Click here to read my post on the subject and on the wider issues – http://www.icis.com/blogs/asian-chemical-connections/2008/08/can-i-have-your-coconuts-pleas.html

We are going to have to look again at the whole basis of the consumer economy. I like the idea you mentioned in your Newsnight interview about personal carbon credits (or quotas/taxes?. Would be interested to find out more.

Motivating individuals, as well as companies, is key to avoid falling into the kind of climate-change fatalism that was mentioned in last week’s issue of New Scientist – http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2008/08/apa-psychologists-rally-to-fight.html

My company alone is working on a way to reduce airline fuel burn by 15% in the near term. The fuel savings would pay for the retrofit in less than 5 years at $3 per gallon. A new aircraft should save over 20%, plus the same low-tech aerodynamic phenomenon can get a normal road car past 50MPG at highway speeds without any new materials or delicate chemistry.

Doubtless there are other ways to increase fuel economy, not to mention forecasts of solar becoming more cost-effective than diesel for power generation in less than 10 years, which would shut down many diesel generators in China and India further reducing demand for kerosene.

What do you think about the potential for fast-tracked R&D of new technologies as a mechanism to defeat peak oil by the death of a thousand cuts?

Interesting was a speech by Qantas CEO a few weeks ago:

“But right now the global aviation industry faces, not a shock or a blip – not even a crisis – but a permanent transformation. The drivers of this transformation will be globalisation, accelerated by permanently high fuel prices. And the result will be a new aviation world order.

“…Right now airlines around the world are cutting routes and capacity, grounding and retiring aircraft, and shedding staff – it is likely that 100,000 jobs worldwide will be lost before this calendar year is out. In the past six months alone 24 airlines have closed down completely. The major US carriers are now planning to ground 465 aircraft – that is more than twice the size of the QANTAS fleet.

“…These realities are changing the underlying economics of aviation, permanently.”

full speech at: http://www.qantas.com.au/regions/dyn/au/publicaffairs/details?ArticleID=2008/jul08/Qxxxx

Numbers of aircraft and passengers will plummet much further than they already have!

The best thing you can do in your excellent blog and articles, is to recommend to your readers that they should sell shares in airline companies and plane makers. Meanwhile, (in UK) it would be kind to tax payers to highlight in all possible ways, the folly of further expansion at Heathrow and other airports, based on the UK Government’s still extraordinary optimism over the future price of fossil fuels. If indeed, CO2 is the harbinger of global catastrophe that some believe it is, peak oil will bring a huge drops in carbon emissions that may or may not “save the planet”. But mostly I see peak oil bringing economic disaster much earlier than rising seas, drought and drowning polar bears.

As the global price of natural gas continues to converge, ever upwards, on the price of oil, the business folly of gas to liquids (GTL) has already become obvious. GTL is already “dead in the water”, an enormously expensive folly for those (like Shell in Qatar) who believed that gas and oil prices would never be linked. Are there any more GTL plants being built at the same (rather small) scale? I think not. After all, compressed natural gas is an excellent transport fuel. (Now there is a business opportunity for those who are surviving the credit crunch!!)

Coal to liquids will only make economic sense if coal prices do not continue to escalate. International coal prices today are 4 times higher than they were just 2 years ago. What will happen to these if China continues its expansion is anyone’s guess. But in any case, even if coal prices fall again, Fischer-Tropsch (FT) liquids will neither delay peak oil, so will never produce cheap airline nor any other cheap liquid fuel. The small trickle of FT liquids will never grow to a flood simply because of the staggering capital costs and long project times involved to make relatively small CTL plants.

As your informative article makes clear, the excitement over biological aircraft fuels is a triumph of hope (and ignorance) over experience. Anyone who grows algae, especially in open ponds, knows how easily these interesting plants become “contaminated” by the myriads of algal and fungal species floating around in the atmosphere and how rapidly these can “infect” and destroy a mono-culture so exposed. This is because “contaminant” species also grow rapidly!

Closed growing systems can provide some protection against contamination but only at vastly increased capital and operating costs. So the growth of algae will remain a good business for those who grow and sell these for their amazing nutrition value.

Peak oil means impossibly high priced food for many urban poor. Mass starvation, as a direct consequence of peak oil, is already hitting the very poor, so the very idea of turning such excellent food into aircraft fuel is some how morally repugnant.

On that moralistic note, I will say no more, except to repeat, “sell those airline shares while they still have some value!”