Energy security is the association between national security and the availability of natural resources for energy consumption (as opposed to household energy insecurity). Access to cheaper energy has become essential to the functioning of modern economies. However, the uneven distribution of energy supplies among countries has led to significant vulnerabilities. International energy relations have contributed to the globalization of the world leading to energy security and energy vulnerability at the same time.
Renewable resources and significant opportunities for energy efficiency and transitions exist over wide geographical areas, in contrast to other energy sources, which are concentrated in a limited number of countries. Rapid deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency, and technological diversification of energy sources, would result in significant energy security.
The modern world relies on a vast energy supply to fuel anything from transportation to communication, to security and health delivery systems. Peak oil expert Michael Ruppert has claimed that for every kilocalorie of food produced in the industrial world, 10 kilocalories of oil and gas energy are invested in the forms of fertilizer, pesticide, packaging, transportation, and running farm equipment.
Energy plays an important role in the national security of any given country as a fuel to power the economic engine.
Some sectors rely on energy more heavily than others; for example, the Department of Defense relies on petroleum for approximately 77% of its energy needs. Not every sector is as critical as the others. Some have greater importance to energy security.
Threats to a nation's energy security include:
Political/Domestic instability of major energy-producing countries (e.g. change in leadership's environmental values, or regime change)
Reliance on foreign countries for oil
Foreign in-state conflict (e.g. religious civil wars)
Foreign exporters' interests (e.g. Quid Pro Quo/blackmail/extortion)
Foreign non-state actors targeting the supply and transportation of oil resources (e.
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Efficient energy use, sometimes simply called energy efficiency, is the process of reducing the amount of energy required to provide products and services. For example, insulating a building allows it to use less heating and cooling energy to achieve and maintain a thermal comfort. Installing light-emitting diode bulbs, fluorescent lighting, or natural skylight windows reduces the amount of energy required to attain the same level of illumination compared to using traditional incandescent light bulbs.
Energy policy is the manner in which a given entity (often governmental) has decided to address issues of energy development including energy conversion, distribution and use as well as reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in order to contribute to climate change mitigation. The attributes of energy policy may include legislation, international treaties, incentives to investment, guidelines for energy conservation, taxation and other public policy techniques. Energy is a core component of modern economies.
Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global oil production is reached, after which production will begin an irreversible decline. It is related to the distinct concept of oil depletion; while global petroleum reserves are finite, the limiting factor is not whether the oil exists but whether it can be extracted economically at a given price. A secular decline in oil extraction could be caused both by depletion of accessible reserves and by reductions in demand that reduce the price relative to the cost of extraction, as might be induced to reduce carbon emissions.
This course examines the supply of energy from various angles: available resources, how they can be combined or substituted, their private and social costs, whether they can meet the demand, and how t
Le cours abordera les grandes problématiques technologiques et socio-économiques liées à la transition énergétique, ainsi que les perspectives et barrières à l'établissement d'un système énergétique d
This course provides the bases to understand material and energy production and consumption processes. Students learn how to develop a material flow analysis and apply it to cases of resource manageme
In the standard framework of self-consistent many-body perturbation theory, the skeleton series for the self-energy is truncated at a finite order N and plugged into the Dyson equation, which is then solved for the propagator G(N). We consider two examples ...
Over the past two decades, the thermo-hydro-mechanical behavior of earth-contact structures such as piles, walls, slabs, and tunnels, which simultaneously provide structural support and energy supply, has been studied through various field experiments and ...
Energy Geotechnics includes several applications related to the recovery and storage of energy from and into the ground, energy transportation, and the management of waste and carbon dioxide generated from energy use. These applications often involve the n ...