Technological progress and the energy challenges. The role of natural gas

Since the beginning of the industrial evolution, progress in technology development for the energy industry has been guided by economy and choice of fuel. For the last decades 'Energy Crisis' and 'Greenhouse effect' issues have supplemented the driving forces. (Improved Efficiency' is not of the strongest marketing issues when dealing with appliances for energy conversion. The trends of the development of today are towards smaller decentralized units and mass production. This is in contradiction to conventional wisdom of minimizing costs by use of centralized large-scale units. The future of energy conversion of power and heat production will be dominated by small-scale units, which produce heat and power simultaneously. Lower energy prices will slow down the transition to more efficient conversion technologies, but in the open and de-regulated market this will be opposed by competition between companies. To gain market shares and maintain customers, energy companies will have to use 'efficient appliances' as a market parameter. Use of more efficient technology always improves the environmental efficiency but conversion to natural gas from another fossil fuel will by itself lead to radical environmental improvements. (author)