I actually thought his energy vision was pretty off the mark. Oil won't peak when when we'll be able to extract less than before. It will peak when electric cars will start becoming mainstream, and I expect that to happen at least a decade earlier, with most cars "in production" being electric cars happening about 2 decades earlier (so about 10 years from now).
He completely dismisses solar power, even though it has seen accelerated decrease in price/Watt already, in some countries/regions even surpassing coal-based energy in price, and it's still very early days. I also have quite opposite views about fission. If we figure out fusion, we might use that quite a lot, but I really doubt everyone will use an order of magnitude more fission reactors than we do now to power the 3d-printing and space economy.
That's a good point: peak when electric vehicles become mainstream. Is transportation the main driver for crude oil? How about plastic?
I'd love to see solar take a dominant role in energy—the question I have is will PV technology and geographic climate constraints push solar forward fast enough?
Writing a response to you also made me think about energy storage. I think that'll play a much larger role and I didn't think of it earlier.
The energy storage issue for renewable energy can be solved with today's technology just by making the grid bigger. Think of distribution networks spanning multiple timezones and geographic region.
For plastic i believe the recycling rate is already very high.
If it is a major economic activity, it is a safe assumption that the U.S. gov is collecting statistics on it. The pain in the ass is finding where they publish them.
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