Kerkko Jahnukainen
Problem: How to slow down the rise of oil demand ?
Learning Objectives:
- Regulations to the use of oil
- Investing in renewable energy research and alternative ideas
Keywords: Peak oil, EV (Electric veghicles), Oil alternatives, unions
Shortly about the trigger:
The trigger talks about still forth going rise in oil consumption despite extensive efforts from various areas including the rising popularity of electric vehicles. It seems that there is no yet an effective alternative to traditional oil, which is becoming an increasing issue.
Regulations to the use of oil:
All countries have their own regulations regarding the use of oil, furthermore the EU have collective regulations and most U.S. states have their own as well. For example the the Netherlands (from their official government website www.goverment.nl) have said by 2020 14% of all energy used in the Netherlands, must be sustainable and by 2050 almost all must be this. They have said that companies which fail to meet this have no place in low-carbon economy. Regulation on oil storage is also another area where there is big difference between countries, with very precise instructions on how different types of oils and sizes of containers need to stored.
Mike Levi says in an article on www.cfr.org that the U.S. could reduce oil consumption by ending use of oil for heating and changing transportation into mix of hybrids and electric vehicles. In the same article Anthony Perl suggest that building more high speed railways would reduce consumption, only down side being that rate at which these rails could be constructed. Ian Parry vaguely suggest taxation for all oil based products in US, saying that if would be one of the effective ways of controlling oil usage. It would discourage people from driving and promote them towards electric vehicles. Anthony pear has a vision where The United States could reduce oil-powered transportation by 40% by the year 2025 while not compromising mileage. In the vision half of today cars would be electric and one third of flight within USA would be done by electric trains. He suggests a creation of Transportation Redevelopment Agency (TRA) to help build the new infrastructure. Before Obama left the Whitehorse he made an oil reform agenda this included points like for example:
- Fully implement oil well safety recommendations in the Interior Department’s report, including better back-up systems and inspections.
- Establish a 45-mile per gallon fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks by 2020, and establish the first fuel economy standards for trucks.
- Power trucks and buses with natural gas by enacting the NAT GAS Act (PDF). Power cars with electricity by enacting the Electric Drive Vehicle Deployment Act (PDF)
- Eliminate the liability limit for oil disasters, currently capped at $75 million.
- Eliminate tax loopholes that benefit big oil companies.
- Invoke the Trade Expansion Act to levy an oil import fee, and use this revenue to invest in clean energy infrastructure.
Investing in renewable energy research and alternative ideas:
Renewable energy is energy collected from renewable sources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves or geothermal heat. Renewable energy often provides energy in four important areas: electricity generation, air and water heating/cooling, transportation, and rural (off-grid) energy services.
Power Generation: According to Wikipedia by the year 20140 renewable energy (RE) is projected to equal cola and antural gas electricty prodution. In 2015 42% of Denmarks electrcity was made wind.
Heating: Solar water heating provides water heating for over 70 million households worldwide
Transportation: Bioethanol is pure alochol made by fermantation, this already exsists and is mostly used mixed into gasoline. Inovation such as bioethnaol are key when talking about the future of transportation. Other gasoline fueled car substitutes include: solar vehihcles (EV), biodiesel and hydrogen based cars.
The Guardian on their website (www.theguardian.com) mentioned that China is the number investor in renewable energy at the moment. They will be spending almost 300bn (292bn exa.) solely on renewable energy by 2020, including solar, wind and hydro, creating over 13 million jobs in the sector.
Source for below is by Frankfurt School "Global Trends in renewable energy investment 2017" made for the United Nations Environment Programme.
In 2016 new investments in hydro fell 23% which is record low since 2013, but at the same time there was record installation of
renewable power capacity worldwide in 2016. Wind,
solar, biomass and waste-to-energy, geothermal,
small hydro and marine sources between them added
138.5GW, up from 127.5GW in the previous year.
This 2016 gigawatt figure was equivalent to 55% of all
the generating capacity added globally, the highest
proportion in any year to date.
Overall, renewable energy investment in developing
countries fell 30% in 2016
One of the up-and-coming innovations in renewable
power is the siting of two different technologies
in the same location, to make use of shared land,
grid connections and maintenance, and to reduce
intermittency. Some 5.6GW of these ‘hybrid’ projects
have been built or are under development worldwide,
including hydro-solar, wind-solar, PV-solar thermal,
solar thermal-geothermal and biomass-geothermal
Rapid progress is being made to lower the costs of renewable energy and goods strides in recent years have been made.
While renewable energy popularity have been rising steadily, Financial Times reported a big dip new annual investments in 2016 (Source: https://www.ft.com/content/688d4b20-d8c4-11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e)
.
Sources:
https://www.government.nl/topics/renewable-energy/the-future-of-fossil-fuels
https://www.cfr.org/expert-roundup/reducing-us-oil-consumption
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/05/china-invest-renewable-fuel-2020-energy
https://www.ft.com/content/688d4b20-d8c4-11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e
http://fs-unep-centre.org/sites/default/files/publications/globaltrendsinrenewableenergyinvestment2017.pdf
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