I reccomend the following books:
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"Won't high oil prices motivate us to look for alternatives?"
To a certain degree, yes. Unfortunately, the situation is far too complex to be solved via alternative energy "plug-and-play" as is commonly believed. First, as explained in great depth later on this page, we really don't have any ready-to-scale alternatives that share oil's energy density, energy portability and high energy return on energy invested (EROEI).
Second, and perhaps more importantly, even if we did have alternatives that shared the characteristics of oil, we won't be motivated to invest in them on the massive scale necessary until it's too late. To illustrate this point: as of October 2007 a barrel of oil costs about $75. The amount of energy contained in that barrel of oil would cost between $100-$250* dollars to derive from alternative sources of energy. Thus, the market won't signal energy companies to begin aggressively pursuing alternative sources of energy until oil reaches the $100-$250 range and stays there for several years.
*This does not even account for the amount of money it would take to locate and refine the raw materials necessary for a large scale conversion or the retrofitting of the world's $50 trillion plus economy to run on these alternatives.
Once we do finally begin aggressively pursuing these alternatives, there will be a 25-to-50 year lag time between the initial heavy-duty research into these alternatives and their wide-scale industrial implementation. However, in order to finance an aggressive implementation of alternative energies, we need a tremendous amount of investment capital - in addition to affordable energy and raw materials - that we absolutely will not have once oil prices are permanently lodged in the $200-$300 per barrel neighborhood. Source
While we need 25-to-50 years to retrofit our economy to run on alternative sources of energy, we may only get 12-to-18 months once oil production peaks. Within a short time of global oil production hitting its peak, it will become impossible to dismiss the decline in supply as a merely transitory event. Once this occurs, traders on Wall Street will quickly bid the price up to, and possibly over, the $200 per barrel range as they realize the world is now in an era of permanent oil scarcity.
With oil at or above $200 per barrel, gasoline will reach $10 per gallon, assumming it is even available. This will cause a rapid breakdown of trucking industries and transportation networks which have all been built and financed under the assumption fuel prices would remain low. Importation and distribution of food, medicine, and consumer goods will grind to a halt as trucking and shipping companies go bankrupt en masse.
The effects of this will be frightening. As Jan Lundberg, founder of the Lundberg Survey, aka "the bible of the oil industry" recently pointed out:
"What's likely to happen to the economy?"
The US economy is particularly vulnerable to the coming oil shocks as we consume a greater proportion of the world's oil than any other nation. The unparalleled prosperity experienced in this country during the last 100 years was built entirely on cheap oil. Oil was discovered in 1859 but did not become a truly important industrial fuel until Henry Ford began mass producing automobiles in the early 1900s. The mass production of automobiles became a cornerstone of the US economy while allowing people to move out of the cities and into the suburbs.
The expansion of the suburbs fueled the real estate and housing booms of the 20th century, which in turn fueled the US steel, copper, construction, etc industries. A system of finance sprung up that facilitated these booms while simultaneously becoming dependent on them.
These trends are still driving the US economy here in the 21st century:
Fact #1. According to the American Automobile Manufacturers Association, one out of every seven jobs in the US is dependent on automobile manufacturing. Source
Fact #2. According to an August 2005 report by Merrill Lynch, half of the new jobs created in the US since 2001 are dependent on (suburban) housing construction.
Most of the automobile and home purchases in this country are made with interest-bearing loans which, absent a hyperinflationary monetary policy, can only be paid back in the aggregate if the economy grows. The US economy, at least in its current incarnation, can only grow if people can afford to drive more. As researcher Stuart Staniford has shown in a series of graphs originally published on The Oil Drum, a strong causal (if not virtually direct) relationship exists between miles driven and economic growth:
Remember, once we get the reactors built, we still have the not-so-inexpensive task of retrofitting a significant portion of the following to run on nuclear-derived electricity:
The 800 million oil-powered cars traversing the world's roads;The mllions of oil-powered airplanes crisscrossing the world's skies;Millions of oil-powered boats circumnavigating the world's oceans.Scientists have made some progress in regards to nuclear fusion, but the road from success in tabletop laboratory experiments to use as an industrial scale replacement for oil is an extremely long one that, even in the most favorable of circumstances, will take decades to traverse.
For more information, see:
"What about Ethanol?"
Ethanol, methanol etc. are great, but only in small doses. Like all other biofuels it is grown with massive fossil fuel inputs (pesticides and fertilizers) and suffer from horribly low, sometimes negative, EROEIs. The production of ethanol, for instance, requires six units of energy to produce just one. Source That means it consumes more energy than it produces and thus will only serve to compound our energy deficit.
In addition, there is the problem of where to grow the stuff, as we are rapidly running out of arable land on which to grow food, let alone fuel. Source This is no small problem as the amount of land it takes to grow even a small amount of biofuel is quite staggering. As journalist Lee Dye points out in a July 2004 article entitled "Old Policies Make Shift From Foreign Oil Tough:"
. . . relying on corn for our future energy needs would devastatethe nation's food production. It takes 11 acres to grow enoughcorn to fuel one automobile with ethanol for 10,000 miles, orabout a year's driving, Pimentel says. That's the amount of landneeded to feed seven persons for the same period of time. And ifwe decided to power all of our automobiles with ethanol, we wouldAccording to a Fortune Magazine article entitled "Ethanol Could Leave the World Hungry", emphasis added:
The growing myth that corn is a cure-all for our energy woes is leading us toward a potentially dangerous global fight for food.While crop-based ethanol -the latest craze in alternative energy -promises a guilt-free way to keep our gas tanks full, the reality isthat overuse of our agricultural resources could haveconsequences even more drastic than, say, being deprived of ourSUVs. It could leave much of the world hungry. One tankful ofFinally, geologist Byron King explains how small the nation's ethanol production is when compared to its collosal petroleum consumption:
. . . the forecast annual U.S. production of 11 billion gallons ofethanol translates into about 262 million barrels of that type offuel produced over the course of a year. And I am not evenadjusting for the energy density of ethanol, which is far lower,only 59.5%, than an equivalent barrel of petroleum. . . Whatappears at first to be an impressive number in terms of energysupply (11 billion gallons per year) is actually relatively small. Infact, it is almost in the "rounding error" of the nation's daily liquidFor more information, see
What about Biodiesel?
If we wanted to replace even a small part of our oil supply with farm grown biofuels, we would need to turn most of Africa into a giant biofuel farm, an idea that is currently gaining traction in some circles. Obviously many Africans - who are already starving - would not take kindly to us appropriating the land they use to grow their food to grow our fuel. As journalist George Monbiot points out, such an endeavor would be a humanitarian disaster.
Some folks are doing research into alternatives to soybeans such as biodiesel producing pools of algae. As with every other project that promises to "replace all petroleum fuels," this project has yet to produce a single drop of commercially available fuel. This hasn't prevented many of its most vocal proponents from insisting that algae grown biodiesel will solve our energy problems. The same is true for other, equally ambitious plans such as using recycled farm waste, switchgrass, etc. These projects all look great on paper or in the laboratory. Some of them may even end up providing a small amount of commercially available energy at some undetermined point in the future. However, in the context of our colossal demand for petroleum and the small amount of time we have remaining before the peak, these projects can't be expected to be more than a "drop in the bucket."
Tragically, many well-meaing people attempting to develop solutions don't even understand this. As Dr. Ted Trainer explains in a recent article on the thermodynamic limitations of biomass fuels:
This is why I do not believe consumer-capitalist society can saveitself. Not even its "intellectual" classes or green leadership giveany sign that this society has the wit or the will to even thinkabout the basic situation we are in. As the above figures makeclear, the situation cannot be solved without huge reduction in thevolume of production and consumption going on. The current craze surrounding biodiesel is a good example of what Dr. Trainer is talking about. While folks who have converted their personal vehicles to run on vegetable oil should certainly be given credit for their noble attempts at reducing our reliance on petroleum, the long-term viability of their efforts is questionable at best. Once our system of food production collapses due to the effects of Peak Oil, vegetable oil will likely become far too precious/expensive a commodity to be burned as transportation fuel for anybody but the super-rich. As James Kunstler points out in an April 2005 update to his blog "Cluster Fuck Nation", many biodiesel enthusiasts are dangerously clueless as to this reality:
Over in Vermont last week, I ran into a gang of biodieselenthusiasts. They were earnest, forward-looking guys who wouldlike to do some good for their country. But their expectationsstruck me as fairly crazy, and in a way typical of the bad thinkingat all levels of our society these days.For instance, I asked if it had ever occurred to them that biodieselcrops would have to compete for farmland that would be neededotherwise to grow feed crops for working animals. No, it hadn't.(And it seemed like a far-out suggestion to them.) Theirexpectation seemed to be that the future would run a lot like thepresent, that bio-diesel was just another ingenious, innovative,high-tech module that we can "drop into" our existing system inplace of the previous, obsolete module of regular oil.Kunstler goes on to explain that when policies or living/working arrangements are set up around such unexamined expectations, the result is usually a dangerous deepening of our reliance on cheap energy and "easy motoring."
Biodiesel advocates can get downright nasty when somebody points out any of the above described limitations of their favorite fuel. For instance, in a December 2005 article entitled, "The Most Destructive Crop on Earth No Solution to the Energy Crisis," well known progressive journalist George Monbiot, recounted his experiences attempting to point out the limits of biodiesel:
The last time I drew attention to the hazards of making diesel fuelfrom vegetable oils, I received as much abuse as I have ever beensent for my stance on the Iraq war. The biodiesel missionaries areas vociferous in their denial as the executives of Exxon Mobil.If biofuels such as biodiesel and ethanol are such poor substitutes for oil, why then do you hear about them so much? The answer becomes obvious once you follow the money: the vast majority of the biofuels produced in this country are (as mentioned earlier) produced by giant agribusiness conglomerates such as Archer Daneiles Midland. Investigative reporter Mike Ruppert points out:
Archer Daniels Midland laughs all the way to the bank. With a price to earnings (P/E) ratio of 17:1, every dollar of net profit throwninto their coffers by politicians or investment advisors selling thesnake oil of alternative fuels generates $17 in stock value whichADM will happily sell off before all the markets succumb to PeakOil. That came out of your pocket whether you invested or not.See also:
"What About Synthetic Oil From Coal?"
Coal can be used to make synthetic oil via a process known as gasification. Unfortunately, synthetic oil will be unable to do all that much to soften the coming energy crash for the following reasons:
Insufficiency of Supply/"Peak Coal":
The coal supply is not as great as many assume. According to a July 2004 article published by the American Institute of Physics:
If demand remains frozen at the current rate of consumption, thecoal reserve will indeed last roughly 250 years. That predictionassumes equal use of all grades of coal, from anthracite to lignite.Population growth alone reduces the calculated lifetime to some100−120 years. Any new uses of coal would further reduce thesupply. . . The use of coal for conversion to other fuels wouldquickly reduce the lifetime of the US coal base to less than aEven a 50-75 year supply of coal is not as much as it sounds because coal production, like oil production, will peak long before the total supply is exhausted. Were we to liquefy a large portion of our coal endowment in order to produce synthetic oil, coal production would likely peak within 2 decades, if not sooner.
Coal's Falling "Energy Profit Ratio":
As John Gever explains in his book, Beyond Oil: The Threat to Food and Fuel in Coming Decades, the production of coal will be in energy-loser within a few decades:
. . . the energy profit ratio for coal slips to 20 in 1977, comparableto that of domestic petroleum. While an energy profit ratio of 20means that only 5 percent of coal's gross energy is needed toobtain it, the sharp decline since 1967 is alarming. If it continuesto drop at this rate, the energy profit ratio of coal will slide to 0.5by 2040.In other words, with an EPR of .5, it will take twice as much energy to produce the coal than the coal actually contains. It will thus be of no use to us as an energy source.
Issue of Scale and Environmental Catastrophe:
The environmental consequences of a huge increase in coal production would be truly catastrophic. Caltech physics professor Dr. David Goodstein explains:
We use now about twice as much energy from oil as we do from coal, so if you wanted to mine enough coal to replace the missingoil, you’d have to mine it at a much higher rate, not only toreplace the oil, but also because the conversion process to oil isextremely inefficient. You’d have to mine it at levels at least fivetimes beyond those we mine now — a coal-mining industry on anIn his book, Out of Gas:The End of the Oil Age, Dr. Goodstein tells us that a large scale switch to coal could produce such severe global warming that life on planet Earth would cease to exist.
For more information, see:
"Can't We Use a Combination of
the Alternatives to Replace Oil?"
Absolutely. Despite their individual shortcomings, it is still possible for the world economy to run on a basket of alternative sources of energy - so long as we immediately get all of the following:
Need #1. A few dozen technological breakthroughs;
Need #2. An unprecedented degree political will, honesty, and bipartisan cooperation;
Need #3. Tremendous international collaboration;
Need #4. Massive amounts of investment capital;
Need #5. Fundamental reforms to the banking system;
Need #6. No interference or obfuscation from the oil industry
Need #7. About 25-50 years of general peace and prosperity to retrofit the world's $45 trillion dollar per year economy including transportation and telecommunication networks, manufacturing industries, agricultural systems, universities, hospitals, etc. , to run on these new source of energy.
Need #8. Rational and non-corrupt elected officials and capable government appointees to manage the generation long transition.
If we get all of the above, we might be able to get the energy equivalent of 3-5 billion barrels of oil per year from alternative sources.
That's a tremendous amount of oil - about as much as the entire world used per year during the 1950s, but it's nowhere near enough to keep our currently mammoth-sized yet highly volatile global economic system going. The world currently requires over 30 billion barrels/1.2 trillion gallons of oil per year to support economic growth. That requirement will only increase as time goes on due to population growth, debt servicing, and the industrialization of nations such as China and India.
So even if the delusionally optimistic 9-step scenario described above is somehow miraculously manifested, we're still facing a 70-90% reduction in the amount of energy available to us. A 70-90% reduction would be extremely painful, but not the "end of the world" if it wasn't for the fact that, as explained above, the monetary system will collapse in the absence of a constantly increasing energy supply. If a shortfall between demand and supply of 5% is enough to send prices up by 400%, what to you think a shortfall of 70-90% is going to do?
To make matters worse, even if the all of the above obstacles are assumed away, we are still faced with the problem of "economic doubling time." If the economy grows at a healthy clip of 3.5% per year, it doubles in size every 20 years. That growth must be fueled by an energy supply that doubles just as quickly. Thus, our total "energy debt" will have compounded itself by the time we have made any major strides in switching to alternative sources of energy.
"What about amazing new technologies such as thermal depolymerization, solar nanotech, space based solar arrays, and other 'energy-miracles'?"
Thermal Depolymerization:
Thermal depolymerization is an intriguing solution to our landfill problems, but since most of the feedstock (such as tires and turkey guts) requires high-grade oil to make in the first place, it is more "high-tech recycling" than it is a solution to a permanent oil shortage.
While the following analogy is certainly a bit disgusting, it should clearly illustrate why thermal depolymerization won't do much to soften the coming collapse:
Expecting thermal depolymerization to help solve our long termenergy problems makes as much sense as expecting theconsumption of our own feces to help solve a long-term famine. Inboth cases, the energy starved party is simply recycling a smallportion of the energy they had previously consumed.On a less grotesque note, the technology is besieged by several fundamental shortcomings that those desperately hoping for a techno-messiah tend to overlook:
First, there is the problem of production costs. According to a recent article in Fortune Magazine, a barrel of oil produced via the thermal depolymerization process costs $80 to produce as of January 2005. To put that figure in perspective, consider the fact that oil pulled out of the ground in Saudi Arabia costs less than $2.50 per barrel, while oil pulled out of the ground in Iraq costs only $1.00 per barrel.
This means that with spot oil prices in the $50/barrel range, a barrel of oil produced via thermal depolymerization in January 2005 would have to sell for between $1,600-$4,000 per barrel to have a return on investment comparable to oil produced from Saudi Arabia or Iraq.
Oil prices of $1,600-$4,000 per barrel would put gas prices at roughly $80-$200 per gallon.
If the technology was the miracle many people are desperately hoping for, the company would likely not have needed a grant from the Department of Energy to keep its head above water. Nor would it have been the subject of an April 2005 Kansas City Star article appropriately entitled, "Innovative Turkey-to-Oil Plant Eats Money, Spits Out Fowl Odor."
Sky-high production costs and horrific odor problems aside, a look at the history of thermal depolymerization tends to show it will never amount to more than a tiny drop in the giant barrel that is our oil appetite.The technology was first developed for commercial use in 1996. Here we are, ten years later and there is only one thermal depolymerization plant online and it is producing less than 500 barrels of oil per day, despite record high oil prices. Even if oil production from thermal depolymerization is upscaled by a factor of 1,000, and the cost of production brought down by a factor of 10, it will still only be producing 500,000 barrels of oil per day. While that may make a tremendous amount of money for the company, it won't make much difference in our overall situation as the global need for oil is projected to reach 120,000,000 barrels per day by 2020.
If thermal depolymerization sounded "too good to be true" when you first heard about it, now you know why.
Space Based Solar Arrays
As disappointing as thermal depolymerization has been to those hoping for a techno-savior, at least it has produced a small amount of commercially available energy. The same cannot be said for space-based solar arrays, which according to NASA, are plagued by "major technical, regulatory and conceptual hurdles" and won't see the light of day for several decades.
Even if these major hurdles are somehow cleared inside of 5 years instead of 50 years, there is still the not-so-minor problem of rewiring all of industrial civilization - including agriculture, communications, transportation, defense, health care, education, industry, government, finance/banking, etc. . . to run on space-derived solar energy.
Of course, before the global rewiring can begin, we have to find the energy, raw materials, political willingness, financial capital, etc. to get such a project off the ground. We also have to find a way to prevent China's million man standing army from snapping up all the raw materials necessary to make the transition.
Solar Nanotechonology:
While there are some promising technological advancements in solar-nanotechnology, even Dr. Richard Smalley, the scientist at the forefront of these technologies, admits we need a series of "miracles" to prevent a total collapse of industrial civilization. Source In the February 2005 issue of Discover Magazine, Dr. Smalley gave the following prognosis:
There will be inflation as billions of people compete for insufficientresources. There will be famine. There will be terrorism and war.He went on to say that it will take "presidential leadership" to inspire us to pursue technologies that might alleviate this crisis.
In other words, the chances of technology saving you from the coming economic collapse are about the same as the chances of another virgin-birth taking place.
For you or any other "average" person to expect high-tech solutions to save you from the economic effects of Peak Oil is akin to a person living in sub-Saharan Africa to expect high-tech medical treatments to save their community from the effects of AIDS. These treatments are only available and affordable for super-wealthy people like Magic Johnson, not the average people in Africa.
Likewise, many of the recent technological advancements in energy production and efficiency may be available and affordable to extraordinarily wealthy people or agencies like the Department of Defense, but they aren't going to be available or affordable to the rest of us.
"What About Super Fuel Efficient
and/or Electric Cars?"
Hybrids:
Hybrids or so called "hyper-cars" aren't the answer either because the construction of an average car consumes the energy equivalent of approximately 27-54 barrels (1,110-2,200 gallons) of oil. Thus, a crash program to replace the 700 million internal combustion vehicles currently on the road with super fuel-efficient or alternative fuel-powered vehicles would consume the energy equivalent of approximately 18-36 billion barrels of oil, which is the amount of oil the world currently consumes in six-to-twelve months. Consequently, such a program (while well-intentioned) would actually bring the collapse upon us even sooner.
See also:
Electric Vehicles:
Electric vehicles are incapable of replacing more than a small fraction (5 or maybe 10%) of the 700 million internal combustion engine powered cars on the road due to the limits of battery technology. Dr. Walter Youngquist explains:
. . . a gallon of gasoline weighing about 8 pounds has the sameenergy as one ton of conventional lead-acid storage batteries.Fifteen gallons of gasoline in a car's tank are the energy equal of15 tons of storage batteries. Even if much improved storage batteries were devised, theycannot compete with gasoline or diesel fuel in energy density.Also, storage batteries become almost useless in very coldweather, storage capacity is limited, and batteries need to bereplaced after a few years use at large cost. There is no battery pack which can effectively move heavy farmmachinery over miles of farm fields, and no electric batterysystem seems even remotely able to propel a Boeing 747 14 hoursnonstop at 600 miles an hour . . . Some promising research into new battery technlogies using lithium is being performed, but even the scientists at the forefront of this research admit, "We've got a long way to go."
See also:
Assumming these problems away, the construction of an average car also consumes 120,000 gallons of fresh water. Source Unfortunately, the world is in the midst of a severe water crisis that is only going to get worse in the years to come. Source Scientists are already warning us to get ready for massive "water wars."
Thus, the only way for us to replace our current fleet of gas-guzzling SUVs with fuel-efficient hybrids or electric vehicles is to seize control of the world's reserves of both oil and fresh water and then divert those resources away from the billions of people who already rely on them.
Even if we are willing to undertake such an endeavor, the problem will still not be solved due to a phenomenon known as "Jevon's Paradox," whereby increases in energy efficiency are obliterated by corresponding increases in energy consumption.
The US economy is a good example of Jevon's Paradox in action. Since 1970, we have managed to cut in half the amount of oil necessary to generate a dollar of GDP. At the same time, however, our total level of oil consumption has risen by about fifty percent while our level of natural gas and coal consumption have risen by even more. Thus, despite massive increases in the energy efficiency over the last 35 years, we are more dependent on oil than ever. This trend is unlikely to be abated in a market economy, where the whole point is to make as much money (consume as much energy) as possible.
"What About Large-Scale Efforts at Conserving Energy or Becoming More Energy Efficient?"
Amazingly, such efforts will actually make our situation worse. This probably makes absolutely no sense unless you understand how the modern day banking and monetary system works. To illustrate, let's revisit Jevon's Paradox, explained above, with an example:
Pretend you own a computer store and that your monthly energy bill, as of December 2004, is $1,000. You then learn about the coming energy famine and decide to do your part by conserving as much as possible. You install energy efficient lighting, high quality insulation, and ask your employees to wear sweaters so as to minimize the use of your store's heating system.
After implementing these conservation measures, you manage to lower your energy bill by 50% - down to $500 per month.
While you certainly deserve a pat-on-the-back and your business will certainly become more profitable as a result of your conservation efforts, you have in no way helped reduce our overall energy appetite. In fact, you have actually increased it.
At this point, you may be asking yourself, "How could I have possibly increased our total energy consumption when I just cut my own consumption by $500/month? That doesn't seem to make common sense . . .?"
Well think about what you're going to do with that extra $500 per month you saved. If you're like most people, you're going to do one of two things:
Option #1. You will reinvest the $500 in your business. For instance, you might spend the $500 on more advertising. This will bring in more customers, which will result in more computers being sold. Since, as mentioned previously, the average desktop computer consumes 10X it's weight fossil-fuels just during its construction (Source) your individual effort at conserving energy has resulted in the consumption of more energy.
Option #2. You will simply deposit the $500 in your bank accoun where it will accumulate interest. Since you're not using the money to buy or sell anything, it can't possibly be used to facilitate an increase in energy consumption, right?
Wrong. For every dollar a bank holds in deposits, it will loan out between six and twelve dollars. Source These loans are then used by the bank's customers to do everything from starting businesses to making down payments on vehicles to purchasing computers.
Thus, your $500 deposit will allow the bank to make between $3,000 and $6,000 in loans - most of which will be used to buy, build,or transport things using fossil fuel energy.
Typically, Jevon's Paradox is one of the aspects of our situation that people find difficult to get their minds around. Perhaps one additional example will help clarify it:
Think of our economy as a giant petroleum powered machine that turns raw materials into consumer goods which are later turned into garbage:
Petroleum In > The Economy Garbage Out >
If you remove the machine's internal inefficiencies, the extra energy is simply reinvested into the petroleum supply side of the machine. The machine continues to consume petroleum and spit out garbage but now at an even faster, "more efficient" rate.
The only way to get the machine to consume less petroleum is for whoever owns/operates the machine to press the button that says "slow-down." However, since we are all dependent on the machine for jobs, food, health care, subsidies for alternative forms of energy, etc., nobody is going to lobby the owners/operators of the machine to press the "slow-down" button until it's too late.
Eventually (sooner than later) the petroleum plug will get pulled and the machine's production will sputter before grinding to a halt. At that point, those of us dependent on the machine (which means all of us) will have to fight for whatever scraps it manages to spit out.
To be clear: conservation will benefit you as an individual. If, for instance, you save $100/month on your energy bills, you can roll that money into acquiring skills or resources that will benefit you as we slide down the petroleum-production downslope. But since your $100 savings will result in a net increase in the energy consumed by society as a whole, it will actually cause us to slide down the downslope faster. (Note: for examples of Jevon's Paradox in action in other areas, click here.)
For more information:
Anyone tired of lousy news from the markets should talk to Douglas Lloyd, a director of Venture Business Research, which tracks trends in venture capitalism. "I expect investment activity in this sector to remain buoyant," he said recently. Lloyd's bouncy mood was inspired by the money that is gushing into private security and defence companies. He added: "I also see this as a more attractive sector, as many do, than clean energy."
Got that? If you are looking for a sure bet in a new growth market, then sell solar and buy surveillance: forget wind, buy weapons. This observation - coming from an executive who is trusted by such clients as Goldman Sachs and Marsh & McLennan - deserves particular attention . . .