Juan Lema, an expert at Akademia, explains the challenges facing energy today.
Juan Lema is a professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Santiago de Compostela and president of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Galicia. In addition, it collaborates with the
For Juan, the energy sector is a key element for current innovation, since this sector innovates not only in the research of new technologies, but also provides new capabilities to existing ones. So much so, that energies that barely existed 15 years ago, such as wind or photovoltaic energy, are today renewable energies that take up a large part of the market and current energy demand.
Energy consumption has a direct correlation with the economy of any country, the more energy consumption, the more economic development. But as Juan points out, although this correlation is evident and also exists with other indicators such as life expectancy or the human development index, there comes a point where these indicators do not continue to increase. For this reason, he points out, in certain world regions there is a superfluous consumption of energy that we must control.
In this interview, Juan Lema also gives us a preview of the main challenges that, according to his experience, energy and its sector currently face. Challenges that he organizes in:
- Challenges in the development and generation of new energy sources, where the following stand out:
- The development of nuclear fusion energy,
- The development of coal gasification, which will increase its efficiency and reduce its emissions
- The creation of third-generation biofuels, created from waste,
- Challenges in the development of new energy storage mechanisms.
- Challenges to reduce emissions caused by the creation of energy, which must be a priority due to the ecological deterioration that current energy entails.
Here you can see the full interview.
