In my last column (“Keystone and Fukushima: Balancing Needs and Risks,” Sept. 18, 2013), I pointed out the significant environmental risks from both Canada’s oil sands and Japan’s nuclear facilities and concluded that, after balancing their respective benefits and risks, neither represented a desirable model for either the United States or the international community to meet their future energy needs. Those needs are expected to grow substantially as developing countries strive to improve their standards of living and the world’s population grows from seven billion to more than nine billion people.
Where is that new energy going to come from? While the first choice, especially in the United States and other developed countries, must surely be conservation, energy efficiency and renewable energy sources (solar, wind, geothermal and tidal), those are not sufficient for most developing countries, where average consumption is much less than in the United States, renewable options are often fewer and the additional infrastructure required for renewable energy makes it an unrealistic foundation for national energy policy. Indeed, even in the United States, conservation, energy efficiency and renewables are seen as part of a comprehensive energy mix, not as a complete substitute for fossil fuels until at least 2050.
