Coping with wind

By David Strahan1 Comment
This article was published in Ecologist on 27 April 2010, and in the June edition of Energy World. Texas is full of surprises. In the historic home of the oil industry, the electricity supply is going green. A landscape that for over a century has been carpeted with ‘nodding donkey’ oil wells is now sprouting wind turbines. (more…)...
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Peak at the polls

By David Strahan4 Comments
Peak oil has come a long way in the last few years: from bug-eyed millennial cult to mainstream consensus, embracing academia, much of the oil industry, and now the US military. There’s a growing consensus global oil production will peak this side of 2020, with many forecasts clustered around the middle the decade and some well within the next parliament. Strange then that even now the mainstream parties’ manifestos contain not a single word on the subject. (more…)...
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How long before the lights go out?

By David Strahan1 Comment
This article was first published in the Telegraph on 4 February 2010. Bad news for energy consumers continues to come thick and fast. Bills have more than doubled in the last six years, and could rise a further 25% in the next decade according to a wide-ranging report published yesterday by Ofgem. But even more worrying was the watchdog’s analysis of Britain’s energy security – or lack of it. (more…)...
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Who’s afraid of the tar sands?

By David Strahan4 Comments
This article was first published in Ecologist on 8 December 2009. Criticizing the Canadian tar sands used to be so simple. Environmentalists condemned them as a ‘climate crime’, while peak oilers argued they could never fill the gap left by conventional depletion. It turns out neither critique captures the full magnitude of the problem. In the light of the latest science, exploiting the tar sands threatens to damage not only the climate but also the long term fuel supply. (more…)...
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Can non-conventional oil fill the gap?

By David Strahan3 Comments
A version of this article was published in New Scientist on 3 December 2009. The oil crisis is not dead, only sleeping, according to an emerging consensus. The price may have collapsed from last year’s all-time high of $147 per barrel to around $75 today, as the recession grinds away at demand for crude, but nobody expects that to last when the economy recovers. (more…)...
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