Outside of China, the countries of southern and eastern Asia contain 30% of the world's population but only 2% of the known fossil-fuel resources. Economic growth has resulted in increasing imports of petroleum and petroleum products. Because of the tenfold rise in oil prices since 1972, several of these countries are faced with two dilemmas - one short range and one long range. Unless they can discover more fossil-fuel resources within their own borders, they must either incur dangerously growing foreign-exchange deficits or drastically slow their economic growth. Research and development in energy production, conversion, and conservation should eventually allow local energy sources, of which the most promising is biomass energy, to be substituted for imported fuels. But diverting scarce land and water to plantations of fast-growing trees or other kinds of biomass may seriously limit food production in these crowded countries. 44 references, 5 tables.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/209/4452/164.full.pdf

Energy dilemmas in Asia: the needs for research and development.

The exponential growth of fossil fuel use over recent decades has resulted in a 4.3 percent annual increase in the carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere. The question addressed here is: When (and to what extent) will constraints limit the use of fossil fuels and the subsequent production of CO2? We discuss three types of possible constraints: resource constraints, fuel demand constraints, and environmental constraints. An analysis of the next 50 years suggests that resource constraints will not provide severe limits. The impacts of atmospheric carbon dioxide will not reach levels that cause mankind to take action soon. Fuel-demand constraints will probably limit the use of fossil fuels to levels that keep the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration below 450 ppm(v) for the next 50 years. In spite of this conclusion we see a continuing, long term problem and urge that full efforts be made to understand and continually monitor the CO2 problem and to be alert to any changes that may require action.

Constraints on Fossil Fuel Use

Environmental perception plays a major role in environmental decision-making. Three distinct perspective types can be identified—personal, technical, and organizational—which determine the response to environment management problems. Integrating perspectives using multiple perspective analysis can be of use in environmental management. Using this technique, two environmental management problems have been analyzed and differing perspectives have been integrated. This integration resembles the task of conceptualizing a three-dimensional object from a series of one-dimensional descriptions and two-dimensional drawings.

Integrating perspectives in environmental management

Planet Earth is simultaneously approaching a number of ecological and resource limits. The resulting uncertainties will heavily impact future energy choices, both the level of primary energy used globally and the shares of fossil, renewable and nuclear fuels in the energy mix. This paper reviews the possible futures for the various types of renewable energy. To be viable, all potential energy sources must be assessed on their energy return on energy invested (energy return). Given that renewable energy RE growth is considered important for sustainability reasons, renewable energy must be assessed on its ecologically sustainable or 'green' energy return, which includes the energy costs of ecosystem maintenance as input energy costs. The green energy return is accordingly much lower than the conventional value, so that ecologically sustainable renewable energy is unlikely to deliver anything near existing global energy use. The paper further argues that such constraints on renewable energy growth rates mean it cannot be a timely response to global climate change. The paper concludes that energy reductions will be essential, mainly in high energy use countries.

Wolf Haefele

Papers

Global perspectives and options for long-range energy strategies