Discussion on:

The cost of new oil supply

until battery technolgies can be developed (and the power grid beefed up) to make electric more affordable

Coal-to-liquids barely even exists at this point, so data is hard to find. Stuart Staniford took a good stab at it in 2010 though: http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2010/01/coal-to-liquids-production-statistics.html
My guess is that CTL production globally is still under 200,000 barrels per day, and that the production cost is toward the high end of the range I've outlined here - probably on the order of $100/bbl. If anyone has more current data, feel free to share it here.

When someone puts a Billion Dollars into a CTL plant, then we will see a transformation in that industry, until then expect to see nothing more than "feel good" demonstration projects that do nothing but further delay an actual implementing a new way to "get" gasoline and or Diesel fuel from Coal!

Celanese claims they can do it for around $60 bl (they are making ethanol at this point - but the world consumes a lot of ethanol)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-10/celanese-says-ethanol-from-coal-process-is-a-game-changer-1-.html

They are spending close to a billion getting this set up.

For anyone who keeps their cars for longer than a three-year lease, considering a hybrid or EV has got to be in the mix. Oil price volatility can be somewhat more easily absorbed if you are getting 40+ mpg. I also think carpooling is vastly underrated and should be expanded and promoted more in cities. Many municipal bus websites offer carpool matching services, which a woefully small number of people use. It's a great way to save money, reduce carbon emissions and maybe even network.

Sure carpooling saves gas but unless a huge number of folks all work very close together and keep the same hours it just is more wishful thinking by Planners that are planning "More" and really doing "less"...

As for mass transit, those in cars that are commuting in from expensive neighborhoods a good distance from their Office will NEVER take mass transit because who wants to be tied to a BUS that runs on a varying schedule, have to sit next to a bunch of people that you don't know and or have to walk home at night from a darkened bus stop in poor weather.

Smaller electric vehicles, mopeds and or mobility scooters will become THE way to travel to work in the future, unless you are young and healthy in which case you will probably ride a bicycle and or take a shower before reporting to work!

Middle class families in the USA are used to living far from work. People live in "good" subdivisions & commute by car for long distances. Well paid workers "turn over" urban centers to transients after business hours. This pattern was made possible by low fuel prices. The middle class is willing to endure long commutes to live in larger homes in "good" subdivisions. As fuel prices rise, the cost of commuting by car will cancel out the low prices of land in distant subdivisions. People will live closer to work and/or along commuter rail corridors. 1 problem will be that a couple may not be able to live close to the jobs of both partners. The working poor will be worst off, as usual, because an individual may not be able to find affordable housing within a short commute of either of the 2 jobs they have. They make less to begin with & will have to spend more of it on fuel.

CaptD wrote, "Smaller electric vehicles, mopeds and or mobility scooters will become THE way to travel to work in the future, unless you are young and healthy in which case you will probably ride a bicycle and or take a shower before reporting to work!"

Ah, a person after my own heart. Exactly! We haven't even seen the e-vehicles of tomorrow yet (closer to e-bikes than e-cars), except as experiments and prototypes. Once it get's started the shift will be dramatic when as Chris says, "...the U.S. and Europe are forced to park their cars for good." (And the scrap, recycled value climbs)

You'll enjoy this pic (if it comes through). Ugly as sin but doesn't have to be:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=267834289972722&set=p.267834289972722&type=1&theater

Smaller, slower, but still personal transport, will keep us moving with low carbon, if we physically compact our lives a bit. In a resource constrained future there just won't be the capital and resource inputs for huge subway, trolley or highway projects, but we don't have to back up all the way to the 19th century to hang onto the best of civilization.

We do need to make the decisions of what we must keep, and what we can do without, in an low exploitation, sustainable civilization. The vehicle in the pic is about a 3rd the weight of a horse, less carbon intensive than the horse or a seat on the subway or bus particularly when fed by on-site sun or wind, and whole lot faster and more reliable. It's not as comfortable as a car, but fun, and will still move and protect our butts from the elements.

We took the bus, because we did not have a car. But the bus and trolley system that was in place worked very well, there were reasonable schedules, you could transfer easy to get where you needed. I don't know what they did to the bus systems, but I know where I live you can't get there from here. We had to be at a hospital apt. at 5:30 a.m. and there was absolutely no buses connecting from the 3 cities we had to cross. We ended up in a cab that cost us $50 each way.

Good information to counter the BS that comes from partisan factions (both sides) that is being mindlessly repeated in the news. The take away is that no one should be making energy policies based on unsupported optimism that $2/gallon gasoline is in the future or that we will become energy independant by drilling everywhere. It is time for us to start thinking about using what oil is left for those things that are important. A lot of oil goes into agriculture in many forms from fertilizers to transporting crops to the market; without the use of oil the crop yields will not be enough to support the 7 billion people on this planet. Homo Sapiens translates as man the wise, but history does not support that statement.

...and thanks for helping people understand they roller coaster we're all on and about to tilt towards the long descent.

Now, if only we'd concentrate on allocating what we have left to local rail/trams and waterways transport development --rather than saving Business-As-Usual and bailing Too-Big-To-Fail-- we'd easily adapt and with grace.
But we won't, and thus things will be needlessly very painful instead.

At least let's keep our eyes wide open, it'll be quite memorable and hopefully the Titanic won't be a better analogy.

The Big's (Big Nuclear, Big Oil and Big Gas) are now engaged in market share Warfare, where they seek to maintain and or increase their percentage of the American Energy "PIE". Left unsaid is that the American consumer is no longer part of the picture, having been eliminated since they have no real choice as to where they get their Energy from.

Pick a form of Energy and the other Two Big's will spend huge bucks to promote for less of "theirs" and more of "our's" Energy.

New Oil, New Nuclear are going to be too expensive before they even come on line as market forces and the RISK of another Fukushima continue to make Solar THE source of energy from now on. Look to the Germans to model the way and provide the new tech that America will pay big bucks for soon!

While Solar (of all flavors) is ready for prime time, the BIG 3 have the political clout to make sure that any new GREEN projects that might cut into their bottom line are never approved unless they are controlled by one of the BIG's or their Utilities...

Here are 4 books that model how to go SOLAR:

The High Frontier by Gerard K. O'Neill,
Colonies In Space by A. Heppenheim??er.
The Third Industrial Revolution by G. Harry Stine
The Space Enterprise by Philip Robert Harris

While I like your book suggestions, and I own two of them, I disagree with your total overall assessment.

First, there is a new generation of Nuclear out there. US Nuclear plants are second generation (Chernobyl was a First Generation Plant, Fukishima was a Second Generation system). The new designs are passive safety based. They are much safer, and may well be smaller. We will see a lot more Nuclear in the overall mix, that will take about a decade to come on line.

Ground based Solar isn't cost comptetitive with existing old Nuclear. Coal is still the least expensive electrical generation method, followed by Hydro, then Nuclear, then oil and gas. That's using present life cycle costing.

Solar also has huge environmental impacts on any large scale deployment scheme, as does Wind power.

Space based Solar is still over 20 years away, even if we were spending real money to develop the infrastructure. (It would cost around $20 Billion a year for 20 years to do it.

One final thought, I would add "Mining the Sky" to your suggested bookshelf.

I'll read it!
RE: Space based Solar is still over 20 years away

That is what they said in the 70's when O'Neill wrote his book!

Until the "current" BIG energy Corp's get on board, we will continue to always be 20+ years away as they squeeze US for every cent they can...

". One need look back no farther than 2005 to find plenty of pollyannish projections in reports from the EIA and IEA, and in op-eds in the Wall Street Journal. None of those projections panned out."

NONE of them? Really?

Tell that to the folks getting rich in the Bakken . Tell that to the factories and utilities enjoying the cheapest natural gas in modern history. Shale energy production has far, far exceeded even the most optimistic predictions.

Most of the shale yields have been in the form of dry gas. This makes sense, since gas was quite expensive throughout the 2004-2008 time frame. (More expensive than oil, if one bases the comparison on long term historical ratios.)

Now this situation has reversed. Gas is cheap and oil is expensive. So we shall have the next 2-3 years to see how the wet shales perform.

At any rate, this dovetails with Mr. Nelders prediction. A "major tipping point" is only 2-3 years away. So, if we link back to this page in 2015, and nothing catastropic has happened with re: to global energy supply and production, it will give us a nice piece of information with re: to the integrity and accuracy of Mr. Nelder's world view.

I don't think so! Not only does it not avoid the catastrophe that becomes ever more inevitable when finite, non-renewable resources are viewed as short term ultimate values, but it leaves behind ruined air, water and soil resources that could have contributed to long term sustainability. Whether it happens by 2015 or later is of little matter.

I have to thank you, Mr. McMurtry for being such a prime example of crushing, myopic denial. Is someone paying you to be so disagreeable?

I don't think planning on new extraction technologies is myopic. This is the way it's been since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Mr. Nelder is saying "this time it's different". The 4 most expensive words in the history of investing.

I suspect you think a catastrophe is farther around - like 20 years or so. Good luck with that prediction.

I guess that CaptD has not heard of Solyndra, Abound Solar, Energy Conversion Devices, BrightSource, LSP Energy, Evergreen Solar, Ener1, SunPower, Beacon Power, ECOtality, A123, Uni-Solar, Azure Dynamics, and Solar Trust

Why are only western nations subjected to tight emission laws and higher fuel standards?

Why are China, India and the rest of the DEVELOPED world exempt?

Why are we being punished for their wasteful and polluting ways?

Yep, vehicle owners paying less long term for fuel (higher fuel standards) and living better and longer by breathing air that is not brown (remember the Beijing Olympics) is a punishment fer sure! Dunno why we'd want to do that?

Sure lets keep investing in fossil fuel choke the planet a bit more as well as our wallets. What we sould all be thinking about is putting our efforts into renewable energy and say goodbye to mid 20th century practices and thinking.

http://solarpowerenergy1.com/blog/

Let private technology provide the best solutions. It brought us from wood and coal stoves to power plants that improved the living standard for the world.

"All of the above" is the only answer with the cost-benefit analysis made by experts at companies specializing in the various sources. Technology available today can scrub CO2 emissions from smokestacks in the 85-95% range and we have a 1,000 year supply of coal. But we're selling it to the Chinese/Indians/etc at sale prices while they build dirty plants and undercut the West with subsidized solar/wind/etc.

We really need new nuclear, coal and natural gas power solutions to make the economy work. Yes to wind but no to solar in the short term. Invest in R&D but stop with the pie-in-the-sky theories of solar saving us. Yes to R&D in fuel cells and other exotics but don't hold your breath.

We either produce the power needed for our economy to grow or we will reduce our standard of living for all Americans - especially the middle and lower classes.

Get the lawyers and government out of it and let the experts figure it out. Obama says "All of the above" but I think he has his fingers crossed behind his back. Lovely politics.

The Nuclear Industry was his largest donor and he is their greatest supporter, which is keeping the USA from racing Germany toward a GREEN, less risky future... This is not the CHANGE so many voted for!

Obama's always been forthright about being all the above when it comes to energy.

Perhaps you should vote for the Green Party candidate.

When I was a kid back in the early '60s, gas cost about 12 cents per gallon (sometimes getting as low as 8 cents per gallon). Accounting for inflation (see http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm ), that's 90 cents today. If you told people back then that they would one day have to pay 27 cents per gallon (or $2 per gallon in today's dollars), they would have said they simply couldn't survive. To us today, $2 per gallon is a bargain. Nobody today would have any problems with gas at that price.

My point is that Mr. Neider telling people what they can or cannot deal with does not make it so. When left to their own devices, people come up with their own ways to deal with pinched budgets. They can combine trips, buy more efficient cars (yes, even hybrids or electrics) and take public transit. Or they can bite the bullet and cut back on their daily Starbucks.

What's interesting is that even at current gas prices, only the Prius and Lincoln MKZ hybrids pay for themselves in any reasonable time (see http://www.globalautomakers.org/media/industry-news/2012/04/payoff-for-efficient-cars-takes-years ). So anybody who believes that hybrids and electric are the wave of the future had better hope for much higher gas prices.

What's forgotten in the current debate is that the US has tens of billions of barrels of "conventional" oil offshore, in Alaska, and other places that were simply taken off the table (hence the deception that the US currently has only 2% of the world's oil reserves). No other country in the world has artificially denied itself such resources. The irony is that even if Mr. Neider is right about "tight" oil, this oil will act as a buffer.

Government mandates in the US contribute in other ways to the high price here. We all know about the Keystone XL pipeline. However, the EPA requirement of "boutique" gas mixtures in the summer for each region is a big factor in price spikes. There is only one refinery that can supply Chicago's unique blend, so it's no surprise Chicago has one of the highest gas prices in the nation. A lack of pipeline capacity to where gas is needed is another problem. The northeast can't take advantage of the glut of oil in the lower midwest because there's no cheap way to get the oil there. Even if there was, refineries in the northeast couldn't use it because of stringent EPA regulations. As a result, these refineries have to import Nigerian and North Sea oil which is $18 per barrel more expensive and they can't make money even at today's prices at the pump. We can't even ship gasoline from the refineries in the Gulf to the northeast because the Jones Act says it must be done with very expensive US tankers manned with US crews. As a result, the northeast is expected to import more gasoline from abroad, even as its refineries shut down because they can't get cheap oil to refine.

Finally, while world demand for oil is growing, it's fragile. We complain about $4 per gallon gas in the US, but that same price is an appreciable fraction of a day's wage in India and China. Back in 2008 at the last price peak, both India and China subsidized gas at the pump, allowing their citizens to use as much gas as before. But that broke both countries. Now India no longer subsidizes gas, and China has greatly cut back on its subsidies. When gas goes up today, who will better be able to afford the price increase? Someone in India or someone in the US? It may not be "fair", but when the price goes up it will just free up more supplies for us.

Make no mistake, gas prices will continue to go up in the future. But to say that we in the US can't deal with prices above $4 or $5 is a joke, especially since Europe deals with prices of $7 to $8 today because of their taxes. However, it's exactly rising gas prices, not government mandates, that will drive the success of alternatives such as electrics.