Industrial Engineering: Energy Trends and Future Analysis

This report, prepared by an Industrial Engineering student, examines global energy trends, focusing on the transition from non-renewable to renewable energy sources. The analysis encompasses data from various sources, including Ion, BP plc, and the Energy Information Administration (EIA), comparing historic projections with current consumption patterns. The report highlights the declining use of fossil fuels (coal, oil) and the increasing adoption of renewable sources (solar, wind, hydro). It discusses the benefits of renewable energy, such as sustainability and reduced environmental impact, as key drivers of this shift. The paper provides a comprehensive overview of energy market dynamics, predicting future trends and emphasizing the importance of renewable energy in the global energy landscape. The report's findings underscore the growing significance of renewable energy in the modern world and its potential to surpass non-renewable sources by 2050.

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Industrial Engineering
Student’s Name
Course Code
Module Name
Month and Year of submission

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Executive Summary
Energy is one of the most crucial resources in the modern world and has helped in the realization
of many achievements and developments which have been made in the modern world. There are
two categories of energy namely, renewable and non-renewable energies. These two categories
of energy have been used for long, and their trends of use have been changing. Before 2000, non-
renewable energy sources used to be the main source of energy where they supplied almost 90%
of the total energy consumed in the world. However, things have changed where people have
shifted to renewable energy sources, and by now, almost 30% of the energy used in the world
comes from renewable energy sources. This percentage keeps on rising, and it’s expected by
2050, renewable energy might have surpassed non-renewable energy. This paper aims to discuss
energy trends in the world and predict how the trends will vary.

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Energy trends in the world
Introduction
Energy is one of the most crucial resources in the modern world. It has been the driving
force of modern technology and the many developments realized in different sectors of the world
(Soussan, 2019). All the industries either manufacturing or non-manufacturing industries directly
depend on energy in their many operations. For homesteads, they also depend on energy for
lighting, cooking, preserving their foods and drinks, among many other roles (Bruegge, Carrión-
Flores, and Pope, 2016, pp.63-76). Therefore, energy has been one of the most critical driving
forces which have enabled the world to reach the level it is today as it is required in almost all
the sectors of life. For the past many years, non-renewable energy sources such as coal and oil
have been the main sources of energy in the world (Adams, Klobodu, and Apio, 2018, pp.755-
767). This is very risky as these sources can be depleted leaving the world with little or no
energy sources. The good news is that the concerned parties have realized and noted the great
risk associated with depending on non-renewable energy sources, and from this realization, they
have introduced other non-renewable sources which can never be depleted as they depend on
natural resources such as the sun, wind, water, among many other natural resources. This means
the trend of energy sources used in the world has been changing where there has been a tendency
of many people and organizations shifting from using the risky non-renewable energy sources to
using the safe renewable energy sources that can never be depleted (Furlan and Mortarino, 2018,

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pp. 1879-1886). This paper aims to analyze the trends in the energy markets as many people and
organizations tend to shift from using non-renewable energy to using renewable energy sources.
The paper will consider the energy markets of the past few decades, the current energy markets,
and the predictions which have been made and are expected to happen in the energy market until
the year 2050.
The energy consumption trends as predicted by Ion
Considering different sources, Ion being one of the sources, it’s evident that the energy
market trends of renewable or inexhaustible energies have been rising while the exhaustible or
non-renewable energy market trends have been declining as many people continue to embrace
and accept to use non-renewable energy sources which don’t face the risk of getting depleted
(Hondrila et al., 2018, pp.234-249). We can start our analysis by considering the energy data that
was released by Ion (1978) to show the trends of energy consumption and thus predicted how
these trends are likely to fair until 1950 as many people continue to learn the benefits of
renewable or non-exhaustible energy sources. The table below shows the energy data that was
released:
Table 1: World energy supply 1950 – 2050 (data known until 1974)

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Source Ion (1978)
To understand the trends shown by the data, some line graphs can be shown to show how
the energy supply and consumption has been varying for the considered years (1950 to 2050)
Figure 1: World energy supply projections 1950 – 2050 (source: Figure 10 in Ion
(1978))

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From the line graphs, it’s evident that the supply of inexhaustible energies which include
nuclear fusion, hydro-power, and nuclear energy which are all renewable energies has been
rising significantly and this supply is expected to keep on rising until 2050 and beyond. The line
graphs also show that the supply of non-renewable (exhaustible) natural gas, crude oil, and coal
which are all non-renewable energies used to rise significantly until 2000 when the ‘rate of
rising’ of the supply started to reduce. Although it’s expected that the supply of these energies
will continue to exist in the global market, their usage will be significantly lower compared to
the renewable energies as it can be seen from the line graphs. By 2050, most organizations and
homesteads will have embraced the use of renewable energies leaving non-renewable energies to
a few organizations and a few homesteads who will also be trying to shift to start using

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renewable energies. The reason as to why non-renewable energies can’t be phased out
completely (by 20150) is that people require enormous amount of energy to run their
organizations or homesteads and it will be quite challenging to get this enormous amount of
energy from renewable energy sources only.
The energy usage trends as predicted by BP plc
BP plc is an England-based multinational gas and oil company based in London. This
company has been doing some analysis to predict the trends of the supply and demands of
different types of energies in the contemporary world for it to know how it will fair in the global
energy market. This major energy company agrees with many other sources that the use of
renewable energy sources have been rising as the use of non-renewable energy sources continue
to decline. From the analysis done by the company, coal and oil used to be the major energy
sources between 1965 and 2005 but the use of these energy sources has been declining paving
way to some renewable energy sources such as renewable gas, hydro power, renewable nuclear
energy, and other renewable energies. After its recent energy trends analysis in 2017, BP plc
came up with the graphs shown below to show the energy trends in the global market.
Figure 2: The energy trends from 1965 to 2035 as given by BP

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Source BP plc 2017
These graphs show that non-renewable energies such as oil and coal used to be the main
sources of energy before 2015 where the renewable energy sources had no say in the global
energy market. However, things are changing as the non-renewable energy sources (mainly coal
and oil) have been constantly declining while the use of renewable energy sources is constantly
increasing. Basing our argument from the graphs, it’s possible that by 20150, the use of
renewable energy sources will have overtaken the use of non-renewable energy sources as many
people continue to learn and embrace the use of renewable energy sources which are by far more
beneficial than the exhaustible non-renewable energy sources.
The energy market trends as predicted by BP plc

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Energy Information Administration (EIA) is a body concerned with the energy supply and
demand in the world and monitors how different types of energy are consumed and how their
trends of consumption are likely to change. This body also did its study to show the trends of
usage of renewable and non-renewable energy sources and how these trends are likely to change
in the next few decades. The results presented by EIA can be visually presented by the line
graphs shown below:
Figure 3: The energy trends as predicted by Energy Information Administration
From the line graphs, it’s evident that the use of non-renewable energy sources such as
petroleum and other liquids and coal has been declining while the use of renewable energies such
as renewable natural gas, liquid biofuels, hydro power, among other renewable energy sources
has been rising. From the graphs, it can be predicted that the use of renewable energy sources is
likely to have surpassed the use of non-renewable energy sources by 2050. These graphs agree
with the other sources which assert that renewable energy sources continue to gain popularity in

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the modern world which means their usage continues to rise while the usage of the non-
renewable energy sources continues to decline.
The benefits of renewable energies which have been making them popular than non-
renewable energies
From all the three sources which clearly show that the use of renewable energy sources has
been rising while the use of non-renewable energy sources has been declining, a question to
explain this trend can be asked. Different scholars have given different ideas or arguments to
explain this trend but all of them agree that there are many benefits associated with renewable
energies making them more popular (Liang, Yu, and Wang, 2019, pp.700-712). Some of the
main benefits include:
Renewable energy sources can never be depleted which means they can be used forever (Bella
and Mattana, 2018, pp.187-202).
Renewable energy sources do not emit harmful or toxic green house gases that can pollute the
environment and cause some health complications (Patel et al., 2018, pp.426-421).
Most renewable energy resources such as water, wind, and sun can easily be tapped to give the
required energy without employing very complex and expensive technologies.
Conclusion
From the entire discussion, it’s evident that the use of renewable energy has been rising
significantly while the use of non-renewable energy has been dropping. Although by now the
usage of non-renewable energy is by far higher than the usage of renewable energy, more people

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continue to accept and embrace the use of renewable energy and it’s very possible that by 1950,
the use of renewable energy will have surpassed the use of non-renewable energy (Hajer and
Pelzer, 2018, pp.222-231). Most energy experts including organizations and governments have
realized the many benefits associated with renewable energies and continue to sensitize their
people and encourage them to embrace the use of renewable energies in their operations. There
are many environmental benefits and other general benefits that will be realized by replacement
of non-renewable sources with renewable energy sources and so most people should shift from
using non-renewable energy sources to using renewable energy sources.
List of References
Adams, S., Klobodu, E.K.M. and Apio, A., 2018. Renewable and non-renewable energy, regime
type and economic growth. Renewable Energy, 125, pp.755-767.
Bella, G. and Mattana, P., 2018. Global indeterminacy and equilibrium selection in a model with
depletion of non-renewable resources. Decisions in Economics and Finance, 41(2), pp.187-202.

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Bruegge, C., Carrión-Flores, C. and Pope, J.C., 2016. Does the housing market value energy
efficient homes? Evidence from the energy star program. Regional Science and Urban
Economics, 57, pp.63-76.
Furlan, C. and Mortarino, C., 2018. Forecasting the impact of renewable energies in competition
with non-renewable sources. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 81, pp.1879-1886.
Hajer, M.A. and Pelzer, P., 2018. 2050—An Energetic Odyssey: Understanding ‘Techniques of
Futuring’ in the transition towards renewable energy. Energy research & social science, 44,
pp.222-231.
Hondrila, K., Norcross, S., Golinska-Dawson, P., Broz, V., Rios, A. and Muller, J., 2018.
Democratising renewable energy production. In Sustainability Science (Vol. 234, No. 249, pp.
234-249). Routledge in association with GSE Research.
Liang, Y., Yu, B. and Wang, L., 2019. Costs and benefits of renewable energy development in
China's power industry. Renewable energy, 131, pp.700-712.
Patel, M.K., Bechu, A., Villegas, J.D., Bergez‐Lacoste, M., Yeung, K., Murphy, R., Woods, J.,
Mwabonje, O.N., Ni, Y., Patel, A.D. and Gallagher, J., 2018. Second‐generation bio‐based
plastics are becoming a reality–Non‐renewable energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) balance of
succinic acid‐based plastic end products made from lignocellulosic biomass. Biofuels,
Bioproducts and Biorefining, 12(3), pp.426-441.
Petroleum, B.B., 2017. Statistical Review of World Energy; BP plc. British Petroleum: London,
UK, pp.66-78.