Suchergebnisse

Being the world's biggest consumer and importer of fossil fuel and the largest emitter of greenhouse gases the East Asia region is extremely interested in the accelerated development of energy transition. Due to the geographical position and place of East Asian countries in the international division of labour energy transition demonstrates specific features here. East Asia is not only the developer and producer of technologies and equipment for the energy transition but also an initiator of totally different international economic relations in new energy.

To decarbonize the economy it is not enough to adopt renewable energy sources alone. The opportunities of "clean" electric power are not unlimited. Fossil fuel continues to dominate in industrial technological processes, transport and in housing sector. A need arises in alternative synthetic fuel with the minimum carbon footprint. Such fuel is possible to produce from various raw materials through chemical reactions with the use of "clean" electric power from renewable sources. In the foreseeable future "green" methanol seems to be the synthetic fuel which is the easiest to obtain without changing the existing infrastructure.

Transport of India is developing in the context of the country's rapid economic growth in the last decades. Progress in the transportation system is accompanied with structural changes, the most important of which is the steep increase in the share of road transport in freight and passenger transportation due to the decline in the share of rail transport. The predominance of road transport in the world's fourth economy with an enormous population has given rise to a threat of transport collapse and problems connected with the environment and occupation of land by new road construction. That's why rail transport which is more economical and has a greater capacity of its lines is entering a new stage in its development. Air transport which has been improved technically and lowered its tariffs is developing at the highest rate. Indian market of domestic air transportation is one of the world's biggest and most promising. The use of sea shipping, particularly coastal, capable of doing part of the freight transportation of overcrowded highways and railroads, is used insufficiently. Pipeline transport is not very important in freight transportation because the major part of natural gas and oil are imported by sea and the refineries are situated in sea ports.

An important part of the current world's energy transition is the emergence of the electricity storage sector in the energy complex, which rationalizes and optimizes energy production, transportation, distribution and consumption making operation of grids stable, economical and safe. Energy storage is actually an alternative to construction of new power stations. When developed, the energy storage sector will give oriental countries an opportunity to avoid braking the accelerated economic growth of their backward energy sector as compared to leading industries. New productive forces in energy will make it possible to substantially reduce the negative consequences of the shortage of some energy resources as well as put an end to «energy curse».

A trend of accelerated electrification of automobile transport has recently arisen due to technical progress in this area. The driving force of electrification is its huge economic and ecological effect. A transition to electric transport offers the greatest benefits to Asian countries with a shortage of energy and an unfavourable environmental situation. Electrification of automobile transport will reduce the need in imported fuel, increase energy efficiency of national economies and improve the tense ecological situation in overpopulated cities.

A global trend today is the gradual replacement of the large-scale centralized electric energy by a small distributed electric generation. It became possible after being by the competitiveness of renewable energy-based facilities which can be installed everywhere. New technologies of distributed generation guarantee quick electrification of new areas, low capital and operation expenses, progressive reduction of costs and tariffs, lower vulnerability due to man-made disasters, cyber attacks and terrorist acts. Distributed energy is very attractive for African and Asian countries with vast hard-of-access and little developed areas and multiple contingents of poor population for whom electric energy is inaccessible. It is exactly there that distributed energy has the world's highest development potential.

The transition of world energy to renewable energy sources is changing the geopolitical importance of both countries exporting fossil fuels and importing ones. The energy map of the world is being redrawn; the geography and structure of energy supplies are changing. The essence of energy security is changing radically.