Custom essays on Portfolio: Energy

Just refrigerator efficiency saves more energy than all that we’e generating from renewables, excluding hydroelectric power… I cannot impress upon you how important energy efficiency is. It doesn’ mean you eat lukewarm food and your beers are lukewarm. You can still have it; you just make a better thing
— Stephen Chu
Talk (Summer 2008) quoted in ‘Obama’s Energy and Environment Team Includes a Nobel Laureate’, Kent Garber, USNews website

Introduction
Today, the problem of the lack of sources of energy is one of the major threats to the future economic growth and the normal development of the world economy. The use of fossil fuels as the main source of energy leads steadily the world to numerous conflicts because the sources of fossil fuels are limited. The scarcity of fossil fuels stimulates the development of new alternative sources of energy, which are renewable and which can decrease costs of the energy generation. In this respect, the use of solar and wind power along with traditional hydroelectric power are considered to be most perspective directions in the development of modern technology and economy along with the structural changes in such industries as automobile industry with the shift to hybrid and electric cars that can make cars and transportation fuel efficient decreasing costs of transportation and negative impact of traffic on the environment. Hence, the structural technological changes in regard to the introduction of energy efficient technologies are crucial for the future development of the world economy.
Current need to develop energy efficient technologies
Increase of consumption of fossil fuel
Today, the world economy is highly dependent on the production and consumption of fossil fuels, such as oil and natural gas. At the same time, fossil fuels are scarce resources. The scarcity of fossil fuels and difficulties associated with their extraction and production stimulate speculations, when oil prices hit the ceiling exceeding $140 per barrel. Obviously, the high price of fossil fuels is determined by the growing demand on fossil fuels for the generation of energy and transportation needs. As the demand on fossil fuels and energy grows, the price of fossil fuels grows respectively or even faster than the demand on fossil fuels grows. The dependence of the world economy on fossil fuels as the major source of energy cannot fail to affect the economic development of practically all countries and economic policies conducted by governments. At the same time, the growing demand on fossil fuels stimulates the development of new technologies which maximize the efficiency of the use of fossil fuels and, simultaneously, open new horizons for the extraction of a larger amount of fossil fuels worldwide, including areas, which used to be unavailable for the extraction of fossil fuels in the past. Moreover, the increase demand on energy and fossil fuels stimulates the world economy to shift toward the use of alternative sources of energy. Many specialists argue that “we’ve embarked on the beginning of the last days of the age of oil. Embrace the future and recognize the growing demand for a wide range of fuels or ignore reality and slowly—but surely—be left behind” (Best, 663). Hence, fossil fuels are likely to be out-of-date within several decades or sooner.