Profile journalists of the British Financial Times and the owner of the newspaper, the Japanese Nikkei Publishing House, analyze what could be a situation in the sphere that they write about. VTIMES within five days represent their opinions in five areas of labor market, finance, energy, consumer sector, technologies.
Energy
David Schpadard, Energoressource Department Editor FINANCIAL TIMESThe history of the oil sector for more than 100 years is characterized by long-term periods of boom and price collapse: at the same time low prices eventually led to the rise in price of oil, since insufficient investments and consumption growth has created a deficit. Since almost all 2020, the price of oil did not exceed $ 40 per barrel (and this is two more than six times less than six years ago), it would naturally assume that the cycle will change and by 2025 the oil will increase significantly.
However, today it is definitely not to count on it. The global energy system is located on the threshold of transformation, which occurs once in a century. Due to ambitious government programs to reduce harmful emissions and a rapid increase in the number of electric vehicles on the roads, the demand for oil is expected to reach the peak already in the foreseeable future - perhaps for 10 years. This buys the prospects for the development of the industry, accustomed to the eternal growth.
But even if demand decreases, can the lack of suggestions arise if the energy companies will cease to invest in intelligence and mining? Or the largest producers will try to dig each barrel, fearing that they are sitting on assets that soon can depreciate? As such a future may look, the world found out when a short price war broke out in March between Saudi Arabia and Russia.
No one knows exactly how the situation will be formed. But the approach of peak demand is threatened to turn the established ideas, even such rooted, as an oil cycle.
Matsuo Hirofumi, Senior Nikkei CorrespondentWe are on the threshold of the energy revolution. The transition to the world with zero carbon dioxide emissions causes changes not only in the structure of demand and supply of energy resources, but also in international politics and business. In the next five years, it will be determined who will be headed by this revolution.
In addition to the EU and Japan, the elected US president Joe Biden promised to provide a zero level of greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2050. China, the record holder for these emissions, set itself the goal of cutting them to zero to 2060. To implement these plans, radical technological innovations will be required to implement these plans, Changes in economic and public structures. Sales of electric vehicles, according to the estimates of the International Energy Agency, by the end of 2030 should grow 20 times, and hydrogen supply is 100 times.
The required transition to a power supply system based on renewable energy sources, according to experts, will require investments in the amount of $ 1.6 trillion, which exceeds today's level four times.
Countries and companies that control technologies that allow us to reduce harmful emissions on such a scale, when driving to a decarboonized society will have a competitive advantage. If the twentieth century was the oil era, in which the United States was leading, then in the XXI century. Challenge them will throw China. It will have a dominant share in the global technology market and products - such as solar panels, wind installations, electric cars and batteries - necessary to implement measures to combat climate change. In China, there are programs for the development of renewable energy, it controls large deposits of rare-earth metals, necessary, for example, for the production of motor vehicles. Energy will be one of the spheres of the collision of China and the United States fighting for technological dominance.
Providing resources - but no fossil fuels, but necessary for the energy transfer, will become one of the main tasks in maintaining high economic growth rates.
Victor Davydov and Mikhail Overchenko
Read the opinions of FT and Nikkei journalists about possible changes in other sectors every day this week.