Energy

IN SEARCH OF A SOLUTION TO OUR ENERGY NEEDS

In the not so far future, a city of people wake up on a cold day during winter, only to find there is no electricity to turn on the heater. This scenario is not science fiction; it might happen in the near future. As of today, fossil fuel contributes to most of humans’ energy needs. Currently, approximately 80% of the world energy is derived from fossil fuels (Monthly Energy Review June 2014, 2014). This means that if the supply of fossil fuels were to be depleted, the world will be short of 80% of energy. And such a day is not very far off, according to a research done in the University of Queensland, “ fossil fuel reserve depletion times for oil, coal and gas of approximately 35, 107 and 37 years, respectively” (Shafiee, Topal, 2014 ). Very soon, humans will face an energy crisis but is everyone even prepared for it? Only 10% of the world energy depends on renewable sources such as wind and sun (Ren21, 2013). And the remaining 10% is obtained from nuclear sources. In 100 years, mankind will have to rely purely on nuclear and renewable energy sources only, which demonstrates the dire situation the world is in now. This paper aims to analyse the different possible alternatives to fossil fuels to enhance energy security in the near future. Furthermore, this paper also proposes policies to help achieve the above mentioned goal.

Often enough, people will point to nuclear energy as the solution to all of the world’s energy needs due to the amount of energy that it can generate. However, nuclear energy is not as reliable as it seems. Apart from the contamination that comes along with the technology, it is out of reach for most countries. Starting off with the definition, nuclear power is defined as the use of exothermic nuclear process to produce useful energy such as electricity (Murray, Holbert, 2009). On 11 March 2011, mankind faced the second largest nuclear disaster in history; there was a meltdown of a nuclear plant in...