Growing Risks Ahead - Energy and Climate: How to Achieve a Successful Energy Transition - page 15

s energy dependency is particularly high as
regards oil (85% of oil imported, without including Norway, 65%
including Norway). It is close to 50% for natural gas (57% without
Norway, 43% including Norway) and 40% for coal.
In Asia, Japan is totally dependent on imports for its consumption of oil
and natural gas, supplied as LNG. China

The European Union

s spectacular economic growth is
creating increasing tension on the energy markets, as growth in Chinese
demand has created a surge in imports. The dependencies of China and
India are tending to increase as their economies improve; these two
countries deploy the infrastructures and investments designed to favour
energy supplies, primarily oil. In addition, China relies heavily on its
coal reserves, which has serious implications for the environment. These
constraints could encourage this country to further diversify its energy
sources, placing more emphasis on natural gas in particular.
In this context, the dependency on energy imports represents an increas-
ing risk factor for the consumer countries and a factor of instability.
Whenever deliveries from an exporting country are stopped or simply
reduced, the shock waves are felt throughout the world, often inducing
sudden price rises.

Dependency of transport on oil

The transport sector is particularly vulnerable. Road and air transport,
which relies on liquid fuels derived almost exclusively from oil, accounts
for consumption of more than half of the oil produced worldwide.
Road transport is 97% dependent on oil. The rapid increase of passen-
ger and goods traffic will inevitably add to the oil demand, unless
substitution solutions are rapidly set up, which is no easy task. Liquid
fuels provide ameans of storing large quantities of energy, in a formwhich
is easy to handle and, as we will see in Chapter 6, it is difficult to find
substitutes offering comparable advantages.
The dependency of air transport is also a matter of concern in view
of the higher traffic, which is expected to double every fourteen years.
The share of aviation in world consumption of fuels intended for trans-
port, which has already risen from10.7%around 1990 to 13.5%in 2000,
is expected to increase even further in the future. At the current time,
air transport is totally dependent on the supply of kerosene produced
from oil.
Increasingly dependent on road and air transport, international trade
would be completely paralysed if oil supplies were cut.