[Deuda-QdQ] Noticias y dossier sobre energía

[Tom Kucharz - Ecologistas en Acción]

Hola:

Adjunto dos artículos de mucho interés sobre la crisis energética.

Además recomiendo mucho la lectura y la referencia a este dossier sobre 
energía:

http://www.euractiv.com/en/energy/energy-outlook/article-117476

Con datos, análisis y enlaces  muy interesantes.

(Hay una opción de traducción automática al castellano, pero es 
preferible leer la versión original en inglés).

Un abrazo,

Tom Kucharz

-- 
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Energy: The end of the world as we know it
http://www.euractiv.com/en/energy/energy-world-know/article-171772

Michael T. Clare, Professor, Hampshire College

The rising cost, increased demand and limited supply of oil as well as 
the slow development of alternatives are all leading to a new world 
order that will be based on supply and demand economics - with power 
resting with oil and gas-abundant states, argues Professor Michael T. 
Clare of Hampshire College in a 17 April commentary for Middle East

The price of oil is currently $110 a barrel and is only set to rise due 
to shrinking energy supplies and an intensifying wrangle over its 
distribution, says Clare. Many years ago, energy was abundant and was 
not seen as a hot political issue. But now, claims Clare, former "Third 
World" countries like India and China are beginning to industrialise 
their economies, leading to a massive surge in global energy consumption 
- of some 47% in the last 20 years, according to the US Department of 
Energy.

This would not be such a frightening prospect, believes Clare, if we 
were able to produce enough fuel. Yet the opposite is happening, with a 
noticeable slowdown in global energy supplies coming at a time of rising 
demand, he adds. This development, he believes, coupled with powerful 
emerging energy consumers, will lead to a new world order. He summarises 
this change as: "rising powers/shrinking planet."

Clare suggests the new world order will be characterised by violent 
international competition for shrinking fossil fuel stocks and a shift 
of power from energy deficient states, like the US and China, to energy 
surplus states like Russia and Saudi Arabia.

Clare believes there are several major forces that will drive this change:

     * There will be an intensifying of the competition between older 
and newer economic forces for energy supplies;
     * the dwindling supply of primary energy supplies will lead to 
global energy shortages which will be a constant cause of conflict, and;
     * alternative energy sources are being developed much too slowly.

According to the US Department of Energy, fossil fuels will account for 
the same amount of world energy in 2030 as in 2004, whereas the increase 
of renewables will be a mere 8.1%. Additionally, the Department of 
Energy revealed that global emissions of CO2 will rise by almost 60% in 
the next 25 years, which draws Clare to conclude that all hope of 
averting climate change are virtually lost.

Moreover, Clare believes a steady shift of power and wealth from energy 
deficient states to energy surplus states will contribute to creating a 
new world order. He reveals that net earnings of oil exporting states in 
2006 were almost $1 trillion, with this figure set to rise in the coming 
years. These earnings have been deposited in "sovereign wealth funds", 
owned by oil-rich countries such as those in the Gulf region, and are 
being used to buy up large stakes in key sectors of the US economy, 
which has gladly accepted petrodollars to shore up its own ailing 
economy, observes Clare.

Lastly, claims Clare, the growing risk of conflict in the world is 
enabling major powers to use military force to satisfy their objectives 
in search of energy resources. He concludes by suggesting the 
"energy-centric" world will dominate people's lives as power will lie in 
the hands of those who control distribution of fossil fuels, "ending the 
world as we know it".






The Rise of the New Energy World Order
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=25430

The most pressing decision facing the next US president and Congress may 
be how best to accelerate the transition from a fossil-fuel-based energy 
system to a system based on climate-friendly energy alternatives, says 
Michael Klare.


The End of the World as You Know It

Oil at $110 a barrel. Gasoline at $3.35 (or more) per gallon. Diesel 
fuel at $4 per gallon. Independent truckers forced off the road. Home 
heating oil rising to unconscionable price levels. Jet fuel so expensive 
that three low-cost airlines stopped flying in the past few weeks. This 
is just a taste of the latest energy news, signaling a profound change 
in how all of us, in this country and around the world, are going to 
live -- trends that, so far as anyone can predict, will only become more 
pronounced as energy supplies dwindle and the global struggle over their 
allocation intensifies.

Energy of all sorts was once hugely abundant, making possible the 
worldwide economic expansion of the past six decades. This expansion 
benefited the United States above all -- along with its "First World" 
allies in Europe and the Pacific. Recently, however, a select group of 
former "Third World" countries -- China and India in particular -- have 
sought to participate in this energy bonanza by industrializing their 
economies and selling a wide range of goods to international markets. 
This, in turn, has led to an unprecedented spurt in global energy 
consumption -- a 47% rise in the past 20 years alone, according to the 
US Department of Energy (DoE).

An increase of this sort would not be a matter of deep anxiety if the 
world's primary energy suppliers were capable of producing the needed 
additional fuels. Instead, we face a frightening reality: a marked 
slowdown in the expansion of global energy supplies just as demand rises 
precipitously. These supplies are not exactly disappearing -- though 
that will occur sooner or later -- but they are not growing fast enough 
to satisfy soaring global demand.

The combination of rising demand, the emergence of powerful new energy 
consumers, and the contraction of the global energy supply is 
demolishing the energy-abundant world we are familiar with and creating 
in its place a new world order. Think of it as: rising powers/shrinking 
planet.

This new world order will be characterized by fierce international 
competition for dwindling stocks of oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium, 
as well as by a tidal shift in power and wealth from energy-deficit 
states like China, Japan, and the United States to energy-surplus states 
like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. In the process, the lives of 
everyone will be affected in one way or another -- with poor and 
middle-class consumers in the energy-deficit states experiencing the 
harshest effects. That's most of us and our children, in case you hadn't 
quite taken it in.

Here, in a nutshell, are five key forces in this new world order which 
will change our planet:

1. Intense competition between older and newer economic powers for 
available supplies of energy: Until very recently, the mature industrial 
powers of Europe, Asia, and North America consumed the lion's share of 
energy and left the dregs for the developing world. As recently as 1990, 
the members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development 
(OECD), the club of the world's richest nations, consumed approximately 
57% of world energy; the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact bloc, 14% percent; and 
only 29% was left to the developing world. But that ratio is changing: 
With strong economic growth in the developing countries, a greater 
proportion of the world's energy is being consumed by them. By 2010, the 
developing world's share of energy use is expected to reach 40% and, if 
current trends persist, 47% by 2030.

China plays a critical role in all this. The Chinese alone are projected 
to consume 17% of world energy by 2015, and 20% by 2025 -- by which 
time, if trend lines continue, it will have overtaken the United States 
as the world's leading energy consumer. India, which, in 2004, accounted 
for 3.4% of world energy use, is projected to reach 4.4% percent by 
2025, while consumption in other rapidly industrializing nations like 
Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Turkey is expected to grow as 
well.

These rising economic dynamos will have to compete with the mature 
economic powers for access to remaining untapped reserves of exportable 
energy -- in many cases, bought up long ago by the private energy firms 
of the mature powers like Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, Total of France, and 
Royal Dutch Shell. Of necessity, the new contenders have developed a 
potent strategy for competing with the Western "majors": they've created 
state-owned companies of their own and fashioned strategic alliances 
with the national oil companies that now control oil and gas reserves in 
many of the major energy-producing nations.

China's Sinopec, for example, has established a strategic alliance with 
Saudi Aramco, the nationalized giant once owned by Chevron and Exxon 
Mobil, to explore for natural gas in Saudi Arabia and market Saudi crude 
oil in China. Likewise, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) 
will collaborate with Gazprom, the massive state-controlled Russian 
natural gas monopoly, to build pipelines and deliver Russian gas to 
China. Several of these state-owned firms, including CNPC and India's 
Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, are now set to collaborate with 
Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. in developing the extra-heavy crude of the 
Orinoco belt once controlled by Chevron. In this new stage of energy 
competition, the advantages long enjoyed by Western energy majors has 
been eroded by vigorous, state-backed upstarts from the developing world.

2. The insufficiency of primary energy supplies: The capacity of the 
global energy industry to satisfy demand is shrinking. By all accounts, 
the global supply of oil will expand for perhaps another half-decade 
before reaching a peak and beginning to decline, while supplies of 
natural gas, coal, and uranium will probably grow for another decade or 
two before peaking and commencing their own inevitable declines. In the 
meantime, global supplies of these existing fuels will prove incapable 
of reaching the elevated levels demanded.

Take oil. The US Department of Energy claims that world oil demand, 
expected to reach 117.6 million barrels per day in 2030, will be matched 
by a supply that -- miracle of miracles -- will hit exactly 117.7 
million barrels (including petroleum liquids derived from allied 
substances like natural gas and Canadian tar sands) at the same time. 
Most energy professionals, however, consider this estimate highly 
unrealistic. "One hundred million barrels is now in my view an 
optimistic case," the CEO of Total, Christophe de Margerie, typically 
told a London oil conference in October 2007. "It is not my view; it is 
the industry view, or the view of those who like to speak clearly, 
honestly, and [are] not just trying to please people."

Similarly, the authors of the Medium-Term Oil Market Report, published 
in July 2007 by the International Energy Agency, an affiliate of the 
OECD, concluded that world oil output might hit 96 million barrels per 
day by 2012, but was unlikely to go much beyond that as a dearth of new 
discoveries made future growth impossible.

Daily business-page headlines point to a vortex of clashing trends: 
worldwide demand will continue to grow as hundred of millions of 
newly-affluent Chinese and Indian consumers line up to purchase their 
first automobile (some selling for as little as $2,500); key older 
"elephant" oil fields like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia and Canterell in 
Mexico are already in decline or expected to be so soon; and the rate of 
new oil-field discoveries plunges year after year. So expect global 
energy shortages and high prices to be a constant source of hardship.

3. The painfully slow development of energy alternatives: It has long 
been evident to policymakers that new sources of energy are desperately 
needed to compensate for the eventual disappearance of existing fuels as 
well as to slow the buildup of climate-changing "greenhouse gases" in 
the atmosphere. In fact, wind and solar power have gained significant 
footholds in some parts of the world. A number of other innovative 
energy solutions have already been developed and even tested out in 
university and corporate laboratories. But these alternatives, which now 
contribute only a tiny percentage of the world's net fuel supply, are 
simply not being developed fast enough to avert the multifaceted global 
energy catastrophe that lies ahead.

According to the US Department of Energy, renewable fuels, including 
wind, solar, and hydropower (along with "traditional" fuels like 
firewood and dung), supplied but 7.4% of global energy in 2004; biofuels 
added another 0.3%. Meanwhile, fossil fuels -- oil, coal, and natural 
gas -- supplied 86% percent of world energy, nuclear power another 6%. 
Based on current rates of development and investment, the DoE offers the 
following dismal projection: In 2030, fossil fuels will still account 
for exactly the same share of world energy as in 2004. The expected 
increase in renewables and biofuels is so slight -- a mere 8.1% -- as to 
be virtually meaningless.

In global warming terms, the implications are nothing short of 
catastrophic: Rising reliance on coal (especially in China, India, and 
the United States) means that global emissions of carbon dioxide are 
projected to rise by 59% over the next quarter-century, from 26.9 
billion metric tons to 42.9 billion tons. The meaning of this is simple. 
If these figures hold, there is no hope of averting the worst effects of 
climate change.

When it comes to global energy supplies, the implications are nearly as 
dire. To meet soaring energy demand, we would need a massive influx of 
alternative fuels, which would mean equally massive investment -- in the 
trillions of dollars -- to ensure that the newest possibilities move 
rapidly from laboratory to full-scale commercial production; but that, 
sad to say, is not in the cards. Instead, the major energy firms (backed 
by lavish US government subsidies and tax breaks) are putting their 
mega-windfall profits from rising energy prices into vastly expensive 
(and environmentally questionable) schemes to extract oil and gas from 
Alaska and the Arctic, or to drill in the deep and difficult waters of 
the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. The result? A few more 
barrels of oil or cubic feet of natural gas at exorbitant prices (with 
accompanying ecological damage), while non-petroleum alternatives limp 
along pitifully.

4. A steady migration of power and wealth from energy-deficit to 
energy-surplus nations: There are few countries -- perhaps a dozen 
altogether -- with enough oil, gas, coal, and uranium (or some 
combination thereof) to meet their own energy needs and provide 
significant surpluses for export. Not surprisingly, such states will be 
able to extract increasingly beneficial terms from the much wider pool 
of energy-deficit nations dependent on them for vital supplies of 
energy. These terms, primarily of a financial nature, will result in 
growing mountains of petrodollars being accumulated by the leading oil 
producers, but will also include political and military concessions.

In the case of oil and natural gas, the major energy-surplus states can 
be counted on two hands. Ten oil-rich states possess 82.2% of the 
world's proven reserves. In order of importance, they are: Saudi Arabia, 
Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Russia, Libya, 
Kazakhstan, and Nigeria. The possession of natural gas is even more 
concentrated. Three countries -- Russia, Iran, and Qatar -- harbor an 
astonishing 55.8% of the world supply. All of these countries are in an 
enviable position to cash in on the dramatic rise in global energy 
prices and to extract from potential customers whatever political 
concessions they deem important.

The transfer of wealth alone is already mind-boggling. The oil-exporting 
countries collected an estimated $970 billion from the importing 
countries in 2006, and the take for 2007, when finally calculated, is 
expected to be far higher. A substantial fraction of these dollars, yen, 
and euros have been deposited in "sovereign-wealth funds" (SWFs), giant 
investment accounts owned by the oil states and deployed for the 
acquisition of valuable assets around the world. In recent months, the 
Persian Gulf SWFs have been taking advantage of the financial crisis in 
the United States to purchase large stakes in strategic sectors of its 
economy. In November 2007, for example, the Abu Dhabi Investment 
Authority (ADIA) acquired a $7.5 billion stake in Citigroup, America's 
largest bank holding company; in January, Citigroup sold an even larger 
share, worth $12.5 billion, to the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) and 
several other Middle Eastern investors, including Prince Walid bin Talal 
of Saudi Arabia. The managers of ADIA and KIA insist that they do not 
intend to use their newly-acquired stakes in Citigroup and other US 
banks and corporations to influence US economic or foreign policy, but 
it is hard to imagine that a financial shift of this magnitude, which 
can only gain momentum in the decades ahead, will not translate into 
some form of political leverage.

In the case of Russia, which has risen from the ashes of the Soviet 
Union as the world's first energy superpower, it already has. Russia is 
now the world's leading supplier of natural gas, the second largest 
supplier of oil, and a major producer of coal and uranium. Though many 
of these assets were briefly privatized during the reign of Boris 
Yeltsin, President Vladimir Putin has brought most of them back under 
state control -- in some cases, by exceedingly questionable legal means. 
He then used these assets in campaigns to bribe or coerce former Soviet 
republics on Russia's periphery reliant on it for the bulk of their oil 
and gas supplies. European Union countries have sometimes expressed 
dismay at Putin's tactics, but they, too, are dependent on Russian 
energy supplies, and so have learned to mute their protests to 
accommodate growing Russian power in Eurasia. Consider Russia a model 
for the new energy world order.

5. A growing risk of conflict: Throughout history, major shifts in power 
have normally been accompanied by violence -- in some cases, protracted 
violent upheavals. Either states at the pinnacle of power have struggled 
to prevent the loss of their privileged status, or challengers have 
fought to topple those at the top of the heap. Will that happen now? 
Will energy-deficit states launch campaigns to wrest the oil and gas 
reserves of surplus states from their control -- the Bush 
administration's war in Iraq might already be thought of as one such 
attempt -- or to eliminate competitors among their deficit-state rivals?

The high costs and risks of modern warfare are well known and there is a 
widespread perception that energy problems can best be solved through 
economic means, not military ones. Nevertheless, the major powers are 
employing military means in their efforts to gain advantage in the 
global struggle for energy, and no one should be deluded on the subject. 
These endeavors could easily enough lead to unintended escalation and 
conflict.

One conspicuous use of military means in the pursuit of energy is 
obviously the regular transfer of arms and military-support services by 
the major energy-importing states to their principal suppliers. Both the 
United States and China, for example, have stepped up their deliveries 
of arms and equipment to oil-producing states like Angola, Nigeria, and 
Sudan in Africa and, in the Caspian Sea basin, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, 
and Kyrgyzstan. The United States has placed particular emphasis on 
suppressing the armed insurgency in the vital Niger Delta region of 
Nigeria, where most of the country's oil is produced; Beijing has 
emphasized arms aid to Sudan, where Chinese-led oil operations are 
threatened by insurgencies in both the South and Darfur.

Russia is also using arms transfers as an instrument in its efforts to 
gain influence in the major oil- and gas-producing regions of the 
Caspian Sea basin and the Persian Gulf. Its urge is not to procure 
energy for its own use, but to dominate the flow of energy to others. In 
particular, Moscow seeks a monopoly on the transportation of Central 
Asian gas to Europe via Gazprom's vast pipeline network; it also wants 
to tap into Iran's mammoth gas fields, further cementing Russia's 
control over the trade in natural gas.

The danger, of course, is that such endeavors, multiplied over time, 
will provoke regional arms races, exacerbate regional tensions, and 
increase the danger of great-power involvement in any local conflicts 
that erupt. History has all too many examples of such miscalculations 
leading to wars that spiral out of control. Think of the years leading 
up to World War I. In fact, Central Asia and the Caspian today, with 
their multiple ethnic disorders and great-power rivalries, bear more 
than a glancing resemblance to the Balkans in the years leading up to 1914.

What this adds up to is simple and sobering: the end of the world as 
you've known it. In the new, energy-centric world we have all now 
entered, the price of oil will dominate our lives and power will reside 
in the hands of those who control its global distribution.

In this new world order, energy will govern our lives in new ways and on 
a daily basis. It will determine when, and for what purposes, we use our 
cars; how high (or low) we turn our thermostats; when, where, or even 
if, we travel; increasingly, what foods we eat (given that the price of 
producing and distributing many meats and vegetables is profoundly 
affected by the cost of oil or the allure of growing corn for ethanol); 
for some of us, where to live; for others, what businesses we engage in; 
for all of us, when and under what circumstances we go to war or avoid 
foreign entanglements that could end in war.

This leads to a final observation: The most pressing decision facing the 
next president and Congress may be how best to accelerate the transition 
from a fossil-fuel-based energy system to a system based on 
climate-friendly energy alternatives.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at 
Hampshire College and the author of Resource Wars and Blood and Oil. 
Consider this essay a preview of his newest book Rising Powers, 
Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, which has just been 
published by Metropolitan Books. A brief video of Klare discussing key 
subjects in his new book can be viewed by clicking here.