Peak Oil: Misconceptions, False Solutions, and Real Opportunities

October 21st, 2010 by Zachary Shahan

Robert Rapier, Chief Technology Officer for Merica International, a bioenergy holding company, was recently interviewed as a follow-up to his presentation on Peak Oil at the Global Footprint Conference in Siena, Italy.

He does a great job of addressing some of the misconceptions/myths about Peak Oil as well as potential solutions to it, so I thought I’d share it here.

In Rapier’s own words, the following is some of what he covers in the interview above.

The misconception that Peak Oil means we are running out of oil

The idea that oil will be very difficult to replace, and impossible to replace solely with biomass

The danger posed by false solutions (which I denoted the ‘fake fire brigade‘ in my presentation)

The difficulty the developing world will have in attaining a ‘First World‘ standard of living

What will happen if oil peaks soon and declines rapidly

The reasons for the rise in oil prices over the past decade

That we are now comfortable with $80 oil — and why that is dangerous

The fact that some “renewable energy” is mostly embedded fossil energy

The reason I prefer thermochemical technologies over biochemical technologies

The types of projects that my company is working on; primarily energy projects that can be operated on low fossil fuel inputs and ideally off the grid (i.e., projects that could provide meaningful energy in a world in which oil supplies are declining)

Rapier also clarifies some of his statements and adds some info on the issues and on the interview via his own blog, R-Squared.

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Tags: fossil fuel, Merica International, peak oil, R-Squared, Robert Rapier

About the Author

Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.