Some considerations on energy debate

When we take a look on the activities and the objects that we use everyday in order to meet our purposes as individuals and society, is it impossible to neglect the relevance of energy as an entity that makes us easy to live. Mankind along time has used energy at different extents during its history, but has been just since 200 years ago that intensive use of energy has totally transformed the relationship between human beings and their environment. The energy became a way to get better perspectives of live for humans, comfortability in their houses, security against nature's elements, better and faster transport, access to a continuous supply of potable water, and consequently a higher expectancy of live, it was a real revolution.

As usually in life, all the benefits of energy have been accompanied also for new problems or inconvenients that have been also faced, in different ways, by the society. The new perspectives and potentialities of the intensive use of energy have not been used always in order to guarantee the well-being of the majority of the individuals, and during the last century there were world conflicts that seeded terror and sorrow in a very efficient way thanks to technology and improvement of the intensive use of energy in a lot of different manners specifically designed to destroy and annihilate another human beings.

Besides, the human lifestyle became extremely dependent on intensive use of energy in almost every activity of life. Just think about the indispensable need to prepare your breakfast in order to get your own life energy every morning, without a continuous supply of energy in the form which is contained in natural gas or electric power, it would be at least challenging to get it; or the wish to take a warm shower in the mornings after wake up, that would be just really nothing if you compared it with the fact that maybe you need to go, without any locomotion artifact, to your work place or business located several kilometers away from your home. In this context it is better don't think about the possibility to be informed as efficiently as today, or to make our tasks, as fast as we can do it now, without the help of a computer, a network and other peripheral devices that require a safe, continuous and reliable energy supply.

But, Where does the energy come from?. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474×10¹⁸ J=132,000 Twh). Oil and another liquid fuels are at the top of the consumption rate list between the different fuels, followed by coal, natural gas, renewable energies and nuclear energy. On the other hand, China, United States and India are leading the ranking of energy consumption around the world, as it is possible to see in the International Energy Outlook 2011 of the U.S Energy Information Administration, and also in other related reports from similar agencies.

The energy rate consumption is growing, as is obvious to expect, while the world population is also doing the same. The United Nations (UN), in it's long-range population projections, has reported for 2300 a world population of 8,97 billion people. It is also considered the existence of a growing peak of 9.22 billion in 2075. If the energy supply shortage is considered, what will be the energy sources that our society is going to use in the future in order to satisfy these growing needs?

Another issue is the global warming and the pollution which are favored and generated during the utilization of the different energy sources. Fossil fuels like oil and coal are used in power plants in order to get energy, but simultaneously are released huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and pollutants like sulphur dioxide (SO₂), unburned hydrocarbons (HC), volatile organic compounds (VOC), nitrogen oxides (NO_X) and another different compounds that cause health and environmental problems. Nevertheless, abatement pollution control technologies are becoming more and more efficient reducing the amount and concentration of pollutants that are released to the atmosphere, and also the energy efficient practices which have been implemented in the production and industrial sectors are getting satisfactory results, but if a region or country is improving it's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) it means a more intensive use of energy and, consequently, a higher amount of CO₂ and pollutants released to the air.

There is no just one solution to these problem. It is not possible to say that our society is going to decline it's quality of life in order to diminish the quantity of pollutants and global warming gases when its standards of life are not guaranteed to the majority of the population. If it is desirable to have worthy life conditions in the whole world, then is unavoidable to cause environmental damage in a certain extent. Therefore, is necessary to get an agreement as a society about the damages that could be acceptable, from a realistic and quantitatively point of view, in a wide social and technical discussion, without fanaticisms and prejudices whatever be the nature of them.

One the most controversial proposals is increasing the use of nuclear energy instead of fossil fuels. Regarding accidents like Chernobyl or Fukushima just few years ago, this alternative looks not so popular, but from a technical and pragmatical point of view it does not sound so bad. The fact that nuclear energy produces the most electricity in relation to it's environmental impact, in comparison with other energy sources, has to be considered.

The use of another alternative energy sources is also of great importance. Solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and other sources have been improved in terms of its efficiency and reliability. Oil and fossil fuel's prices play a negative role against the development of a better capacity and higher intensive use of these energy sources making them not very economically competitive till now, but there are very admirable efforts to encourage and subsidize it's use, for example in Germany and another countries of the European Union (EU).

Finally, is better to consider all the alternatives that are available in order to get the better answer. It is strongly necessary to continue promoting further developments in the field of renewable energies, they have to be part of the solution and are going to contribute in a considerable share to the energy budget. Nevertheless, in the mean time, available energy sources have to be used, efficiently, as clean as possible, and using economic incentives for the renewable energies that could come from the fossil fuel use. Nuclear energy is also an alternative, its use has to be considered and subject to a comprehensive analysis, because if a decision is taken considering only misconceptions and prejudices and not real facts also, the competitiveness of a society can be put into question.