For years the energy industry didn’t change all that much. New developments in equipment and technology changed the way they did things, of course, but the general business model remained largely the same. The main focus was on coal and gas and they always had a growing market for it. But now things are changing.
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Environmental concerns, coupled with frustration at rising energy prices are forcing the energy industry to adapt and change. These are some of the biggest trends that you should be following right now.
Here are the trends shaping the future of the energy industry!
Fracking
Running out of resources is one of the main challenges that the energy industry faces. Researchers haven’t agreed on a solid figure yet but some say that fossil fuels are going to run out in around 50 years.
That’s a pretty worrying figure and obviously, we need to start looking for other sources of fuel. Renewable energy is taking shouldering some of the burdens but we’ll come back to that later.
The other new direction that the energy industry is looking toward is fracking. It’s a new method for extracting gas that’s caused a lot of controversies. It’s fairly safe and cheap to do if you’ve got good drilling equipment and a rig mat from somewhere like http://northernmat.ca to stabilize it.
The method has drawn lots of critics that say it is unsafe for the environment and pollutes the water supply, potentially contaminating the drinking water of the people that live nearby.
It’s a new method so there is no definitive answer as to how safe it is, but it will soon be the only viable way to extract gas.
Renewables
Like I said before, most energy companies are moving toward renewable energy. The technology in solar and wind energy has come on a long way in just a few short years and it’s now a more viable way of powering our homes.
Environmental concerns mean that renewable energy is really the only logical direction for the energy industry to go in. It’s clean and it’s usually cheaper once all of the equipment is set up.
Renewable energy has thrown a bit of a spanner in the works though because people can produce their own energy. More people are buying solar panels from places like http://hespv.ca/ and fitting their homes with them. They completely bypass the energy companies and buy their own free energy.
At the moment it’s a very small number of people so it doesn’t have too much of an effect but who knows how the energy industry will react if the practice becomes more widespread. At the minute, they’re benefiting from it in a small way by purchasing surplus energy from these people so they can keep their reserves stocked without having to build new facilities of their own.
Cyber Attacks
We’ve been hearing more and more about cyber-attacks in the last couple of years but most people don’t think it can affect the energy industry.
However, grids have been updated with new technology to make them more efficient, the only downside is that they’re now vulnerable to cyber-attack.
It hasn’t happened yet, but there is the chance that cybercriminals could seriously disrupt entire countries if the security is not good enough.
The energy industry faces a few big challenges but by adapting to changing trends, they can remain relevant for a long time to come.
