Oil Endgame: The B-to-Everything Problem
September 13th, 2007 by Hugh KennedyOnce in a while you come upon a topic that makes anything look like a bully pulpit. You think, why isn’t every YouTube video coming out of every educated person’s video camera focusing on this issue? (Several are, but where’s the tipping point?)
So. The most compelling thing I’ve seen or heard this year is not, in fact, about wonderfully efficient storage, a better way to run gels, a more comprehensive approach to Integrated Healthcare Management, or a better Linux kernel.
It’s about our slavish addiction to oil, the root of just about every domestic and international evil we suffer from on a daily basis. And yet, seemingly under the radar, an amazing new project has emerged out of the Rocky Mountain Institute to slash oil use to levels not seen in decades. This project, co-funded by the Pentagon, may be the best use of tax dollars in the last eight years. Or eighteen years. Or longer.
It’s called Winning the Oil Endgame. This week it celebrates its third anniversary of publication, but it sure feels timely right now, with oil at $79.91 a barrel.
The scary statistics: We currently import oil into the U.S. to the tune of $10 billion a MONTH. And after 120 years of using oil to power us forward, only 1/8 of the power of the gas we pump into our cars ever reaches the wheels, and only 6% of that power moves our physical bodies down the road. In sum, less than 1% of the $10 billion in oil we import each month actually gets us from A to B.
The hopeful statistics: There have been spectacular advances in super-efficient carbon materials and lightweight metals, mostly in the military R&D complex, and it’s time that car companies brought those advances forward. Vehicles can look just as good, carry just as much, be safer, and use a fraction of the fuel they do now if built from such materials. The prototypes are out there. And the last time the U.S. last paid attention to oil, in 1977–85, it cut its oil use 17% while GDP grew 27%. Oil imports fell 50%, and imports from the Persian Gulf by 87% in just eight years. That exercise of dominant market power—from the demand side—broke OPEC’s ability to set world oil prices for a decade.
The answer is not .gov., it’s BtoB and BtoC. Business can and must create the path out of our addiction.
To quote from the report:
“Investing $180 billion over the next decade to eliminate oil dependence and revitalize strategic industries can save $130 billion gross, or $70 billion net, every year by 2025. This saving, equivalent to a large tax cut, can replace today’s $10-billion-a-month oil imports with reinvestments in ourselves: $40 billion would pay farmers for biofuels, while the rest could return to our communities, businesses, and children. Several million automotive and other transportation-equipment jobs now at risk can be saved, and one million net new jobs can be added across all sectors. U.S. automotive, trucking, and aircraft production can again lead the world, underpinned by 21st century advanced-materials and fuel-cell industries. A more efficient and deployable military could refocus on its core mission—protecting American citizens rather than foreign supply lines—while supporting and deploying the innovations that eliminate oil as a cause of conflict. Carbon dioxide emissions will shrink by one-fourth with no additional cost or effort. The rich-poor divide can be drastically narrowed at home by increased access to affordable personal mobility, shrinking the welfare rolls, and abroad by leapfrogging over oil-dependent development patterns. The U.S. could treat oil-rich countries the same as countries with no oil. Being no longer suspected of seeking oil in all that it does in the world would help to restore U.S. moral leadership and clarity of purpose.”
Sounds good, no?
I encourage anyone who reads this post to learn more:
The PDF: get an executive summary or get the whole book free. Your taxes paid for the study; why not have a look?
The site: Winning the Oil Endgame. Have a look. Have a second look. Tell someone about it. Tell three people.
The podcast: Rocky Mountain Institute’s brilliant director, Amory Lovins, speaks for about an hour at the World Affairs Council in San Francisco.
Someone prove me wrong. Tell me you’re up to speed and energized about this. Tell me you’re spreading the word, posting and writing letters about it. Unless you do, you get behind the barrel again. It’s like falling behind the client in an agency context, just about the least powerful position you can be.