Changing Technological Landscape of the Global Energy Sector: Drivers and Opportunities

Abstract

The article provides an overview of the key expected changes in the technological landscape of the global energy sector. On the part of the end-use energy consumption sectors, the requirements for energy systems and the organization of their operation are changing significantly. Consumers are demanding ever more versatile, environmentally friendly, cost-effective and reliable energy supplies, and energy-intensive equipment with off-grid options is increasingly in demand. Technical progress, in turn, provides access to new solutions, while changing the parameters of inter-fuel competition. Government policy also contributes, and its tools allow both to softly influence the attractiveness of the choice and to simply limit the possibilities of using certain equipment.

Electrification is becoming a key trend in the supply of energy to industry, commercial and residential sectors. The transportation sector is moving from an era of oil dominance to an era of inter-fuel competition, with electric solutions also becoming a key substitute for petroleum products.

In the electricity generation sector itself, preference is increasingly being given to carbon-free and renewable energy sources. In some regions of the world, renewable energy sources are already becoming competitive in terms of the cost of electricity production (before feeding into the grid) with fossil generation. It is important that with an increase in the share of renewable energy sources in the electricity balance, the share of costs for backup, storage, and network infrastructure increases, which makes it necessary to assess costs in a complex manner when making decisions.

The growing share of renewable energy sources in energy systems necessarily requires the development of storage technologies; however, the current level of scientific and technological progress in this area makes such solutions extremely expensive, which leaves long-term niches for thermal generation, but significantly changes its operating modes.

Technologies are also changing significantly in the field of exploration, production and transportation of fossil fuels. This makes it possible not to fear resource shortages in the coming decades, despite rising production levels and the depletion of the easiest-to-exploit reserves. But the operating environment for conventional energy will change.