In 2014 , we ’re constantly hear speech like clean energy , solar great power , fossil fuels , carbon emissions , the cost of oil , and fracking . And if you ’re like me , you know what some of those wrangle mean but you ’re blurry on others .
mention : This post is an add - on to the post “ Why is My laptop computer On ? ” for those who need to become someone who understands vigor better than jolly well but still not really well .
So here ’s a little overview of the major types of vigour in today ’s man and a little bit about each .
allow ’s start with what ’s almost definitely not powering whatever gimmick you ’re study this on ( or using to charge its stamp battery ) —
Renewable Energy
Renewable Energy , sometimes called Green Energy or Clean Energy , is quick and fuzzy and everyone likes to hold hand and sing song about it . This is because A ) it uses resource that are basically infinite , like water , wind , or sun , or those that can be refill on a human time scale , like wood , and B ) it does very lilliputian damage to the environment , relatively speak .
Unfortunately , renewable muscularity is a minor part of the push equality and looks to extend being that way of life for a long time — the problem is that equate to other energy source , renewables are expensive or inefficient to follow through , and rural area are n’t really that into hurting their current productivity and world fight for long term reasons , especially if the other country are n’t doing it alongside them ( we ’ve triedto all agree to do it together — andit has n’t worked ) . The final stage result is that renewable energies make up only 19 % of the humanity ’s vigor , and the cleanest , greenest types that you hear about most make up just about 1 % of the earth ’s push phthisis :
Let ’s take a closer look at the main renewable energies we employ —
Biomass
Biomass energy is created by burning living or recently - living organisms or manufacture them into fuel — common examples include burning wood or convert corn into ethanol fuel .
When multitude talk about unclouded vigor , you do n’t often hear the words biomass or biofuel . This is because it ’s both less renewable and less clear than the other clean energies . But if you ’re going to include biomass in the renewable category , it makes up most of world ’s renewable vigor .
The bad news is that , unlike the other types of renewable energy , bio - related vim does add to carbon paper dioxide expelling , often require a big deal of land , and its resources are n’t infinite like the sunlight , wind , or water are .
Hydropower
Hydropower is the other relatively salient renewable get-up-and-go , typify almost 4 % of the world ’s energy and over 8 % of the electrical energy in the US.1 It works by harnessing the powerfulness of gravity by rank a dam in front of water that ’s falling or hasten downstream . When the water system pull its way through the dam , it spins a turbine ( a big propellor ) which rotates coils of bull wire between attractor — this generates electrical energy , which shoots out into wires and into the electrical gridiron .
This process of spin a turbine to get electricity is at the heart and soul of most power plant life and the beginning of most all the electrical energy you ’ll ever encounter .
Wind
Wind energy — which is used altogether to generate electricity — makes up about .5 % , or 1/200th of the world ’s energy phthisis . A super - clean-living and harmless type of energy , steer power is tight growing and already fairly big in some lieu ( Denmark generates over a quarter of their electricity from wind ) .
Solar
You find out a spate about solar power , but right now , solar covers only about .3 % , or 1/300th or the worldly concern ’s energy pulmonary tuberculosis ( sometimes as electrical energy , sometimes as heat energy ) . A gross ton of research and creation is going into solar technology , and it ’s the fastest develop renewable get-up-and-go in the world.2
It ’s also amazing how little of the Earth ’s Earth’s surface you ’d need to cut across with solar panel to power the entire world . Here ’s how piffling ( good manners of LAGI)3 :
Geothermal
Georthermal ability industrial plant habituate the military unit of natural steam come out from the hot inner Earth to spin turbines and generate electrical energy ( and like solar , geothermal is often used for heating as well ) . Right now , geothermic power cover only about .2 % , or 1/500th of the populace ’s energy expenditure .
Alright , enough of the soft shit . Moving up in intensiveness now to what mightbe powering whatever you ’re reading this on ( but believably is n’t ) —
Nuclear Energy
Nuclear energy harnesses the vast power of nuclear fission — the process of splitting heavy atoms , which turn energy — to sire electrical energy .
atomic energy is controversial . Some feel positivist about it,4 often going so far as to chunk it into the renewable energy category , and contend that it ’s both sustainable and good for the environment because it reduces harmful emissions . Others guess those people are stupid,5 and that between catastrophic accidents , harmful waste garbage disposal , high costs , and the increased risk of infection of atomic proliferation and terrorism , the gist of atomic power should be consider as bad or worse than those of fossil fuel vigour .
The pessimist ’ case was strengthened in 2011 when a tsunami smashed into Japan and caused the Fukushima atomic power plant to meltdown , result in the most harmful nuclear disaster since the hideous Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in 1986 . After the Fukushima calamity , a number of land decided to cut down or ban nuclear mightiness all together ( Germany and Italy are two ) .
And while these horrifying tragedy take a huge cost and in full expose nuclear push ’s downsides , over sentence , nuclear energy has caused few fatality per social unit of energy yield than any other major beginning of vigor ( coal , petroleum , natural gas , or hydroelectric ) , and since 1 kg of uranium-235 can generate 2 - 3 million times as much energy as 1 kg of coal or oil , without adding to our CO2 problem , there seems to be compelling grounds to further explore atomic energy .
As of 2011 , atomic zip represent 2.8 % of the cosmos ’s energy use , but over 8 % of energy in the US ( all in the form of electricity ) .
And now , onto the spoiled boys —
Fossil Fuels
Undoubtedly the most dickish of energy sources , the burning of fossil fuel ( coal , oil , and natural gas ) make up 78 % of the world ’s vigour consumption ( 82 % in the US ) , and they ’re probably responsible for power whatever gimmick you ’re using to read this post .
Fossil fuels can be credited for enabling the Industrial Revolution , raising the quality of life for the masses by growing the middle class , and thrust the world into modernity . They can likewise be credit for about 90 environmental catastrophes , including global warming , acid rain , water contamination , oil spills , increased lung cancer , pollution and smog , and that polar bear in the television being extra sad because his methamphetamine hydrochloride is melting .
The motion , “ How bad are the effects of burn off fogy fuels , what does it intend for the futurity , and what should we do about it ? ” is an integral post in itself , and one for another time . For today , permit ’s pleasantly ignore all that and just endeavor to understand what fossil fuels are and where they come from .
The basic thought behind fossil fuels is that coal , oil and natural flatulence are all the remains of ancient organism ( mostly plants and mostly those from the Carboniferous Period 300 - 360 million years ago ) who died and whose Department of Energy was partially preserved before they decomposed . After many meg of years of being squelch under the intense heat and pressure of the inner Earth , these organism and their stored chemical get-up-and-go have been converted to fossil fuel — and they ’re still underground . We can now mine them up to land and burn them , which releases their stash away free energy ( and emits lots of CO2 in the appendage ) . Most of the electrical energy and gasoline we use and nearly all of the energy our cars and planes run on comes from the electrocution of fossil fuels . People in the twelvemonth 2300 will wait upon this time as the Fossil Fuel Era of human history .
Let ’s ascertain out the big three fogey fuels :
Coal
Coal , a black aqueous rock that ’s detect in underground layers called ember beds , is used almost totally for making electrical energy , and is the most prolific material at doing so . Because ember is plenteous and relatively cheap , the earth go through a net ton of it — but it ’s also the worst perpetrator for CO2 emissions , releasing about 30 % more CO2 than the burning of oil and almost double that of rude gas when beget an equivalent amount of heat.6
The US is the Saudi Arabia of ember , possessing 22 % of the world ’s ember and the most of any nation . China , though , has become by far the mankind ’s largest consumer of coal — over half of the coal burn off in the world in 2011 was burned in China.7
Oil
When you hear citizenry talk about oil color , they ’re blab out about crude oil , also hollo petroleum — a gooey black liquid normally find in bass underground man-made lake . When crude oil is extracted , it heads to the refinery , where it ’s furcate , using different boiling peak , into a number of discrete fuel and gaseous state — the most prominent being gas ( about 45 % of every bbl ) , but include everything from spurt and diesel fuel to motor oil to the propane you use for your grille to candle wax . In most parts of the macrocosm , oil ’s intention is transportation fuel , not for render electricity .
The United States is by far the full-grown consumer of oil in the earth , consume over 20 % of the world ’s oil colour and about double the next big consumer . The US is also one of the three big oil producer in the world , alongside Saudi Arabia and Russia , who all bring forth some the same amount . But the US scarce has the most oil reserves — that ’s all in the Middle East :
look at this mapping , three things become decipherable :
1 ) Why Saudi princes have such fancy palaces2 ) Why Saddam Hussein wanted to slip Kuwait so badly3 ) Why Dubai has thing like an indoor ski resort , a few hundred gentleman’s gentleman - made islands , and the world ’s marvelous construction
All in all , the Middle East has over 60 % of the human race ’s remaining oil reserves .
One other interesting thing — when I looked at an image of the genuine petroleum fields , it strike me how small-scale a part of the land they were . For example , Iran is almost entirely barren of oil , but that lilliputian scattering of modesty on the far west side of the country is enough to make it the second - plentiful petroleum commonwealth in the world :
We ’ve been verbalise about formal oil , but there are also cracking reserve of “ rock oil sands”—rocks or sludge that contain oil — in Canada and Venezuela . It ’s expensive and inconvenient to extract this oil , but if / when normal oil start out to run ironical , the world will in all probability tap into these excess backlog .
Natural Gas
Natural gas pedal is essentially gaseous methane obtain in pocket underground , or sometimes imbed inside shale rock . This is the gas that fires up your kitchen range or heats your flat ( if those are n’t electricity - powered ) , and also one of the major sources of electricity ( it makes about 20 % of electricity in the US ) . Natural gas is on the rise and now make up almost a poop of the cosmos ’s energy .
One of the reasons it ’s on the rise is that scientist have witness a young means of extracting lifelike petrol from the Earth called hydraulic fracturing , or “ fracking , ” which uses a mixture of water , George Sand , and chemicals to create chap in innate gaseous state - fertile shale and force out the gasoline . This method acting has been tremendously effectual , but it ’s also controversial because of some serious environmental concerns — this videoexplains it well .
Fossil fuel contain the Earth ’s integral history of inhume being remains , and unlike renewable muscularity seed , once they ’re gone , they ’re exit constantly .
So how much is bequeath ?
According to the US Energy Information Administration , here are the remaining try second-stringer of the three dodo fuels8 :
Coal : 905 billion metric tons – which equals 4,416 billion barrels ( 702.1 km3 ) of oil eq
Oil : 3,740 billion bbl ( 595 km3 ) – this physique includes all the spare oil in Canadian and Venezuelan crude gumption
Natural gas pedal : 181 trillion three-dimensional meters – which equal 1,161 billion barrels(184.6 km3 ) of oil equivalent
sum up this all together , the volume of oil and oil colour equivalent that represents the amount that continue of all three fogy fuels is 1,481 km3 . That would make a cube with a side of 11.3 km , or 7 mile — it would cover most of Brooklyn , and stop all fossil fuels left on Earth . Using the same “ crude oil equivalent ” method acting , each twelvemonth , the world ’s fogy fuel consumption add up to a block with a side of about 2.4 kilometre , or 1.5 miles — this would fit nicely on top of downtown Manhattan .
At some point soon , I ’ll get more into the construct of our remaining fossil fuels and how much of them we have left . But the key point is that that 7 air mile cube of our remaining fogey fuel will last us just about 80 years , if we use the same amount each year moving forward as we ’re using today . Spicy .
Finally , here ’s a big visual9 set out all the energy sources we just discussed and their usage in the US in 2012 ( a “ quadruplet ” is a quadrillion BTU — the US ’s 95.1 annual quads of vigour ingestion represents a piddling under a fifth of the world total ) . Interesting to see how much develop energy terminate up go to waste :
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[ US Energy Information Administration;Renewables 2010 Global Status Report , p. 15.;Land Art Generator Initiative ; James J. MacKenzie . Review of The Nuclear Power Controversyby Arthur W. Murphy The Quarterly Review of Biology , Vol . 52 , No . 4 , pp . 467 - 468 . ; Sturgis , Sue . “Investigation : divine revelation about Three Mile Island tragedy raise doubts over atomic flora safety”;“Natural Gas and the Environment ” ; World Energy Council – Survey of Energy Resources 2010;World Proved Reserves of Oil and Natural Gas , Most Recent Estimates ; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory – Flowcharts ]
look-alike : Shutterstock / Andrea Danti
This articlehas been republish with permission from WaitButWhy.com , where it can beseen here .
Part 1 of this post : Why is My Laptop On ?
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