case. Second is the High Mileage Case. The Slideshow will walk you through $1.20, $1.50, $2.00, $3.00 and $8.00

Click the images and you will be taken to short slideshows showing the effect of rising prices. (Quicktime/iTunes required)

The $1.50 scenario could happen by May long weekend.

The $2 and $3 scenario could easily happen due to a major disruption/attack/hurricane/etc… and the $8 scenario is what they currently have in Europe.

The question we must start to ask, is, if oil prices are going to stay high, or go higher… how will that affect working people. People who *must* live outside the City due to high mortgage/rent will be forced to pay more and more just to get to work. When is the point that we should start investing in alternatives to get people from their home, to their work. Or better yet, start bringing their home and work closer together.

Personally, i don’t think we can wait for markets and economies to force down prices in urban areas in order to shift people back in from the suburbs. The prices are simply rising too fast. Right now, what we need to do is look at our medium range options. And on Vancouver Island, that means the E&N and Island Corridor Foundation. Sign up at OurCorridor.ca to show your support.

Next I will be doing commuters to Victoria.

UPDATE: I’ve updated the images and movies. Two changes:
#1: I am now using Median Household Income AFTER TAX to better reflect the effect on disposable income.

#2: They now include a $1/L scenario which is close to $4/Gallon US since that price point is creeping up on our neighbours to the South.

From the EnergyBulletin

After last weeks admission by the CEO of Shell that cheap oil will peak around 2012. Now we have the former CEO of Canadian energy jewel, Talisman Energy.

Dr. Jim Buckee thinks we’ll see $150-$200 oil by Q3 or Q4 2008.. And that will be the point where price rationing begins, as it did in the 70s.

Here’s his interview with Mark Colvin from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

MARK COLVIN: Meanwhile, ‘peak oil’ - the idea that the world’s supplies of oil have either peaked or will soon start declining, has suddenly gained new respectability.

It’s been derided by the big oil companies for years, but at the end of last week came a turnabout.

The Chief Executive of the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell, Jeroen van der Veer put out a paper on Friday forecasting the end of easy oil.

Mr Van der Veer said the result could be a worldwide scramble to mitigate climate change.

Dr Jim Buckee has just retired as President and CEO of Talisman Energy, a major independent Canadian oil company with a market capitalisation of $25-billion.

On the phone from Perth, Dr Buckee told me that ‘peak oil’ was now either here, or very close.

JIM BUCKEE: It is the underlying decline of the world’s major fields that is the dominant driving factor here.

If you think that at the moment the world is consuming 30-plus billion barrels a year of oil and is finding seven or eight billion barrels a year. And this state of affairs has been going on now for 20 or more years. It’s obviously unsustainable and the world is increasingly drawing on the bigger older fields.

You couple that notion with the irreversibility of decline and you’ve got a very alarming picture.

MARK COLVIN: Now this was a very unfashionable notion among the oil companies until pretty recently. But just last week the Chief Executive of Shell came out and said that easy oil was coming to an end. Did that surprise you?

JIM BUCKEE: I think it was only a matter of time before one of them had to say that and the pronouncements of the majors are inscrutable at best and I believe they often have a very political overturn.

MARK COLVIN: What are the politics there?

JIM BUCKEE: I think it’s pretty alarmist if one or more of the worlds largest oil companies say, listen guys, supplies of oil are gonna get tight. The ramifications are immense.

Always the line of the major oil companies, Exxon, Shell, BP has been, ‘there’s plenty of oil, you know technology will overcome shortages; we’ll find it’.

They changed a little bit to, ‘there’s plenty of oil, but access is difficult’ and then this is a change again saying, ‘well actually, it looks like it’s finite and you know we’re looking over the hill’.

MARK COLVIN: Global warming has brought a worldwide debate as to what to do about it, centring around, whether there should be a carbon tax or cap in trade. Is this peak oil going to just force everybody’s hand anyway because the oil will run out?

JIM BUCKEE: Oil running out is sort of wrong terminology. It will continue to produce in large quantities, but increasingly less quantities at higher prices. So we’ll still be using a lot of oil in 20 or 30 years time, but it’ll be rationed by price to the most essential uses of oil and that’s generally transportation.

MARK COLVIN: So we won’t be able to make plastic bottles out of it to put water in?

JIM BUCKEE: Well…quite right.

And in passing of course we pay more for water than we do for petrol at the moment, which is insane. But that sort of thing will rectify.

So another point here is that the amount of carbon generated by hydrocarbons will be nowhere near that envisaged in e.g. the Stern report.

MARK COLVIN: How high can oil go now?

JIM BUCKEE: I don’t think that really we’ve seen any rationing of consumption by price. We did see it in ‘79, ‘80 and that was largely because of the sudden quadrupling of the price of oil. Now we’ve seen a relatively gentle approach and people have accommodated it.

So I would say you need to see oil in the $150, $200 a barrel range before it would have any particular impact on demand.

MARK COLVIN: When do you think we’ll reach that?

JIM BUCKEE: The situation is always very tight in the fourth quarter because Northern Hemisphere demand increases; it’s the sort of highest quarter for demands. So I’d say we’ll see stress again in the third and fourth quarter of ‘08.

MARK COLVIN: Do you think it’ll get to $150, 200 by then?

JIM BUCKEE: I think that’s the number that’s required to ration demand and I’d say so yes.

MARK COLVIN: That’s really racing up on us.

JIM BUCKEE: Well I think the whole situation it’s here. It’s snuck up on us without any people really paying attention to it. And it’s very important. I mean things like layouts of cities and future plans all have to take this sort of thing into account.

I mean if you look at a city like Los Angeles, if the supply of gasoline became tight, it’d be a big problem; how to run Los Angeles and the same problem, smaller in lots of other places. Where you have work at point A, residence at point B, shops at point C and they’re all miles apart.

MARK COLVIN: You’d have to include most of Australia’s big cities in that wouldn’t you?

JIM BUCKEE: Yes I think so. But I mean Perth isn’t quite there yet I don’t think but yes in general it ignores the distances, yes.

MARK COLVIN: Dr Jim Buckee, former president and CEO of the Big Canadian independent oil company Talisman Energy, on the phone from Perth.

This could be the most important interview you read/hear in your lifetime.

From Denmark… translated, with the Director of Crisis Management at the International Energy Agency.

The situation on the oil market is worrisome in the sense of there being more demand than supply.

It only gets better from there.

This is a letter I wrote to Port Alberni Mayor Ken McRae on November 2, 2007.

Dear Mr. Mayor and Members of Council

Over the past few months I’ve had the chance to engage in some good discussion on City matters through the public meetings on the Budget and Recycling. Thank you for that opportunity. I’ve also touched bases with Mr. Pat Deakin on a number of occasions and found him to be very open minded on issues that I find most important. I ask that you please take the time to read my thoughts. I would also like to extend an offer to present a short presentation to you and council on these matters.

In all my discussions, one thing that continues to pop up is leadership, and that is why I’m writing today.

I believe the Mayor and Council have done a good job in keeping the Good Ship Alberni afloat in very tough times. However, I also believe there is a great opportunity to lead Port Alberni into a whole new era that you are missing. What I am about to suggest would require major changes, but in 40 or 50 years it would make all the difference… can the Council of 2007 approve a vision for 2057? As we celebrate Amalgamation and Echo ‘67, remember the vision and leadership that it took to build that center and join this City in the face of stiff opposition and the benefits we still now enjoy. I don’t mean to do this figuratively. I mean we need someone who will really stand at a microphone and announce both the Hard Truths that we all are facing, and the Hard Ways in which we are going to come out ahead.

Like the debate on Climate Change, there is now mounting evidence and studies are piling up that predict a coming final “plateau” or “peak” in the rate of world oil production. In fact, a German group last week indicated that by its’ calculations, the worlds production peaked (even with Oil Sands) in 2006 and will decline by as much as 3% a year starting around 2010. A former Saudi ARAMCO executive speaking at a conference in Houston last week also indicated that official published estimates of reserves by Middle East countries are grossly overestimated (by nearly 40%).

The effect of this peak? Ever rising oil, fuel, and natural gas prices and an ever rising Canadian $… if the price of crude hits $150 in the next 10 years… where will the Loonie be? $1.25? $1.50?? These issues can be frightening to people… but they are also incredible opportunities to lead. Port Alberni is currently at the bottom of an economic cycle that has taken 50 years to get us here. In 50 years, where will we be, how can we use something like Peak Oil, to our advantage?

Would Port Alberni announce itself as the first Peak Oil Aware city in Canada? Will we commit to reducing our reliance on fossil fuels to near 0 in all facets we control in our City by 2057?

Here are some opportunities that I see, or that I think we’re missing….

#1: Heritage: An excellent focus for our tourism… but it hasn’t caught on yet in town,or with any tourists, local or otherwise. As we do our Uptown Revitalization… take a page from Chemainus’ book and make it a town theme. Turn back the clock to the early 20th. Create a bylaw to restore the older buildings to what they looked like in 1905 or earlier and to provide access to old blueprints to assist renovations. Fact is, in the early 20th Century we knew very well how to work with very little fossil fuels… in other words, Old Ike should be able to solve all our problems. During your renovation of Argyle, install an electric, or cable, rail-trolley car like there used to be… (this is the peak oil angle) and have it run a loop uptown… even in small cities like Port Alberni, public transport will be incredibly important in the future. In Future aim to replace the BC Transit buses in the City with electric rail or bus trolley cars loops by 2030.

#2: Redevelopment of City:

Roads: Our City is City Works intensive! It has the widest streets around. Instead of fretting about repaving those streets… create simple boulevards. They will reduce maintenance costs, beautify the City, and reduce the heat of the summer. Create a Bylaw that Neighbourhoods/residents must maintain, not only their sidewalk, but their boulevard as well. Allow neighbourhoods to cooperate and plant their own trees or shrubbery… grass is labour, and water, intensive.. encourage natural, local, shrubs, trees and bushes. Ban tractor trailers from using the Redford Corridor!! How? Narrow it with a beautiful boulevard so it’s no good to them… They should be using Stamp/Gertrude and Johnson… or RAIL! The most damage to roadways happens on the HILLS… make them use the Provincial Highway!

Business Corridors: We must pursue a strategy to create a “walkable” or “ridable” City. Keep the current “pockets” in place. Please resist the temptation to expand the Johnson bigboxes throughout the corridor. Allowing them to “creep” would simply create a transportation mess like what happened in Nanaimo and Duncan. Create and expand the pockets, but never allow them to merge. We need to encourage more “anchors” to locate in lower Johnson and the Argyle area to provide those areas with new retail blood.

#3: Alternative Energy: Distributed, localized, energy will be the only way to add more electricity to the grid now that huge hydro projects and natural gas plants are either not existent, or will be too expensive to buy power from.

Community Forest: We have an incredible source of fiber around the Valley. Catalyst burns it for fuel… when they are gone, we should burn it for electricity. Get started NOW on putting the plans together to create a major BioMass facility. I watched, on the 30th, on the Beauforts, as smoke lifted up from the slash burning and thought… “that should be powering my microwave!!”. Our Community Forest should have a directive that forbids any piling of waste and directs it and any other waste including chips to a local BioMass facility. All TFLs and Private Lands should have the same provincial/Federal law, but I know that will never happen with current governments so we’ll have to do it on the local level.

Heating: In Norway, there is a City that uses a CoGen BioMass plant to produce heat to heat 80% of residential homes through plumbing… this is a City the size of Nanaimo. Port Alberni could do the same… imagine, if in 50 years, 80% of City residents didn’t pay for heating oil, natural gas, or electricity to heat their homes?? This decision requires leadership, vision, and tenacity…

SmallHydro: Alberni must continue to support, and participate in, Small Hydro projects in and around the Valley

Solar and Rain: Did you know that Solar Water heaters can actually work in Port Alberni… so can solar electricity panels!! Thanks to our hot dry summers, we can actually save money by installing solar water heaters. Make a bylaw encouraging developers, and residents to install these devices! Any new City building must have one… as well as tanks to store rainwater for groundskeeping and solar panels to generate electricity.

#4: Commuters:

Car: Create designated “Park and Ride” spots around town (all it takes is a sign and an OK from local businesses)… the Tourist Bureau, Walmart, 10th Ave Plaza, all good places for one… these small steps would really send a major message to people that we are thinking about it!

Rail: Please continue to vigorously support the ICF and APR! THe key to our economic re-awakening, especially in a Peak Oil world, is efficient, Rail Transport. Encourage business to use Rail… setup partnerships between SVI, ICF and businesses to make railfreight happen again on the Island! Take the Tough track and start to lobby to the Province and Feds to Electrify the rail lines. Only electric rail corridors can, eventually, be high speed and thus able to offset car commutes. We must start small now or the cost later will be to the moon.

If you have made it this far, I hope that means that you will seriously consider my proposal. My biggest concern of all, aside from all the suggestions, is simply that our elected leaders not chicken out on the issue of Peak Oil. Peak Oil and Climate Change are one and the same… it’s time someone in power actually said it. People want to know why their energy costs are rising so quickly. It’s time the people who we elect to lead us through good and bad, tell us the truth and give us a direction. That, above all, is what people really want.

Thank you very much for your time and service to this community

Sincerely,

Chris Alemany