Have you checked how much fuel is in your lifestyle tank?
“Petroleum production and driving are connected like Siamese twins.
Without fossil fuels, hardly any vehicle moves. Petroleum provides the energy for the drive. Petroleum also provides the energy for oil production.”
This is the premise Dr. Berndt Warm begins his 2022 paper “Calculations on the Lifespan of Vehicle Production and Petroleum Production” with. Dr. Warm is a member of ASPO the “Association for the Study of Peak Oil” in Germany.
Peak Oil theory does not suggest there is no more oil to be extracted in the earth’s crust rather it refers to the maximum production rate of oil from a given oil field or group of oil fields.
A major concept he employs in his short paper is the idea of Energy Productivity (world Gdp/world energy consumption). “Energy productivity makes it easy to convert money into energy.
This is important because the economy runs on energy not money. This difference seems trivial, but is always overlooked. Crude oil is extracted with energy not money.
Money is printed by central banks, and can be produced in any quantity. :Energy is Finite.” For modern industrial societies the finiteness of energy refers to fossil fuels and the master fossil fuel is oil.
Dr. Warm examined worldwide production of motor vehicles using publicly available data on Wikipedia. Interestingly, the data shows that worldwide motor vehicle production peaked in 2017 and had been declining into 2022.
More specifically he looked into German car production and noticed that it peaked in 2018 and is on a downward trend.
Linearly extrapolating the declining production trends projects production to be nil sometime between 2027 and 2034. Perhaps the decline in supply helps to explain the increased cost of new and used vehicles.
Dr. Warm investigated the monthly production of passenger cars, vehicle sales and the cost of oil. This method of investigation was used to look at vehicle demand in terms of the propensity to purchase a vehicle.
“The extrapolation of sales data relative to the oil price shows that in 2027 and later hardly any cars will be sold.” Perhaps the car manufacturers aren’t going to produce any more vehicles than can be purchased given the current energy situation.
Dr. Warm states “Electric vehicles are usually more expensive than comparable cars so the transition to electric vehicles will not slow down this trend.” Perhaps it is a left right combo demand/supply constraints resulting in increased vehicle prices and the promotion regarding transitioning to electric vehicles are just some fancy Mohamed Ali footwork from the powers that were.
Dr. Warm reviewed the oil supply and demand dynamics based on oil price in terms of energy content from 2008 to 2022. In doing this he interprets there is a maximum oil price that industrialized countries can afford while maintaining their lifestyle and a minimum price that the oil producing countries need to keep their economies running.
In 2020 the minimum price that oil producing countries required to keep their economies running exceeded the maximum price industrialized countries can afford while maintaining their lifestyle.
“The extrapolation of oil prices shows that from 2022 the lifestyle in the industrialized countries will degrade and that after 2027 the inhabitants of the industrialized countries will hardly be able to pay for oil or its products”. Perhaps this partly explains eye popping totals at the grocery checkout.
Dr. Warm’s short paper provides some interesting insights to recent and current experiences by industrialized consumers regarding the cost of living and lifestyle.
One should be very careful with linear extrapolations as things rarely move in a straight line.
However, given citizens’ purchasing experiences and projections contained in his paper is it time to pause, take a deep breath to consider what a post industrial society may look like?
What would you choose to create, discard, maintain or improve with the opportunity?