Energy scenarios for the future of mankind

Abstract

The current scenarios for the future of energy seem to suffer a kind of schizophrenia. Some experts do not venture into an uncertain future and prefer to stick to a business-as-usual scenario focused on fossil fuels like they are going to be used in the future with no limitations at all. According to this scenario fossil fuels are not a commodity bound for depletion in the next decades, but they are going to be used forever, and no “energy transition” is in sight for the foreseeable future. Some other experts depict a completely different scenario, where solar energy and electric vehicle are “disruptive” technologies that in a matter of few years will send out of the market both the power utilities like we intend them nowadays and internal combustion engine cars, determining the end of oil-age and nuclear-age. In our opinion both scenarios have some strengths but suffer ofmanyweaknesses, and at the end of the day the “energy transition” from oil-age to renewable-age will happen during this century but probably it will not be so fast as some predict. The paper describes the strengths and weaknesses of the two scenarios and presents a feasible vision for the foreseeable future of world energy. Eventually, current research efforts under way at DIISM-UNIVPM will be presented, starting from the reasons why the topics are substantial for the energy transition to continue with the results expected from these researches.