Estimated total reserves: 497,708 million tons.
Economically recoverable reserves: 269,457 million tons.
Currently being mined/developed: 18,216 million tons.
Total production in 2002: 1,094.3 million tons.
Thus, just to supply our electrical generation needs (currently at 52-55%) and assuming we hold constant at 2002 levels, we only have about 250 years of economically recoverable reserves of coal. Throw in a 3% growth factor and we’re looking at a bit less. Throw on using coal synthesis and we are now maybe down to 100 years or so, maybe less.
ElKabong: Given what you’ve told us, about your predictions and your occupation, why aren’t the oil companies themselves advocating any of this? Don’t they, like you, have a vested economic interest in keeping the worst from happening?
Just curious how far along are we with using methane hyrate for energy?(I ask because my chem book mentioned that there is twice as much carbon in the form of this as all other fossil fuels combined. Just wondering if there is really that much laying around what stops people from mining it, other than it being at the bottom of the ocean.)
Uh, there are certainly people here who can speak with more authority on this subject, but I’d say it’s mainly because their vested interest under the current economic structure is to keep their stockholders happy for the next year or so. In any event, I think you’ll find that the majors are investing heavily in alternative fuels R & D, but as I understand it, a company can only invest a few percent of it’s annual turnover in R & D and remain viable,nand these research funds have to compete with requirements for research in their (current) core businesses. As for the service companies, Schlumberger and Halliburton have long since diversifed into non-energy businesses, but hardly any of the others that I know of, including the outfit I work for, are seriously considering how their business is likely to wither away in the next few decades. My employer, however is not publicly traded, so their available resources and management viewpoint is considerably different than that of the bigger companies in the sector.
That’s really outside the area where I’d feel comfortable speculating, but my guess would be not all that much except for fuel scarcity in the short term. The crashes I’m talking about in the beginning would be like the fuel crisis of the mid-70’s. I think I’d worry more about areas where it gets very cold in the winter, myself.
Anyway, I’ll freely admit I could be wrong about everything I’ve said about shortages. I hope I am, in fact.
What about thermal depolymerization? It converts waste organics into light crude oil and supposedly exceeds energy break-even. Since the end product is crude oil it should be able to plug right into our current hydrocarbon infrastructure. But I’m not an expert on this, is it really as promising as it sounds?
Now there’s a good one. I remember having read about this once, but I had completely forgotten about it. Does anyone know if this process has hit any snags yet? Would it be feasible for the human race as a whole to sort their waste product (much as we do for recycling in some places today) into hydrocardbon fuel vs non (such as metal trash, etc), and use this process on the trash to produce our fuel needs?
The thing about fossil fuels is that that are an extremly convenient form of concentrated energy. It would be difficult for nature to have devised anything more easily available than underground lakes of gas and oil just waiting to be sucked up and cracked/distilled. OK, pure octane would have been nice.
The point is there is (was) massive quantities of oil lying around, no other species competing for it and it is very cheap to collect. You put very little energy in for the
amount returned.
Biofuels are great, but nowhere near as ‘convenient’ as fossil oil. You need water, nutrients and energy input (besides solar).
Keep in mind that population will increase from 6 bill to 9 bill in the next 50 years. Not only will there be massive demand for energy, crops for food will be competing with biofuel crops. Water will also be more expensive.
The World Energy Council foresees global energy demand rising from 8.8 Gtoe (gigatons of oil equivalent) in 1990 to 13.4 Gtoe in 2020 and 20-40 Gtoe in 2100. It was 2.2 Gtoe in 1950 and 1 Gtoe in 1900.
If we are really optimistic and say that we can obtain half our energy from biomass, nuclear and hydro (solar and wind are negligible) by 2020 we will still need as much fossil fuel as we did in 1975.
But by 2020 there will only be 2/3 the remaining reserves of oil as there was in 1975, and quickly dropping. Gas and coal reserves are also quickly being depleted.
Nah, we don’t really NEED it today to make a difference. We can have it develped within the next decade and it will make a signifigant difference.
And actually there is headway on my link above: Try this, sure it isn’t perfect, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be discounted entirely, to me, it shows definate headway.
Honestly I don’t understand the solar hydrogen craze. If hydrogen as a storage and transport medium is so inefficient, and the sun is providing the real power anyways, why not just hook solar power up to the electric grid and be done with it?
ph, this process (if it works as stated - and I see no reason why not) will be used to get energy out of otherwise waste material. This will improve efficiency of our use of the primary energy (mostly fossil) that generated that waste to begin with. This does not replace oil /coal/natural gas as a primary source. In other words, we can use up all the plastic in landfills, etc, getting lots more energy out, but then how do we make more plastic (etc) to put into this process? That’s when you find it takes more energy to generate the input stream of things than you get out of the process.
This is a great technology that can help immensely at delaying the peak and using our limited energy sources, but it is not a source of new energy.
Often it is presented as one, just as hydrogen is presented as a source of energy, like you can dig down and find a hydrogen well.
In reply to Epimetheus, thanks for the link, it would not work on my older version of netscape (crash) but I will take your word on developments.
I said we need it today because we do, we need things working today to slow down the growth in fossil fuel use, and then to actually reduce the amount of fossil fuel we use, before nature’s limits force us to reduce.
Would it be feasible to farm crops to throw into a thermal depolymerization machine to “produce” energy at it’s 85% rate, or would we still be facing a net loss loss in that case?
I believe at a loss - there is still some debate as to how much energy plus (or minus) biodiesal and ethanal are - and this would probably be worse. Plus, even if all 3 worked, we need lots of farmland to grow the food we eat. It would take away from that quite a bit. Smaller populations would work for that model perhaps, but again there is that surplus population to worry about.
Global grain production peaked a few years ago due to many factors (soil depravation, water problems, farmland developed into houses, more expensive fertilizers due to natural gas price increases, etc) . Global grain stores are slowly being drawn down. As natural gas and oil get more expensive , food production will continue to decline, leadin to more problems worldwide.
As far as most of the available alternative energy sources go, they mostly require oil to make. They often take more energy to make than they produce and are know as energy carriers. Here is a tamer article I read on this topic yesterday:
[QUOTE=
In reply to Epimetheus, thanks for the link, it would not work on my older version of netscape (crash) but I will take your word on developments.
[/QUOTE]
Strange, I use netscape. Have you downloaded Mozilla?
But the question is: Does growing the corn, transforming it into ethanol, and extracting the hydrogen use more or less energy than you get from the hydrogen? IANAS but I’m pretty sure that it must take more energy overall then it produces. In fact, even if we ignore growing the corn etc., just the process of extracting the hydrogen must take more energy than it produces.
This is a line I’ve heard so many times – and every time I look around it just keep getting more and more wrong. What do you have to show for general rising food prices? I live in a part of the world where too large a food production and what to do with it all and whom to dump it on has been the major problems the last three decades or so. I talked to an apple farmer in New Zealand a few years back. He had to sell his farm because the price of apples was now so low as to be quite unprofitable. The world market was simply swarmed. Eastern Europe has immense potential to ramp up food production. Barring any global disaster I just can’t this scenario as being very realistic.
Talking about alternative power sources. Anybody know the straight dope on fusion? I thought they were still ages away – but now it seems a European, Japanese and Chinese (and now also American I believe) consortium is getting ready to build what they claim will be the last generation of experimental fusion power reactors (ITER) before a commercial reactor will be possible.
