What is Peak Oil?
Peak oil is not the end of oil. It’s not as if all the reserves in the world are just going to dry up. Rather, it’s the end of cheap and available oil, something we humans have become quite used to in the last 100 or so years.
EROEI is a term often tossed around in this field of study. It stands for Energy Return on Energy Investment. What this measures is how much energy you create or extract minus the energy you spent during the process. For example, when oil was really cheap and more easily available in 1930, the EROEI was about 100:1. In 2004, when extraction had become much more difficult and costly, it was approximately 11-18:1. That is a significant difference.
When the EROEI is less than 1:1 that energy source becomes what is called an “energy sink” and is no longer feasible from a practical economic perspective. You can’t use more energy to extract the energy that you plan to use, it’s simple math. Peak oil means that the cost to extract oil from the ground will create such low EROEI that oil will no longer make sense as a primary energy source.
This is concerning for many reasons:
- Our food supply in America is directly tied to the very extensive shipping and distribution industry which relies on cheap and available oil.
- Our food supply is also dependent on petroleum products in the form of fertilizers and the fuel used to run the machines that are a backbone of the industrial farming sector.
- Even alternative energy sources as they stand now require parts and pieces that are made with petroleum products. We still do not have a truly "renewable" energy source.
- All the renewable energy sources available today do not produce nearly enough energy to replace the amount of oil Americans use on a daily basis.
It is possible for America to get on a speedy path to sustainability, but it will take a serious and concerted dedication of resources and innovation to achieve real energy and food security. Ready… set… go!
