Shell CEO: 21st century energy crunch
At a conference about Shell's role in the 21st century, CEO Jeroen van der Veer laid out 3 hard truths about the future of energy. None of them were too optimistic about the environment or the price of energy. First and foremost, most of the challenges will stem from the world's rising population -- experts predict it to grow from today's 6 up to 9 billion by 2050. They also predict that energy demand will double over the same period. Renewable energy, he said, is still far too expensive to compete with oil, gas, and coal -- even with petroleum prices skyrocketing. Without major technical breakthroughs making renewables more productive and less expensive, it will take many decades to build the infrastructure to make renewable sources viable. Until then, nuclear will probably become the best way to fill in the gaps.
The 3rd bitter pill is that the easy oil is drying up. Most of the accessible oil patches are steadily being depleted, meaning the next phase of oil production is going to require more expensive mining techniques. Obviously, it's going to take much larger investments in order to bring oil to the marketplace -- which will be passed along to the consumer.
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