America's Newfound Power: What U.S. Should Do To Capitalize On Shale, Renewable Energy Revolutions

摘要

It was hard not to do a double take when the story broke last November: By 2017, the headlines read, the United States would overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer. And by 2025, the U.S. could be exporting more oil and gas than it imports. Combined, the country's vast deposits of newly accessible shale oil and shale gas -which had been locked in subterranean rocks until innovative technologies combined with market forces to liberate them - will make America "all but self-sufficient" in meeting its energy needs within a generation, according to the International Energy Agency's (IEA) 2013 World Energy Outlook. The scale of this metamorphosis is such that it will likely necessitate the adoption of a new mindset by everyone who thinks about energy. Adult Americans were raised under the finger-wagging notion that energy is scarce. Now, shale fuels, together with the parallel emergence of groundbreaking technologies to produce cleaner energy, are leading from an era of energy shortage to one of abundance.