Question

What are the remedial measures to be taken to overcome to scarcity of power resources

Answer 1

Petroleum has been the driver of human productive capacity for more than 100 years, helping humankind achieve great productivity... but we may now be reaching a point where world demand will soon be surpassing world supply. This is energy scarcity, often referred to as Peak Oil.

Oil has the highest energy leverage of any resource; it now delivers about 75 times the energy needed to extract it. Most of the technology and products developed and produced in the 20th century were either powered or manufactured with oil.

However, many leading oil geologists now argue that the world is quickly reaching the point where total world consumption of oil will soon outstrip the production rate of oil world-wide.

Today, no one seriously disputes that the production of accessible petroleum reserves will max out sometime between now and the year 2020. The world will then face energy descent—an increasingly widening gap between oil production and demand - and energy transition - the emergence of potentially new forms of energy to replace or substitute for oil, such as shale gas and synthetic oil.

The size and growth of the energy gap will be exaggerated by continuing urban and industrial development in China and India. As low cost manufacturers with a combined population of 2.5 billion — including many middle class aspirants —China and India will compete fiercely with traditional petroleum consumers in Europe and North America.

There is still significant debate as to the economic impacts of Energy Scarcity. Critics of Peak Oil such as Vaclav Smil assert that even as oil production capacity decreases, other types of fuel will be available take oil's place. For example, even though oil is now the primary fuel for transportation, as oil prices rise as international oil supplies peak, transportation will simply begin to transition to electric power sources supplied through the burning of coal or natural gas. However, irrespective of the availability of substitute fuels, Peak Oil proponents such as Richard Heinberg argue that the increasing cost of oil will necessarily induce price pressures on both transportation and food production, which will in turn produce economic and social stresses on cities. The question is therefore not whether there will be future stress, but rather, at what level, and how quickly will the price pressures occur.