As we walk through our daily lives, it becomes very easy to take for granted the almost complete dependence we have, as humans in a post-industrial economy, on the incredible supply of inexpensive and convertible energy. If we live in anything other than a tropical climate, we require heating so that we don’t freeze. We use energy to till our fields and harvest our food. We also use energy to provide light during non-daylight hours as well as power machines that allow for inexpensive manufactures such as clothing and other household items. We move about, except when walking or bicycling, through the conversion of some sort of potential energy into the kinetic energy of the plane, train, automobile, or boat. And finally, we use energy to communicate and store and manipulate data. This vast network of comfort, nourishment, nutrition, transportation and information would be utterly impossible without inexpensive and readily dispatchable energy. It is literally the life’s blood of the entire economic system.
The resemblance between the human circulatory system and the natural gas grid (or the electric transmission and distribution grid) is similar, and the energy delivery system is almost as crucial to the economy as the circulatory system is to the human.
This chart shows the dependence on energy of various economies around the world. This is directly showing Tons of Oil equivalent to make $1,000 of GDP. A tonne of oil is equivalent to 7.44 barrels or 11,630 kWh. The implications are massive. Every 1,000 dollars of GDP in the US has at least 1 MWh or almost a barrel of oil embedded in it. More importantly, this offers no quantification of the risk to the economy should this energy supply be disrupted. Then the energy intensity would increase massively and whole supply chains and communication networks would be disrupted.
The constituents of global greenhouse gas emissions (those gasses which contribute to global warming) can be seen below:
To see just how much the energy sector contributes to these emissions, please see below.
Note: The pie chart below is interactive. You can click on sectors of the chart to see the proportions within a sector or category.
Hopefully, it becomes apparent that to address the threat of global warming, addressing the greenhouse gas intensity of the energy sector is paramount. In order to address this intensity, we must understand how the markets for energy work. This understanding helps us to make better decisions as we are confronted with choices to make in our professions.
Energy dependence drives geopolitics in a significant way. Many (if not most) of the world conflicts since the early 1980s either have been directly caused by a scramble for energy or had significant energy undertones. The flashpoints for global conflict include Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Russia, Nigeria, and Venezuela. Each of these nations has significant energy wealth. The recent and deadly conflict in Ukraine has significant energy implications. The Donbas region is a part of Ukraine with large oil and gas reserves. This potential supply, when interwoven with greater integration of Ukraine’s economy, represents a threat to Russia’s position as the EU’s energy supplier. Please read the article "6 Ways Russia's Invasion of Ukraine Has Reshaped the Energy World" for a view into the conflict and the effect on energy throughout the world.
There are many other examples of how energy and its uninterrupted supply influence geopolitics and national security strategy. These include a huge and continuous US Navy presence in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea as well as the long-term contracting of China for Petroleum products. Please read the article called "BP Signs Long-Term LNG Contract with China's Shenzhen Energy."
Links
[1] "https://pixabay.com/users/clker-free-vector-images-3736/?
[2] "https://pixabay.com//?
[3] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/natural-gas-pipelines.php
[4] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/total-energy-supply-per-unit-of-gdp-for-selected-countries-and-regions-2000-2020
[5] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
[6] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data
[7] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg3/
[8] https://ourworldindata.org/
[9] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/