It’s something the IEA (International Energy Agency) won’t normally do but for a mishap somewhere. After playing hide and seek for decades with the prospect of hydrocarbons continuing as the primary source of energy globally, the IEA finally came round to the view that by 2050 solar power would become the primary source of energy around the world. The agency has a controversial reputation of being a front of oil industry interests and this makes it all the more intriguing when it first says that oil won’t last forever and follows it up with a bolder statement in favour of solar energy. Has the IEA finally broken free from the vice-like grip of the oil Czars?
It surely seems to be the case at least for now; in fact, it seems unlikely that the IEA will or to put it more simply, can climb down from this position and return to uphold the projections of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) about hydrocarbon production continuing to go up. Now, how on earth did they come to the year 2050? Apparently the energy economists in the IEA are ready to unload more than a dozen equations to prove their point, but going by their conservatism and the rub-off effect of their past collusion with the OPEC gangsters, they seem to be charting out the new roadmap.
Interestingly, the year 2050 could easily get advanced by a couple of decades if not more in another couple of years and I feel the reverse projection could pick up enough pace to advance the deadline to as early as 2020 for solar power to reign supreme. It needs to be remembered that this discourse is going on in an era when no significant investments have gone into solar power research and development. We still don’t know about the multiplier effect of the technologies that are likely to develop in the process of generating, storing, and transferring solar power.
However, we can’t underscore the importance of the IEA abandoning the hydrocarbon gang to jump into the renewable energy bandwagon. These are significant winds of change that will eventually blow the sails of the hydrocarbon vessel. You don’t expect investments to pick up in a scenario where the leading sources of market intelligence are pitted against everything you do. Yet, we have seen the kind of investment going into developing the infrastructure for renewable energy sources only because of the impeccable fundamentals of these sources of energy.
In the murky world of hydrocarbon energy interests worldwide, IEA has a dubious record of being under the influence of vested interests and lobbyists of the hydrocarbons based energy businesses. The turbulence in the oil industry all over the world, has led to crises on so many fronts that it’s just a matter of time before the lids get blown over from one crisis point to another. The ISIS takeover of the oil-rich northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria is a case in point with multiple stakeholders converging at one place only to clash elsewhere.
The Spartly Islands in South China is another oil flashpoint that could make the crisis in northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria look like a picnic if things come to a boil. Energy experts who have been watching the activities of bodies like IEA and cartels like OPEC know all too well that the cover-up of the more realistic date for peak oil production might just have gone on longer than it should have. The peak oil production theory focuses on the estimated date when oil production will peak and then go into terminal decline. It’s a deadline that the hydrocarbon Czars shudder to think about and would have loved to keep under wraps, but alas…IEA has spoilt it.