Energy Transition

Global warming, and the change it generates in the climate system, has generated various widespread impacts on both humans and nature and many of them are unprecedented.

For this reason, following the Paris Climate Conference (2015), an international agreement was signed that established the goal of keeping global warming below 2 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels. How? Through the “energy transition”.

This process is not new, since it has been present throughout the history of mankind, and was driven by various reasons: improvements in technologies, environmental and economic considerations, ease and convenience.

What is meant by energy transition today?

It is a paradigm shift of the entire system, including the development of clean energy, and methods to reduce the production of greenhouse gases; change that encompasses all sectors, and even households.

Despite being one of the most important concepts today, there is no consensus regarding the method by which this objective will be achieved, since it could be a change towards a system with low carbon emissions, absolute decarbonization, or the generation of energy that considers the cancellation of carbon emissions through mechanisms that absorb them (Net Zero).

Current panorama

During the next few years it will be possible to observe how the generation of electrical energy continues to change through the use of solar panels and wind turbines, as representatives of modern renewable energy generators, reflecting the beginning of distributed and intermittent generation, as opposed to traditional generation, based on coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants.

However, the intermittence of modern generators represents a challenge for these resources, since having a stable and reliable network is extremely important.

This shows that the generation of energy with modern renewable resources will require support from non-renewable sources, until the necessary infrastructure and technology are available to be able to store the surplus electricity generation produced by these intermittent sources.

For this reason, it is proposed that natural gas, as a hydrocarbon that emits lesser amounts of greenhouse gases, serve as support for electricity generation through renewable energies, until the aforementioned technology and infrastructure are available.

Change from sustainability

It must be taken into account that the energy transition process cannot be immediate, it must be approached from a sustainable point of view, which includes the economic, social and environmental axes. Considering, in turn, the need to create and absorb jobs from the fossil fuel industry to the electricity generation industry with renewable resources.