Oil-free Travel
Why Not Start Now?
by Guy Dauncey

How will we travel, when the oil is gone? It’s not a stupid question, or something that belongs to science fiction.

We all take oil for granted. It’s only 146 years since oil was first drilled in North America, but in that short time we have shaped our entire world around it.

But pause for a moment, while I show you the numbers. The geologists’ estimates of the world’s total oil supply, laid down all those millions of years ago, range from 2 to 2.8 trillion barrels. We are getting through 29 billion barrels a year, and so far, we have consumed 990 billion barrels. If we carry on at this rate, the entire supply will be gone between 2039 and 2067. In reality, it will last a bit longer, because as soon as we enter the second half of the global supply, sometime between now and 2015, prices will skyrocket, causing confusion all round and slowing its use.

The rocks of the world are not creating new oil, as some would love to believe. Even the supposedly vast Alberta Tar Sands, with 174 million barrels of oil that can be extracted using today’s technology, will only stretch the world’s supply for another six years. All that mess, for six years supply of fuel. The tar sands contain 315 billion barrels that are “ultimately recoverable,” assuming advances in technology. This would supply the world for eleven years. Big deal.

Canadians and Americans use 27 percent of the world’s oil supply, so if we kept all the tar sands oil ourselves, assuming the rest of the world allowed us to continue burning oil while the planet fried, it would still only last 24 to 40 years, pushing the “empty” period for North America back to 2063 to 2100. This is within the lifetime of our children. So how are we going to travel after 2075, and for the next million years of human civilization?

But here’s the other reality we need to throw into the mix: our use of oil, coal, and gas is slowly cooking the planet, promising misery for everyone. The most recent report from the University of Leeds Department of Conservation Biology warned that with the current predicted rise in temperature, between 18 and 37 percent of all land-based animals and plants could become extinct as early as 2050.

The logic is quite clear. Since we’re going to have to manage without oil after 2075 anyway, why not start now, and avoid all the damage?

There are three strategies that could handle our personal trips by car and truck. The first is to plan for a 50 percent reduction in the trips we make by car. If we made our cities really pedestrian friendly and designed all new development as “smart growth”, we could make 10 percent of our trips on foot. If we made our cities really bicycle friendly too, we could do 15 percent by bike. And if we invested more in transit and light rapid transit, we could increase their share of our trips to 25 percent.

How are we going to
travel after 2075,
and for the next million years
of human civilization?

Secondly, we can assume that all future city vehicles will be small, sweet, and swift, like the Mercedes Smart CDI (appearing in Canada this fall, 2004), which uses 3.4 litres per 100 km (83 mpg) (www.smart.com). We should plan on a threefold increase in fuel efficiency, reducing the fuel needed for the remaining trips by 66 percent and our overall need for fuel by 83 percent.

For these trips, there are three fuels we can draw on: electricity, biofuels, and hydrogen. Electric vehicles operate well and are fine for short range trips. For a good British Columbia example, take a look at the R-Car, that uses a lightweight lithium ion battery similar to a cellphone battery. (www.r-electriccar.com)
Biofuels include biodiesel from agricultural crops, restaurant fats, and animal wastes; ethanol from soybeans or hemp; and compost gas from the collection of organic kitchen and yard wastes. Zurich, Switzerland, has 1200 vehicles running on Kompogas. (www.kompogas.ch/en)

To make hydrogen, we need electricity to split water, or we can make it from sewage, algae, or plants. This will need a lot of electricity, but every home, office, and factory could be twice as efficient as it is today, using only half its current load. Trucks, buses, and ferries can run on biofuels, too. For airplanes, we’ll need hydrogen.

If we abandon the idea that every household must own its own vehicle and switch to community car-sharing, we could choose the car we need according to the trip, as Vancouver’s Cooperative Auto Network’s 1500 members do today with the 75 vehicles they share.

Zoom zoom! We’ll still be able to travel, without oil. We might be required to ration the electricity, but we’ll get by.

This article was first published in Vancouver’s Common Ground Magazine, May 2004, www.commonground.ca.

Guy Dauncey is author of Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change (New Society Publishers, 2001) and other titles. He is president of the BC Sustainable Energy Association (www.bcsea.org) and lives in Victoria, BC. His personal Web site is www.earthfuture.com.