Today’s energy system is based on fossil fuels, which account for more than 80% of all primary energy consumed, said Igor Sechin, Chief Executive Officer of Rosneft Oil Company.

“Fossil fuels have made the global energy system the backbone of modern life. Over the past 200 years, the use of hydrocarbons has made energy more affordable, which in turn, along with improvements in health care and human nutrition, has led to an increase in life expectancy from 30 to 70 years and a reduction in the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty from 90% to 10%,” the Rosneft CEO said in a keynote speech at the 17th Verona Eurasian Economic Forum (Ras Al-Khaimah, UAE).

Igor Sechin noted that the modern energy system is a huge and complex organism. On average, each person consumes the energy equivalent of 800 kilograms of oil per year, and 95% of all goods are made from oil and gas products. There are more than 60,000 power plants in operation around the world, providing energy for more than six billion people. One and a half billion vehicles are on the road every day, 98% of which run on conventional fuels.

The Rosneft CEO also listed a number of qualities that make oil, gas and coal indispensable to modern life. For instance, fossil fuels are easy to transport. It can be directed to where it is most needed at almost any time. As such, the amount of energy that can be transported 1,000 miles for one dollar is up to 4.4 megawatt hours for pipeline oil, up to 1.2 megawatt hours for pipeline gas, and only 0.2 megawatt hours for hydrogen.

“Building on the research of the great Russian scientist Pyotr Kapitsa, McKinsey experts and scientists from Western universities have confirmed that fossil fuels also have a high energy flow density,” Sechin stressed. Diesel outperforms hydrogen by nearly 30 times, and gas outperforms wind and solar by 270 and 70 times respectively.

Thanks to these properties, the use of fossil fuels results in much higher investment efficiency measured in energy units, the Rosneft CEO said. Coal and gas-fired power plants (30 and 28 times energy return on investment) are more than 10 times more efficient than subsidised wind and solar power (around 4 and 2 times energy return on investment).

Source: Rosneft