Resources

WHAT'S NEXT?: The world is depleting its natural resources at an alarming rate due to population growth and over consumption. Increased competition for ever-diminishing food and water resources may amplify socio-economically motivated armed conflicts and causing quests for more efficient resources on and beyond Planet Earth.

• [New] If China uses the most cost-effective renewable energy resources, it could generate more than 60% of its electricity from non-fossil sources by 2030 - including wind, solar, hydro and nuclear - at a cost that is around 10% lower than under business-as-usual.
• [New] Within the next 10 years - we could see costs of key technologies fall by 10 times or more, production processes become 10 times more efficient, all while using 90% fewer natural resources and producing up to 100 times less waste.
• Permian-based energy producers including Diamondback Energy, Cimarex Energy, Concho Resources are all going to invest a lot less money into the Permian in 2020 in the face of low prices.
• A draft rule issued by the California Air Resources Board in April would require 5% of new Classes 7-8 tractor sales to be zero-emission vehicles such as electric or fuel cell trucks by the end of 2024.
• Following Water UK's calls to action, the Environment Agency has released its National Framework for Water Resources - a series of proposals for improving water efficiency through to 2050, in line with megatrends such as global temperature increase and population growth.
• Jordan also has extremely limited primary energy resources and is forced to depend on the imported petroleum and natural gas from neighbouring countries: the rapidly increasing population, energy demand is expected to rise by at least 50% over the next 20 years, aggravating the existing shortage.
• The California Air Resources Board unanimously voted on a plan to require manufacturers to produce more electric trucks, which would put 100,000 zero-emission trucks on roads by 2030 and produce 300,000 by 2035.
• The California Air Resources Board adopted a first-in-the-world rule requiring truck manufacturers to transition from diesel trucks and vans to electric zero-emission trucks beginning in 2024.
• While upstream oil and gas production and development in Texas and around the U.S. has taken a substantial hit in the first and second quarters of 2020, so too have opportunities for energy companies to export U.S.-produced resources abroad.
• With a global population projected to reach nine billion by 2050 and freshwater resources under threat from climate change, pollution, salinization, and depletion, producing more food using less water is critical to human survival.
• By 2030, China's economy will outgrow the US, and China plans to use its vast economic resources to project its presence deep into space in ways that may lead to escalating military confrontations with the newly created US Space Force.
• In case of the virus outbreak returning in Slovenia later in the year, the second lock-down will have a lasting negative impact on businesses, leading to relatively large shares of underutilized resources at the end of the projection period.
• The rate of annual investment in distributed energy resources will increase 75% by 2030, with the market set for a decade of high growth.
• The Indonesian government has encouraged Pertamina to reduce petroleum imports, while at the same time setting goals of achieving 23% of its energy needs from renewable resources by 2025.
• In the longer term, the EIA expects prices to remain below $ 4.00/MMBtu out to 2050 because of an abundance of lower cost resources, primarily in tight oil plays in the Permian Basin.
• Natural gas prices are expected to remain lower than $4 per million British thermal units through 2050 because of an abundance of lower-cost resources, primarily in tight oil plays in the Permian Basin.
• The Life Sciences Investment Programme will provide the British Business Bank with additional resources to make up to £200 million in equity commitments to support the UK's most innovative health and life sciences firms over the next five years.
• Oil and gas companies' market valuations are mostly driven by commercially proved reserves that will be monetised over the next 10 to 15 years, and not so much by the resources that would be likely to be stranded over a longer-term horizon.
• The U.S.' adversaries, particularly non-state terror groups, are looking for any opportunity to use limited resources to inflict maximum damage to the U.S.
• Rystad Energy predicts that if low prices persist - and most forecasts suggest low prices for years - nearly 42% of Australia's gas resources would be rendered uneconomic - a scary thought to the world's largest gas exporter.
• Agricultural germplasm resources to be protected, utilized - SCIO By 2035, a scientific and efficient system will be established for the protection and utilization of agricultural germplasm resources, and the resource volume will reach the front ranks of the world.
• Europe will need to ensure sufficient and sustainably produced supplies of raw materials, energy and industrial products, under conditions of decreasing fossil carbon resources (oil and liquid gas production expected to decrease by about 60% by 2050), while maintaining its competitiveness.

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Last updated: 12 August 2020