CHAPTER 16—NONRENEWABLE ENERGY
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Oil is the lifeblood of most of the world’s economies. It supplies one-third of the world’s energy,
with demand increasing rapidly.
Wells are being drilled on land and on sea, but reserves are expected to be 80% depleted
between 2050 and 2100, even if reserves increase or more oil is somehow found.
Three options: look for more oil, use or waste less oil, use something else.
It takes 50-75 years to change to new sources of energy.
TYPES OF ENERGY SOURCES
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Solar and Commercial Energy-99% of energy used for heat comes from the sun, 1% from
burning fossil fuels.
Life on earth is made possible by a gigantic nuclear fusion reactor (the sun) that fortunately is
safely located in space about 150 million kilometers away.
Solar energy also produces indirect forms of renewable energy: wind, hydropower, and
biomass.
Commercial energy sold in the marketplace makes up the 1% used to supplement solar energy.
Most of it comes from extracting and burning nonrenewable mineral resources obtained from
the earth’s crust, primarily carbon-containing fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal.
About 76% of the commercial energy we use comes from nonrenewable fossil fuels with the
remainder coming from renewable sources.
Roughly half the world’s people in developing countries burn wood and charcoal to heat their
dwellings and cook their food.
The actual percentage of renewable biomass energy used in the world is higher than 11%
New energy is the amount of high-quality usable energy available from a resource after
subtracting the energy needed to make it available for use.
It takes energy to get energy
The second law of thermodynamics tells us that some of the high-quality energy used in each
step is automatically wasted and degraded to lower-quality energy.
The usable amount of high-quality energy available from a given quantity of an energy resource
is its net energy.
It is the total amount of energy available from an energy resource minus the energy needed to
find, extract, process, and get that energy to consumers.
It is calculated by estimating the total energy available from an energy resource over its lifetime
and then subtracting the amount of energy used (the first law of thermodynamics),
automatically wasted (the second law of thermodynamics), and unnecessarily wasted in finding,
processing, concentrating, and transporting the useful energy to users.
Energy produced at a nuclear plant will lead to a net energy loss because we will have to put
more energy into it than we will ever get out of it.
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OIL
Petroleum or crude oil is a thick liquid containing hydrocarbons that we extract from
underground deposits and separate into products such as gasoline, heating oil, and asphalt.
Oil is found by geologists using satellite data, ground and air surveys, drilling and sound waves,
all analyzed by sophisticated computers.
Wells are drilled into crude oil and natural gas deposits, which can be as deep as 6 kilometers,
with recovery rate at 35-50%.
Crude oil is refined into petrochemicals and other products, such as gasoline and diesel oil.
Industrial biotechnology is used to find alternatives to petrochemicals to produce most of the
products now tied to oil.
Eleven OPEC countries –most of them in the Middle East-have 78% of the world’s proven oil
reserves and most of the unproven reserves.
After global oil production peaks and begins a slow decline, oil prices will rise and could threaten
the lifestyles and economies of oil-addicted countries that have not shifted to new energy
alternatives.
A rise in oil production will bring about an increase in food prices, airline fares, and car prices.
The United States is the world’s largest oil user (25%), but has only 2.9% of the world’s proven
oil reserves and only a small percentage of its unproven reserves.
25% of world’s oil is controlled by states that sponsor or condone terrorism.
Advantages of conventional oil: ample supply for at least 50 years, low cost, low land use, high
net energy yield, well-developed technology, easily transported.
Disadvantages of conventional oil: substitutes need to be found within 50 years, low price
encourages waste and discourages search for alternatives, air pollution, water pollution, CO2
release.
Advantages of using heavy oils from oil sand and oil shale: moderate cost (oil sand), large
potential supplies, easily transported, and well developed technology, efficient distribution
system.
Disadvantages from oil shale and oil sand: high cost (oil shale), low net energy yield, severe land
disruption, air pollution, CO2 emissions.
NATURAL GAS
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Natural gas supplies about 23% of U.S. energy needs, 12% of electricity, and heats 52% of
homes.
Conventional natural gas lies above most reservoirs of crude oil. Unconventional natural gas is
made up of coal beds and hydrates. They are trapped in ice crystals deep under the arctic
permafrost and beneath deep-ocean sediments.
Advantages of conventional natural gas: ample supplies (125 years), high net energy yield, low
cost, lower CO2 emissions than other fossil fuels, easily transported, low land use.
Disadvantages of conventional natural gas: nonrenewable resource, methane can leak from
pipelines, requires pipelines, shipped across ocean as highly explosive LNG.
COAL
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Coal is an abundant energy resource that is burned mostly to produce electricity and steel.
It’s the world’s most abundant fossil fuel, with reserves that could last to over a thousand years
in the U.S., Russia, and China.
Advantages of coal usage: ample supplies, high net energy yield, low cost, well-developed
mining and combustion technology, reduced air pollution with increase technology.
Disadvantages of coal usage: severe land disturbance, air pollution, water pollution, high land
use, severe threat to human health, high CO2emissions when burned.
Coal can be converted to synthetic fuels such as syngas and liquid synfuel.
Advantages of synthetic fuels: large potential supply, vehicle fuel, lower air pollution when
burned than coal.
Disadvantages of synthetic fuels: low energy yield, higher cost than coal, high environmental
impact, high water use, higher CO2 emissions than coal.
NUCLEAR ENERGY
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When isotopes of uranium and plutonium undergo controlled nuclear fission, the resulting heat
produces steam that spins turbines to generate electricity.
Light-water reactors produce 85% of the world’s nuclear-generated electricity.
Nuclear power plants have failed as a power source due to construction cost overruns, higher
operating costs and more malfunctions than expected, and poor management.
The world’s worst nuclear power plant accident occurred in 1986 in Ukraine, with an estimated
death toll of more than 90,000 over 20 years from cancers, and more than 350,000 people
displaced from their homes.
Radioactive wastes must be stored safely for thousands of years (10,000 to 240,000), and
facilities are vulnerable to terrorist attack.
Nuclear weapons can also be built through the knowledge acquired from building nuclear power
plants.
Building more plants will not decrease dependence on foreign oil and will not reduce CO2
emissions as much as the other cheaper, safer alternatives.
The technology of nuclear breeder reactors has essentially been abandoned due to very high
costs and bad safety experiences.
Controlled nuclear fusion, where 2 isotopes of light elements, such as hydrogen, are forced
together at extremely high temperatures to release energy, is still in the experimental stages
due to high cost and low net energy yield.
Most of the government subsidies for energy research and development have gone to nuclear
energy (fusion and fission), and the results have been very disappointing.
Critics of nuclear power believe that it should be phased out over the next 20-30 years.
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Proponents of nuclear power argue that we should continue researching and testing of safer
and cheaper conventional fission reactor designs.