As world population continues to grow and people in the developing world improve their standard of living toward the level of residents of industrialised nations, demand for energy will increase enormously. Even taking into account anticipated progress in energy conservation and forecasts that world population will reach a mid-century peak and then stabilise, the demand for electricity alone is forecasted to quadruple in the century from 2000 to 2100. If electric vehicles shift a substantial part of the energy consumed for transportation from hydrocarbon fuels to electricity, the demand for electric power will be greater still.
Providing this electricity in an affordable, sustainable way is a tremendous challenge. Most electricity today is produced by burning fuels such as coal, natural gas, and petroleum; by nuclear fission reactors; and by hydroelectric power generated by dams. Quadrupling electric power generation by any of these means poses serious problems. Fossil fuels may be subject to depletion, pose environmental consequences both in extraction and release of combustion products into the atmosphere, and are distributed unevenly around the world, leading to geopolitical tensions between have and have-not countries. Uranium fission is a technology with few environmental drawbacks, but operating it in a safe manner is very demanding and requires continuous vigilance over the decades-long lifespan of a power station. Further, the risk exists that nuclear material can be diverted for weapons use, especially if nuclear power stations proliferate into areas which are politically unstable. Hydroelectric power is clean, generally reliable (except in the case of extreme droughts), and inexhaustible, but unfortunately most rivers which are suitable for its generation have already been dammed, and potential projects which might be developed are insufficient to meet the demand.
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