Post Carbon Institute

Last updated
Post Carbon Institute
Founded2003 (2003)
Founder Julian Darley and Celine Rich
65-1208462
Location
Key people
Asher Miller, Executive Director; Jason Bradford, Board President; Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow
Revenue (2017)
$1,051,861 [1]
Expenses (2017)$712,871 [1]
Website www.postcarbon.org

Post Carbon Institute (PCI) is a think tank which provides information and analysis on climate change, energy scarcity, and other issues related to sustainability and long term community resilience. Its Fellows specialize in various fields related to the organization's mission, such as fossil fuels, renewable energy, food, water, and population. Post Carbon is incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and is based in Corvallis, Oregon, United States.

Contents

Post Carbon Institute largely publishes and promotes the work of its Fellows and allies. It maintains two major websites, postcarbon.org for material from its staff and Fellows, and resilience.org for material from allies. Since 2009 it has focused on: publishing articles, reports, and books; running issue-oriented promotional campaigns; and serving as a speakers' bureau for some of its Fellows.

History

2003–2008

Post Carbon Institute was founded by Julian Darley (President) and Celine Rich (Executive Director) in 2003. (Although not explicitly recognized as a founder, Dave Room helped build the Institute from months of its inception into a funded organization.) Its initial purpose was to implement programs to educate the public on issues surrounding global fossil fuel depletion (see peak oil, peak coal, peak gas) and climate change, as well as on possible responses to these challenges. A key tool for this was a film called "The End of Suburbia", which featured Richard Heinberg and James Howard Kunstler among others. Post Carbon promoted the concept of Relocalization , a strategy to build community resilience based on the local production of food, energy, and goods, and the development of more localized governance, economy, and culture. [2]

Post Carbon Institute was one of the few organizations in this period actively promoting the concept of peak oil, along with groups such as the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, the International Forum on Globalization, and the Transition Towns movement, and websites such as EnergyBulletin.net and The Oil Drum. It ran the predominant online social network focused on community responses to peak oil and climate change, the Relocalization Network. Richard Heinberg [3] joined as a Senior Fellow-in-Residence in 2008. Major activities included:

Since 2009

Asher Miller became Executive Director in 2009, and Post Carbon restructured to concentrate its program activities on research and publishing. It broadened its topical focus to include natural resource depletion, climate change, the limits to economic growth, human overpopulation, food, and other issues - partly in response to the changed U.S. political landscape following the 2008 oil crisis, the financial crisis of 2007–2008, and the election of President Barack Obama (see Post Carbon Institute Manifesto). Most of its earlier programs were consolidated or discontinued. It entered into partnerships with Transition US [6] and Energy Bulletin.net, a clearinghouse website on issues surrounding global energy resource depletion. Its roster of Fellows was significantly expanded to include notable figures such as Bill McKibben, Wes Jackson, David Orr, and Majora Carter.

Activities

Resilience.org

Resilience.org is a resource platform for communities building local self-reliance, emphasizing community-based responses to the rapidly emerging fallout from the end of cheap fossil fuels. It was launched in 2012 as the successor to the popular peak oil website EnergyBulletin.net. [7]

Think Resilience

Think Resilience is an online course on "how to make sense of the complex challenges society now faces" and "how to build community resilience." [8]

Publications

Since 2012, publications have focused primarily on energy and/or community resilience:

Energy

Community Resilience

Other Topics

Fellows

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Natural gas</span> Gaseous fossil fuel

Natural gas is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane (97%) in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and helium are also usually present. Methane is colorless and odorless, and the second largest greenhouse gas contributor to global climate change after carbon dioxide. Because natural gas is odorless, odorizers such as mercaptan are commonly added to it for safety so that leaks can be readily detected.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hubbert peak theory</span> One of the primary theories on peak oil

The Hubbert peak theory says that for any given geographical area, from an individual oil-producing region to the planet as a whole, the rate of petroleum production tends to follow a bell-shaped curve. It is one of the primary theories on peak oil.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peak oil</span> Point in time when the maximum rate of petroleum extraction is reached

Peak oil is the theorized point in time when the maximum rate of global oil production will occur, after which oil production will begin an irreversible decline. The primary concern of peak oil is that global transportation heavily relies upon the use of gasoline and diesel fuel. Switching transportation to electric vehicles, biofuels, or more fuel-efficient forms of travel may help reduce oil demand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colin Campbell (geologist)</span> British petroleum geologist (1931–2022)

Colin J. Campbell was a British petroleum geologist who predicted that oil production would peak by 2007. He claimed the consequences of this are uncertain but drastic, due to the world's dependency on fossil fuels for the vast majority of its energy. His theories have received wide attention but are disputed and have not significantly changed governmental energy policies at this time. To deal with declining global oil production, he proposed the Rimini protocol.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Heinberg</span> American journalist and educator (born 1950)

Richard William Heinberg is an American journalist and educator who has written extensively on energy, economic, and ecological issues, including oil depletion. He is the author of 14 books, and presently serves as the senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.

The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream is a 2004 documentary film concerning peak oil and its implications for the suburban lifestyle, written and directed by Toronto-based filmmaker Gregory Greene.

<i>The Partys Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies</i> 2005 book by Richard Heinberg

The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, by Richard Heinberg, is an introduction to the concept of peak oil and petroleum depletion.

Julian Darley is a filmmaker, writer and speaker on policy responses to global environmental degradation. He is the author of the book High Noon for Natural Gas, and the founder of Global Public Media, Post Carbon Institute and Mysterious Movies Ltd. He lives in London, England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Special Report on Emissions Scenarios</span> 2000 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) is a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that was published in 2000. The greenhouse gas emissions scenarios described in the Report have been used to make projections of possible future climate change. The SRES scenarios, as they are often called, were used in the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR), published in 2001, and in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), published in 2007. The SRES scenarios were designed to improve upon some aspects of the IS92 scenarios, which had been used in the earlier IPCC Second Assessment Report of 1995. The SRES scenarios are "baseline" scenarios, which means that they do not take into account any current or future measures to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Oil depletion is the decline in oil production of a well, oil field, or geographic area. The Hubbert peak theory makes predictions of production rates based on prior discovery rates and anticipated production rates. Hubbert curves predict that the production curves of non-renewing resources approximate a bell curve. Thus, according to this theory, when the peak of production is passed, production rates enter an irreversible decline.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Fleming (writer)</span> English historian and economist (1940–2010)

David Fleming was an English economist, cultural historian and writer on environmental issues, based in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Energy descent</span> Process whereby a society either voluntarily or involuntarily reduces its total energy consumption

Energy descent is a process whereby a society either voluntarily or involuntarily reduces its total energy consumption.

World energy resources are the estimated maximum capacity for energy production given all available resources on Earth. They can be divided by type into fossil fuel, nuclear fuel and renewable resources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oil Depletion Analysis Centre</span>

The Oil Depletion Analysis Centre (ODAC) is an independent, UK-registered educational charity. The centre is working to raise international public awareness and promote better understanding of the world's oil depletion and peak oil problem. It is based in London and belongs to the New Economics Foundation.

Peak coal is the peak consumption or production of coal by a human community. Peak coal can be driven by peak demand or peak supply. Historically, it was widely believed that the supply-side would eventually drive peak coal due to the depletion of coal reserves. However, since the increasing global efforts to limit climate change, peak coal has been driven by demand. This is due in large part to the rapid expansion of natural gas and renewable energy. As of 2024 over 40% of all energy sector CO2 emissions are from coal, and many countries have pledged to phase-out coal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shale gas</span> Natural gas trapped in shale formations

Shale gas is an unconventional natural gas that is found trapped within shale formations. Since the 1990s a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has made large volumes of shale gas more economical to produce, and some analysts expect that shale gas will greatly expand worldwide energy supply.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monterey Formation</span> Miocene geological sedimentary formation in California

The Monterey Formation is an extensive Miocene oil-rich geological sedimentary formation in California, with outcrops of the formation in parts of the California Coast Ranges, Peninsular Ranges, and on some of California's off-shore islands. The type locality is near the city of Monterey, California. The Monterey Formation is the major source-rock for 37 to 38 billion barrels of oil in conventional traps such as sandstones. This is most of California's known oil resources. The Monterey has been extensively investigated and mapped for petroleum potential, and is of major importance for understanding the complex geological history of California. Its rocks are mostly highly siliceous strata that vary greatly in composition, stratigraphy, and tectono-stratigraphic history.

<i>Carbon Shift</i> 2009 non-fiction book edited by Thomas Homer-Dixon and Nick Garrison

Carbon Shift: How Peak Oil and the Climate Crisis Will Change Canada is a 2009 non-fiction book edited by Thomas Homer-Dixon and Nick Garrison that collects six essays that discusses the issues of peak oil and climate change. The book was first published in hardcover by Random House of Canada in 2009 under the title Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future, and became a national bestseller. In 2010, the paperback was published by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House Canada, the sub-title then changing to How Peak Oil and the Climate Crisis Will Change Canada .

Shale gas in the United Kingdom has attracted increasing attention since 2007, when unconventional onshore shale gas production was proposed. The first shale gas well in England was drilled in 1875. As of 2013 a number of wells had been drilled, and favourable tax treatment had been offered to shale gas producers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dario Tamburrano</span> Italian politician

Dario Tamburrano is an Italian environmental activist and one of the first members of the Five Star Movement elected in the European Parliament.

References

  1. 1 2 "Post Carbon Institute" (PDF). Post Carbon Institute. Retrieved 17 November 2018.
  2. Vancouver Straight (2009-07-23). Hello local, goodbye global: Relocalization movement gains momentum
  3. San Francisco Chronicle (2008-05-27). Supply-demand imbalance boosts oil prices
  4. Toronto Star (2008-01-03). Is oil supply at its peak?
  5. Boulder Daily Camera (2007-09-28). Lifestyle changes prepare locals for energy changes
  6. New York Times (2009/04/19). The End is Near! Yay!
  7. FinancialPress, Energy Bulletin has Moved to Resilience.org, 3 January 2013.
  8. "Think Resilience". Think Resilience. Retrieved 2018-11-17.
  9. Peter Moskowitz, Sapping the sweet spots: How long will US energy boom last?, Al Jazeera America, November 10, 2014.
  10. Anne Mulkern, Is Calif.'s Monterey Shale a major oil resource or over-hyped?, EnergyWire, 5 December 2013.
  11. Richard Heinberg, Was the Oil and Gas Industry Promoting Peak Oil to Make Maximum Profits?, AlterNet, 19 August 2013.
  12. Wendy Koch, Could fracking boom peter out sooner than DOE expects?, USA Today, 3 November 2013.
  13. Alvin Lee, Shale Oil and Gas: The Contrarian View, Forbes, 6 May 2013.
  14. Tara Lohan, The Coming Crash: Our Addiction to Endless Growth on a Finite Planet, AlterNet, 27 March 2013.
  15. Susan Carpenter, Natural gas: study raises doubts on U.S. supply, Los Angeles Times, 17 May 2011.
  16. The Scotsman (2008/10/09). Scottish councils urged to get into peak oil practice
  17. InfrastructureUSA, Resilient Against What?, 21 October 2013.
  18. Publishers Weekly, Rebuilding the Foodshed: How to Create Local, Sustainable, and Secure Food Systems, 4 February 2013.
  19. Brita Belli, Owning Your Energy, The Environmental Magazine, September/October 2012.
  20. Michael Shuman, 5 Ways to Make Your Dollars Make Sense, Yes! Magazine, 14 February 2013.
  21. Jim Jubelirer, A Primer for the Post-Carbon World, GreenBiz, 10 December 2010.
  22. Candice Bernd, Post Carbon Institute Calls on Environmentalists to Embrace Post-Growth Economics, Truthout, 9 October 2013.
  23. Crawford Kilian, The End of Growth...and Then What?, The Tyee, 11 June 2012.