The Prospects for Global Energy, 1985–2000

Abstract

In treating the issues of national energy policies as we have done in the body of this book we have to a considerable extent concentrated on the near future, that is, the period up until 1985 or thereabouts. Yet the practical horizons of most governments and businesses are often of the order of five years rather than ten and the individual citizen is attuned to an even shorter perspective. The insidious danger arising from these varying levels of planning horizons is that the world energy supply situation could reach a critical imbalance in energy sources where serious economic distortions had been institutionalised by virtue of insufficient long-term planning. It is to minimise that propensity that this final chapter embarks on a very preliminary assessment of global energy factors and likely trends in the post-1985 period.