Last week, the UK Government held a work shop, entitled “Policy Response to potential future oil supply constraints”. Transition Network’s Rob Hopkins summarises it as “potentially the day when the UK government finally started to ‘get’ peak oil“.[1]
As recently as a year ago, you could find no acknowledgement of peak oil in official UK government policy literature. Its policy position was blandly summarised by former Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks review:[2]
“Few authors advocating an imminent peak take account of factors such as the role of prices in stimulating exploration, investment, technological development and changes in consumer behaviour.”
Wicks uncritical opinion in turn simply reflected that fed to him by those oil companies such as BP, in who’s interest it is that governments maintain lucrative fossil fuel subsidies and tax reliefs.
So why the change?
Government policy is made in the shadow of three core imperatives, two of which are obvious: (1) stay in power and (2) raise revenue for the state.
The third is more subtle (or, rather, hides in plain sight): ensure the survival of the state. Peak Oil entails the commercial, financial, social and ultimately the cultural collapse of your state. There can be few issues more core to government policy.
The peak oil debate has undergone a substantial transformation in the last few months. Much of the disagreement about hydrocarbon volumes arose from a simple lack of definition about the grades, types and reporting frameworks. This has been corrected.[3] It is appearing in the broadsheets in very clear terms.[4]
Familiarity is growing with the limitations and expense of renewable energy systems, and their insurmountably low areal energy densities and net energy returns.
Taken together, the degree of uncertainty has diminished to the point where the issue has started to flash on government’s “core imperative” dashboard.
The event attracted little attention — it will take a while before the significance of the government’s change is recognised, not least because most people aren’t even aware of what the government’s position was before. But there has been some[5] and it remains to be seen what the policy response of other governments will be.
References
[1] Government ‘Peak Oil Summit’ Starts the Process of Government Acknowledging Peak Oil?, 24 March 2010
[2] ITPOES, 2010, The Oil Crunch: A Wake-up call for the UK economy. p31
[3] For example, see Owen, N.A., Inderwildi, O.R. & King, D.A., 2010, The status of conventional world oil reserves–Hype or cause for concern? Energy Policy.
[4] For example, Mason, 2010, Oil reserves ‘exaggerated by one third, The Daily Telegraph, Retrieved March 26, 2010.
[5] Tom Whipple, The Peak Oil Crisis: A Breakthrough?, Falls News Church Press, 24 March 2010
