10 BQ – Our big power struggle

One hundred years ago the electricity system hardly existed, with most people reliant on oil lamps, iceboxes, fireplaces and so on.
Industry burned coal on-site to run steam turbines for mechanical power. Mining operations were primitive compared with the extraordinary scale and sophistication of today’s operations.

Dr Francis Clark talks further about how renewables and where we are heading globally but also what will electricity systems be like in another hundred years, with the global need of electricity supply to quadruple by century’s end, driven by the spread of affluence and a world population heading for about nine billion.

To find out more Dr Clark’s 10 Big Question go to his Advertiser article – ‘Our big power struggle‘. Published on Tuesday 21st June 2011.