WILL THE CARBON AGE (OIL AND GAS) TERMINATE BEFORE DEPLETION OF RESERVES? IT WAS NOT LACK OF STONES THAT ENDED THE STONE AGE. A RESEARCH PERSPECTIVE ON A MORE SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION OF ENERGY

摘要

Three inextricably linked issues pose a major challenge facing society today: I. The world's increasing demand for energy; 2, World population growth; 3. The need to assure a viable world for future generations. To meet these requirements the energy industry is developing new energy production technologies from all sources, fossil -coal, oil, gas, nuclear- as well as renewables -biomass, water, wind, solar. The ancient processes that harvested sunlight and converted it into carbonaceous materials stored in the earth essentially limit fossil-based resources. The 'Club of Rome' thinking was that the cost of recovering these finite resources should increase, as it would require an increasing effort. However, we now know that fossil fuel sources are more abundant than predicted then, and we continue to /earn to reduce their production cost At the same time, the cost of renewable energy is decreasing even more rapidly, but in most cases the actual cost is still high. There are two more factors that influence the competition between fossil and renewable energy: I. Costs to bring energy from its source of production to the sink (consumer, industry), the energy infrastructure; 2. The cost associated with the emissions, especially greenhouse gases, of conversion of the energy source,. The energy infrastructure is changing from large-scale electricity producers connected to large and small-scale consumers towards a "distributed energy" infrastructure, as smaller scale energy conversion offers opportunities for integration of various energy usages (power, traction, heat, cold). That improves the overall energy efficiency, reduces costs, but is linked to a gas pipeline network Such energy infrastructure needs to have the capability to balance supply and demand, thus the possibility to store energy. Greenhouse gas emissions, especially CO_2, will need to be reduced to avoid climate change. However, it is still uncertain how the 'world' is going to drive that process. Inevitably CO_2 sequestration will add costs to fossil carbonaceous energy production. At the same time, it offers new opportunities for e.g. enhanced oil/gas recovery with CO_2, and thus generate a new learning process to reduce the costs associated with CO_2. One way society can build a much more versatile energy infrastructure is the so-called hydrogen economy. Hydrogen can be distributed and stored more easily than electricity and at the same time it offers a decoupling of energy from carbon, connects small and large-scale energy producers and consumers, and couples renewable and fossil sources. Therefore the hydrogen infrastructure is the ideal bridge between today's fossil fuel world and the future renewable energy world. In conclusion: fossil oil and gas will continue to play an important role in the future energy supply, but competition by renewable energy sources will increase. Society will make choices with respect to greenhouse gas emissions and consequently on the energy infrastructure, e.g. to move to the hydrogen economy. Research and technology will drive the costs down of fossil and CO_2 sequestration routes as well as of renewable energy sources.