Chapter 19: Conventional Energy
19.1 Energy Resources And Uses
• How do we measure energy?
• Fossil fuels supply most of the world’s energy
• What are the current sources of U.S. energy?
Measuring Energy
• Joule = Energy to raise 1 kg 10 cm
– Energy to Move 500 g (a Pound) 1 m/sec
• calorie = Energy to heat 1 gm Water 1 C
• Calorie = Energy to heat 1 kg Water 1 C
– 1000 calories
– Food Calorie
– Equals 4200 joules
• Watt = 1 joule/second
• Human body outputs about 100 watts
Quads
• Btu = British Thermal Unit = Energy to heat a
pound of Water 1 Degree F
• 1 Btu = 1055 J
• Many Energy Reports use Quads = 1
Quadrillion (1015) Btu
• 1 Quad = 1.055 x 1018 J
World Energy Use
• Total about 150,000 TWh = 540 x 1018 J =
128,000 Megatons
U.S. Energy Use
• Total about 27,000 TWh = 97 x 1018 J = 23,000
Megatons
What U.S Uses Energy For
Energy Use, California, 1972
Energy Use, California, 1979
Energy Use, California, 1993
Energy Use, California, 1994
Energy Use, California, 2003
All You Need to Know
Economics
• 2000 WINNEBAGO CHIEFTAIN
SERIES M-36LP-DSL
• Average Retail Price: $51,600
• Suggested List: $140,851
• Source: NADAGuides.com (23 April 2010)
• Ten-Year Cost: $89,251
• @$300/day = 297 days = 30 days/year
19.2 Coal
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Coal resources are vast
Coal mining is a dirty, dangerous business
Burning coal releases many pollutants
Clean coal technology could be helpful
19.3 Oil
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Oil resources aren’t evenly distributed
Like other fossil fuels, oil has negative impacts
What Do You Think? Oil Drilling in ANWR
Oil shales and tar sands contain huge amounts
of petroleum
Petroleum
A hydrocarbon molecule
What organisms make these?
Answer: None
Petroleum
• Lots of organisms make these, however
• Fatty Acids
• Probable source: Marine plankton
Petroleum Traps
Where the Oil Is
The Geography of Oil
Hubbert Curves
• In 1956, Oil geologist M. King Hubbert noted that
rates of oil production follow a bell-shaped curve.
• Cumulative production follows a slanting S- curve
• Production lags discovery by about ten years.
Hubbert’s 1956 Prediction
Where We Stand Today
What if We Find More Oil?
• Even a huge
increase in total
oil has very little
effect on the
peak and
decline of
production.
• Why? We waste
most of it on
inefficient uses.
One Solution: Limit Production
Is There a Lot More Undiscovered Oil?
• 80 per cent of oil being produced today is from fields
discovered before 1973.
• In the 1990's oil discoveries averaged about seven
billion barrels of oil a year, only one third of usage.
• The discovery rate of multi-billion barrel fields has
been declining since the 1940's, that of giant (500million barrel) fields since the 1960's.
• In 1938, fields with more than 10 million barrels
made up 19% of all new discoveries, but by 1948 the
proportion had dropped to only 3%.
Oil Discovery Rates
U.S. Petroleum Use
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2009 - 7,121,644,500 barrels
2007 - 6,257,125,000 barrels
2006 - 6,384,780,000 barrels
2005 - 6,470,457,000 barrels
2004 - 6,410,770,000 barrels
2003 - 6,175,244,000 barrels
2002 - 5,945,585,000 barrels
= 19,498,000 barrels a day
= 1 billion barrels in < two months
Global Petroleum Usage
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2008 projection: 87 million barrels/day
= 31.8 billion barrels per year
= 1 billion barrels in 11.5 days
= 1000 barrels/second
U.S. = 25% of total
Oil Fantasies
“America is sitting on top of a super massive 200
billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make
America Energy Independent and until now has
largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology
the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could
boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10
times, giving western economies the trump card
against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and
making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of
disrupted supply irrelevant” (Next Energy News,
13 February 2008)
Realty Check
• 200 billion barrels @ 20 million barrels a
day = 10,000 days = 27 years
• Then what?
• Reality: maybe 10% of the oil is recoverable
with known technology
• The Bakken is a “tight” formation
• Horizontal drilling can increase yields
Canadian Oil Sands
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170 billion recoverable barrels
10 x larger total amount
Current production: 1.2 million barrels/day
Projected production in 2015 = 3 million
barrels per day
• 3 million barrels = 4 hours of U.S.
petroleum consumption
19.4 Natural Gas
• Most of the world’s known natural gas is in a
few countries
• There may be vast unconventional gas sources
– Coal-Bed Methane
– Fracking
– Methane Hydrates
Methane
Hydrate
Gas Hydrates
• Hydrocarbons trapped in cage of water
molecules
• Freeze above 0 C under moderate pressure
• Solid gas hydrates occur in marine
sediments (“yellow ice”)
• Potentially huge energy resource
• Possible role in climate change?
19.5 Nuclear Power
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How do nuclear reactors work?
There are many different reactor designs
Some alternative reactor designs may be safer
Breeder reactors could extend the life of our
nuclear fuel
19.6 Radioactive Waste Management
• We lack safe storage for radioactive wastes
• Decommissioning old nuclear plants is
expensive
19.7 Changing Fortunes Of Nuclear
Power
• Nuclear Explosives Once Envisioned For:
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Mining
Deepening Harbors
Large Excavations
Anything that Required Large Amounts of Explosives
• We Were Going to Have Nuclear
– Cars
– Airplanes
– Trains
We Had a Long Range Energy Plan
• Before Fossil Fuels Ran Short, Nuclear Power
Would Take Over
• By About 2000, We’d Have Fusion Power