The Energy Grid Blog is managed and written entirely by Seed editors and expert guest bloggers. Read more about them The current challenges around the fossil-fuel based energy system affect the core of modern societies and cut across questions of security, national sovereignty, environmental sustainability, technological innovation and economic prosperity. While the energy crisis is multi-faceted, two broader notions exist with regard to where we might find the solution: in political reform or in technological innovation.
To some, the root cause of the energy crisis is the lack or failure of institutions that govern the energy system. The solution is to establish institutions that set the right incentives to ensure that carbon dioxide emissions are reduced and that allow for the fair and safe international trade of oil and gas. Moreover, it is argued that the energy crisis is not only a crisis of political institutions, but also a crisis of societal values. The values of economic growth and consumerism have proven to be unsustainable.
To others, the energy crisis is essentially a technology crisis: humankind lacks the technological know-how to meet its increasing energy demand in a sustainable way. The solution lies primarily in scaling up investment in technology research, development and deployment. It is believed that the human mind is creative enough to come up with radically new forms of energy production that will enable us to meet demand in an environmentally friendly way.
Who is right? Does the global energy crisis represent primarily a political or a technological challenge? Will researchers and entrepreneurs or policy makers and activists lead the way out of the energy crisis?
Environment
Politics
Comments
For me it's evident that, in the end, it is a political problem. Because, even if technology could lag, to bring it up to date is also a political problem.
However I would really like to see come data supporting (or contradicting) this opinion I have. Just for my peace of mind because I doubt data and evidence would convince anybody with deeply rooted beliefs or faiths as we see with issues like creationism...
Posted by: El Guerrero del Interfaz | May 15, 2009 11:11 AM
Technology is nice, but oftentimes it won't be implemented quickly enough without political willpower. Relying on economic incentives provided exclusively by the market works some of the time but various externalities render it a poor solution to rely on. While regulation can't force people to want to save the environment it can force them to start driving hybrids, using low-energy lightbulbs recycling, etc.
Posted by: Eronarn | May 15, 2009 1:37 PM
A case can be made that politics is a technology of the social sciences, and that the engineering in that field of technology is underdeveloped.
This viewpoint often gets me funny looks.
Posted by: abb3w | May 15, 2009 3:25 PM
It's not an either one or the other type of problem. If we find a scientific solution that would be great - i.e. if we had easily workable fusion tomorrow the whole issue of energy would dissapear. But to rely on a scientific breakthrough which may, or may not materialize is foolish (and finding a scientific solution is not a simple matter of just throwing some "x" amount of money at the problem). The political decisions we make should be based on current, or easily predicted technology.
Posted by: Coriolis | May 15, 2009 4:25 PM
Take both approaches. Keep working as hard as possible for a technical solution while pushing for political ground in a responsible manner. Hopefully these two approaches should be symbiotic.
Posted by: Nils Ross | May 16, 2009 6:48 AM
It clearly requires both. The current "alternative" technolgies are not good enough yet to cover the whole problem -even if we had the political will. But without the will even really good technology by itself will not do the job. Essentially we are running into limits to growth issues. LTG is not just about fossil fuel scarcity, but also about lots of other mineral inputs that our current growth oriented economic model has taken for granted.
Some of the more obvious things we need:
(1) A new macro-economics model that quides our political economic system into the era where growth in physical consumption of resources is severely limited.
(2) Attitude changes towards the consumption of scarce -or likely to become scarce commodities.
(3) Research on alternatives to all of the critically short inputs expected to come into play.
(4) Research and an attitide of early adoption for improvements in the efficiency of usage of such.
Posted by: Omega Centauri | May 16, 2009 5:35 PM
It's not an either one or the other type of problem. If we find a scientific solution that would be great - i.e. if we had easily workable fusion tomorrow the whole issue of energy would dissapear. But to rely on a scientific breakthrough which may, or may not materialize is foolish (and finding a scientific solution is not a simple matter of just throwing some "x" amount of money at the problem). The political decisions we make should be based on current, or easily predicted technology.
Posted by: Oteller | July 2, 2009 6:01 AM
Technology is nice, but oftentimes it won't be implemented quickly enough without political willpower. Relying on economic incentives provided exclusively by the market works some of the time but various externalities render it a poor solution to rely on. While regulation can't force people to want to save the environment it can force them to start driving hybrids, using low-energy lightbulbs recycling, etc.
Posted by: Haberler | July 2, 2009 6:07 AM
thanks ten number
Posted by: kelebek sohbet | October 22, 2009 3:19 AM