The successful outcome of COP21 has raised hopes and expectations of concerted global efforts to tackle climate change, and brought forward a whole raft of challenging questions:
• How will this affect the momentum behind the deployment of key renewable technologies and the drive for greater energy efficiency?
• Ample supply is keeping downward pressure on fossil fuel prices, coal, oil and natural gas. When and how will market dynamics change – or might lower prices for some fuels be here to stay?
• The impact of local pollution, often energy-related, on air quality is a matter of rising social and political concern in many countries. How can governments act to tackle this problem – and what would these actions mean for the energy sector?
The World Energy Outlook 2016 published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) is coming out this month and will seek to shed some light on these questions with insightful analysis. In the meantime, there is one matter that everyone can agree on: for the near future, energy demand will continue to grow. How it is produced and used will be a critical factor in the future of the global economy, geopolitics, and the environment.
With that in mind, McKinsey took a hard look at the data, modeling energy demand by country, sector, and fuel mix, with an analysis of current conditions, historical data, and country-level assessments. On this basis, McKinsey’s Global Energy Insights team has put together a description of the global energy
Most of the energy that we use comes from fossil fuels like petroleum and coal that provide electricity and gas to power our growing energy needs. These fossil fuels, currently providing most of our home energy needs are finite resources, which mean that, they will eventually run out. Furthermore, the world’s population is growing rapidly. Countries are becoming more industrialised and are using notable amount of energy. Individuals are consuming nearly twice as much as energy as they were using 30 years ago. In Australia itself, the total amount of energy consumed by households has increased over the past two decades and is forecast to increase. This could be due to the dependence of our standard of living on easily available energy. Between
The UNFCCC is working with the various governments around the world to stabilize the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere to keep the planet from warming more than 2ºC above pre-industrial temperatures (Watts, 2015). The most noted of the work is the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings that began with COP1 in Berlin back in 1995. The COP3 adopted the Kyoto Protocol, even though it wasn’t fully accepted by all member nations. The COP21 was an effort to legally bind members to their submitted plans of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), defining what level of greenhouse gas production each nation would commit to not exceeding from 2025-2030. Prior to the INDCs, a bleak outlook was forecast in 2009-2010 of global temperature rising between 4-5ºC. That figure was restated by the UNFCCC prior to the COP21 in Paris, to below 3ºC, due to the commitments of the INDCs (Watts, 2015).
The prevalence and severity of extreme changes in climate will likely affect how much energy is produced, delivered and consumed all over the world. There?s pressure to produce more energy resources for the growing population that have been depleted by unsustainable production systems. Impetus to better manage nonrenewable energy resources must become part of market systems and signals that form decision making in energy resources.
On the same note, the energy revolution spoken of above brings forth another advance in the ongoing global climate situation. The nature of the Kyoto Protocol calls for nations to increase research and eventually semi-convert their energy usage to accommodate for cleaner energy. Products such as solar power, wind power, biomass, geothermal power, and hydropower are now widely being studying to create processes that use less coal, oil, and natural gas in production. Altogether the results have
“Scientists have been warning about global warming for decades. It's too late to stop it now, but we can lessen its severity and impacts” - David Suzuki. Global warming, a primary topic of debate in various conversations throughout all levels of government, has been an issue for countless years. In fact, of the 134 years recorded, the 10 warmest years have all occurred “since 2000, with the exception of 1998 “(NASA). Solving a global issue such as this is not as easy as it may seem; however ,The Paris Agreement vows to do just that by setting a plan to limit global warming to well below 2°C in “the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate deal” (Europa). Before signing off on such an agreement one must analyze the many negatives
Our society has faced two major energy related problems since the Industrial Revolution. The first is where our future energy resources are going to come from. The United States both consumes and produces an immense
As the global population increases and developing nations seek to emulate the consumer consumption of their Western counterparts, demand for fossil fuels and alternative energy sources continues to increase apace (Tracey et al, 2011). OPEC
Everything we do, everything we use is a form of energy. The resources necessary to provide us even the simplest of comforts are becoming more in demand due to population growth. As of today, coal, oil and natural gas supply almost 90% of the world’s energy needs. We are a world of oil consumption, indeed, everything we use has some form of oil product built into it. It is versatile and has been the only thing we have known for most of our lives. Realizing that the energy policies are a major economic problem is key and being able to provide policies that can have financial benefits for all parties will result in balanced energy budget. Using alternative resources will be a major adjustment by Americans and we need to focus on alternative
People need energy, it’s a fact. We need it for our cars, for our televisions and for our iPods. We need it all the time, every day. The simple fact is though, we are running out. Carbon based fuels are being used at an alarming rate every day. And every day our demand increases as our society becomes more and more reliant on technology.
Recently, a report by REN21 (Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century) reported two facts that set the stage for the growth of green energy. First, in 2015, the global economy experienced the largest annual increase of renewable energy; second, developing economies spent more than developed countries on increasing their use of green energy. Another notable fact to mention is that the substantial increase in green energy
The climate change impacts of greenhouse gases threaten the economic development and environmental quality. These threats indicate that all nations regardless their economic growth should work collaboratively to reduce the emission to a certain level. Hare et al. (2011) argued that “climate change is a collective action problem” thus requires a global coordination from all countries. This indicates that actions from several countries would never be sufficient to address the climate change problem. If a global target to limit warming to 2°C or below is about to achieve (UNFCCC 2010, p.4) a broad range of participation is required (Hare et al., 2011). However, the increasing complexity of negotiation processes is inevitable. Each country will pursue its own interests during the
With American population expected to increase by approximately fifty percent over the next fifty years, some sort of energy reform is needed (Lehrman 2). The most commonly proposed idea is for America to stop relying so heavily on fossil fuels, and to turn its focus onto renewable sources of energy, such as solar power and hydroelectricity (Energy Information Administration). If the United States could realize the benefits of renewable energy, then much of the world’s energy problems could be solved.
The International Energy Agency estimates that by the year 2003 forty percent of the world's energy production will be from sources other than fossil fuels or nuclear power. Nevertheless, the need for
On December 12 of 2015, 195 countries made history by committing to the first truly global international climate change agreement (Paris Agreement, 2015). This agreement took place in Paris and was adopted under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The outcome of the Paris Conference on Climate Change was described as “revolutionary” (Venezuela) “marvelous act” (China) and as “a tremendous collective achievement” (European Union) that introduced a “new era of global climate governance” (Egypt) while “restoring the global community’s faith of accomplishing things multilaterally” (USA) (Paris Agreement, 2015).
World oil demand is increasing as emerging economies need more energy to increase their living standards. Estimates, shown below, are that by 2030, China and India as emerging markets will import over 70% to 90% of their fossil fuel needs (1) . Coupled to a continued high and growing demand for oil, makes this a robust market for the next 30 years.