2008 is supposed to be the year of the credit crunch, when borrowing money ceases to become either easy or cheap and the bank manager stops hurling low-interest £20 notes at you and turns into Scrooge with a laptop.
Perhaps it will be, but maybe we should be more worried about another crunch, one that will soon send a chilly blast through the
We have already seen the first example of what is likely to be a big, across the board rise in domestic fuel bills caused, according to power suppliers, by the soaring cost of energy on the wholesale markets.
Meanwhile, speculators in the
Let’s all hope those speculators are wrong, but even a modest rise on the current price will be deeply unpleasant for consumers and businesses alike.
All in all, 2008 could be the year of power pain. But if the source of that pain is ‘conventional’ energy sources – namely oil, gas and their derivatives – could it also spell an opportunity for the technologies with the potential to ease that discomfort.
Whether it is an alternative fuel or generation system, a technology to improve the efficiency of power consumption or a way to monitor and regulate how much energy is being used, innovations in this area are likely to prove more attractive than ever before. Indications from the financial markets already suggest that serious investors have never been better disposed towards companies with potential answers to the big questions facing us over energy production and consumption.
So if 2008 is the year we get the energy jitters, it could also mark the moment we begin to take the alternatives seriously.
Andrew Lee
Editor
USD$200 a barrel? True, a cost such as this would hurt at the pumps, but only in the UK due to the high tax and duty. In the USA this would take the price to a level that the UK would have expected three years ago. The USA has still not tapped Its reserves, and will continue not to do so, hence their stance on global warming and joining treaties on this subject. The reason for not using renewable energy is purely the amount of money that would be lost by the big oil giants. Comparable to the reasons for not legalising drugs, governments have not worked out a way to tax it and make off the back of it. We’re a long way off being green, whilst the oil companies make so many greens in their banks.
I do not believe that only Britain would be hurt by such a price hike. it is clear that troubles across the world are related to the price of fuel.
Energy supremacy is the buzz word now both in developed and developing countries. We should focus on coal which is considered as a dirty fuel. Ethanol from coal, and coal bed methane can serve as alternative energy resource.
Solar power, tidal energy and wind energy are other sources to be looked into.