How much power is enough?
Americans love using power.  I should know. I use plenty.  As a visual aid, I have next to me a 16 gallon barrel.  This represents how much gasoline my vehicle uses in just one week.  Many people use much more than this when they tank up their oversized SUVs several times a week.  This barrel would be much larger if it represented the amount of energy (oil or otherwise) that I use to heat my house, cook my food, heat water for a shower, and provide electricity to run my computer.  It also doesn't represent the tremendous quantity of energy needed to transport or make the various goods I use.  What is shocking is that cheap liquid energy of this nature will become more expensive and may become unaffordable in the decades ahead.  Because oil will become more expensive, some predict dire consequences while others think there is no problem at all.  I have the opinion that the next few years will be somewhere in between.  It will be rough - but steps taken now might ease our transition into a post oil world and avoid the end of civilization. 

How big of a crisis is this?
Depends on your time horizon.  In the next five years, petrol products will be expensive but still affordable for most people.  However in the next fifty years, major changes will start happening.  There are several areas of promising technology that may help in the short term (the next few decades).  One of them is providing petrol products from coal using Coal Gasification.  Another short-term transition technology is Nuclear Power. Since people much more qualified that I am are working on these solutions, I will leave investigation of these alternatives to the reader.  This site will instead concentrate on what renewable sources could be used for the longer term (50 years and beyond).

What should we do now?
For my household, I have found that conserving is still the least expensive, easiest and highest return option to save energy.  Carpooling works well as does taking train, bus or bicycle when possible.  When using an automobile, I try to combine trips.  When it comes time to replace my auto, you can be sure that it will be one that has a much higher mileage rating than my gas guzzling 24MPG car.  Although I have a small window air conditioner - I usually use a low power ceiling fan I bought for $15 at Walmart.  For the winter, I use additional plastic sheeting on my windows to keep the heat in.  I have also switched to high efficiency florescent lighting and I am now in the habit of switching off all vampire appliances by powerstrip when not in use.  For cooking, I use a microwave when possible instead of an electric oven. I also have a flow reducer in my shower (not so much to save water - just to save HOT water).  All of these steps have taken a substantial bite out of my monthly utility bill.  While all of these steps will help, just conserving is unlikely to be enough in the years ahead. 

What else can be done?
In addition to conserving, I will be exploring various renewable systems that collect energy and deliver it in a useful form.  I think of researching such systems as a personal challenge.  I will be concentrating on solutions with an emphasis on replacing household power or household transportation.  Candidate energy systems include biodiesel, ethanol, methanol, solar and micro-woodgas.  Other systems such as hydro, tidal, biogas, geothermal and wind were eliminated from my list for now since I don't have useful quantities of these sources in my area. The overall goal is to find real world pitfalls of renewable energy solutions NOW rather than LATER.   Some solutions might work - others might not.  But if they don't work, I'm just a hardware store away from fixing or abandoning the technology.  In a few years, that might not be true!   By finding the problems now, the cost of making mistakes will be much lower should I (we) need to depend on such a technology! 

Renewable energy systems are challenging even if you're not on the 3rd world.
I am finding that small renewable systems can be challenging to buy and maintain even for a person in a developed country. One major problem is that once outside support goes away, a system can become useless due to failures of hard to get parts or lack of knowledge.  In America, we like to think that a lack of support is only a problem for 3rd world installations but many renewable systems in the U.S. have failed for the same reason.  The lesson is that energy solutions for an area should match the knowledge, wealth and tooling base of the area to be considered a long-term winner. I will be trying some experiments to see if some solutions match my technology level.  Of course, your level of technology may differ.

Since I would like to maximize interest in this subject, I will be using a rather subjective point of view rather than the dry objective methods of most studies.  If a solution produces or saves useful quantities of power AND if it's affordable AND if it can be maintained - I'll try to describe it in some detail.  Then, it is up to the reader to investigate further.  If I clearly don't succeed, you'll know that too - and perhaps save some time and effort when you investigate your own future energy solutions.  Peak oil will create severe problems.  But with these problems comes opportunity.  It is my hope that the seeds for solving the energy problems might be planted now and grow to at least partial fruition before they are needed.  This site hopefully will be helpful in motivating people to pursue solutions that work rather than just the ones that industry and government decide to subsidize.

About the author: 
The author of this page is William McCracken - a disclaimer for this site can be found HERE last updated 8-14-2005