Your power bill is standing by

peakoil.com -> forbes.com :

If someone asked you to burn 10% of your cash, it’s doubtful you’d comply. But this happens every month with your energy bill. The culprit: the many electronic devices in your home that are always on, even when you think they’re off. “Standby power can be 10% to 15% of the energy load of a state,” says Andrew Fanara, team leader for product specification development at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “In California they went to homes where everything was shut off, and even then they consumed 100 to 105 watts of standby power at all times.”

Digital video recorders and cable/satellite converter boxes are among the most profligate. These devices, known as “set-top boxes,” draw a constant 30 or more watts of power. Computers are also a huge standby drain. Traditional computers average 35.5 watts in standby, while laptops average 16.5 watts. Other large standby drainers include ink jet printers, which can use from three to 20 watts, and mini-stereos, which can consume from one to 25 watts.

- Update : I have finally turned off the old VCR. I figure I don’t need another clock display since there is a battery-powered clock on the wall, and all my computers auto-sync themselves to atomic clocks. I have also turned off the speakers for the PC’s. The *second*, not-really-necessary, analog, non-DECT, non-encrypted cordless phone may be turned off permanently – soon.

Existing measures include setting up the wireless network in a cascaded subnet topology, such that while the original (and still working after 5-6 years) wired Linksys BEF-SR41 router remains on, the Linksys WRT-54GL wireless router and the third (!) PC in the bedroom are turned on only when needed. All battery chargers are also turned on only when needed.

One of the measures with the greatest potential impact could be the replacement of the electric hot air-pot with a Tiger vacuum flask. The old air-pot was demonstrably guzzling electricity since I have noted that the outside surface felt hot to the touch. It was continuously heating up water for the occasional use (!). Quite a waste actually.

…. and then there’s the matter of the *second* fridge …

Well, I’d suppose that my household guzzles energy, to the tune of 650-700 KWh per month (!). Way above the national average consumption for my housing type (supposedly 474 KWh for a HDB 5-room flat as indicated on the power bill). On the other hand, we have not turned on the aircon to sleep through the night for years, we have cancelled our cable TV subscription (so no more set-top box!) many years ago, and we have replaced the old, spoilt Ariston 3.0KW dryer with a more efficient Fisher Paykel 1.8KW model <- still need that, because, with 3 adults and 2 kids in the house, the existing clothes line capacity is regularly exceeded.

Let’s see what transpires in the next few billing cycles.

See also :

1. Electricity tariff to go up 2.3%
2. TV standby buttons will be outlawed

- via lowem.log

 

Corporate energy awareness

Over an in-house lunch at the office, our R&D team’s Chief Architect spoke at length about biofuels, and how it is going to turn out to be a choice between feeding people or feeding cars – a topic I have blogged on earlier. My colleague and senior, a System Architect, proffered his opinion that biofuels are nothing but a gimmick. I noted that we burn up in fossil fuels the equivalent of 400 years of global plant and animal growth each and every year, so it’s not like biodiesel can help much.

My boss, VP Software Engineering, and the Chief Architect, then talked about the storage and range problems associated with using hydrogen as a fuel (or rather, as an energy carrier, as peakoilers will point out). A fellow colleague chimed in with his observation that there is a hydrogen fueling station at East Coast and how it seemed to have been built just for one particular “million-dollar Mercedes” seen zipping around the area.

I’m not quite sure how the discussion came about though. Perhaps it was the sight of the amount of catered food (KFC and Pizza Hut) on the conference table, and how someone remarked how we shouldn’t waste it as we had apparently ordered a bit more than needed. But it’s interesting to see how awareness of energy issues is making its way into the company. And these folks are alpha geeks – the smartest people in the room, in fact some of the smartest people I have ever worked with. They are probably a couple of notches down on the “doomerosity scale” but that’s fine by me; there are no economists in the room.

Elsewhere, in the parent company, it is also apparent that there is an increasing level of corporate awareness of energy issues. The current edition of the company newsletter has an article on the front page about alternative commuting options such as vanpools, carpools, bus services and even cycling to work. An employee comments enthusiastically about a work-related advantage : “I drive in with eight people who work on the F-22, and it keeps me in touch with what’s happening …”

So, how does your company fare on the energy awareness scale? How about your colleagues, on a personal level? Are you the resident peakoiler in your company or department? Has the corporate HQ shown any awareness or taken any action in this regard?

 

Electricity tariff to go up 2.3%

It’s official.

Electricity tariffs will go up by an average of 2.3 percent or 0.49 cents per KWh (kilo-watt hour) between October 1 and December 31 this year.

If you care to check out Singapore Power’s website for the details on the tariff hikes, you might see that it went up 3.04¢ per kWh (+18.4%) in 2005 while in 2006, it’s an annual increase of 2.07¢ (10.6%).

Even though the increase has slowed, I believe consumers in Singapore can do certain things to offset their increased expenditure in this area.

Conservation.

Personally, I’ve started switching off home appliances (with standby modes) at the source for about 2 months now. Overall, I’ve gotten a savings of 7% so far. This month, I’m starting to cut down my usage of airconditioning, replacing its use with electric fans. From this, I should see a further 15% reduction in my electrical bills.

And, this is not because I cannot afford my bills.

But rather, I feel people should starting thinking about how they are spending their money. If you look at the economics of this situation, not curbing your usage will send the signal to our commercial power producers that their product is price inelastic, meaning, they can still increase prices without an impact on revenues, and hence profits. Remember, unlike our public transport whose rates are regulated by the PTC, our now-commercial power sector does not have such controls or transparencies.

Normally, if these companies are losing their pants selling subsidised power to me, I would just shut up and pay up. But the fact is that these power companies are reaping more profits than ever (I’m only up to 2005 with their annual reports). So, in spite of how it is preached to me that “fuel cost make up 55% of the cost of electricity”, it is financially straightforward to see how these tariff hikes will ultimately improve profits.

All’s fair and square in economics.

If you feel this continued trend of tariff hikes is ‘ok’, go on and continue to pay your bills.

If you don’t like it, start conserving. Imagine, if we’re all to switch off our standby-mode appliances alone, power producers will see a 7% drop in their retail revenues. This will send a strong signal to them that electricity tariffs is not that inelastic afterall. And, they will think harder about pricing when the next quarter comes.

Besides, it’s good for the environment

 

Interlude

Wow, I didn’t realised I made the last post to this blog exactly one month ago, and for that matter, it wasn’t even my own writing! I took a much needed break from too much Peak Oil talk – taking good advice from Matt Savinar, himself only thinking and writing about PO once a week.

A month has passed but I’ve been busy changing my lifestyle. The focus of which is to lower my personal carbon emission.

Turning Off Appliances
First off, I started to practice of switching off home appliances at the source, leaving all of them totally off, not on some standby mode. I do this when I’m out to work or off to sleep. I did this for 2 months and got a savings of 7.5% off my electricity bills.

At work, I rolled out a similar exercise for colleagues to turn off everything after work and over weekends. The savings are similar but due to the bigger bill, we were able to give a couple of hundred dollars less to Singapore Power.

Less Airconditioning

Riding on this little victory, I decided to tackle the biggest guzzler of electricity at my household – airconditioning. For about 10 days now, I’ve stopped using airconditioning when I work at night. In it’s place are two 38W fans that circulates fresh air into my study for an average of 3-4 hours a night. I did a little math and found that in a month, I might save up to $80 per month doing this.

Carbon-Free Day (for the car)

I’ve set Saturday as the day we don’t drive the car. Mathematically, it’s a 1/7 savings on fuel, but given that we drive more on Saturdays, I would say it could be as high as 25%.

Walk It If You Can

I recently reorganised my songs on my iPod into various lists and started to take them wherever I go. That way, I have ‘good excuse’ to take a walk instead of the usual 2-stop train ride. It’s a little time consuming but I’ve got lots of that to spare on weekends.

Riding to Work

I just started this today. The usual 8-minute commute is now a 20-minute bicycle ride. Because I perspire so much, I can only do it on days I don’t meet my clients.

Lower-Power Servers

I just realised that my Dell rack servers are 350-500W machines. And the Mac Mini just takes in 100W at peak. Starting next month, we will be swapping out those racks and moving the Mac Mini’s in. A nice little surprise is that because the Mini’s are so small and quiet, we might not even need to house them in a room that airconditioned 24×7. This saves us even more energy.

 

LNG Will Not Provide Energy Security

This is a repost of Ng Weng Hoong’s (Editor of www.EnergyAsia.com) letter to the Straits Times on our recent decision to build an LNG terminal here. I got to know Weng Hoong over the Internet. He’s been writing on energy for 20 years and I certainly look forward to picking his brains a lot more in the months to come.

Dear Sir,

Singapore’s search for energy security and diversification is leading it to commit deeper to fossil fuels for our energy supply. We should remember that natural gas, like oil, is a depletable resource, and an increasingly expensive one as it is linked to oil pricing. As oil prices continue to climb, there will be no escaping higher gas and power prices down the road.

Two weeks ago, the Trade and Industry Minister, Mr Lim Hng Kiang, announced Singapore’s decision to build an LNG terminal in 2012 based on a study by a Tokyo Gas Engineering-led consortium. The consortium made rosy assumptions about the availability and cost of LNG in the coming years. Yet, oil and gas producers have been warning and continue to warn that the cost of finding, extracting, delivering, storing and processing fossil fuels will continue to rise. There’s also the extra cost brought on by geopolitical conflicts and terrorism, which won’t go away any time soon.

Qatar and Australia, among those cited by Singapore as potential suppliers, are straining to meet demand by much large consumers around the world with whom Singapore will have to compete if we chose the LNG path. At the opening of China’s first LNG terminal in Dapeng, Guangdong in late June, Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard told his Chinese hosts including Premier Wen Jiabao to expect to pay alot more for future LNG supplies from his country. There were even calls among Australian companies to revise upwards the cost of the LNG signed under their 2002 contract. Qatar has also made it clear that most of its production capacity has been sold out, while Russia’s energy supply, which Singapore is also courting, is not stable or reliable as a result of its internal politics.

According to Mr Lim, we need to import LNG as an alternative to piped natural gas supply from Indonesia and Malaysia. LNG is being touted as a viable and necessary alternative to ensure feedstock for our power plants.

In pursuing the LNG option, the interest of the power companies is being equated to that of national energy security. If energy security is the bigger concern, we should take a deeper and wider view on energy supply and demand issues. I believe energy security will be one of Singapore’s biggest challenges in the coming years.

The oil markets are sending a clear and unmistakable message that we’ve moved into an era of high energy prices. World demand continues to set new record highs each year as many countries are pursuing the US consumer lifestyle and model of economic development, both based largely on cheap fossil fuels. The world’s ‘easy oil’ have all been uncovered, forcing countries and governments now to go after reserves in places that are harder to access, both geologically and politically. There is now a worldwide scramble for fossil fuels, coal and uranium, leading to further conflict among nations. When cheap energy is no longer available, what happens to our way of life and the economy that we’re used to? Our assumption is that we need and — somehow — will continue to find the additional energy supply at whatever cost to maintain an increasingly unsustainable lifestyle.

We need to start planning for scenarios if and when oil hits US$100 or US$150 a barrel. The decision to go with the LNG terminal was based purely on a comparison of choices between competing fossil fuels. The conclusions reached by the TGE study failed to take into account the growing debate in the oil industry of a possible peaking of global oil reserves, and that we’re living in a more dangerous and unpredictable world.

A more comprehensive study would examine the impact of US$100-150-a-barrel oil on Singapore’s economy, and which sectors will not survive the onslaught of high energy prices. Should we be even promoting the development of cheap airlines? How will tourism be impacted? How will the proposed integrated resort be affected? It is interesting to note that all the studies and debate on the integrated resort have failed to address the issue of the impact of high oil prices. The integrated resort project is founded on the assumption of cheap energy. Its sustainability could be called into question with higher energy prices.

What is the role and future of our power companies in an era of high oil and gas prices? The EMA projects further growth in electricity demand into the future. My quesion is: do we necessarily need to use more electricity?

Can we reduce or at least maintain our power and energy demand with better urban and transportation planning and building design, enforcing tough efficiency, conservation and recycling measures, and getting rid of sectors that could not survive in an era of high energy cost? Can our buildings be planned and built in a way to reduce the need for air conditioning? Can power consumption in lighting be reduced? Can we plan for the demise of energy-intensive sectors that won’t survive high oil prices? Is it possible to forgo the construction of the LNG terminal by making these collective changes?

If a Republican President from oil-rich Texas recognises that his country is addicted to oil and that they should be doing something about it, shouldn’t Singapore be concerned too?

Instead of spending US$500 million on a small LNG terminal — and this excludes the rising cost of LNG supply contracts — would we better off now preparing to reduce energy use, and introduce solar and other alternative energy sources into Singapore? Would the country be better served if electricity generation was decentralised? There are enough tall buildings in Singapore to take on solar panels and films to lessen the load on the power grid. What other viable energy sources are available? Would the LNG terminal and the slow-moving vessels that deliver natural gas to the terminal make for attractive terrorist targets, thereby weakening, not strengthening, our energy security?

We need to subject our every economic decision, every project to the question: “How will this project cope with oil at US$100 a barrel, US$150 and US$200?” If it fails the test, we should drop it or find new ways around it.

On a broader note, we will need to look at the impact of rising energy costs on our food supply, medical care and our basic needs. Do we know how US$100-150 oil will affect our food costs and supply? This will be worthy of a detailed study.

What is Singapore’s energy policy? We have several ministries and agencies looking at various aspects of energy issues, but not a coherent, broadbased policy needed to deal with energy security. Would a carefully thought out energy policy endorse the LNG terminal?

There are enough warning signs that we are headed into an energy crisis. We should consider these warnings and start preparing now.

 

Peak Oil and Food

SPOG (Singapore Peak Oil Group) had an interesting meeting last Saturday. I (2nd from left) gave a briefing to the group on my Peak Oil presentation to MTI’s Energy Planning Division and we brainstormed on how to engage a wider audience on the subject. Choong Yong (dunpanic, first from left) felt we should approach it from a universal interest of Singaporeans, food. (3rd from left: Chardy, Toh Chye and Ee Mien)
Over the last couple of days, I managed to squeeze some time on this. Below are my findings.

1. Food is Energy

Most of you wouldn’t know but we are literally eating fossil fuels. In “The Tightening Conflict: Population, Energy Use and the Ecology of Agriculture“, Giampietro and Pimentel built on earlier research to derive how industrialized agriculture in the US uses 10kcal of energy (exosomatic, e.g. gas used in harvesters) to produce 1kcal of food.

More than 10 kcalories (kilogram-calories or “large calories”) of exosomatic energy are spent in the U.S. food system per kcalorie of food delivered to the consumer. Put another way, the food system consumes ten times more energy than it provides to society in food energy.

You might be skeptical about the high 10:1 ratio, but consider these uses of fossil fuels in your average commercial farm:

• pesticides are made from oil;
• commercial fertilizers are made from ammonia which is made from natural gas;
• tractors, harvesters and trailers are run on petroleum;
• food storage systems (refrigeration) run on electricity (which comes from coal, gas or oil) or gas;
• food processing is powered by electricity;
• the food distribution network is entirely dependent on oil;
• most food is delivered to you packaged in plastics, which comes from petroleum; and
• (in the US) the average piece of food is transported over 1,400 miles.

Once you agree on the amount of fossil fuel energy that goes into the food you eat, it’s easy to understand why increasing oil prices will result in increasing food prices.

2. The Oil>Food>Population (Vicious) Cycle

The 20th century saw the biggest jump in the world’s population in our entire history. And there’s a website that’s telling me the world’s population right now is around 6.58 billion. Now, you don’t have to read Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb (1968) or Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth (1972) to know this: we’ve roughly added the entire population of the US from 2000 to 2004 but not anywhere near the amount of resources (land, water, food, energy).

Historically, when agriculture was ‘powered’ by manual labour, population has been capped by-and-large by the limited amount of food available. Then, in 1945, the Green Revolution happened and farmers started using new techniques such as irrigation, chemical fertilizers & pesticides and mechanized harvesters to industrialize the agricultural sector. Interestingly, it was the Rockefeller Foundation that initially funded the program (yes, this is the Rockefeller of Standard Oil, the original oil conglomerate in the US).

So you see, the availability of oil created the abundance of food which lead to the boom in our population. I call this the Oil>Food>Population cycle.

It’s really all and well if there’s more oil to be made available. But, when the rate of oil production slows, food production will tumble and people will go hungry. That’s the vicious side of this cycle.

3. Food Sovereignty

The term “Food Sovereignty” was coined by Via Campesina in 1996:

Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to define their own food and agriculture; to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production and trade in order to achieve sustainable development objectives; to determine the extent to which they want to be self reliant; to restrict the dumping of products in their markets; and to provide local fisheries-based communities the priority in managing the use of and the rights to aquatic resources. Food sovereignty does not negate trade, but rather, it promotes the formulation of trade policies and practices that serve the rights of peoples to safe, healthy and ecologically sustainable production.

When food prices keep the pace of rising oil prices, it is the poor that will be hungry first. Against this background, food sovereignty takes on added importance because the presence of domestic agriculture production will:

• cushion the rate of increase in imported food prices;
• make avail alternative (local) sources of food; and
• enable the poor to feed themselves by working on the farms.

It is no wonder that more and more countries are taking action to re-structure their agriculture both at both government- (UK, Australia) and community-levels (Vermont, USA).

4. There’s Almost Zero Agriculture in Singapore

I did some number crunching on statistics reported on Singapore’s AVA website (www.ava.gov.sg). (Note: I didn’t use data on eggs because it was reported in numbers rather than weight. So, take note, we do produce some 2% of our own eggs)

As you can see from the chart above, we grow very little of our own food. There’s no pork, beef, mutton or duck. And, I’m not sure if rice imports comes under Vegetables or is that out of the picture as well.

Well, it’s kind of ok now because Singapore is a rich little nation and we focus on comparative advantages such bio-medical sciences, hi-tech manufacturing, banking, tourism, etc to bring in the big bucks. And right now, that kind of pays for all the food we want to get our hands on: air-flown Australian pork, Brazilian chicken and Swiss chocolates. And as our leaders have alluded of late: when prices go up, Singaporeans will turn on their creative gears and make more money to pay for [blank] (the example given was electricity).

My main concern with food is not with increasing prices, but with supply disruptions:

• What if the Australians and Brazilians decided to reconfigure their agricultural mix and that results in not producing enough pork and chicken to sell to us?
• What if a shortage of fertilizers results in a production collapse of rice in SE Asia?
• What if fishermen really did over-fish our seas?
• What if another Katrina hits an agriculture region?

Supply disruptions, by definition, means you don’t get the goods no matter how much money you have.

Conclusion

Overall, I think the Food approach to Peak Oil is an effective one. The subject matter is close to heart and the impact of oil on food prices is easy to understand.

And if you take this to the average man on the street, what would they say? I hope this will kindle some sense of ownership of the situation at hand. I would even go so far to expect people to ask what they can do today to address the situation. I’ve some answers here but let me hear from you first.

 

Debunking the debunker

I was taking a short break from Peak Oil by reading stuff people are putting up on the other side of the fence. One of the most popular has to be Peak Oil Debunked (peakoildebunked.blogspot.com) by JD. At the time of this writing, JD has some 309 breathtaking (read: long) articles. While I’m still going through some of JD’s claims, here’s a sample of the kind of rebuttal that he’s coming up with:

Consider GTL. Shell is investing $5 billion in a GTL facility in Qatar which will produce 140,000bbl/d of diesel when it is completed in 2011. A barrel of crude, on the average, is 20% diesel. So, in terms of diesel, the Shell GTL plant will be the equivalent of an ordinary crude source producing about 700,000bbl/d. That’s quite large — roughly the same as the oil production of an entire country like Egypt, Australia, India etc. For reference those countries have current oil reserves of about 4 Gb. So, from the standpoint of the diesel market, we could say that the Shell plant is the equivalent of the discovery of an oil field about 4Gb in size. Assuming the entire $20 billion of scheduled investment goes through, GTL in Qatar will be the equivalent of a 15Gb super-giant oil field discovery. That would definitely put a big out-of-trend spike on Cambell’s curve.

So, as you can see, a 140,000b/d diesel GTL setup is 1) inflated 5x too 700,000b/d of crude (which the plant will not produce), 2) compared without reference to the production rates of some countries, 3) pulled a fictitious relationship to some reserve number – 4Gb, 4) inflated the original investment by Shell by 400% and finally, derive a totally out-of-whacked 15Gb super-giant oil field comparison to the original GTL plant.

I think there’s a real use to PeakOilDebunked, and that is, the next time I come across an objection to Peak Oil, I’ll look it up there and if I find it, it’s a debunkable debunk.

 

PM Lee on Oil

I was watching Singapore’s National Day Rally Speech by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong yesterday evening where he mentioned oil as one of two examples (the other being terrorism) which will derail Singapore from its economic growth projections:

It’s because of the uncertainties in the Middle East, that is why today oil is $70+ a barrel, and in Singapore, electricity is expensive and bus fares have to go up. It’s not that there’s not enough oil, it’s the fear, the uncertainty, the risks that’s keeping the oil prices high and hurting us. But if something goes wrong in the Middle East, and there is a flare up, oil prices will not stay at $70, it may go to $120, it may double to $150. I think it will have a very big impact on us. It will have a big impact on the whole world, create a global recession. We have to be psychologically prepared for that.

The PM then mentioned how the government will help the poor pull through these difficult times. Next, he talked about how the economy will be affected:

But, as a economy as a whole, if this happens and there is a oil crisis, a oil shock, then we will have to work together and pull through. As we’ve pulled through after the Asian Crisis, as we’ve pulled through after 9-11. Working together, cutting costs, showing that we are different. And, making the adjustments we have to make, to make ourselves competitive again.

On the whole, I am very glad that the oil crisis has been singled out by our Prime Minister in his speech. It means the government has taken notice. Hopefully, we will see the following from our government:

• Establishing a terms of reference for oil crisis – what exactly is the kind of oil crisis that we are preparing for.
• Engaging energy consultants (e.g. Dr Samsam Bakhtiari, Dr Colin Campbell)
• Rollout a national educational campaign on the oil crisis
• Implement green/sustainability/relocalisation programmes
• Etc…

 

Australia on the move

The Australian Senate (Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee) recently published it’s hearing (transcript here) on Australia’s future oil supply and alternative transport fuels. Present to address the hearing is Dr Ali Samsam Bakhtiari, former senior advisor to the National Iranian Oil Company in Tehran. Here are some notable snippets:

The decline of global oil production seems now irreversible. It is bound to occur over a number of transitions, the first of which I have called transition 1, which has just begun in 2006. Transition 1 has a very benign gradient of decline, and it will take months before one notices it at all. But transition 2 will be far steeper, and each successive transition will show more pronounced declining gradients. My WOCAP model has predicted that over the next 14 years present global production of 81 million barrels per day will decrease by roughly 32 per cent, down to around 55 million barrels per day by the year 2020 … Preparation should be carried out on individual, familial, societal and national levels as soon as possible. Every preparative step taken today will prove far cheaper than any step taken tomorrow.

And a further note on LNG:

Fortunately, Australia has an enormous amount of gas, and I believe this is going to become very handy because the peak for gas will be between 100 and 105 TCF global production in
2008-09 … The price of LNG is going to go sky high because everybody will want LNG—in America, Mexico and Canada, which are in full decline; in all the South-East Asian countries and especially in China

And more on the volatility of LNG prices:

I can tell you that, with gas prices in the US being around $6 per barrel, you have LNG spot sales today of $12 per barrel—and we are in a normal situation. So, wait for the panic and you will have prices of $25 or $30 per barrel, and maybe much more than that. For one week in March this year the British did not have enough gas and the price of gas shot up to $258 per barrel oil equivalent. At first I thought I had made a mistake of one decimal place, but then I realised it was not $25.8—it was $258.

 

Apocalypse Now?

I guess I’m not the only one concerned that the Peak Oil message gets misunderstood as one propounded by an apocalyptic cult. Just this afternoon, an old friend lamented “how the world is coming to an end” after my sharing of Peak Oil with him.

I guess many of us (peakoilers) never got to the part of the sharing where the world becomes a better place to live in when humans start to work with nature rather than against it. Here are some points I want to make about the side most PO newbies tend to miss:

1. Peak Oil does not mean we run out of oil. It means we literally used up half the world’s endowment of oil and from thereon, production of oil will fall year on year, no matter how hard you try to get better at extracting oil.
2. Peak Oil does not kick us back to prehistoric lifestyles. We do have to live a lifestyle that is more sustainable. Living sustainably simply means we take less than we give back to nature. PO will also mean our economy has to be more localised, meaning your chicken might come from Lim Chu Kang instead of Brazil.
3. Peak Oil means you simply travel less using fossil-fuel driven modes of transport. With oil prices going nowhere but up, more drivers are going to trade in their cars and use public transport instead. And given that public transport rates aren’t staying put either, more will start looking for jobs within walking/cycling distances from their homes.
4. Peak Oil means there will be a comeback of agriculture. Today, Singapore imports >95% of its food from abroad. Higher oil prices mean these imports will cost more to ship. At the same time, because PO is a global phenomenon, net food exporters might be reconfiguring their own agriculture to be more self-sustainable. This means the price of food itself will rise too. At some point, it’s going to make sense again to grow our own food right here in Singapore.
5. Peak Oil means less waste. Remember how your mom always cringes at you when you throw stuff out? She didn’t live her life that long ago, right? In fact, she probably learn all that attitude during the last oil crisis in the late 1970s.

I hope this clears up some of the apocalyptical images (Mad Max) that you might have of a post-peak-oil world, always look on the brighter side of change because that’s where you’d find hope and strength to see through the change.