Vaclav Smil, Distinguished Professor at the University of Manitoba, Canada, offers a general overview on the state of affairs. He starts by explaining the exponential growth of the energetic consumption, especially in the case of Spain, and in the unbalanced consumption in the different economic world areas. He continues describing the distribution of the world energetic reserves and the use and development of alternative energies. In conclusion, he appeals to the global public awareness to obtain energetic efficiency.

Vaclav Smil studied in an interdisciplinary program at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Carolinum University in Prague (RNDr) and at the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences of the Pennsylvania State University (PhD). Currently he is a Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba. He has published more than 25 books (not counting translations to Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Norwegian) and more than 300 papers in about 80 different energy, environmental, Asian studies and general science periodicals (ranging from American Scientist to World Development and from Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to Scientific American), and in more than 30 edited volumes. His interdisciplinary research interests encompass a broad area of energy, environmental, food, population, economic and public policy studies. Since the early 1970s he has also applied these approaches to energy, food and environmental affairs of China.