Crisis Of Energy Conservation

There exists a limited supply of natural resources in the world and higher demands. These natural resources take a long time to replenish. The crisis regarding energy has many factors associated with it. Some of these factors are government embargoes, labor strikes, mindless consumption, outdated infrastructure, and technology, etc. It can also come from natural disasters disrupting the supply chains. Political instability and changes may also result in energy crises or supply disruptions. The modern world is extremely dependent on oil for its energy needs and any changes in the prices of oil will have a domino effect on all other industries around the world. This would result in increased prices for other commodities as well.

Causes And Impact

The energy crisis is the result of various chain events that happen around the world. One of the most important events that happened recently is the pandemic. The pandemic resulted in a fall in energy prices since the World was in lockdown and the demand had gone down. The other reason for the fall in prices was that even though the demand had gone down during the early days of the pandemic the supply was still the same. China, India, and the US were the countries worst hit by this sudden change. 

Recently both developed and developing nations are facing an energy crisis. The coal crisis in China, and India and the fuel crisis in the UK are examples of this. Some of the reasons for this include pandemic, geopolitics, inflation, etc.

The covid pandemic led to reduced global demand for energy resources. This in turn led to slowing down the production gradually. The world however started recovering from the pandemic quicker than expected, and the energy demand started going up again. This mismatch between demand and supply led to an inflation in energy prices. Crude Oil and coal prices almost doubled and caused higher competition among countries to acquire the limited supply.

Climate change is one of the other important reasons for the energy crisis. Southeast Asia and South Asia witnessed high rainfall in recent years making mining for coal extremely difficult. Especially so in India and China. This contributed to the energy crisis faced by these countries. Colder winter is the factor that made the energy crisis worse in Europe. Europe imports most of its energy needs and colder weather disrupts supply chains making it harder to transport.

The attempt made by various countries to move toward more sustainable energy options is also leading to green inflation. Many countries closed various mines due to the effect it was having on the environment. This further limited the available energy supply. Renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines require massive amounts of investment even though they are sustainable. The storage of such energy is also a difficult task making it harder to switch to those options.

Geopolitics in the war between Russia and Ukraine have also made fuel prices increase in various countries refusing to buy fuel from Russia to show support to Ukraine. This has had a huge scale impact on the energy crisis.

Conclusion

The world is currently undergoing a transition stage. Transition to sustainable sources of energy. This process is going to take some time to come into full effect. It wouldn’t be possible to have a quick change from thermal energy to renewable energy. This would cause a balance in the supply-demand system. The transition phase will be expensive due to this. To avoid such a future crisis the global population needs to collectively switch toward sustainable sources of energy and reduce dependency on thermal energy. Many countries and companies are trying to invest in forming new technology that would make the switch to sustainable energy sources easier. Tackling climate change and conserving the environment requires handling the energy crisis due to the complex integrated world economy that we have now as a result of globalization.