Do we actually want to make the change ?
Well, the answer to that is not as simple as you might think, because unfortunately even today there are some people thinking that it is more important to have a nice view on the landscape next to them than to have a windmill in that very view.
And it is not just the stubborn elderly people working against our future it is ourselves as well, since most people in industrialized have thus far failed to establish a reasonable of handling with energy, as we are still able to see dozens of cars driving to the air-conditioned supermarket that is actually just a couple of hundred yards away, in order to buy some frozen egg rolls that have been imported via plane. Of course we do not want to get stuck in such pointless moaning, but even if we pull our sight away from private households we would have reason to go on.
If we want to achieve something we need to convince the industry and the governments of the importance of this issue because than we would have the support of those who consume the major share of our energy as talking of the industry, and the authorities that are actually capable in guiding the national and international energy providers towards the right direction.
You see there are quite some things to consider if we do want to succeed in fulfilling this challenge and to give a more specific impression of the various issues, once again we have provided you with some images and graphics.
And it is not just the stubborn elderly people working against our future it is ourselves as well, since most people in industrialized have thus far failed to establish a reasonable of handling with energy, as we are still able to see dozens of cars driving to the air-conditioned supermarket that is actually just a couple of hundred yards away, in order to buy some frozen egg rolls that have been imported via plane. Of course we do not want to get stuck in such pointless moaning, but even if we pull our sight away from private households we would have reason to go on.
If we want to achieve something we need to convince the industry and the governments of the importance of this issue because than we would have the support of those who consume the major share of our energy as talking of the industry, and the authorities that are actually capable in guiding the national and international energy providers towards the right direction.
You see there are quite some things to consider if we do want to succeed in fulfilling this challenge and to give a more specific impression of the various issues, once again we have provided you with some images and graphics.
First things first: Is it necessary ?
To answer this question one would need to know two things: first how much of the fossil fuel resources is left and second: how much do we consume ? These two questions appear to be fairly simple but the truth is they aren't because they are depending on various eventualities.
In the past the availability of fossil fuels has never been questionable because if one source had run dry the companies simply went onwards and found a new one. The problem with this system is that you never know how long you can actually count on its availability, because one day you will obviously come to a point where no further sources can be accessed. Therefore they always add a certain percentage of estimated reserves to the proven reserves, not to much in order not to suit great expectations but not to few as well in order not to threaten the consumers obviously.
Now if we take a look at this bar chart showing us the proven reserves per resource in the years 1991, 2001 and 2011 one would be surprised to find that until today the amount of oil and Natural Gas has increased rather than decreased, but don not lean yourself back yet, because as I said:' The estimates in this table have been compiled using a combination of primary official sources, third-party data from the OPEC Secretariat, Wordl Oil, Oil and Gas Journal and an independent estimate of Russian and Chinese reserves based on information in the public domain,' as BP say in the annotations to page 6 of their 'Statistical Review of World Energy 2012'.
Added to that you can see that with coal the reserves are already decreasing by 17% from 2001 to 2011.
In the past the availability of fossil fuels has never been questionable because if one source had run dry the companies simply went onwards and found a new one. The problem with this system is that you never know how long you can actually count on its availability, because one day you will obviously come to a point where no further sources can be accessed. Therefore they always add a certain percentage of estimated reserves to the proven reserves, not to much in order not to suit great expectations but not to few as well in order not to threaten the consumers obviously.
Now if we take a look at this bar chart showing us the proven reserves per resource in the years 1991, 2001 and 2011 one would be surprised to find that until today the amount of oil and Natural Gas has increased rather than decreased, but don not lean yourself back yet, because as I said:' The estimates in this table have been compiled using a combination of primary official sources, third-party data from the OPEC Secretariat, Wordl Oil, Oil and Gas Journal and an independent estimate of Russian and Chinese reserves based on information in the public domain,' as BP say in the annotations to page 6 of their 'Statistical Review of World Energy 2012'.
Added to that you can see that with coal the reserves are already decreasing by 17% from 2001 to 2011.
Proven Reserves of fossil fuels
The numbers are given in million tonnes of oil equivalent. All numbers are based on the World Energy Outlook 2011 by the IEA, the Statistical Review of world energy 2012 by BP, and the Annual Energy Outlook 2012 by the EIA.
Now the reason for this is the steadily growing demand for energy, as we can see when looking at this next chart, which shows us the Primary Energy Consumption of our planet in 2001 and 2011.
Primary Energy in case you do not knew until now is all the energy saved in all kinds of natural resources or nature itself that has not been transformed or conversed in any way, which basically means fossil fuels, sunlight, wind etc.
In every part of the world we have an increasing consumption of energy. In the Middle East the amount of consumed energy has doubled over the last decade and the biggest increase is to be found in Asia Pacific with 2113,8 which is more than Africa's, South America's, Central America's and the Middle East's total energy consumption.
Primary Energy in case you do not knew until now is all the energy saved in all kinds of natural resources or nature itself that has not been transformed or conversed in any way, which basically means fossil fuels, sunlight, wind etc.
In every part of the world we have an increasing consumption of energy. In the Middle East the amount of consumed energy has doubled over the last decade and the biggest increase is to be found in Asia Pacific with 2113,8 which is more than Africa's, South America's, Central America's and the Middle East's total energy consumption.
Total Primary Energy Consumption 2001 and 20011
The numbers are given in million tonnes of oil equivalent. All numbers are based on the World Energy Outlook 2011 by the IEA, the Statistical Review of world energy 2012 by BP, and the Annual Energy Outlook 2012 by the EIA.
Given even the very unrealistic scenario that the reserves are actually as enormous as estimated in 2011 and that we would from now on keep our energy consumption on a steady level we would end up with the following. In 2011 the total annual oil consumption was 4059,1 Million tonnes of oil and the estimated reserves left were about 234,3 billion tonnes of oil ( According to Statistica Review of World Energy by BP). That ends up in the fact that by the year 2068 there will be no oil left on our planet. But as I said earlier the oil would only last that long if we would keep our consumption at exactly the same level over all those levels and since it has steadily increased since there are measures this is very unlikely to happen.
And it is the same really with oil and gas, which will last until 2076 ( Natural Gas ) and 2124 ( Coal ) again under the circumstances that we can manage to stop the increase of our energy consumption and the fact that the estimated reserves are the actual reserves.
And it is the same really with oil and gas, which will last until 2076 ( Natural Gas ) and 2124 ( Coal ) again under the circumstances that we can manage to stop the increase of our energy consumption and the fact that the estimated reserves are the actual reserves.
How has such an unsustainable system managed to survive so long ?
The answer to this question is as astonishing as it is unreasonable, because we have actually played a quite considerable part in this struggle for survival, because there have been huge amounts of tax money given to the energy companies in order to make it possible for them to keep their old oil, coal and gas power plants alive.
This pie chart shows us the global energy subsidies in 2009 for Renewable sources of energy ( shown in red ) and for fossil fuels (shown in blue ) according to the Bloomberg Businessweek (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-09/renewable-energy-subsidies-worldwide-reached-57-billion-in-2009-iea-says.html ).
They reported that the IEA has published that the amount of money invested in fossil fuels was 312 billion US-Dollars, while the subsidies for renewable sources of energy only came up to 57 billion US-Dollars.
So we are still financing a system that is constantly getting more expensive for the consumer, that is harming our planet's environment in an alarming way and as we have established earlier will be dead in less than 60 years.
If we would actually invest this money in fossil fuels it would be more attractive for the companies to change their attitude towards renewable sources of energy.
This pie chart shows us the global energy subsidies in 2009 for Renewable sources of energy ( shown in red ) and for fossil fuels (shown in blue ) according to the Bloomberg Businessweek (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-09/renewable-energy-subsidies-worldwide-reached-57-billion-in-2009-iea-says.html ).
They reported that the IEA has published that the amount of money invested in fossil fuels was 312 billion US-Dollars, while the subsidies for renewable sources of energy only came up to 57 billion US-Dollars.
So we are still financing a system that is constantly getting more expensive for the consumer, that is harming our planet's environment in an alarming way and as we have established earlier will be dead in less than 60 years.
If we would actually invest this money in fossil fuels it would be more attractive for the companies to change their attitude towards renewable sources of energy.
Concluding this we are living in a very important period of time. We do have the potential to build up an energy system based on renewable sources of energy, as we can see from the subsidies that are constantly invested into the wrong branches. We do as well have enough fossil fuels to get supply our planet with energy while the new system is being built. And we have the need to go for a sustainable energy system as well, which can be seen in the growing energy demand.
So when we come back to our very first question, whether we really want to make a change the disappointing answer seems to be: No. Since otherwise we would eventually start doing it . . .
Sources:
1. http://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/pdf/Statistical-Review-2012/statistical_review_of_world_energy_2012.pdf
2. http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/0383(2012).pdf
3. http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/pressmedia/recentpresentations/PresentationWEO2012launch.pdf
So when we come back to our very first question, whether we really want to make a change the disappointing answer seems to be: No. Since otherwise we would eventually start doing it . . .
Sources:
1. http://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/pdf/Statistical-Review-2012/statistical_review_of_world_energy_2012.pdf
2. http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/0383(2012).pdf
3. http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/pressmedia/recentpresentations/PresentationWEO2012launch.pdf