Tompkins County Relocalization Project

[Tompkins County Relocalization Project <tcrp-news AT lists.ibiblio.org>]

As tcrp-news subscribers know, our effort (in the process of
changing its name to TCLocal -- look for further developments in
the near future) is dedicated to forming plans for how Tompkins
County will deal with the economic crisis resulting from a decline
in fossil fuel production that we see coming within the next 10-20
years.

Well, the City of Hamilton, Ontario, has beaten us to it, and in
the process, it has produced a model of what a local peak oil plan
can look like.

Hamilton, which has a population of about five hundred thousand,
was in the process of finalizing a comprehensive 30-year
development plan that included an ambitious "aerotropolis" built
around the air freight industry when someone thought to ask what
the prospects for air freight would be in a future dominated by
energy constraints.  The city brought in urban planning consultant
Richard Gilbert to prepare a study, the result of which was
released in late April.  It appears that the city got rather more
than it bargained for.

Based on research that sets a new standard for this kind of
analysis, Gilbert estimates that by 2018 (the midpoint of the
city's planning period), prices of gasoline and natural gas will
be roughly four times what they are now -- about four dollars
(Canadian) per liter for gasoline and two dollars per cubic meter
for natural gas.  Then he sets out an ambitious but believable
plan for Hamilton that through drastic reductions in energy use
and all-out efforts to produce energy locally might be able to
keep the effective per capita energy outlay to about double its
present level -- about the maximum that could be sustained without
catastrophic effects on the local economy.

I won't attempt to summarize the details of the Hamilton plan,
which of course relies as much on conditions peculiar to its
specific location as would any effective peak oil plan.  Instead,
I urge all those interested in our future to read it for
themselves.  You can find a copy at

   http://www.ibiblio.org/tcrp/lib/hamilton_peak_oil_report.pdf

It will be interesting to see whether the Hamilton City Council
has the courage to face up to what their consultant is telling
them and rework their whole 30-year plan in light of a projected
future very different from what they were counting on.  Gilbert's
credentials, which include among many other notable achievements
his transportation studies for the OECD, his long-time service on
the Toronto City Council, and his presidency of the Federation of
Canadian Municipalities, put his credibility at the highest level
and will make his conclusions difficult to ignore, particularly in
Ontario and (one would hope) adjacent regions such as New York
State.

Whatever its eventual fate in the city's planning process, the
Hamilton peak oil report is nothing less than brilliant and should
serve as an inspiration to those of us trying to plan our local
futures.  We should all be grateful to Richard Gilbert for this
seminal contribution to local energy planning.

Jon