the uncertainty over future global sources of energy supply

With the worlds primary energy needs set to grow by 55% by 2030, and electricity consumption expected to double over the next few decades, managing future need is a global challenge, perhaps one of the most significant of our time. The international energy authority or the IEA estimates that $22 trillion of new investment will be needed by 2030. At the same time, there is the global challenge of climate change and the need to develop cleaner sources of energy in order to improve, or at the very least not worsen, the health of out environment.

As oil and gas supplies become scarcer an more expensive, the hunt for new reserves is creating political alliances and the danger of fresh conflicts. China is moving aggressively to find sources of energy imports, potentially setting up a confrontation with the USA over the dwindling resources of the Middle East and Africa.

As fossil fuel prices rise, the option of exploiting resources previously considered uneconomic becomes more attractive. It is now possible to pull carbon out of the ground in forms that were once too expensive or too technically difficult to compete with cheap oil and gas. Governments around the world have re-examine their energy supplies, looking particularly at possible indigenous sources of 'unconventional oil'.

Canada's oil-sands seem to offer a vast energy resource, but it can only be exploited at considerable cost to the environment. This is not only local as huge amounts of energy are consumed in hearing the sands to extract the oil. The same is true of previously untapped reserves of oil. For example, the largest onshore oil reserves yet found in North America are in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Northern Alaska. But the refuge is a huge area of wilderness inhabited by 45 species of land and marine mammals, ranging