Future Energy Leaders Program
Detailed program — Tuesday, September 14, 2010

According to most surveys, there are adequate resources in the world to meet growing global energy demand well into the 21st century. It is also expected that fossil fuels (from conventional and unconventional sources) will dominate the total primary energy mix for several decades to come. However, to anticipate the future and to meet the currently unmet demand, it is also necessary on a large-scale to deploy other resources, including wind, sun, biomass, geothermal and other.

Fossil fuels will remain a large part of the energy equation for the foreseeable future. The oil industry will, however, have to develop continuously in order to access new resources which will increasingly be located in remote regions. New technologies and techniques will be needed for exploration, extraction, transport, and transformation of these new resources. They will also have to be economically competitive and environmentally acceptable.

Transforming primary energy into an end-use ready energy product is becoming an increasingly challenging process. Given the high cost of energy, this process must be as efficient as possible. It must also be efficient in using other natural resources, such as land and water, and be as clean as possible. The final uses of energy, in particular, hydrocarbon-based fuels, must also be efficient since they generate greenhouse gases or other pollutants. There are solutions already in existence addressing these impacts and others are being developed.

Nuclear power is sometimes considered as a declining and dangerous technology and alternately as a sound environmentally sustainable solution for a world concerned about climate change and the dwindling fossil fuel resources. Nuclear power seems to be at the dawn of a new era that will be characterised by new designs and technologies. The nuclear fuel cycle is also being reassessed for a long-term outlook, including fuel production, reprocessing and disposal.

In a world of declining conventional energy resources, the idea of continuously renewable resources is certainly appealing. Until now, large hydroelectric schemes have been the only truly significant sources of renewable power, but things are changing fast with the introduction of more efficient technologies that generate power at competitive prices using renewable sources such as wind and solar power as well as biomass and geothermal energy, and, in the more distant future the energy from the oceans. More fundamental work in physics, genetics and material sciences could also open up other hitherto unexpected possibilities.

In the global energy equation, avoiding energy consumption is preferable to adding more production, since with greater efficiency we can provide the same energy services using less resources. In this sense, energy efficiency can really be considered the equivalent of a new, large and almost untapped energy source. From big industries to individual consumers, everyone can make an effort to improve energy efficiency and benefit from it. Improving energy efficiency is, however, not always an easy task as it is a result of policies and regulations, measures, technologies, economics and other components.

Although there are still significant quantities of oil and gas in the world, their continuously growing use in the last 100 years has led to the depletion of the most easily accessible reserves. The increasing difficulties and costs encountered in developing new reserves, whether due to harsh arctic conditions or exploration of deep sea deposits, has encouraged the development of new technologies for extracting oil from unconventional sources. These may include some types of sources previously considered uneconomical, such as oil shale and oil sands, for example, or new techniques increasing oil quantities which can be recovered from wells previously considered as depleted.

The rapid development of the petroleum industry in the 20th century has led to the exploitation of the oil sources closest to markets. As demand grew, new sources of hydrocarbons were sought in farther away, harder to reach areas requiring more sophisticated recovery techniques. Strengthened by these experiences, we now have the very real possibility of accessing to vast reserves lying under the land and marine territories of the arctic zones, reserves which until not very long ago were out of reach. But what is the Arctic’s real energy potential?