[vtsnowedin]

Imagine if you will a future where every American drives just 25 % of the miles they drive each year now. Not impossible or even difficult if you have time to make the adjustments necessary. That should save some twelve million barrels of oil a day.

20 million bpd/4=5 millions saved. How do you get 12?

But to the point, I have imagined the same. But the more I think about it, the long drive to work is baked into the pie. And folks are not going to/can't car pool for various reasons.

Folks might commute 20-30 miles per day for their jobs (each working member of the family) but only a few miles more to local supermarket/restaurant/bowling and bar. How could we possibly save 25%

Not all our 20 mbpd is spent on transportation and not all of that on personal transportation. Also whatever factors such as high price and scarcity of oil effect our personal driving habits will effect other uses of oil such as commodity transport and agriculture, driving efficiencies across the board.
And I am talking about a 75% reduction in personal driving (not 25% the other way around) which would get us down to 5 MBPD but some things are not as voluntary as personal driving , agriculture for example so I'm projecting us reaching 8 to 9 MBPD depending on all those unknown future variables and how we learn to deal with them.
All those reasons for driving a long way to work by yourself exist because for 100 years gas was cheaper then rents. Let gas get to $10.00 a gallon and all those reasons for not car pooling or moving closer to work will fade away and every retail outlet you require will be along the route you walk to work.

[vtsnowedin]

Okay, so you are talking about powerdown to a sustainable level? Got it. I see that happening, but not voluntary. Not possible. $10.00/b will crush the economy and make a conversion to a Solar Economy impossible. We can barely repair our roads now. Can you imagine the Greatest Recession of All Times again? That is what $10.00 does.

Folks are already angry with the little (they believe that. no me.) they have. The powerdown won't be voluntary and won't be by government edit. It will happen naturally and chaotically. Just like everywhere else. We are not exception and this will end in violence, not the Solar Revolution.

You been drinking that ebt coolaid again?
I wrote $10.00 a gallon of gas not $10.00 a barrel for crude oil.
When a commodity becomes scarce it's price goes up to the point that demand balances supply. The EBT model is junk.

[Newfie]

If one starts with a clean slate you can design a reasonable approximation of alternative power sustainability. Not sure if that's true if you include all the material and construction costs but let's ignore that for now.

Sailboats make a pretty controllable environment. I'm not into a lot of fancy energy monitor gadgets as some are but I can tell when the batteries are flat.

We have solar and a wind generator. With long sunshiny days the solar keeps. On a good windy day the wind generator will keep up. But today it was overcast and the wind dropped so right now I'm running the little Honda 2000W generator charge batteries so we have power the oil fired heater over night. It's about 45 here in SC At the moment.

Now compare that to most Americans situation. They live in a temperate climate that needs heat and AC. They drive to work because of how their community is built. They have huge living spaces by comparison to out 350 or so sq ft. They have no good source of solar or wind, especially if they live in a city.

That's a long way to transition if you have to abandon most of the current infrastrucure and build anew. Tall hill to climb.

[vtsnowedin]

If one starts with a clean slate you can design a reasonable approximation of alternative power sustainability. Not sure if that's true if you include all the material and construction costs but let's ignore that for now.

Sailboats make a pretty controllable environment. I'm not into a lot of fancy energy monitor gadgets as some are but I can tell when the batteries are flat.

We have solar and a wind generator. With long sunshiny days the solar keeps. On a good windy day the wind generator will keep up. But today it was overcast and the wind dropped so right now I'm running the little Honda 2000W generator charge batteries so we have power the oil fired heater over night. It's about 45 here in SC At the moment.

Now compare that to most Americans situation. They live in a temperate climate that needs heat and AC. They drive to work because of how their community is built. They have huge living spaces by comparison to out 350 or so sq ft. They have no good source of solar or wind, especially if they live in a city.

That's a long way to transition if you have to abandon most of the current infrastrucure and build anew. Tall hill to climb.

Yes it is a tall hill to climb but we will not get a vote on that. We or our children will have to climb that hill or die on the slopes.

[vtsnowedin]

The quick answer is that $10/ gallon gas will make conversion to solar necessary not impossible. Other alternatives and substitutes will also be sought out and implemented to whatever degree proves to be most economical.
The idea that Americans need to burn through four times the average per capita energy consumption of the world to exist at all is ridiculous.
We can and will learn to get by with less and convert to sustainable alternatives to fill the gap between actual need and that that can still be provided by dwindling fossil fuel supplies.
Edit: to add that this is in answer to a post by Pstarr that has now been deleted.

[Kylon]

It's possible to not only maintain civilization and the oil age, but to perpetuate it for the indefinite future.

The solution is ocean farming. It's a type of solar power where you basically have things that have seaweed hanging/growing out of them.

The seaweed then grows by itself. You then later go along and harvest some of it. You can then use thermal depolymerization to convert seaweed into oil. Or use seaweed for food.

Once the things are built, you can just reharvest the seaweed over and over again.

The main cost/concern would be a labor shortage of skilled corrosion engineers. Using thermal depolymerization in any kind of metal structure would be corrosive to the structure due to the high salt content. Infrastructure in a salt environment will also be subject to increased corrosion.

There is also the international legal environment and treaties concerning the oceans.

However, both of the problems, one being a shortage of corrosion engineers, and the other being the legal/international treaty framework could be fixed. One requires mass education programs, the other requires very skilled diplomats/lawyers.

Both problems are fixable however.

This would also solve the problem of food as arable land becomes less and less capable of supporting agriculture. This would allow more water to be diverted from agriculture to drinking water, without reducing the food supply.

[vtsnowedin]

Edit: to add that this is in answer to a post by Pstarr that has now been deleted.

sorry for that. I was merely going to correct my unit measure from barrels to dollars. Got distracted, bored, and so deleted.

No problem. I thought we were just typing at the same time and you had reconsidered or got drawn away by real life.

My point I have made over and over on this forum for years, is that our extravagant oil consumption is baked into our suburban sprawl. No other country on earth lives like us, thus their reduced energy needs. We can not go back to donkeys or forward to EV's.

Why do you assume we are so inflexible? No we can't or at least don't want to go back to donkeys or horse power but a reordering of our housing locations and commuting habits is certainly doable. Ratcheting up fuel taxes to European levels would get the ball rolling nicely.
Just look at how much Detroit and the other rust belt cities have changed after the adoption of NAFTA for an example of how entrenched status quo can change rapidly when the pay checks move.

[GHung]

vt said; "....but a reordering of our housing locations and commuting habits is certainly doable."

Doable how? A huge part of our leveraged "wealth" is tied up in suburban investments. Any significant change in that set of arrangements crashes the banking system and individual net worth. Kunstler gets it:

"Thirdly comes the question of how Americans inhabit the terrain: the suburban fiasco and all its accessories and furnishings. You can just stick a fork in that. The great project awaiting this country is how we might redistribute our people into re-scaled walkable communities with re-localized economies, including re-scaled agriculture. It’s going to happen whether we like it or not. It’s only a matter of how disorderly the process may be. Obviously all the suburban crapola out there also represents a tremendous load of presumed wealth. The vested “value” in suburban houses alone is the underlayment of structured finance....

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/ ... re-6723%27

It would be like the MBS débâcle on steroids, and a progression of disinvestment. Already over-crowded cities with over-stressed infrastructure and already expensive costs-of-living would go critical. One need to only look at major migrations to cities like Beijing to see what the effects would be like, but even more severe.

[vtsnowedin]

vt, folks will say that indeterminacy is the primary problem with solar, that the sun doesn't always shine or the wind blow. And that this requires the same amount (or more--you have to keep the big coal plants running all the time) of fossil-fuel electric power. Others point out that the power grid is the primary problem with electrical energy. We'd have to completely revamp it, add storage.

There is a simple workaround to this problem. Simply the grid. Disconnect the interconnects. Work when the sun shines, or when the wind blows. Needs only a little storage (make that hydrogen) The rest of the time you commune with nature, tinker, paint, discuss philosophy. Much like the rest of the world. We really don't have to compete and strive all the time. Freedom is great! But of course there are problems with all this: many jobs can not wait, a leaky second-floor pipe, a fire, etc.

A bigger problem is electric wall receptacles. Outlets, There are none where we drive and park.

Run a plug to the street, where city people park their cars. Rough estimate: 50 millions folks don't have garages, would need overnight charging of their EV (takes 8 hrs at 240 volts). Minimal cost to lay a new electric line from mains across the sidewalk for each car:
--labor to cut holes through building, into the sidewalk, lays electric lines, install a charger and repair damage: $1,000
--cost of 240v charger: $1,500
--cost of manager (for accounts, payments etc like a public gas/diesel pump) and other electric components: $1,000

$3,500 * 50 million street parking chargers==$175 billion. Cost of just charger for suburban garages 50 million suburban cars, $75 billon. Now we have to wire up shopping centers. Oh. Ask me about interstate highways where there is no electricity.

You need to get a grip on the size of America and it's economy.
Last year Americans bought 17 million vehicles at an average price of $33,560 per car. That adds up to 570 billion dollars. Adding on $2500 to get each car it's own dedicated charger would not break the bank.
the USA changes it's working fleet over about a fifteen year period so we could put in all those chargers over the same time frame.
As to the interstate without electricity issue ,I'm glad you brought that up. Consider that a typical four lane interstate has a grass median thirty or more feet wide between the east/north bound and west /south bound lanes and another thirty feet or more of ditch line and slope on each side between the edge of the shoulder and the Right of way fence. Not all of that faces south of course but let us consider that on average you could install solar panels 25 feet wide on average clustered where they work the best. There are just under 48,000 miles of the Interstate system so a 25 ft wide strip would cover 145,000 acres of solar panels. I'll let you figure out how many EVs we could run off that.

[vtsnowedin]

vt said; "....but a reordering of our housing locations and commuting habits is certainly doable."

Doable how? A huge part of our leveraged "wealth" is tied up in suburban investments. Any significant change in that set of arrangements crashes the banking system and individual net worth. Kunstler gets it:

"Thirdly comes the question of how Americans inhabit the terrain: the suburban fiasco and all its accessories and furnishings. You can just stick a fork in that. The great project awaiting this country is how we might redistribute our people into re-scaled walkable communities with re-localized economies, including re-scaled agriculture. It’s going to happen whether we like it or not. It’s only a matter of how disorderly the process may be. Obviously all the suburban crapola out there also represents a tremendous load of presumed wealth. The vested “value” in suburban houses alone is the underlayment of structured finance....

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/ ... re-6723%27

It would be like the MBS débâcle on steroids, and a progression of disinvestment. Already over-crowded cities with over-stressed infrastructure and already expensive costs-of-living would go critical. One need to only look at major migrations to cities like Beijing to see what the effects would be like, but even more severe.

Whine whine whine. So your house on a hill an hour from your job is now not worth $750,000 like they told you but $50,000 like it should have been from the day it was built. You will have some choices. Find or bring work to within walking distance of your house or move closer to your work.
Back during the first great depression my father went from Vermont as far as Cleveland looking for work.
Don't expect this next time to be any easier.
Most of these suburbs were small towns in their own right before the cities ex patriots took them over. Returning to more self sufficient communities with both employment, services and housing confined to a walk-able area will be a necessary step.

[vtsnowedin]

Let me add that I have little sympathy for people that are say 55 years old that have traded up houses two or three times and are just five years into a thirty year mortgage on their "Dream house" plus have a vacation home or time share ( also mortgaged ) and payments on the thirty foot RV and the boat they tow behind it.
What were they thinking and no they will not do well if and when this financial house of cards crashes.
They planned on making payments until they were eighty? Seriously? And who is the fool that lent them the money?

[vtsnowedin]

You need to get a grip on the size of America and it's economy.
Last year Americans bought 17 million vehicles at an average price of $33,560 per car. That adds up to 570 billion dollars. Adding on $2500 to get each car it's own dedicated charger would not break the bank.
the USA changes it's working fleet over about a fifteen year period so we could put in all those chargers over the same time frame.

'we' who is 'we' You haven't put in those chargers. I haven't. Has anyone here among the thousands who have posted actually installed a charger? Your math is weak (I won't bother) your attitude is weak, and thus you vt . . . are personally liable for the failure. The rest I won't bother with. It's a distraction.

If my math is weak please point out the errors. The market for EVs is still quite small so few here would have installed a charger so that proves nothing.
The "WE" is of course all Americans as a group dealing with the future.
Are you trying to say that Americans will not rise to the task?
Those that have placed that bet in the past lost the war badly.

[GHung]

You need to get a grip on the size of America and it's economy.
Last year Americans bought 17 million vehicles at an average price of $33,560 per car. That adds up to 570 billion dollars. Adding on $2500 to get each car it's own dedicated charger would not break the bank.
the USA changes it's working fleet over about a fifteen year period so we could put in all those chargers over the same time frame.

'we' who is 'we' You haven't put in those chargers. I haven't. Has anyone here among the thousands who have posted actually installed a charger? Your math is weak (I won't bother) your attitude is weak, and thus you vt . . . are personally liable for the failure. Call me when your charger is up and running. Got an EV?

Installed a charger? Yes, I have installed two. The home electrical part involves only installing a NEMA 6-50 outlet available for about $10 at Home Depot + a box + cover. Wiring is the same as installing an electric range outlet, or an electric dryer. The Leaf chargers I installed plug into the outlet and come with a wall mount; about $750 complete. If your garage already has a dryer outlet not being used, you're good to go (may need to change the $10 socket).

Total cost for me to do these, including charger, was about $1000 per (breaker panels were in their garages). About two hours labor per. Adding an outdoor charger will cost a bit more, depending on wire length, outdoor box, etc..

https://www.amazon.com/Nissan-LEAF-Char ... B00BJ5W9HW

[GHung]

GHung, you are one of the few here. Are you aware of any others? I ask because it seems the chicken/egg problem. You have a charger. You probably have other cars for long trips, right? How many folks are willing to buy an EV without their own garage charger? What does that public network look like these day? How many chargers are available in your work area, in your shopping area? What if you have to go outside your range? What does the map of chargers out their look like beyond?

Neither charger was for me. They were for other folks. I don't drive enough to justify the costs, and my first EV will be a farm vehicle since that is what I use my truck for the most. When Subaru makes an EV AWD, my wife will consider it, I'm sure (AWD is a must where we live).

As for; " How many folks are willing to buy an EV without their own garage charger?" How many people buy a hot tub without getting it hooked up? The costs are the same. How many homes have a hook-up for an electric dryer or range? The costs are the same. Air conditioning? Electric hot water? All are simple 240 volt (120+120) 30-50 amp wiring. If an electrician is charging more for an EV plug-in (minus the charger), the electrician is ripping you off. Indeed, when you call them to install an outlet for your EV, just tell them it's a clothes dryer, at least, for the quote.

Meanwhile, if you are on the road, pull into an RV park and ask them how much to let you charge your EV for a while. Most have available 30-50 amp plug-ins for every slot. The chargers I've seen are portable, have plug adapters, and weigh less than 20 pounds.