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Peak oil means soon the maximum rate of global oil production will be reached and after that, the rate of production will start declining. This means that oil production will fall shortly, and gas will be the next.

Whatever goes up has to come down. So crash will happen – already there are predictions of a crash happening, both in terms of climate change as well as in terms of fossil fuels getting over. The attempt so far has been to replace oil and coal with green technologies, nuclear power, look at clean coal, etc. But in every case we are going to run into a huge number of problems.

We really do not have anything much at the ground level except a few experiments. And there is nothing which tells us that these little experiments can be up scaled. This huge upcoming crisis is not amenable to technical fixes, legal fixes or economical fixes. The fact remains that we do not have any fuel today (even green energies) that could replace oil and coal.

Besides the issue of techno-economic feasibility there is the question of energy density, which fossil fuel has, and most current uses, like transport need. In fossil fuel if you put in one Jule you can get back maybe 30-40 even 50 Jules. In ethanol, you have to put in 1.5 Jules to get one Jule back. In hydrogen you have to put 6 Jules to get one Jule back; so none of these will be able to replace fossil fuels. This is beside the issue of gestation period, cost factors, other risk factors as in nuclear energy, and so on.

The whole problem is with the carbon cycle and the tampering of the carbon cycle. Currently we are using up 3000 extra Jules from the primary energy production (photosynthesis) each day. We are also doubling our energy consumption every 30 years. As against an energy consumption of 6000 million tonnes of oil in 1971, we are today consuming 12000 million tonnes of oil in a short period of just 35 years and that is only accelerating. So, we are accelerating growth that is completely unsustainable. Essentially we have gone against the laws of nature.

In short what I am trying to say is that human society over the last few centuries has amassed energy from other bioforms and has used it for itself. It has grown and colonized the world. More importantly it has colonised the larger section of human society itself, which comes to the third part of the problem – namely the auto escalating of the problem both in terms of resources as well as economically within human society.

I would like to introduce a term eMergy, which has gained currency in the last couple of decades or so. It means accumulated embodied energy. Every thing has energy. This table has energy. We have energy because we have been brought up as children and so on. The creation of embodied energy is through knowledge. The whole process of owning an energy converter and saying this eMergy is mine is the crux of the problem.

Human society has taken energy, has used knowledge that rightfully belongs to other biota and used it for itself. And in turn a part of society has become energy ‘haves’ and a part of society has become energy ‘have-nots’ and in the whole process it has gone and created a concept of a state which is also nothing but in fact an energy.

We have completely lopsided energy consumption, energy production pattern. As against the 600 units we consume per capita per year in this country, the USA consumes about 12000 units per capita and Sweden and Norway consume around in the region of 25,000 to 30,000 units.

So actually this is only growing. This is all about carbon dioxide emissions and which places have how much carbon dioxide and the focus is on population. Actually the US emits nearly 30% of the CO2.

There are many ways in which this energy transfer happens. In a recent study, we looked at three coastal power plants. In the power plant which is supposed to come up in Udupi we found the primary energy loss in a 25 km radius is 15% of the capacity of the plant. This means that for every 100 kilowatts of power which goes to Bangalore, there is a loss of an equivalent of 15 kilowatts energy to Udupi farmers. I was looking at statistics of global conflict and I found that the greater the difference in the holding of eMergy, the greater the conflict in the world. We have lost something like 75 to 100 million people in the last decade from1900 to 2001 due to conflict.

Essentially the driver is energy and knowledge of what is happening in the world.