Figure 1.1: The history of the oil price per barrel normalized to the February 2013 value of the US dollar [4].
A second challenge that we are facing is related to the fact that our energy
infrastructure heavily depends on fossil fuels like oil, coal and gas, as shown in Figure 1.2.
Fossil fuels are nothing but millions and millions of years of solar energy stored in the
form of chemical energy. The problem is that humans deplete these fossil fuels much
faster than they are generated through the photosynthetic process in nature. Therefore
fossil fuels are not a sustainable energy source. The more fossil fuels we consume, the less
easily extractable gas and oil resources will be available. Already now we see that more
and more oil and gas is produced with unconventional methods, such as extracting oil
from tar sands in Alberta, Canada and producing gas with hydraulic fracturing [7], such as
in large parts of the United States. These new methods use much more energy to get the
fossil fuels out of the ground. Further, offshore drilling is put in regions with ever larger
water depths, which leads to new technological risks as we have seen in the Deepwater
Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
Figure 1.2: The primary energy consumption of the world by source in 2012. The total supply was 155,505 TWh (data
from [6]).
A third challenge is that by burning fossil fuels we produce the so-called greenhouse
gases such carbon dioxide (CO 2 ). The additional carbon dioxide created by human
activities is stored in our oceans and atmosphere. Figure 1.3 shows the increase in carbon
dioxide concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere up to 2015. According to the International
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5),
The atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased to levels
A second challenge that we are facing is related to the fact that our energy
infrastructure heavily depends on fossil fuels like oil, coal and gas, as shown in Figure 1.2.
Fossil fuels are nothing but millions and millions of years of solar energy stored in the
form of chemical energy. The problem is that humans deplete these fossil fuels much
faster than they are generated through the photosynthetic process in nature. Therefore
fossil fuels are not a sustainable energy source. The more fossil fuels we consume, the less
easily extractable gas and oil resources will be available. Already now we see that more
and more oil and gas is produced with unconventional methods, such as extracting oil
from tar sands in Alberta, Canada and producing gas with hydraulic fracturing [7], such as
in large parts of the United States. These new methods use much more energy to get the
fossil fuels out of the ground. Further, offshore drilling is put in regions with ever larger
water depths, which leads to new technological risks as we have seen in the Deepwater
Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
Figure 1.2: The primary energy consumption of the world by source in 2012. The total supply was 155,505 TWh (data
from [6]).
A third challenge is that by burning fossil fuels we produce the so-called greenhouse
gases such carbon dioxide (CO 2 ). The additional carbon dioxide created by human
activities is stored in our oceans and atmosphere. Figure 1.3 shows the increase in carbon
dioxide concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere up to 2015. According to the International
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5),
The atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased to levels