How to meet the challenge

Population surging, oil running out and water scarce — we need solutions before then, says David Binning

By 2050 the world’s population is expected to exceed nine billion, at which point fossil fuels may be no more, countries will no longer be reliant on the Middle East for fuel, America will no longer be the world’s leading economy and areas now sparsely populated may be home to bustling metropolises.
The health of national and world economies as well as people and the environment at this juncture depends very much on widespread collaboration between governments and industries of all kinds to fast-track alternative energy programmes and global agreements on carbon trading and emissions caps.
Many hope that the Copenhagen summit in December will mark a big step in the right direction. However, no one is under any illusions about the difficulty of achieving a proper global accord, especially one that does not disadvantage developing countries.
The fact that we are in real danger of encountering some sort of energy crisis in the future is not debatable. At issue is finding the right balance between the need for long-term planning and more immediate action in identifying new reserves of fossil fuels and other short-term options.

One key concern is that the growing energy needs of countries such as China and India are pushing up prices for coal, oil and gas, leading to sharp rises in electricity costs for industry and homes.
While many acknowledge that most of the easily accessible oil and gas has been exploited, advances in geological mapping, drilling and computational modelling may buy us more time before we need to lose our dependency on fossil fuels completely.
Many people expect that nuclear power will emerge as the world’s dominant energy source in the decades to come. Once the scourge of environmentalists and people of virtually all political persuasions, nuclear has been recast as a possible environmental saviour. Some see it as the best short-term solution to addressing greenhouse emissions from the burning of fossil fuels but of all the energy types it faces the most opposition.
Some scientists stress that a reduction in CO2 emissions of the order of 80 per cent is needed within the next few decades if the world is not going to dry up, freeze or become submerged, depending on which Armageddon scenario you subscribe to.
Yet there is growing disagreement about the science of climate change. Many of the claims made in Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth have been debunked in the face of mounting evidence that the planet has been heating and cooling in the same cycles since long before the industrial revolution, and has not become warmer in the past ten years.
It would seem that people will have a different, certainly a more sophisticated, understanding of man’s effect on the weather long before 2050, a fact that will influence government and industry responses to the challenges now being outlined.
David Clarke, chief executive of the Energy Technologies Institute, calculated that Britain needs to spend about £100 billion to meet its 2020 energy and environment targets and at least that amount again before 2050. This includes the massive investments needed in carbon capture and storage.
“We have to understand what we need to do from a supply chain and skills point of view,” Clarke said. “We need to think about not just what we can do but what we need to do.”
Working in partnership with big corporations to solve energy and environmental problems, the Energy Technologies Institute employs complex computer modelling to learn more about key factors, including power, heat, transport and infrastructure and the interplay between them. Predicting population and demographic changes will also be key to developing a clean and sustainable future.
Professor Peter Dobson, head of Oxford University’s Begbroke Science Park and an expert in energy and sustainability, acknowledges that there are serious concerns surrounding energy and food, but predicts that the sourcing and supply of water will emerge as the biggest challenge facing the planet, come 2050.
“We are going to be running out of fossil fuel, that’s a given. However, in terms of energy challenges we have to integrate with a whole range of societal needs like water, which is of course essential for growing food.”