The challenges of energy and development .. The conclusion of the seventh international energy conference in Kuwait

Mahmoud Kafrawi - Kuwait

With the participation of researchers from 22 countries concluded the seventh international conference for research and development of energy organized by the College of Engineering and Petroleum in cooperation with the Kuwaiti Society of Engineers and the American Society of Refrigeration and Heating Engineers "Ashri".

Through 40 refereed papers selected from 80 papers, the conference discussed progress in energy research and its relationship to development and the challenges associated with renewable energy.

Continued demand growth
The Minister of Education and Minister of Higher Education Hamid Al-Azmi, the continued growth of demand for energy, with estimates of OPEC estimated this by 23% between 2020 and 2040.

Oil and gas are expected to account for more than 50 percent of global energy needs, and demand will increase by 14 million barrels by 2040, he said.

Al-Azmi said that the increase in consumption is not the result of the voracious need to provide fuel sources for transportation and power plants, but also for the growing petrochemical industry.

He explained that scientists have a great task to overcome the effects of this increasing demand in order to achieve a comfortable equation for both market parties, namely, the producer and consumer, as increasing consumption causes significant environmental problems due to high levels of carbon dioxide and other harmful gases, and the increase of global warming Global warming and increased desertification and drought.

Fuel with safe specifications
The Kuwaiti Minister stressed that these challenges necessitated the search for fuel in safe specifications as much as possible, while working hard to reduce the risks, which made the search for clean sources of sustainable energy a major goal of scientific research.

Therefore, with its abundant oil reserves, Kuwait has been keen to make use of solar energy to relieve the terrible pressure on power plants and counter the negative effects of burning fuel.

For his part, Chairman of the Scientific Committee organizing the conference Sorour Al-Otaibi said that the conference focused on achieving optimum utilization of energy resources, especially on energy conversion technologies and discussing opportunities and challenges in the field of renewable energy.

Al-Otaibi considered that the conference was an opportunity to bring together leading academic scientists, researchers and experts to review the results of their research.

In addition to the scientific sessions, the conference schedule included three workshops and a number of training courses.

Energy scene shifts
On the sidelines of his participation in the conference, the Director General of the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science (KFAS), Adnan Shihab Al-Din, told Al Jazeera Net that his paper focused on the shifts in the global energy landscape and reviewed the 200-year march that began with wood passing through coal to oil and gas to renewable energy.

He pointed out that the paper focused on these engines of changes, the most important of which is energy security as well as fairness of providing energy at reasonable prices and also climate change.

He said that the most important of these three engines is related to climate change, which poses great challenges in the Gulf region in particular, but what mitigates this is the availability of opportunities on the transformation of renewable energy in the Gulf and the Arab world.

Discussions also included how to convert oil and gas into clean sources by extracting carbon dioxide in power plants, or converting oil into hydrogen and storing carbon dioxide in the ground, ensuring zero CO2 emissions.

Map of cooling modes
A scientific workshop was held on the roadmap for refrigeration in domestic air conditioners, which will review the results of one of the studies conducted by the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, funded by the Ministry of Electricity and Water, to study air conditioners in the Kuwaiti market.

`` The study focuses on concerns about banning the production and use of some refrigerants by 2040, '' said Fattouh, director of the Institute's Energy Efficiency Technologies program.

She pointed out that the study focused on the study of a local alternative to the media currently used and refute theoretical concerns about the low efficiency of air conditioners once the use of the new medium, and pointed out that the development of science allowed to overcome this through the development of efficiency.

She added that the possibility of using the available media in the local market as an alternative to those in the devices has been scientifically confirmed with conformity with the specifications required by the Ministry of Electricity and Water, the most important of which is related to the building system.