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[[Challenges to Energy Security - Is a demonization of conventional energy production under current global trends beneficial?]]
[[Challenges to Energy Security - Is a demonization of conventional energy production under current global trends beneficial?]]


Globalisation is the worldwide disappearance of ideological, political, scientifical and technological boundaries. It is not an entirely new event but a historical process, which however has gained enormous momentum in the last decades. Within this process peoples and nations come closer together, enabling a free flow of capital and economic exchange. Billions of people around the world can profit from this with the chances of improved working and living conditions. Emerging countries like India, China and Brazil are made into economic centers of gravity as a consequence, relinquishing their old image as cheap producers and transforming it into that of serious industrial providers.
In 2008 the worlds energy consumption reached about 740 Exajoules, with 85% of it being derived from the combustion of fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency expects worldwide energy demand to double by 2030. While there are many reasons to rightly believe that the excessive burning of fossil fuels is the cause of many changes to the environment and climate, it is also equally true that in the last centuries and decades fossil fuels have provided a considerable part of humanity with unparalleled economic and industrial success, indirectly triggering inventions in almost any field and improving man's living conditions on Earth over those of previous centuries. Within the process of meeting the future energy demand largely through the use of renewable energies it might also prove to be benificial looking at opportunities to improve upon conventional energy production – other than to demonize it. The following article will analyse some current global trends, especially in the field of electricity production, and the great challenges to a coherent energy policy.


The free flow of capital and an absence of an economic „global order“, however, makes problems inevitable as the current economic crisis is showing clearly. Also the old economic giants in Europe and the US are challenged by an additional and ever more skilled and educated workforce of 2 billion people that before had lived beside the world economy, creating a „War for Talents“ and defying the shrinking populations of the western world.
The inevitable interdependence and cause of severe concern created by the process of globalisation, however,  becomes highly apparent in the field of energy supply. The International Energy Agency (IEA) suggests that with a world population of then 8,5 million people energy demand will double by 2030 ([[http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/docs/weo2008/WEO2008_es_english.pdf]]). In 2005 the Hamburger Weltwirtschaftsinstitut (HWI) presented a study by which the future demand for oil grows by 1.7 % annually and the demand for gas by a whopping 2.4% a year should global economies retain their growth rates. Whether or not the reserve ranges in that study (42 and 63 years respectively) are accurate it is probable that both will lose their profitability within this century.
This presents the world with wide ranging questions and challenges on which paths are to be taken in order to guarantee a secure and cheap energy supply. The following article will analyse some current trends, especially in the field of electricity production, and the question on how the growing demand will be met.


== Marenka Krasomil ==
== Marenka Krasomil ==
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