“The world uses a lot of oil, and spends a lot of money getting it out of the ground and taking it where it is needed. Some places depend more on oil than others, and some places even need very special types of oil. If a nation’s oil cannot be delivered, then that can have a big bad effect called an “oil shock”. An oil shock can get complicated very quickly, and the bad effects may even spread out to other countries. We need to understand such oil shocks – so to do that we read what previous academics had written about such shocks. From our reading we came up with a better way to map oil shocks across 63 countries.”

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1178

In Europe we are acutely aware of the importance of one or two pipelines as events in recent years have shown.

The uptake of renewable energy sources is rising at a rapid rate globally. A fundamental shift is occurring and it would be interesting to know how that relates regionally – some areas obviously have more sun etc.

The shift to electric cars is puzzling in a way because it takes energy to power all those charging stations anticipated. For some reason, it seems, people think of electric cars as being powered by thin air.

Does an aging population use more energy?

Keep up the good work.