Agro Perspectiva

World looking for oil and gas substitutes

16.01.2012 12:39 "Agro Perspectiva" (Kyiv) — Global energy prospects are being discussed by representatives of over 130 countries at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi which was organized by the International Renewable Energy Agency. In the course of the forum, from the 16th to the 19th of January, over 800 delegates will assess the prospects of the renewable energy market and the introduction of environmentally-friendly technologies. Energy and environmental problems, arising due to global climatic changes, as well as the Fukushima challenge are the most acute topics for discussion. This is quite understandable, believes Sergey Pikin, director of the Energy Development Foundation. Sergey Pikin says that the world is moving to the use of renewable sources of energy due to climatic problems. At the same time, it is not clear what their share will be in the near future. Remembering the Fukushima accident, the future of the nuclear energy is also uncertain. Some countries intend to develop it, others to give up. For this reason, it is quite timely to discuss all topics associated with the use of traditional and new sources of energy and the change in their ratio. It is especially important because the use of energy is growing annually in spite of the crisis. The participants in the Abu Dhabi conference believe that the governments ought to give priority to the development of new sources of energy immediately, so as to have more opportunities for using them in a few years. This is a key issue, believes Konstantin Diyesperov, an expert in alternative kinds of energy. «We all live in the oil and gas economy but its efficiency is falling with time. The explored reserves are running low, so serious investment is required for exploring new fields. The profitability of both the mining and processing industries is falling. No solutions replacing the oil and gas economy have been found yet. At the same time, there are methods of getting a whole range of valuable products from biomass. The Abu Dhabi forum will be of great practical use if it helps to find the ways to effectively process inedible biomass.» Because of the huge explored reserves of oil and gas in Russia, this problem was not relevant here before. However, in recent years it suddenly came to the fore. Sergey Pikin, director of the Energy Development Foundation, draws our attentions to this, saying that Russia is dealing with this issue only on the level of separate projects, rather than a real policy. However, taking part in this summit will be useful to us in any case. The summit will show how new programmes and technologies could be put into practice. It would also be very good to see the suggestions made at the summit translated into practical steps of federal offices and ministries responsible for energy development. This would result in creating a system of incentives in Russia as well, so as to develop various renewable sources of energy side by side with traditional ones. Russia’s joining the International Renewable Energy Agency (IREA) will also create beneficial requisites for this. The IREA General Assembly session took place before the summit opened and discussed the issues of new participants. Apart from Russia, China and Brazil are considered to be prospective members. The session pointed out the huge potential of these three BRICS member-states in the development of international cooperation in the field of alternative sources of energy and innovative ‘green’ technologies.