Energy Descent Pathways – Post Carbon Cities, Transition Towns and Eco Villages
This is the introduction to week 8 of the Powerdown Toolkit 10-week community learning course created by the Cultivate Center in Dublin. It has an accompanying TV show with a 30-minute episode accompanying each week of the course, soon to be aired on Dublin Community TV
Subject
The concept of “energy descent” was first proposed by Howard Odum who recognized that the human economy is governed by the Laws of thermodynamics and energy and resource availability.
Odum believed that if we were guided by geologists and ecologists as much as by economists, we would be able to safely navigate our way across the inevitable peaking of world oil production and find “a prosperous way down”.
David Holmgren drew on Odum’s thesis in creating the permaculture concept in the 1970s, and more recently proposed a set of “Energy Future Scenarios” to allow us to peak into the future and gain an image of where we may be heading.
“I use the term ‘descent’ as the least loaded word that honestly conveys the inevitable, radical reduction of material consumption and/or human numbers that will characterise the declining decades and centuries of fossil fuel abundance and availability.” -Davie Holmgren
The ‘industrial ascent’ of Hubert’s curve over the past 150 years has given us a one-time energy bonanza allowing the industrialisation of almost every aspect of our life and the globalisation of our economies. Continual economic growth has required an assumption of continuing increase of energy availability, a myth we can now see as we sink into a post oil-peak world and the commencement of global recession.
The first scenario, then, would be to continue with ‘Business as Usual’, anticipating a simple continuation of the upward curve of energy consumption we have seen in recent history. This path takes us ‘to infinity and beyond’ as we continue to try to grow our economy and keep society going just as it is. However, Holmgren refers to this scenario as “techno-fantasy” because, despite decades of talk and research on new energy forms such as hydrogen or nuclear fusion, our economies have become inexorably more dependent on dwindling supplies of fossil fuels. There seems no technological revolution on the horizon
The second scenario -‘green tech stability’ -is assumed by mainstream environmentalists and progressive politicians: as oil supplies fall away we carry on as before with a high-energy lifestyle, only switch everything to run off renewables.
Systems theory would suggest that this is unlikely because running at such high levels of energy consumption is inherently unstable and, as we have seen, renewables will fall far short of plugging the supply gap left after oil peak.
The third option, and the one Holmgren proposes as the most likely, is ‘Earth Stewardship’: a rapid powerdown with a radical localisation of our food and energy systems, a revitalising of community, and the adoption of values that promote the careful husbandry of natural resources.
“Energy Descent, where available energy and resulting organizational complexity progressively decline over many generations, is the most ignored of the four possible long-term futures, but I think the evidence is strong and increasing that it is the most likely in some form or other.” –Holmgren, Future Scenarios (2009).
In this scenario, we will use the foresight of energy descent planning year on year and generation on generation to adapt to progressively reduced energy supplies, not by looking for the magic elixir of new energy sources, but by the careful implementation of passive solar design, permaculture and frugal living, and the building of community resilience.
We should not ignore however the possibility of a fourth scenario, that of ‘collapse’ which becomes more likely the more we try to grow our economies on a contracting energy base without understanding the ecological and social limits. The ‘die off’ which would result in this hubris has been well chronicled by authors such as Jared Diamond in his book ‘Collapse’ and Homer Dixon in ‘The Up Side Of Down’.
Barriers… The extraordinary changes in society that technology and the availability of cheap fossil fuel has given us, particularly in the last 20 years, has radically changed the way we understand and interact with the world. The energy issue is perhaps the biggest challenge as we will have no choice but to design ways of living with less in the future.
The barriers to planning our energy descent are many: • Short term and selfish thinking • The belief that technology will save us • The dominance of centralised and globalised energy and food systems • A society based on consumption • And an economic system dependent on economic growth
Response
Rob Hopkins describes Energy Descent as : “The continual decline in net energy supporting humanity, a decline that mirrors the ascent in net energy that has taken place since the Industrial Revolution. It also refers to a future scenario in which humanity has successfully adapted to declining net fossil fuel energy availability and has become more localised and self-reliant. It is a term favoured by people looking towards energy peak as an opportunity for positive change rather than an inevitable disaster.”
The prototype at the heart of the process was developed in Kinsale, Ireland as part of the 2 year Permaculture course taught by Rob Hopkins. It became known as Energy Descent Action Planning, and it aims to set out a timetabled plan for moving a community beyond fossil fuel dependence towards local resilience. In this report, a range of proposals for creating local resilience are outlined in each of the areas of transport, energy, housing, food and the local community.
… and opportunities
Transition Towns In response to converging challenges of an unraveling global economy, peak oil and climate change, some pioneering communities in the UK, Ireland and beyond are adopting the Transition process. These initiatives are taking an integrated and inclusive approach to increase our ability to look after itself into the long term and to adapt to the shocks that energy, food, economic and climate crises will bring. Networks have been established in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Japan and most recently in the United States. The role of these Transition Networks is to accelerate change through inspiring, encouraging, and supporting communities as they consider how they will build resilience in the face of these challenges.
The 12th step in the Transition process is to ‘Create an Energy Descent Action Plan EDAP’. This plan is the culmination of the learning, the networking and the work done so far by a Transition Initiative’s activities. Each of the initiative’s working groups will have been developing actions to build resilience; it is these actions that form the Energy Descent Action Plan. One of the first detailed attempts to assess the energy needs of a whole region and make proposals for meeting those needs from local sources in the future has been written by The Sustainability Institute in Ireland for County of Mayo in Ireland. References
The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience. by Rob Hopkins (2008) Green Books 2008 http://transitionculture.org/shop/the-transition-handbook/
Kinsale 2021: An Energy Descent Action Plan Download from http://transitionculture.org/essential-info/pdf-downloads/kinsale-energy-descent-action-plan-2005/
Collapse, Jared Diamond, Penguin Books, London. 2006
The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization by Thomas Homer-Dixon http://www.theupsideofdown.com/ A Prosperous Way Down: Principles and Policies by Howard, T. Odum , Elisabeth, C. Odum Mayo Energy Audit 2009-2020 The Sustainability Institute, http://www.sustainability.ie/auditorder.html
Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability by David Holmgren
Future Scenarios: How Communities can adapt to Peak Oil and Climate Change by David Holmgren (2009)
The Transition Timeline for a local, resilient future by Shaun Chamberlin (2009)
I dropped out of college in 1970 and joined a back-to-the-land commune in California where I built a little hand-made house with no electricity. I was surprised to find I didn’t miss having power. Of course we had a cow and chickens, so refrigeration was not needed. It’s a lifestyle thing which can provide a high quality of life. I think of it as “industrial” descent, although we call it energy descent. The cheap-oil-based “industrial” platform, along with its mental frame of reference, which are so destructive, will go. We know how to replace industrial energy with ecological energy. It’s a leap to go from airplane spraying pesticides on vast monocrop –to a mosaic of polycrops with insectaries and an abundant ecology, with birds and insects doing the same job. Tremendous energies are at work here when you consider the “pesticides” are self-replicating. These new systems are energy-lite and intelligence-dense –another form of ecological energy! I see us finding a way to keep the internet on a non-industrial basis. With each other we have all we need.