Sustainable Energy Report Second Half

IAC Report|Energy supply 5

3. Energy supply

Even with concerted eorts to exploit energy-eciency opportunities andother demand-side solutions, the world’s energy needs are enormous andalmost certain to continue growing as developing economies industrializeand as rising standards o living in many societies lead to increaseddemand or modern consumer goods, services, and amenities.For most o human history, animals and biomass supplied the vast bulko human energy needs. With the advent o the Industrial Revolutionroughly two centuries ago, humans began to turn increasingly to hydrocar-bons as their primary source o energy, marking a proound shit thatbrought with it an era o unprecedented technological, socio-economic,and cultural change. Today, as concerns about environmental sustainabil-ity and energy security mount, the necessity o a third transition—to a newgeneration o energy supply technologies and resources—seems increas-ingly inevitable, i still not quite imminent. Even as the world remainslargely dependent on coal, oil, and natural gas, early elements o that tran-sition are beginning to come into view.This chapter reviews the supply-side energy technologies and resourcesthat are likely to play a role in the transition to a sustainable energy uture.Separate sections cover ossil uels, nuclear power, non-biomass renewableresources, and biomass energy. In general, the ocus is on supply-sidesolutions that could make an appreciable contribution to meeting worldenergy needs in the next 20 to 40 years. Longer-term options, such asnuclear usion, methane hydrates, and hydrogen (as an energy carrier) arediscussed briefy but do not receive extensive treatment here.

3.1 Fossil fuels

Fossil uels—coal, petroleum, natural gas, and their byproducts—supplyapproximately 80 percent o the world’s primary energy needs today. Useo these uels drives industrialized economies and has become integral tovirtually every aspect o productive activity and daily lie throughout themodern world. Yet almost rom the beginning, humanity’s steadily grow-

58IAC Report| Energy supply

ing dependence on ossil uels has been a source o anxiety as well as pros-perity. As early as 1866, when the Industrial Age was just getting under-way, the British author Stanley Jevons wondered how long his country’scoal reserves would last. Coal turned out to be a more abundant resourcethan Jevons could have imagined, but similar questions have long beenasked about the world’s petroleum and natural gas supply. More recently,concerns about global climate change have emerged as a new—andperhaps ultimately more limiting—constraint on the long-term sustaina-bility o current patterns o ossil-uel use.Those patterns suggest that ossil uels will continue to play a dominantrole in the world’s energy mix or at least the next several decades, evenwith concerted eorts to promote energy eciency and non-carbon alter-natives. How to manage and improve humanity’s use o coal, petroleum,and natural gas resources during the transition to a more sustainableenergy uture—and in particular, whether it is possible to do so in waysthat begin to mitigate climate change and energy security risks while alsoresponding to the urgent energy needs o developing countries—is there-ore a key question or policymakers and political leaders the world over.This section describes the specic challenges that exist today in connectionwith each o the major ossil uel options. A signicant portion o thediscussion ocuses on the prospects or a new generation o climate-riendly coal technologies because o the unique potential they hold oradvancing multiple economic, development, energy security, and environ-mental policy objectives.

Status o global ossil-uel resources

As context or this discussion, it is useul to begin by reviewing the statuso ossil uel resources in relation to current and projected patterns o consumption. Table 3.1 shows proved reserves o natural gas, oil, and coalrelative to current levels o consumption and relative to estimates o thetotal global resource endowment or each uel. Proved reserves refect thequantity o uel that industry estimates, with reasonable certainty based onavailable geological and engineering data, to be recoverable in the uturerom known reservoirs under existing economic and operating conditions.Proved reserves generally represent only a small raction o the total globalresource base. Both gures tend to shit over time as better data becomeavailable and as technological and economic conditions change. In thecase o oil, or example, estimated reserves grew or much o the last hal century because improved extraction capabilities and new discoveriesmore than kept pace with rising consumption. This has begun to change

IAC Report|Energy supply 59

in recent years, however, prompting concern that oil production couldpeak within the next ew decades leading to a period o inevitable declinein available supplies.Global coal supplies—both in terms o known reserves and estimatedtotal resources—are ar more abundant than global supplies o conven-tional oil and natural gas (Table 3.1); or the latter uels, the ratio o knownconventional reserves to current consumption is on the order o 40–60years, whereas known coal reserves are adequate to support another 150years at 2006 rates o consumption. Obviously, any estimate o knownreserves—since reserves are a measure o the resource base that iseconomically retrievable using current technology—is subject to changeover time: as prices rise and/or technology improves, estimated reservescan grow. Nevertheless, price and supply pressures are likely to continue toaect oil and natural gas markets over the next several decades (Table 3.1).The inclusion o unconventional resources greatly expands the potentialresource base, especially or natural gas, i estimates o ‘additional occur-rences’—that is, more speculative hydrocarbon deposits that are not yettechnically accessible or energy purposes, such as methane hydrates—areincluded. This will be discussed urther in the section on unconventionalresources.

Consumption (EJ)

Table 3.1 Consumption, reserves, and resources of fossil fuels

P r o v e n r e s e r v e s ( E J ) e n d 2 0 0 6

b

L i f e t i m e o f p r o v e n r e s e r v e s ( y e a r s ) a t p r e s e n t c o n s u m p t i o n C o n s u m p t i o n t o d a t e ( 1 8 6 0 - 2 0 0 6 ) a s a s h a r e o f p r o v e n r e - s e r v e s R e s o u r c e b a s e ( Z J )

a

L i f e t i m e o f r e s o u r c e b a s e ( y e a r s )

1860 –1998

a

1999 –2006

b

1860 –2006ª

,b

2006

b

Oil5,1411,2396,3801646,8884192%32.4198Natural gas2,3777853,1631097,0146345%49.8461Coal5,9898786,86713019,40414735%199.71,538

Note

: Under

Resource base

,  zettajoule (ZJ) equals 03 exajoules (EJ). Resources are defned asconcentrations o naturally occurring solid, liquid, or gaseous material in or on the Earth’s crust in suchorm that economic extraction is potentially easible. The

Resource base

includes proven reserves plusadditional (conventional and unconventional) resources. Unconventional resources could extend lietimeo oil, gas, and coal by a actor o 5-0, but their extraction will involve advanced technologies, highercosts, and possibly serious environmental problems

Sources:

(a) UNDP, UNDESA, WEC, 2000: Table 5.. (b) BP, 200

Category:	Uncategorized.
Rating:
Upload Date:	03/09/2009
Copyright:	Attribution Non-commercial
Tags:	This document has no tags.

Documents

People