Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The new
energy world
A slow dawn
The sun is rising on a new energy world. For all the evidence that
supports the naysayers, it surely cannot be that attempts to escape
the fossil-fuel age are futile. Yet, with all of today's endless discus-
sion of energy crises and crunches, climate policies, emission trading
schemes, carbon budgets, renewable resources, new low-carbon
investment frameworks, and invocations of “green” in every conceiv-
able response to the greenhouse gas problem, it is proving to be a
very slow dawn.
This is hardly surprising, given the nature of the energy industry - one
whose investments are big, long-term, and constrained by both public
interest considerations and fundamental laws of physics. “Scale and time
are important in energy,” complains Robin West, head of the PFC Energy
firm in Washington DC. “They, the environmentalists, make the transi-
tion to a low-carbon economy sound so simple, but it isn't”. In the absence
of a major energy crisis such as, say, a revolution in Saudi Arabia and total
shut-down of all its oil exports, inertia and passive resistance to change
will continue to persist among a number of influential groups.
Industries
Low-carbon energy has to find its place in an economy based on fossil
fuels. A few years ago there was the occasional sign that businesses cen-
tred upon fossil-fuel exploitation might take the initiative in wholeheart-
edly transforming themselves into low-carbon energy businesses.
In 1997, under CEO John Browne, BP broke ranks with the rest of the
oil industry. It came out in favour of taking action against climate change,
