The Skolkovo Foundation took part in the 10th jubilee Global Energy Prize Summit, which brought together laureates of this prestigious to discuss perspectives and challenges of the 21 XXI century global energy
Since the Global Energy prize with the annual prize fund of 33 million rubles ($ 1.1 million) was set, 27 scientists from 10 countries have been nominated for it.
The high status of the 2012 event
The chairman of the prize nomination committee academician Nikolai Laverov started the session by announcing the welcome greetings to the members of the jubilee award, which were sent by the Russian president Vladimir Putin, premier Dmitry Medvedev and chairman of the State Duma Dmitry Naryshkin.
The following scientists were nominated this year: Rodney John Allam, UK and Valery Kosyuk: both for cryogenic liquids for energy studies, and the third prize-winner is Russian scientist Boris Katorgin, for elaboration of high-effective jet propulsion engines, also on cryogenic fuel.
The Global Energy Prize Summit, held on October 25, 2012 to mark the jubilee, was moderated by Denis Kovalevich, executive director of the Nuclear energy cluster of the Skolkovo Foundation.
Its a big honour for me to moderate today’s event, the brightest minds of the mankind participate in it, all of them are winners of the Global Energy Prize” of previous yearsDenis Kovalevich, executive director of the Nuclear energy cluster, Global Energy Prize Summit moderator
Its a big honour for me to moderate today’s event, the brightest minds of the mankind participate in it, all of them are winners of the Global Energy Prize” of previous years
Denis Kovalevich, executive director of the Nuclear energy cluster, Global Energy Prize Summit moderator
Laureates, which participated in the discussion:
some of the thoughts, which were voiced by the scientists during the “Energy Dialog” discussion:
The world is on the verge of the third industrial revolution, meaning that the first one was the steel making, the second one was the hydrocarbons energy and the third one is to be so called “smart energy” and IT/internet solutions for it. Russia, due to a number of circumstances, has good chances to be in the front ranks of this “3d industrial revolution”.
Today we find ourselves in a transition period between 2 paradigms: growing influence of the green energy, but at the same time its too early to say that it will be dominating in some visible time frame. The professional (of energy corporations) judgement says that in 20 years the structure of consumption will be about the same: while renewable energy plants may be widely used on local levels, in regions, where traditional energy systems aren’t in place or hard to access.
From this standpoint, the energy economy develops differently from what it was previously planned. For example, it was previously thought that the share of coal in global energy balance will be significantly shrinking, but rapidly developing economies of China and India are in fact increasing coal consumption. But given ecology issues, this factor makes developed economies to thing more about sharing green technologies with the mentioned countries.
The nuclear energy industry due to a growing safety concern worldwide is becoming more and more expensive to run (due to growing investments in security). The nuclear energy high cost is therefore unlikely to let the industry to grow rapidly to overcome its 20% share. Moreover, scientists believe that the role of it was overestimated: it could be even less than previously planned 10 % (by conservative approach), and remain as low as 7%.
At the same time technically there is still no alternative for it, as its the only source of power, which can work 24 hours a day/7 days a week /365 days a year, unlike renewable energy, which highly depends on climate, weather, etc. The NPPs though in the future can be widely used on the Earth orbit, as the source of electricity to be supplied to Earth via different state of the art technologies, now actively studying.
The dilemma the mankind is facing: the structure of demand signals that we have to continue and even increase use of fossils, despite the fact that their cost keeps growing. All these costs make electricity too expensive for developing economies. At the same time we see growing ecological concerns: our planet can’t withstand the growing burning of fossils, due to the CO2 limits. And on this background we can see the breakthrough in shale gas extraction, which will make this resource cheaper. Given all this the gas’s role as the key resource for power plants might be growing.
The key goal for Russia is to increase energy effectiveness from its HC resources in economy, which will require, among other, an increasing growth of technologies of HC purifications. Many believe that HC based energy is not a smart one and talk about “resource curse” of Russia , but experience of different countries, which achieved success in deep processing, like the US, where export of crude oil is prohibited by the law, shows different: we need to talk not about how lucky or unlucky we are in Russia, but how to increase the effectiveness of the “Big Machine, called Russia”.