At the meeting held at the Energy Institute on Monday 22 March the UK Government Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) fielded 4 people. The Department of Transport one, there was one senior representative of a supermajor, three people representing sponsors of the ITPOES report, four academics, two people from sustainability groups, a representative from the Energy Institute (where the meeting was held) two consultants and one other. The meeting was chaired by a retired senior oil industry executive.

Was it a historic moment? Yes I think it was largely because we weren't really debating whether Peak Oil would occur but rather how soon and in what form. One speaker suggested very forcibly that as soon as the world had fully recovered from the Great Recession we would run straight into the Oil Crunch when oil demand runs ahead of oil supply and prices spike.

The meeting started with three presentations. The first from an academic summarising the oil depletion/Peak Oil challenge, The second from one of the ITPOES sponsors summarising key conclusions from the ITPOES report and stressing the risk to UK businesses and the need for government to be pro actively taking steps to mitigate/ameliorate the impact. The third presentation was from Rob Hopkins of Transition Towns doing a joint presentation with Peter Lipman of Sustrans and the Transtion Network.

There was then an extended question and answer period before the group broke into two groups with one group discussing high level responses ie from government and the other looking local responses. I attended the group on national responses, so some of the summary below is from that group.

This was followed with a summing up as a presentation to the Minister.

So what was concluded?

It was a difficult challenge for government who still rather hope the price mechanism will resolve it by providing appropriate price signals but they do accept government action will be necessary.

Many of the steps and policies already in place to minimise greenhouse gas emissions will be helpful.

It is very important to promote necessary change as a positive, as progress and that people should see the changes Peak Oil would bring about not as a loss of living standards or amenity but as progress to a better life. For example some 25% of the fuel used in UK surface transport is used to commute to and from work. Few if any derive pleasure from commuting only doing so to earn a living which means that any steps to promote homeworking, remote working etc can be seen as a positive, beneficial development that make people's lives better while reducing fuel demand. These positive low hanging fruit should be addressed first as it renders government action in a positive light giving more confidence and less resistance to later and more difficult policy actions.

As transport fuels represent up to 75% of the UK refined barrel this is the area of maximum return though it was also pointed out that the high energy density of oil products was precisely what made them attractive transport fuels.

There was still potential to reduce heating uses of fuels although we may be approaching the irreducible core of remote locations and other special situations where alternative fuels such as gas are uneconomic.

Encouragement of electric or hybrid vehicle use is a desirable policy with it being noted that Nissan's Sunderland factory had been chosen to build Nissan's new electric small car 'the Leaf'.

The meeting concluded with agreement that the day had been helpful and that further meetings would be appropriate.