The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand

This is a guest post from Cameron Leckie of ASPO Australia. He can be contacted at cameron.leckie (AT) aspo-australia.org.au.

Major transportation projects and the requirement for Oil Vulnerability Assessments

Introduction

I live in South East Queensland, a beautiful part of the world, but one with a population expected to grow significantly over the coming decades. Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, had a population of 1.77 million in 2004. This is expected to grow to 2.58 million by 2026 ⁱ. There are a large number of significant infrastructure projects planned, or under construction with the aim of delivering the infrastructure required to support the population growth in South East Queensland.

Unfortunately, despite the Australian Senate’s report into Australia's Future Oil Supply, the Queensland Government having established an Oil Vulnerability Task Force and the Brisbane City Council having established a Climate Change and Energy Task Force, virtually no consideration has been given to the impact that higher oil prices and declining oil production will have on the need for, and the types of infrastructure required to support, a growing population.

This will be to the detriment of the residents of South East Queensland and those who invested in these projects. A case in point is the collapse of the River City Motorway’s Group’s share price over recent months.

This is a guest post by Ian Dunlop, originally printed as an opinion piece in the Australian Financial Review on January 2.

Ian was formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry executive. He chaired the Australian Coal Association in 1987-88, chaired the Australian Greenhouse Office Experts Group on Emissions Trading from 1998-2000 and was CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors from 1997-2001. He is Chairman of the Australian National Wildlife Collection Foundation (CSIRO), and Deputy Convenor of the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil.

“ Men Argue, Nature Acts” – Voltaire

The impact of global warming is building far faster than scientists had predicted, with extreme weather events in Australia, the US, Europe, Africa, China or Bangladesh, the rapid melting of Arctic sea ice, carbon sinks turning into carbon sources etc. Recent comments from economists and industry representatives, urging a cautious, gradual response, might have been appropriate a decade ago, but no longer.

They miss two crucial points. First, the response to global warming is not primarily an economic issue; rather it is risk management. Second, the risks are escalating rapidly.

The economic case is built primarily around a middle-of-the-road view of global warming, designed to limit temperature rises to 2 degrees C above pre-industrial conditions, with extreme outcomes being downplayed. But with such a potentially catastrophic issue, risk management must address the extremes.

This is a guest post by Greg Baker (meganerd) in Sydney.

I run a small company, and I've noticed an incongruity in the Australian tax legislation which is penalising public transport over private transport. I'm trying to drum up (sorry, couldn't resist) some support for getting some legislation changed.

Here's the deal:

• if I pay for an employee to take a taxi to a client's office every morning and afternoon, there's no question that that is a valid business expense. I can deduct it fully from the company's income.
• I could also choose to pay for train or bus tickets for an employee to go back and forth to a client's office each day.
• BUT... if I go for the cheapest and most environmentally-friendly option, and pay for them to have a TravelPass (in Sydney, this is a ticket that lets you ride on any train, bus or ferry in a certain set of regions for a week), then it is regarded as a fringe benefit since they could also use it for personal use out of work hours.

It's kind of silly.

This is a guest post by Garry Glazebrook. Garry is a senior lecturer in Urban Planning at the University of Technology, Sydney, and has 30 years' experience in transport and urban planning consulting, and in government policy. He gets occasionally obesessed about peak oil, climate change, and sustainable transport (but then dont we all?). He is a member of ASPO Sydney and UITP (International Union of Public Transport). Professor Peter Newman heads Murdoch University's Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy and is an internationally known expert on transport and sustainability in cities.

Public Transport, Peak Oil and Global Warming

Public transport is a big issue in Australia. As a result of rising oil and petrol prices and rapidly rising road congestion, patronage has risen 20% on Melbourne's trains, 18% on Brisbane's buses, and 12% in Perth in the last two years.

Sydney's rail and bus systems are now overcrowded, as are those in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. Adelaide is now facing a major decision about whether to electrify and extend its rail system. The quality, reliability and availability of public transport affects millions of citizens on a daily basis – as evidenced by headlines such as the Sun Herald front page in Melbourne on Monday 18 June.

Continuing population growth and a trend back to urban living make public transport vital for our future. But the likelihood of world oil production peaking makes this an issue for the present. The recent International Energy Agency Medium – Term Oil Market Report (July 2007) warned of increasing tightness in oil markets beyond 2010, as a result of strengthening demand and weakening oil supply.

Roger Bezdek, an expert on peak oil, highlighted in his recent Australian tour the need to take oil seriously in the planning of cities and regions. His key message is that there is likely to be increasing competition for oil and gasoline from China just at the time when global oil production reaches its maximum. There will also be a problem with peaking of gas production in the near future, while options like coal to liquids are not likely to be viable because of CO2 emissions.

Carbon trading is just a few years away. This will have to be extended to all fossil fuels – oil included – and will further add to oil and petrol prices. Those countries and cities without strong public transport systems will face an uncertain future.

Last week, the National Petroleum Council, i.e. the organisation representing the oil&gas industry, released the report it had prepared over the past 18 months at the request of the Bush administration.

I wrote about it in my last Countdown diary which was based on press articles leaked prior to the publication of the report, and noted that this report appeared to break new ground in the acknowledgement of some hard truths about the sector.

Having now read the Executive Summary (warning, 5MB pdf), I'd like to provide more extensive commentary of what the report actually says.

This was written by Arthur Smith, who is a member of the Oil Drum under user name apsmith.

Energize America (as recently introduced to the Oil Drum) has been working on draft legislation to help America reach energy security in the face of peak oil and our over-dependence on the Middle East, and to address concerns about global warming through efficiency and energy alternative measures. This week saw the delivery of several legislative proposals to Congress. Among the commentary and responses there has been one issue that stood out to me: increasing support for rail, both passenger and freight.

The following is a first draft of a new "High Speed Passenger Rail Act", based on Act V - "The Passenger Rail Restoration Act" of Energize America version 5. The first portion consists of background information on the energy benefits and previous legislation, and the second is the actual proposed act. Your comments will help make this a more solid proposal that could make a real difference to the future of this nation!

A number of you here on the Oil Drum are certainly familiar with Energize America, the plan outlining a sane energy policy that was drafted on DailyKos by concerned bloggers over a number of months last year. For those of you that are not familiar with that process that brought that plan to existence, I am summarizing it below.

The interesting thing is that, after having gotten a few endorsements from candidates during last year's election campaign, we have now caught the attention of senior people in Congress, who have explicitly asked us to send them draft legislation. No names have been provided, but they are well positioned to act on these proposals, and if we manage to deliver what they're looking for, the credibility of Energize America, and that of DailyKos, and all associated bloggers, will get a huge boost.

An important note at this point: while DailyKos is a website of the left in the US, and the contacts with politicians have focused so far on Democrats, Energize America has explicitly been designed from the start as a non-partisan plan, meant to be palatable to all (minus a few lobbies, obviously), and not as a Democratic plan. It relies heavily on market mechanisms and private initiative, while focusing on long term goals like lower energy demand and carbon emission reduction, and should be an acceptable basis for discussion for all that care about energy policy. As a community focused on energy issues, I think that the Oil Drum is an ideal place to participate to that movement, and to bring ideas, solutions and reality-based vetting of proposals, and I'd like to invite you to join that effort. A simple solution would be to invite you over to the relevant DailyKos threads, but it would be even better if the wide range of competences on this site were directly brought into action.

So I'm hoping that you'll be interested to support that process. That can come simply in the form of contributing content and reactions to the diaries that discuss proposals (everything is done openly, transparently). The most active and/or knowledgeable contributors are usually invited quite quickly to participate in the data absorption/draft editing work that takes place offline between diaries in order to bring updated content.

At this stage, I'd like to use this thread to test the appetite of the TOD community to work on Energize America; if there is strong interest, the idea will be to crosspost discussion diaries over here on a regular basis to get the specific TOD input in addition to the DailyKos input. So tell us if you are game!

Energize America diaries
Energize America website