Fossil Fuel Use to Grow
According to the Energy Department, despite persistently high oil prices, global energy demand will grow by 50 percent over the next two decades with continued heavy reliance on environmentally troublesome fossil fuels, especially coal and oil.
The projections by the Energy Department’s statistical agency said that without mandatory actions to address global warming, the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide flowing into the atmosphere each year from energy use will be 51 percent greater in 2030 than it was three years ago.
“Fossil fuels … are expected to continue supplying much of the energy used worldwide,” the Energy Information Administration report predicts, in spite of the growth of renewable energy sources, especial wind and biofuels.
“Global energy demand grows despite the sustained high world oil prices that are project to persist over the long term”. Oil could cost as little as $113 a barrel or as much as $186 a barrel in 2030, the analysis concluded.
This seems to be common-sense information, who would guess that energy use would not increase in the future? What seems even more obvious is that we need to start taking strong steps towards isolating the US from the rest of the world in terms of energy supply. We need our own supply of energy, preferably renewable or nuclear based, that will shield us from the volatility of the global energy market.
Contrary to Exxon’s perspective, Christophe de Margerie (CEO of Europe’s largest oil company, Total) concludes that demand for oil is outstripping supply (the root cause of price increases, not “greedy oil execs”).
In the early part of the decade new production from the former Soviet Union accounted for most of the growth in the world’s supply of oil and gas. But when Mr Putin began his campaign to take control of Russia’s resources, that growth stalled, just as China’s demand for energy was taking off. The present high prices for oil and gas are the result.
Perhaps it’s time we focus on the cause of the global warming, instead of the effect of global warming. Face it, burning fossil fuels, and/or replacing it with fuels that use more energy to create it – are the major cause of global warming. If we believe an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, why aren’t we marshalling national resources to create long-term, bi-partisan science-based solutions?
I spoke to an engineer on a plane recently and asked him why we can’t build more refineries in the US – he said it was too expensive for oil companies…even with current profits !!!
I forgot about the plan to continue to neglect levees and bridges so towns and cities flood. Let’s not give the majority of Americans sufficent health care coverage and we can raise gas prices through the roof. Hey the country is in such great shape at the moment why change anything…its the republican way.
Americans dont want our addiction on foreign oil to go away, we want the addiction to oil to go away…..We want new “green” technologies that wont have an impact on the environment and will create millions of new jobs….easy