Future Energy Supplies: the Big Picture

Chris Llewellyn Smith
President of the Council of SESAME (Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and its Applications in the Middle East),Vice President of the Royal Society, and a Visiting Professor in the Oxford Physics Department

As an introduction to a discussion session, I will give a brief overview of the outlook for energy demand and supply globally. To provoke discussion, I will give my views on questions such as: Can greater efficiency reduce future demand without curbing evelopment? How long are fossil fuels likely to last? What is the potential for capturing and storing carbon dioxide? What is the ultimate potential of different renewables? Once fossil fuels are exhausted (or in the - unlikely? - case that the world renounces their use), will current and future technologies be able to replace them?