Can the world sustain our ever-increasing reliance on electricity? Electricity is the means through which all the equipment we use functions. Electric power brings balance and convenience to our lives. From an electric bulb to our phones and appliances, our current lifestyle is downright reliant on electricity.
The world has evolved into an energy-thirsty environment, so much so that a withdrawal from electric power seems to cripple a lot of processes and operations. Taking the power failure challenge in China last week, one could see the uproar of citizens and business owners lamenting over the absence of electricity and the perceived drop in industry operations, especially with Christmas productions at the corner.
Notwithstanding the varied sources of energy on earth, the world appears to remain energy-thirsty. With the increasing transition to clean energy, utilities worldwide speculate the need to double or even triple electricity generation to soothe the thirst for energy.
Telsa CEO, Elon Musk in a recent conversation at Barron’s, opined that the United States electricity generation needs to double to power transition to electric vehicles. Electric vehicles (EV), as the name implies, runs on electric power. While they are a suitable alternative to fossil-fuelled cars, phasing out in most parts of the world has generated another increasing need for electric power.
Elon Musk emphasised that utilities would need to generate more electrons to make the EV revolution a reality.
While this is on EVs, a similar demand is also on manufacturing, mining and other industries.
In all, the need for energy would keep increasing with increasing technology. Hence, world leaders and utility operators should channel a great deal of effort into providing an energy balanced grid network to cater for this energy-thirsty world.