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A surge in US oil and natural gas production has lifted hopes
about North American
energy security, but that growth will plateau and will be
difficult to replicate
elsewhere, says Maria van der Hoeven,chief executive of the
International Energy
Agency,in an interview with the Monitor.
The United States is awash in hydrocarbons, the result of good
geology, supportive prices, a
favorable regulatory and investment climate, and technology
innovation. But the US energy
boom is temporary, and not easy to replicate in other parts of
the world, Maria van der
Hoeven, chief executive of the Paris-based International Energy
Agency (IEA), says in a Feb.
22 interview with The Christian Science Monitor. Here are edited
excerpts:
Q: The energy industry has undergone a revolution in drilling
techniques that has
opened up vast new sources of so-called tight oil and shale gas,
particularly inNorth America. Is the promise of this unconventional
oil and gas overhyped?
A: The light tight oil revolution in the United States is
changing the geographical map of oil
trade. But we also mentioned [in an IEA analysis] that this
growth would not last that it
would plateau, and then flatten and go down. That means that
from 2025 onward, its again
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states that will come back. Because of
the changing trade map,
this oil will almost completely go to Asia China, India, Korea
and Japan.
Westward Group Energy Alternatives Paris - IEA
chief: Only a decade left in US shale oil boom
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There are some people who really think they can replicate the
United States shale gas
boom. Its not as easy as that. The land ownership and
theresourceownership go together
here in the United States the only country where that is the
case. Its also about having the
right gas industry, the right knowledge, the right
infrastructure, the water, the human
skills, the geological information, etc. And geology in this
part of the world, especially
where the shale gas boom is, is quite different from Ukraine or
Poland. You can learn fromit, but its not a copy-and-paste. The
United Kingdom is changing its attitude to shale gas.
China wants to develop its shale gas, but its in a very dry part
of the country. South Africa
is looking to its shale gas resources. The point is theres a lot
of shale gas in the world, but
its not as easily accessible as itwas in the United States.
Q: California is 36 months into its worst drought ever,
threatening power outages in
a state that gets 15 percent of its electricity from
hydroelectric dams. How critical is
water to the future of global energy security?
A: The use of water in producing energy is a big issue, but it
is also the use of cooling water
in power plants. Sometimes there is a lack of water, and
hydroelectric dams are notproducing as much power as they should.
Sometimes there is too much water, and it
threatens infrastructure. So we are working with a number of
countries on the resilience of
energy infrastructure to climate conditions including water
rising sea levels or storms or
whatever it is.The other issueis water use in unconventional gas
production [hydraulic
fracturing]. We started a high level forum on unconventional gas
last year, and water will
be the focus of its second meeting this year in Calgary. The
water-energy nexus is
underestimated at this moment. The energy-food nexus is looked
into from many sides, but
I think the awareness for the water-energy nexus is growing and
rightfully so.
Q: Countries like Spain and Germany are second-guessing
ambitious plans to
transition to renewables as electricity costs rise. Is Europe
backtracking on its clean-energy goals?
Europe paid the price of a decarbonization policy in a time
frame that made costs quite
high. This is something we have to realize. You have to choose
your renewableenergy
sourcesbased on the indigenous sources you have. Solar in the
south of Europe in Spain,
in Portugal, in Italy and in Greece is much more available than
in the northern part of
Europe, like the Netherlands or Germany. But wind is more
available in the north than it is
in the south. There is hydropower in the Alps, in the Pyrenees,
and in the Scandinavian
countries. Its important to choose your technologies based on
resources you have because
otherwise your feed-in tariffs will be quite high. And when you
have a feed-in tariff that is
paid for by part of your population like in Germany, then you
have to see to it that theburdens are divided among your population
in a way that is acceptable. If you have a feed-
in tariff, thats fine, but put a cap on it. And see to it that
when your technology costs come
down your tariffs go down, because normally the tariffs are in
place for quite some years
and you pay a lot of money. At the same time, you need subsidies
for renewables because
we are not there yet, by far. You need subsidies not only for
technologies that are
economically more or less viable, but also for new technologies
to come. Governments need
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Only a decade left in US shale oil boom
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to use their money to really push technology development and new
types of renewable
energy that are still in a lab stage or in a pilot phase.
Q: Parts of sub-Saharan Africa are coming into new sources of
oil and gas. Can
countries like Kenya and Uganda reap the benefits of their own
resource wealth
without falling victim to the resource curse that has hurt
countries like Nigeria?
A: Without good governance you cant guarantee that you are not
going to end up in the
same situation as Nigeria. And thats a very difficult one. This
is a very poor region of the
world, and in our view its important that you are on good terms
with local populations,
host populations, and with host governments. And that means that
you share benefits. That
can be sharing benefits of fossil-fuel resources, and that can
also mean, for instance, that
you invest in renewable technology to bring electricity to the
people. There are more
solutions than one, but we will be working on this, and will
come up with a number of
proposals in our World Energy Outlook 2014.
Q: About 550 million people in Africa are without electricity.
Can African nationsleverage renewable energy and leapfrog
traditional electric grid development to increase electricity
access and spur growth?
A: They need to leapfrog in Africa and they can. Why should they
make our mistakes? There
are quite a lot of remote areas where you have to find
mini-grid, off-grid solutions, and you
need to have storage capacity. Its not always big storage
capacity, but the costs have to
come down. So its absolutely vital that welook into a myriad of
options. That involves
solar, it involves geothermal, hydro, wind, and other renewable
and fossil sources. Lets not
close our eyes and think that because we did a number of things
in Europe that it must be
done the same way in other countries. Were not only talking
about renewables in Africa
its a mixture. And of course some countries have their own
indigenous resources. Thepoint is how they can get the money out of
it to pay for the solutions for electrification.
