IGSO experts see the world on the brink of an imminent energy revolution

One of these central issues is energy — ranging from its generation, sources diversification, preservation and transportation to the possibilities of guaranteeing its hitch-free supply in adequate volumes, and most importantly, at prices that are affordable by all countries and their citizens. These issues have now come to the forefront of the ‘must-do items’ on the global agenda, especially today, when countries, which are exiting the current financial meltdown, are gearing up for the new economic reality in the unfolding post-crisis business world.

Expectedly, most experts are focusing their attention on these issues with the aim of finding lasting solutions for these energy-related issues that determine the direction of economic growth and national developments across the globe. One of such studies’ results was released last month by the Center for Economic Studies, an affiliate of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements (IGSO), an independent center focused, among other things, on fostering initiatives aimed at democratic, social and economic transformation of the Russian society. 

“This crisis has clearly shown that it is impossible to generate stable growth in sales of goods and, consequently, of the economy as a whole, without sharply reducing the cost of production.”

According to the report’s findings, the resumption of sustainable global economic growth will require a technological revolution in energy production and consumption, and this is likely to occur in the non-too-distant future. Specifically, such technical revolution, the report says, will lead to the intensification of the search for and discovery of new methods of power generation, which will not only significantly reduce the overall cost of energy production, but also will ensure its production in much larger volumes. Thus, according to the IGSO experts, high-tech intensive industries will become more profitable than ever before, thanks to the technological revolution, as the traditional use of manual labor in the energy industry will give way to new, innovative methods of production. Consequently, this will lead to a sharp decline in the use of labor in the industrial, agro, trade and transportation sectors, as the energy revolution will change public conscience, structure and priorities of consumption.

This global crisis has led to a sharp reduction in citizens’ disposable incomes. Indeed, the crisis has clearly shown that without reducing the cost of energy production, it is impossible to generate stable growth in goods sales and, consequently, economic growth. Commenting on this issue, IGSO CEO Boris Kagarlitsky noted that the possibilities of reducing labor costs were exhausted prior to the termination of the economic growth. “This means the global economy has reached a technological dead end, from where it has yet to find an exit,” he said. “One of the reasons for this is that the global economy cannot move over to a new technological production level until the problem of expensive energy resources is finally solved, and this cannot be done by relying on oil alone, as the only source of boosting energy supply.” This problem, according to Kagarlitsky, is made more acute by the fact that the currently available alternative energy sources such as the solar batteries and windmills are comparatively more expensive and incapable of generating sufficient energy, as they constitute less than 1.5% in global supply. “Another alternative, the nuclear power technology, remains very expensive and highly hazardous.”

The current global economic problems call for the introduction of new technologies in the energy industry. A similar situation existed in the early 20th century, when electric power stations and internal combustion engines gained broad application across industries. This is why the world today needs new and advanced energy generation methods capable of producing power at a lower cost. “Without such approach, it is impossible to introduce even the currently available labor automatization technologies on a broad scale,” Vasiliy Koltashov, the director of the IGSO’s Center for Economic Studies, said. “This is why the world must undergo a new technological revolution in the nearest future, a major component of which will be focused on transforming the global energy industry,” he added. “Such changes will finally revoke the vicious myth about the usefulness of energy preservation, and thus accelerate the long-overdue transit to a new generation economy, which will be characterized by broad applications of robotics and other high-tech novelties,” he added. “This new energy-generation technology will also solve lots of ecological problems, as it will offer the opportunities to substantially reduce the number of hazardous production facilities, while boosting more environmentally safe transportation system.”

Probably, the ongoing search for new energy generation methods will be fruitless, without using the works of ‘electricity guru’ Nikola Tesla, an outstanding inventor in the field of electrical and radio engineering. Specifically, Tesla has been credited with making unique contributions, from the point of view of scientific revolution, to the studies of electricity and magnetism and their properties in power generation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which gave birth to lots of other inventions that radically transformed the world.

This ‘electricity genius’ ideas, unfortunately, had been forgotten for decades. For instance, one of Tesla’s principles, which says that ‘electricity is everywhere and that the only problem is how to tap it’ has yet to be put into practical use. Similarly, his invented technologies of generating electricity from the atmosphere and the earth’s geomagnetic field have also been left unnoticed by governments and corporations. Instead, lots of resources are currently being invested into the development of ‘utopian’ biofuel projects that are being promoted as future substitutions for hydrocarbon-based fuels, notably, petrol and diesel. But the current economic needs are calling for an urgent switch to new energy generation technologies and fundamentally new engines. However, the key obstacle for a global energy revolution is the current ‘conservative neoliberal policy’ prevailing in most countries.