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Event Detail
| Date | Monday 05 February 2007 |
| From till | |
| Event Type | Luncheon & lecture |
| Organised by | |
| Topic | Alternative Energy |
| Location | BP |
| Invite | Official Invitation |
| Description | Alternative Energy at BP Luncheon and lecture by mr. V.V. Rao, VP Business Development Global Power Asia BLBG was invited by BP at their Harbour Front office for a great lunch seminar on Alternative Energy. Vice President Business Development Global Power, Mr. V.V. Rao, introduced us to the world of alternative energy. It was very interesting to see how the traditional energy sources compared to the new and alternative energy opportunities compare in numbers and in usage. We learned what the important elements are that play a role in the "game of managing the global power sources". On one hand there is demand growth and supply challenges and on the other hand there are environmental constraints and security of supply. In the middle of all, is the technology and policy which might even play the most important role, as this can simulate both companies and governments with a direct injection to support the different energy friendly projects. The trick will be to have less carbon intensive supplies (the alternative sources) like solar, wind, hydrogen power and natural gas. Although there is a lot of talking about alternative energy, or better called renewable energy, it only makes up for 13.3% of the total energy supply that the world needs at the moment. Gas, oil and coal play and will play still an important role in the future. Luckily there is strong growth in alternative energy. It is expected that investments in renewables will quadruple of the next 30 years. On top of that, the generation cost of renewables is decreasing as technology improves. In the last 20 years we have seen already a significant reduction on cost to produce wind and solar energy. In addition to that also reports on climate change will change thinking. What will be the future? As long as the need for energy is growing, it is not expected that traditional energy sources will reduce. A conflict -or better called a challenge- will even be that the prices might drop for these. The alternative energy's part will fill part of the gap in the growth and will certainly grow, currently it does by 8%. Wind, followed by solar are the strongest growers. For BP, it is clear that there is a lot of opportunity to make impact, as Asia is adapting slower to new renewables than the OECD countries, according to our speaker mr. Rao. BP's programme will focus on the power sector instead of the transport sector as the power sector is the largest producer of CO2 (carbon) and plans to reduce 400 million tons of CO2 till 2010. We wish BP therefore a lot of success in this programme and we are sure they can make the world a bit better in this respect. After the lecture, we had an opportunity to have a look at BP's trading floor, of course completely computerised, where all transactions for the eastern hemisphere are done. Amazingly big! BLBG would like to thank both mr. Rao and Eddy Weemaes for their contributions and openness to share BP's ideas on alternative energy and for organising this event. |
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