Peak Oil Returns: Why Demand Will Likely Peak By 2030  

Think Progress has a post on the "peak oil demand" theory that seems to have come into vogue to replace traditional peak oil theory based on supply depletion - Peak Oil Returns: Why Demand Will Likely Peak By 2030.

Is it possible that the world is actually going to follow the path of the “Transport Transformation Scenario” and peak in oil demand by 2030 or so? At this point I think is not only possible, but likely.

It is increasingly clear that technology will be here to make that possible — indeed, the technology is almost here now (see this recent post, “Tesla And GM Announce Affordable, Long-Range Electric Cars”). Same with the renewables needed to power electric cars carbon-free (see “Why The Renewables Revolution Is Now Unstoppable“).

The core issue now is whether the nations of the world will embrace the policies needed to accelerate those technologies into the marketplace fast enough to cause demand to actually peak in one to two decades globally — much as oil demand in the industrialized countries appears to have peaked a decade ago.