Global Energy Challenges Under Spotlight in South Korea

Jakarta Globe ^ | 10/13/2013 | AFP

[TexGrill]

Seoul. The world’s leading energy officials will meet this week in South Korea to discuss the sector’s major challenges, ranging from climate change to the rise of fracking and nuclear power’s uncertain future.

The 22nd World Energy Congress begins Monday in the southeastern city of Daegu, which has set its sights on becoming a model for the use of renewable energy, particularly solar.

With over 5,000 participants from 93 countries, the conference, which takes place every three years, is considered the most important meeting of the sector and has been dubbed the “Energy Olympics”.

Some 50 ministers and other senior government officials, including many from OPEC nations, as well as bosses of big firms like Tepco, Gazprom, Shell and Aramco are expected to take part.

The future of nuclear energy in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima meltdown in 2011 and the rise in North America of shale gas and oil extraction through the controversial extraction method of hydraulic fracturing — also known as fracking — are likely to be high on the agenda.

Renewable energy and its uneven deployment across countries will also figure, as governments and industry grapple with the dilemma of how to ensure energy for a growing world population, at an affordable cost, and without aggravating global climate change.

The meeting comes as Japan’s government finds itself facing a public increasingly hostile to its use of nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster — the world’s worst atomic accident since Chernobyl in 1986.

Last month Japan shut off its last working reactor for a scheduled inspection with no restart in sight, leaving the country without nuclear power for only the second time since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which saw the Fukushima reactors’ cooling systems swamped, causing the meltdown.

[TexGrill]

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