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All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil

The first event for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil, which I chair, was held on 24th July and David Strahan of The Oil Depletion Analysis Centre gave the major presentation with Chris Skrebowski of The Energy Institute and myself answering questions.

This was an informative event with about 50 members of the public present.

The objective of the APPG is to raise the debate about Peak Oil. It was, therefore, useful that The Government's Chief Scientist Sir David King has submitted his view and Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency has also agreed to do a presentation and answer questions.

It is the process of answering questions that hopefully will tease out the differences in assumptions. The world is in a geological sense a defined entity, but there is some uncertainty about exactly what the definitiion is. Similarly the rules of physics are a reasonable stable set of rules (at least at the macroscopic level at which energy policy sits). It should, therefore, be relatively straightforward to identify where the uncertainties are and where on the spectrum of uncertainty people sit.

Once we have identified the spectrum of uncertainty it will be possible to work out how the uncertainty is reduced and hence generate a trend that can be used to identify how public policy will be driven by reality.

James Howard has been very helpful in creating a website for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil and although it is easiest for me to upload data to my own reference website The main website is the appgopo one.

Comments

biffvernon said…
So Sir David King, when he says

"The challenge I believe lies in framing policies and in advancing the technologies that will enable the fossil fuel resources that exist, whether conventional or those currently dubbed unconventional, to be utilised effectively, economically and sustainably. I would place particular emphasis on the last of these."

is emphasising the challenge of consuming a finite resource sustainably. Some challenge!
Unknown said…
Can you possibly put a list of MPs and Lords who are part of the group on the website, along with the names of their constituencies and the parties they belong to? Currently I have no idea whether my MP is part of the group or not - if not, I'd like to encourage them to join. Jake.

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