The natural sciences define energy, in its broadest sense, as the potential for causing a transformation or change. In the global economy, energy resources help companies transform capital and labor into finished goods and services. Virtually every economic activity, even the production of energy itself, requires the use of energy resources.

Energy supplies are finite and dwindling, but as "Making the most of the world's energy resources"—the first of three articles in the cover package of this issue of The McKinsey Quarterly—points out, demand is on a path to grow by 2.2 percent annually over the next 15 years. Can we lessen the effects of that imbalance? Diana Farrell, Scott S. Nyquist, and Matthew C. Rogers argue that the world economy can significantly reduce the pace of growth in demand by using energy resources more productively. The opportunity, however, is diffuse. World leaders will need to muster great political will if they are to overcome the market-distorting subsidies, information gaps, agency issues, and other market inefficiencies that now undermine energy productivity.

In the second article of the cover package, "A cost curve for greenhouse gas reduction," Per-Anders Enkvist, Tomas Naucler, and Jerker Rosander take no position on the science of climate change or on if and how countries around the world should act to control it. The article instead analyzes the relative economics of each available approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. While others have conducted more detailed studies on specific industries and geographies, this, to our knowledge, is the first investigation of its kind that covers all relevant greenhouse gases, sectors, and regions.

The discontinuities buffeting global energy and materials markets create pervasive uncertainties for business, not least in the energy sector itself. What happens as energy demand shifts toward developing economies in Asia and elsewhere and as supply is increasingly concentrated in geopolitically unstable and remote locations? And suppose that not only Europe but also China and the United States take effective measures to curb carbon dioxide emissions. Ivo J. H. Bozon, Warren J. Campbell, and Mats Lindstrand assert in "Global trends in energy"—the final article in our cover package, available online in late February—that energy and materials companies will need to reevaluate their geographic footprint, their risk and return profiles, their ability to harness technology, and their stance on the environment, among other issues. To do so, these companies must raise their operational productivity, learn to be "locals" in every country where they do business, and improve their ability to execute massive new investment projects at unprecedented scale.

Business and government leaders face an array of difficulties whose scope and complexity can make them seem intractable. Yet as this issue of the Quarterly makes plain, if we carefully think through the trends affecting the energy sector and focus our efforts on using resources productively, energy needn't be one of them.