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Essay Energy & Society Minor Hanzehogeschool
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Essay Energy & Society Minor Hanzehogeschool
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Energy and SocietyIt’s a well-known fact that gas is an important factor in our daily lives. Gas have been a main factor
for the last 60 years. All these technologies we are having in our households are using gas. Most of
the energy society is using is generated by gas. Because gas played a huge factor in our lives, gas also
has influenced our society. The development of society is closely linked to the energy sources that
have been used. The energy source gas has influenced society in the following manner: economical,
households, independence of gas, earthquakes and global warming.
Gas had started influencing the society when people found the first gas fields. After more and more
gas fields where found the use of the gas grown in society. Gas started influencing the Netherlands
when the first gas fields where found in 1948 when the NAM (the NAM is a major gas company) has
found a gas field in Coevorden and in 1959 the famous gas fields in Slochteren. The gas fields of
Slochteren is one of the biggest gas fields of the world. The gas field in Slochteren contained 2800
billion gas m3 (NAM, 2020). The gas from these gas fields first starting to influence the economy. The
Dutch economy has profited greatly from Groningen gas in recent decades. In total, since the first
drilling in the early sixties, has the dutch government earned about 280 billion euros. Natural gas
revenues have therefore been of great importance for Dutch budgets in recent decades. The Dutch
state owns 50 percent of the NAM (Historiek, 2019).
After the gas production has boosted the economic growth, gas also changed the life of people
forever. The life of the people especially changed in the households. Within 10 years of the start of
the gas production, three-quarters of Dutch households already had access to natural gas. The
importance of oil and coal as fuels declined sharply. Nowadays almost every house has a central
heating and hot water supply based on natural gas (Wikepedia, 2020). The Dutch switched from coal
to the much cleaner gas. Greenhouses and thousands of companies were also connected to the
natural gas network. A total of 1,200 kilometres of gas pipelines were laid between 1963 and 1965
(Historiek, 2019). Natural gas is also widely used as a fuel to produce electricity.
Gas hasn’t always influenced the society positive, for example the pumping of gas from the gas fields
in Slochteren has created earthquakes in the province of Groningen. In the early 1990s, the province
of Groningen was shocked by the first earthquakes. Relatively small tremors, but they did cause
cracks in walls or roads. Since 2012, damage has been reported 80,000 times after the first quake.
And possibly even more important, the feeling of safety for many people from Groningen in the
quake area has been seriously affected by the shocks (Historiek, 2019), (Rijksoverheid, 2020).
One of the solutions to this earthquake problem is to lower the demand of gas but it is not easily
possible to do that. Because roughly 7 million houses who burn and cook with natural gas cannot run
on foreign gas. That has everything to do with the special ingredients of the Slochteren gas field.
Across the border, gas is high-calorific and therefore unsuitable for the energy system of Dutch
houses. You can make the natural gas suitable (Trouw, 2018), (WelingelichteKringen, 2018).
Because gas has changed our lives so much, people got depended of gas. Gas is used a lot in the
modern households. That means that countries who doesn’t own gas fields to get their gas from,
needs to buy gas from countries who has gas fields. This makes countries without gas fields very
depended of countries with gas fields to take the gas out, this also gives countries with gas fields a
very strong trade position (Overgasgesproken, 2016). An example of this is in Europe, some of the
countries of Europe are now very depended of the gas from Russia. That gives Russia a very strong
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