Energy Biz - July/August 2008 - (Page 26) » FinAnciAl Front Dateline: nOrtH aMerica By FranciscO Barnés DE casTrO T he North American region will face several energy-related challenges as it works to balance the competing demands of economic growth, energy security and proper care of the environment in order to achieve sustainable development. Climate change Francisco Barnés de Castro resulting from greenhouse gas emissions has been gaining increasing public attention. While North America has been far from playing a leading role in promoting an aggressive policy against greenhouse gas emissions, it maintains its position as the world’s top emitting region. This situation cannot and should not be maintained for much longer if we want to have a reasonable chance of successfully addressing this serious global problem that poses an increasing threat to humanity. North America must take a leadership position, implementing new policies and developing new instruments to effectively tackle this global problem. This is an issue that should involve a coordinated effort on the part of every government in the region, as well as every economic sector. Clean water is another major concern because of the longer distances from sources to use points, and also because of an increase in water recycling. Human population has a high correlation with clean water consumption. The primary technological challenges that we NewsFlash foresee are: Feds revieW solar The growing producThe federal government tion of carbon, driven is studying the environmental impact of by high oil and gas solar energy on public prices, will have an lands in six Western environmental impact states, according to the Associated Press. that must be lessened A total of 125 by the development and applications have been filed for rights of way for implementation of carbon proposed solar projects capture and sequestration on federal lands. A similar study in technologies to make this 2005 studied the impact fuel cleaner and more of wind projects in 11 Western states. competitive. July/August 2008 Nuclear energy will face serious obstacles, both in terms of addressing the problems related to spent fuel disposition and in terms of overcoming real and imagined public concerns. Economic and technological barriers must be overcome in order to accelerate the penetration of renewable energy, sun, wind, water and biomass, both for power generation and for the production of biofuels. In addition, high energy prices are affecting the economies of all countries in several ways. While some oil exporting countries have increased revenues, final energy consumers are facing greater expenses and may suffer a deceleration in their economic growth, which will affect us all. Oil prices have increased so much and so fast that the full effect on the world economy has not been felt yet. High oil prices will have the greatest impact on the less affluent sectors of society and on the less developed countries, affecting their access to food, transportation and energy. Francisco Barnés de Castro is World Energy Council vice chair for North America. gatherings FINANCIAL FRONT www.energycentral.com/events To view any of these events, please go to www.energycentral.com/ ) into the quick link box. quicklink and type the quick link code ( AUGUST 4-5 Cost of Service Concepts and Techniques | Minneapolis E18301 11-15 | Transmission and Wholesale Markets Madison, Wis. E18402 SEPTEMBER 11-12 Gas Storage and Infrastructure | Vienna, Austria E18494 14-16 15-17 15-16 16 17-18 22-24 29-30 | UPMG Atlanta San Francisco E18094 | Utility Internal Auditor’s Training | Renewable Energy Finance London E17872 E18166 | Energy M&A Houston E18452 | Carbon Finance New York E18165 | Metering & Billing/CRM Amsterdam, Netherlands E17647 | Carbon Markets Mumbai, India E18534 26 E n E rgyB i z http://www.energycentral.com/events http://www.energycentral.com/quicklink http://www.energycentral.com/quicklink http://www.energycentral.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.