Great to have the paper embedded.  Thx K-dog.

Now, it will be interesting to see where we are in 2030 globally.  It's tough to get accurate stats per capita going all the way back to 1930, and of course the figure varies tremendously by location.  This chart goes back to 1820 splitting it up by fuel type.



This breaks it down by country and goes  back to 1800



1930 is a good choice of starting point, since both the FSoA and the Brits were pretty close at ~150 GJ/person.  In 2000 the FSoA was at 350GJ/person while the Brits averaged out at around 170 GJ.  The FSoA by far is the most conspicuous consumer of energy globally.

Now you have to check population growth.  FSoA population has more than doubled since 1930.

.  So just to stay even took >2x as much energy/person, with increasing consumption you're talking ~5X as much.  So to get back to where we were in 1930, we'd have to us ~20% of the total energy consumption.  It seems unlikely that it will drop that much that fast here in the land of good and plenty.

On the other hand, the developing world which has seen the greatest percentage increase in energy usage over the last century will drop back much faster, and in fact are already doing so.  Places like the Balkans, or Columbia and Venezuela where they already have daily brownouts and rotating blackouts.

Richard Duncan's timeline also doesn't figure in the rollout of renewables, which while it is not changing oil consumption for transportation that much yet, is supplying a significant amount of power to the electric grid.  So this is likely to slow down the arrival of more regular and widespread power outages here in the FSoA.

Alaska will provide an interesting test case, since due to NG shortage last winter we had a couple of instances of power interruption during a cold snap in January.  Currently they're working on resolving these supply issues, but we'll just have to see how well they keep the power flowing next winter.  Back in 1930, Alaska had very little electricity.  I doubt it will drop to those levels in 7 years.  Unless the NG situation gets resolved though, we might run into trouble.

The biggest factor will be the global economy. 1930 was the beginning of the Great Depression.  A similar economic collapse in 2030 will turn off a lot of lights.

RE