Loudoun County Board of Supervisors
Public Input session
March 17, 2008
I appreciate that Chairman Scott York established an energy efficiency committee for Loudoun County.� This committee chaired by Supervisor Andrea McGimsey may be one of the more important committees established by the Board during its tenure.
The Committee, at the direction of member Supervisor Stevens Miller, has established an award for energy efficiency to be given to one student winner of the Loudoun County Public School�s Regional Science and Engineering Fair.� The winner was Erik Wenkel of Loudoun County High School.
REHAU Corporation, Leesburg, and Sustainable Loudoun have donated to the committee, funds to be given as prize money for this award.
In Addition, REHAU Corporation, Leesburg, and Sustainable Loudoun have, separately, awarded a total of $1000 to three Loudoun County High School students who have entered winning projects on energy and the environment and sustainability in the Regional Science and Engineering Fair.
The three winners of the Sustainable Loudoun awards are:� first prize: Heather Rodgers, Loudoun Valley High School; Second prize: Ian Pearson, Dominion High School; and third prize: Timothy Gondo, Broad Run High School.
The awards presentation will be April 22 at REHAU facilities here in Leesburg and the public and of course all the Board members are invited to participate.� Featured speakers will include Tom Whipple, retired CIA analyst and one of the founders of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil � USA and Alan Hansen, a local Architect who will speak about the AIA 2030 Challenge.
If I were to have addressed the last Board in March 2004 and told them that oil would cost nearly $100 per barrel before the end of their term, I suspect nobody would have believed me.� But that did happen. Tonight, I want to tell you that before your term is up, in fact probably sometime in 2010, oil prices may hit $200 a barrel.�
(My source:� Oil Watch Monthly, February 18, 2008, http://www.peakoil.nl/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/2008_february_oilwatch_monthly.pdf )
There are two forces driving oil prices.� The first is a fundamental limitation on our ability to flow oil out of the Earth.� We�ve used much of the cheap oil and what is left is sour, heavy, and hard to recover and process.� As we can see from this figure, which shows data from the US Energy Information Agency, World Crude Oil Production reached a peak in May, 2005 and has been flat since while world wide demand has continued to increase.
The second cause, for the rise in oil prices at least in the United States, is inflation.� This is shown in the second figure also from the EIA which shows that while oil prices are on the rise in Europe and elsewhere, prices are not climbing as fast as in our country.
Thus the $200-oil scenario does not appear to be unrealistic.
Nobody in this room or even in all of Loudoun County can do anything about either of these problems, geophysical limits on oil flow or the US economy and inflation.� But there still is much we can do.
Since 2004, Congressman Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland has given 38 speeches to the House of Representatives on our country�s energy predicament.� Each speech details the scope of the problem of peak oil and resource depletion, including coal, uranium and natural gas, and describes various solutions.� I heard him speak on October 2005, telling us that 65% of all new energy for America will have to come from conservation.� Conservation is not just for tree huggers, nor is it something we would do just to feel better.� It is required.� And it represents something that the county and its citizens can do.� This is why your Energy Efficiency Committee is so important.
If you would like, Sustainable Loudoun would be pleased to set up meetings between board members, local energy experts and other government officials concerned about these problems such as Congressman Bartlett and Mayor Fitch of Warrenton.
Tony Noerpel�
Sustainable Loudoun