Energy enables modern society to function. It enables us to see at night, keeps us warm or cool, enables us to travel great distances with comparative ease, and it has given us access to plethora of modern day devices, from the washing machine, to the microwave, personal computer to the mobile phone.
Most of the energy required both to manufacture and power such devices was previously locked deep beneath the earth where it had been buried for hundreds of thousands and millions of years. We commonly refer to such energy sources as ‘fossil fuels’, or ‘hydrocarbons’ and these include coal, oil and natural gas. The downside to us extracting these fuels and burning them is that they contain carbon and other elements which are released into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases and other harmful pollutants. In the last 150 years we have extracted and burned these fuels on such an awesome scale that we now have two major problems:
1: We have created a phenomenon called the ‘Green House Effect’ – a blanket of Greenhouse Gases that are preventing heat from escaping into space and are warming the planet on a global scale.
2: We have used so much fossil fuel that our supply of these extremely useful, but finite resources is becoming stretched, and cannot possibly sustain our demand in the medium-term.
The greatest challenge facing humanity today is how to transition to a sustainable the low-carbon energy economy that can cope with current energy requirements and provide scope for growth in the future, whilst minimising the environmental impacts. Our current energy system is inherently wasteful and does not encourage sustainable use of energy. For example, the electricity we use to boil water in kettles is transported hundreds of miles from power stations that themselves produce heat, sometimes twice as much (in energy terms) as the electricity they produce. This heat is not used but dissipated into the atmosphere as steam. To manage our resources sustainably we need to produce electricity and heat at the point at which it is needed to minimise wastage of our resources
The facts are evident - 19 of the 20 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1980, and in the last 5-years the world has experience melting of the ice-caps on an unprecedented scale, unpredictable weather cycles, flash floods, hurricanes, and extreme droughts. This has forced the hand of Governments across the world to act, and the gauntlet has also been picked up by business leaders and environmental groups. From Tony Blair, David Cameron, President Bush, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Richard Branson and the media, the will is evident and solutions are being demanded.
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