Putting a gradual end to fossil-fuel based sources from the energy mix and replacing it with renewables is the demand of wisdom, a lecturer at Sharif University of Technology said.
“Not only does generating energy from natural gas and oil harm air quality, but also power plants which run on fossil fuels have low efficiency given the huge amounts of energy they use,” Hashem Oraee was quoted as saying by ILNA.
Most countries, industrial or otherwise, are slowly shifting to green energy for producing power as they realize and struggle with the scale and scope of ecological disasters (namely global warming) caused by oil, he noted.
Excessive use of fossil fuels have (over the last 30 years) has been exposed as a major health and pollution problem with catastrophic consequences.
“There are few ways left to address this problem. The path most traveled is to replace fossil fuels with renewables like wind and solar.”
Fossil fuels will probably be around for at least 2 decades because the speed of developing technologies that can be stepped up as a successor to fossil fuels is not high enough.
The teacher said replacing oil and gas with clean energy sources demands a paradigm shift.
Drawing a parallel between electric vehicles and those which run on gasoline (an oil derivative), he noted that the maximum efficiency of the latter is 30%. Nonetheless, the former (EV) has an efficiency rate of 70%, so the commonsense says EVs must be a priority.
Based on estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA), up until 2050 the global need for power will double and reach 1.2 terawatts, of which 60% will be generated with the help of renewable energy.
Put simply, oil demand will climb for two more decades and then demand will start to dwindle gradually as green energy will emerge as the dominant player.
Subsidized Fuels
“Supplying power stations with subsidized mazut and gas is wrong policy because the output will never be valued due to its cheap price,” he said. Fossil fuels should be delivered to petrochemical plants for making value-added goods, he stressed. Iran’s energy subsidy is close to $30 billion a year.
Close to 98% of Iran’s power demand is met by oil derivatives and gas, this is while many countries have changed their long-term energy policies and are moving towards cleaner energy.
Iran has huge potential for the production of renewable energies, including geothermal, solar and wind power, environmentalists and experts say.
“The least our policymakers can and must do is to set a long-term plan to end the use of fossil fuels and replace it with solar and wind.”
Compared to renewables, coal is still cheaper per unit energy, but with technical advantages or carbon emission pricing schemes may be outcompeted by renewable power. With continued reduction in renewable electricity costs or increased carbon dioxide pricing the replacement will accelerate also for coal.
Oil is clearly outcompeted on price already, and fossil gas is challenged.
Solar photovoltaic and wind power are rapidly getting cheaper and more abundant – so much so that they are on track to entirely supplant fossil fuels worldwide within two or three decades. The protestation from some politicians that we need to build new coal stations sounds rather quaint.
According to Oraee, the reality is that rising tide of PV and wind energy is the only realistic chance to avoid harming the fragile climate
He says it is very hard to envision any timely response to climate change that does not involve PV and wind.
It is indeed regrettable that attempts to capture and store the carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels have come to naught due to technical difficulties and high cost. Thus, to curtail global warming countries need to replace fossil fuel use entirely with green energy sources.
