Energy-Journal of Session 8

In this session, we concentrate on energy and technology. Some drivers for energy technology are the high price, the running out of easily accessible storage and the harmful environmental impact of traditional energy resources, such as oil and coal.

There are a lot that can be done to achieve energy sustainability. For the supply, we can explore more new sources to provide energy, such as fusion, algae, osmosis and so on. And for energy conversion, there are a lot of chemical, biochemical or thermal technologies that can be used. For consumption, we can design better machines to increasing efficiency. To make the optimum model for both energy production and consumption, there is a need and synergy for multi-field collaboration. Such fields include biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, and so on.

And such collaboration and development need the encouragement and guidance from government policies. Three main considerations for energy policies are energy security, energy equity and environmental impact mitigation. To achieve energy sustainability, governments need to promote renewable energy supply, manage demand by increasing the efficiency of energy consumption, encourage private investment for new energy technologies and make cross-cutting policies to involve all stakeholders in order to ensure the effect and sustainability of energy policies.

To encourage private investment for emerging energy technologies, governments need to reduce the risk of investment by reducing uncertainty through leveraging long-term and strong policies to provide a more stable and predictable investment environment.

Another thing that is also important is education related to energy sustainability. Here, education is not limited to raising awareness, but also developing human capital for energy sustainability, such as all-round experts.

To achieve the optimum of energy sustainability, there are also a need for the collaboration of different countries and regions. Different countries and regions have different advantages in resources endowment. Such resources include natural resources, human capital resources (i.e. knowledge and technologies) and capital resources. International collaboration makes sure that all the resources are used more efficiently and in the meantime, every participant benefits.