WASHINGTON, DC, USA, August 15, 2007.
The United States must “expand and diversify production from clean coal, nuclear, biomass, other renewables, and unconventional oil and natural gas,” concludes the National Petroleum Council.
“Accumulating risks to the supply of reliable, affordable energy” require an integrated national strategy, the group notes in a 422-page report delivered to energy secretary Samuel Bodman. “Over the next 25 years, the United States and the world face hard truths about the global energy future,” that will require “all economic, environmentally responsible energy sources to assure adequate, reliable supply.”
The 18-month study, ‘Facing the Hard Truths about Energy: A Comprehensive View to 2030 of Global Oil & Natural Gas,’ involved 350 energy experts and was requested by Bodman.
“The world is not running out of energy resources but many complex challenges could keep the world’s diverse energy resources from becoming the sufficient, reliable and economic energy supplies upon which people depend,” the study concludes. “These challenges are compounded by emerging uncertainties: geopolitical influences on energy development, trade, and security; and increasing constraints on carbon dioxide emissions that could impose changes in future energy use.”
“While risks have always typified the energy business, they are now accumulating and converging in new ways,” it warns.
Total global demand for energy will grow by 50% to 60% to 2030 as a result of rising incomes around the world and population growth. Among the five core strategies for meeting future energy challenges, one is to “moderate the growing demand for energy by increasing efficiency of transportation, residential, commercial, and industrial uses” and the second is to “expand and diversify production from clean coal, nuclear, biomass, other renewables, and unconventional oil and natural gas; moderate the decline of conventional domestic oil and gas production; and increase access for development of new resources.”
“There is no single, easy solution to the global challenges ahead,” and integrated strategies for the U.S. “must be initiated now and sustained over the long term to meet the accumulating risks to the supply of reliable, affordable energy to 2030 and beyond.”
To mitigate risks, expansion of renewables and other “economic energy sources” will be required, but it notes that each source “faces significant challenges including safety, environmental, political, or economic hurdles, and imposes infrastructure requirements for development and delivery.” It adds that energy independence should not be confused with strengthening energy security because the concept of energy independence is not realistic in the foreseeable future while U.S. energy security can be enhanced by moderating demand, expanding and diversifying domestic energy supplies, and strengthening global energy trade and investment.
“It is another hard truth that a rapidly growing world economy will require large increases in energy supplies over the next quarter-century,” the report notes. “Expansion of all economic energy sources will be required to meet demand reliably, including coal, nuclear, renewables and unconventional oil and natural gas.”
While alternative sources, “particularly fuel from biomass and other renewables, are likely to contribute increasingly to total energy supply,” oil, natural gas and coal are projected to dominate the energy until at least 2030. “Renewable resources such as biomass, wind, and solar represent huge additional energy endowments that are continuously replenished, unlike fossil fuels.”
The results of the study confirm the importance of maintaining comprehensive and updated assessments of energy resources and, “given the growing contribution expected from biomass-based energy sources by 2030, a global assessment of this renewable resource would provide a more complete outlook for the available energy endowment,” it recommends. “A comprehensive approach to carbon management would include measures to: boost energy efficiency and reduce demand; increase use of power that is not carbon based (nuclear, wind, solar, tidal, ocean-thermal, and geo-thermal); shift to lower carbon fuels, including renewables; and deploy CCS.”
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