Despite the best of intentions, the world will not see a low-carbon society for decades during which oil and gas will dominate the energy mix, Norwegian energy company StatoilHydro said Tuesda in a document called Energy Realities.

Company boss Helge Lund said that “fundamental energy reality” was affirmed by the International Energy Agency’s forecast for energy consumption: up 45 percent between 2006 and 2030, or 1.6 percent per year.

“The truth is that renewable energy will not be able to make up the coming shortfall in energy supply in the foreseeable future — the quantities of energy needed are too large, and the lead times to get renewable energy into production too long,” Lund was quoted as saying.

He said the development of advanced new offshore turbines and other forms of renewable energy will take many years, while bottlenecks in the supply of steel and manufacturing have constrained the growth of wind turbines like they have other industrial programmes.

Power and convenience mean oil and gas will remain the backbone of world energy supplies for decades to come, he said.

He said the company was still investing heavily in gas to replace the world’s burned coal and pointed to StatoilHydro’s Marcellus shale gas play in the eastern United States, a recent new energy play.

Tags: StatoilHydro