Energy Crisis

The potential for crisis if we run out of energy is very real but there is still time before that occurs. In the past two decades proven gas reserves have increased by 70% and proven oil reserves by 40%. At expected rates of demand growth we have enough for thirty years supply. Moreover, better technology means that new oil and gas fields are being discovered all the time while enhanced recovery techniques are opening up a potentially huge array of unconventional sources, including tar sands, shale gas and ultra-deepwater.
The security of global energy supplies continues to be problematic. Today, oil and gas reserves are in the hands of a small group of nations, several of which are considered political unstable or have testy relationships with large consuming countries. Eighty per cent of the world’s proven oil reserves are located in just three regions: Africa; Russia and the Caspian Basin; and the Persian Gulf. And more than half of the world’s remaining proven gas reserves exist in just three countries: Russia, Iran, and Qatar. Concerns over energy security prompt policymakers to seek independence from foreign sources of energy. The more governments can extract themselves from the dependence on foreign energy resources, the more secure they feel.
For the first time in history we face an energy crisis not because we might run out of energy, but because we are using it in the wrong way. Up to now the energy industry was judged by two metrics: its contribution to energy security and the cost of energy delivered to the consumer. To this we must now add a third: its success in reducing the emission of greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.
Fortunately, finding solutions to these differing energy crises demands a broadly similar response:
  1) Reduce growing energy demand through improved energy efficiency and conservation. The key for continued economic progress is to learn how to create more wealth with less energy.

  2) Research,...