Sustainable energy - how does it add up?

摘要

It is reasonable to claim that people only get interested in energy matters when a crisis is upon us. A crisis is when the lights are about to go out owing to power shortages, or there are queues at the gasoline pumps following difficulties in the oil product supply chain. But now we have a rather different crisis that is set to last much longer than these relatively short-term incidents. This is the realisation that the way we are currently using energy is non-sustainable, both in terms of the depletion of finite natural resources but more importantly owing to its anticipated impact on the world's climate. Climate change has increasingly grabbed the attention of the world's media over the past decade and everyone has a view on it.