Energy Forum in Kinsale February 9, 2007
Posted by Graham in : General , trackbackFifty people attended an Energy Forum organised by Transition Towns Kinsale in at Acton’s Hotel on Monday 5th February. The response was really positive, and many people expressed their appreciation for the excellent speakers.
Left:Pat McCormac, Davie Philip and Quentin Gargan
The evening opened with a short film from Australia Real Oil Crises which gives an excellent brief overview of the Peak Oil issue and some of its implications: Our dependency in the “developed” world on cheap imports of oil and natural gas has made us precariously vulnerable to disruptions in supply, and as we approach- or indeed pass- the world peak in supply, we urgently need to prepare for fundamental changes in the way we live. “Are we about to hit the Real Oil Crises?” asks the narrator. Jeremy Leggett- who published last year his latest book Half Gone – is one of the oil geologists who thinks we are: “It gives me nightmares when I think about what we are heading for”. There are no new giant fields to discover and many countries have already peaked- the US in 1971; the UK with the North Sea fields in 1999; Australia peaked in 2000. So when will Planet Earth Peak? Legett predicts: no later that 2010, after which be living in a world of cheap oil rapidly shrinking supplies of ever vastly more expensive oil; “That realisation is going to come as a real shock; then we will see world record oil prices. Who knows how high they can go? “ The “early peakers” like Legett are afraid of “An apocalyptic gulf between dwindling supply and rising demand from the voracious East.”
Professor Peter Newman has been trying to prepare his home town of Perthwith a post-petroleum transport system, including Australia’s first Hydrogen buses. But, he says developing Hydrogen as a serious replacement for liquid fossil fuels is a 20 year process. “I don’t know if we can make it. I just feel we havn’t started soon enough. “ We have lots of plans for terrorist attacks but where is the plan for Peak Oil? We don’t have one”.
Legett agrees “I don’t know that we have enough time. It’s all about renaissance, It’s all about how quickly we can repair the problems and get an alternative infrastructure after the crises breaks. “The interesting thing about the problem is that within a few years we will find out, it will happen and play out on our watch”.
The film starkly lays out the current situation with regard to energy supply and dependency; it was then for our three guest speakers to discuss possible responses.
Firstly we heard Pat McCormac of Energy Efficient Engineering talk on assessing personal energy needs. An oil man himself, Pat had told me earlier that he had spent 20 years looking for oil. He didn’t say how much he had found, but the quest had in any case at this stage lead him to working for energy efficiency and now runs a company which performs energy audits.
Pat gave a superb and entertaining presentation introducing some of the technical aspects of energy, the difficulties of replacing fossil energy with renewables, and the essential need to measure how much we use.
Pat explained that, although the universe is replete with energy of one sort or another, it is problematic to access the dilute solar energy that arrives on the earth in vast quantities and turn it into a form that is useful to us. Nature has taken millions of years to develop photosynthesis in plants, which operates at about 14%; but when we burn stored solar energy in the form of wood or coal, we lose more efficiency.
“We won the lotto when we found fossil fuels and have lost the run of ourselves ever since.”
Quentin Gargan has been developing a low-impact lifestyle with his family near Bantry for the past few years to the standard that they consider “comfortable sustainability”, with wind-turbine, straw-bale house, organic gardens and now an electric car. He founded ecologics a couple of years ago to supply solar water panels and has run a series of training workshops on renewable energy . His presentation began with a few slides from Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” showing the extent of glacier retreat in different parts of the world over the past 100 years. He then looked at renewable energy options for householders which might help them address their carbon emissions.
Quentin has taken the bold step of running for the Dail in the next general election in Cork South West under as a Green Candidate, but exclusively under a Peak Oil and Climate Change banner.
Finally, Davie Philip gave a presentation on of the Cultivate Centre in Dublin, discussed his work as a director of the Village sustainable development in Cloughjordan, Tipperary, which will demonstrate many features of sustainable design that will reduce the carbon footprint and create a community that will be to a large degree self-reliant.
Announcing the start of “Cloughjordan- Transition Village” to add to the growing number of communities like Kinsale and Totnes in Devon adopting the “Transition Towns” banner, he described in detail the origins and aspirations of one of Europe’s most innovative and ambitious community-lead integrated sustainable developments. Davie emphasised how in many ways we will be better off if we reduce our energy consumption and adopt a more local, community-based lifestyle. Tying together the two fundamental issues of our time, he put up a slide with a quote by Al Gore, worth repeating here in full:
Our thanks to the speakers and everyone who came and supported this event. There was great feedback with many people saying how much they enjoyed the evening, and enthusiasm form the work of Transition Towns in continuing to promote awareness of and positive responses to the energy and climate issues.
For further information on the speakers and topics covered please have a look at these websites:
www.transitiontowns.org www.sustainable.ie/cultivate www.thevillage.ie www.feasta.org www.ecologics.ie
Comments»
Eric…
This is real good info. Thanks for sharing….