Speaking with DNV GL’s narrator, Mathias Steck, IEA’s Keisuke Sadamori, Director of Energy and Security Markets explores energy security in the age of renewables, explaining that the extreme weather conditions taking place today are impacting renewable energy systems and infrastructures around the world, most likely becoming a major energy security concern for the future.
# Saudi Arabia attacks
Keisuke Sadamori referred to the recent attacks in the Saudi Arabian oil facility commenting that it was a wake up call for the oil supply security system. Although IEA’s members have a dedicated strategic emergency service when an incident like this happens, due to the very quick recovery by the Saudi Aramco in production capacities, they did not need to use this emergency reserve.
# Renewables
Speaking about renewable energy, Sadamori added that because renewables are mostly domestic resources they do not face any supply security threat, in comparison to oil.
However, there are other security problems renewables face, such as the need for ensuring the stability of the electricity markets and also, in the longer term, need to ensure the needed investments in order to provide flexibility to the entire electricity supply systems.
Moreover, cyber security has become a new challenge due to the relation between digital technologies and energy systems.
The IEA is now working focusing on these new types of electricity security matters.
# Becoming an IEA member
To become an IEA member a country should prove that it has enough crude oil and product reserves equivalent to about 90 days of the previous year’s net imports, to which the government can have immediate access.
However, when it comes to renewables the process will be different, as renewable is a kind of domestic sources and it continues to flow to all member countries.
In addition, concerning the 90-days oil test, the oil is still a major dominant fuel for the transportation sector all this time, meaning that new technologies as electric vehicles, need time to replace the role of oil in the transportation.
So, we consider that oil will have a role to play in the coming decades.
He further highlights that the oil demand will be a major factor in the petrochemical sector; Consequently, in the coming decades IEA believes that the So, we consider that oil will have a role to play in the coming decades.
# Weather conditions impact renewables and infrastructure
Also, Sadamori discussed about the challenging weather conditions, focusing on the stability of the electricity supply systems and the infrastructure. In the meantime, the increased temperature also affects the operation of the power generation sources.
For example, the height of heat wave, as it happened in France, increased the river temperature. This led to one of the nuclear power plants had to shut down because of the lack of cooling capacity.
So, all in all we are seeing kind of increasing impacts and effects from the extreme weather events. So, I think that the resiliency against such climate change and increasing extreme weather events has to be discussed in order to get better prepared for such threats on the energy systems.
Sadamori noted that investment is needed to ensure that energy supply in all fields will continue to be ensured towards the future, as it was highlighted at IEA’s World Energy Outlook.
