The oil-based technology and economy: Prospects for the future

Abstract

Dr Ilium, with degrees in Civil Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark and in Energy Systems and Energy Planning from Aalborg University, has had his own consulting company, ECOConsult, since 2000. He was from 1962 for over a decade mainly occupied with the development of educational programs in computerscience alongside with studies in systems theory and cybernetics at the Danish Academy of Engineering in Copenhagen and Aalborg.Thereafter, as senior Associate Professor (Docent) at the Department of Development and Planning, Aalborg University, he was mainly engaged in the development of methods and computer models for the technological, environmental and economic analysis of alternative scenarios for the development of energy systems and agricultural production systems. He has also been engaged in studies of environmental policies and problems in Central and Eastern European countries, in particular in energy planning in Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic, and was Programme Manager for the Nordic Training Programme for Energy Experts in the Baltic States, the PROCEED programme. In addition, Dr Ilium has developed comprehensive computer models for: numerical analysis of thermodynamic systems (power plants, cogeneration plants, integrated industrial processes,etc.); energy planning on the national, regional and local energy system level; technological/socio-economic energy systems analysis; economic assessment of alternative energy system projects; flow analysis (nutrients and energy) and economic analysis of agricultural systems. He has developed the Sustainable Energy Systems Analysis Model (SESAM), an advanced, general computer model for the analysis of scenarios for the future development of national, regional or local energy systems which has been used and is presently being used for the integrated technological, environmental, and economic analysis of present and future energy systems infrastructures in Denmark, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Germany.