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August • September 2008 • Vol. XXVI No. 6 • An Arnold Publication |
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From the Editor— Energy in Perspective— |
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One of the first important principles I learned as a young man was: if you want to solve a problem, you first have to understand that problem. So, with my head feeling like a ping-pong ball listening to the politicians bicker about “drill,” “don’t drill,” I decided to see if I could get a handle on the “real” world energy problem. Here’s what I learned from a 2006 report by the MIT Energy Research Council. Current world energy use: is about 14 terawatts per year. A terawatt is 1-trillion watts. About 86% of that energy is supplied by coal, oil, and natural gas. The United States currently uses about one-fourth of all energy used. Projected Requirements: While world population is expected to grow to about 8 billion by 2050, worldwide energy use is projected to grow by about 2% a year, which means usage will double to 28 terawatts in 35 years. Within that figure, electricity use alone will triple. Some estimates say that figure could climb to 60 terawatts per year by 2050, depending on the increasing demands of the underdeveloped countries. Think about it this way. What if those countries don’t want to stay poor? What if they want electricity, air-conditioning, garages with at least one car, neon lights, movies, you name it? Possible solutions to the energy problem: include drilling for every ounce of oil we can find, converting the vast shale oil resources in the American West into useable fuel, digging out every ounce of coal in the world, creating vast quantities of bio-fuels like ethanol, greater use of solar and wind energy, building more nuclear power plants, developing efficient hydrogen fuel cells, and, maybe most important of all, finding a major scientific breakthrough in energy production, maybe something like cold fusion. One thing I learned during my study of the energy problem is that there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution. Nuclear power is far more capable of producing energy than solar power or wind power. And yet, one study shows that just to achieve 1 terawatt of power with nuclear energy by the year 2050, 2,000 megawatts a month of new nuclear power must go online. That, in my humble opinion, just ain’t going to happen. So what seems to be the bottom line? I once read a book which equated control of energy to wealth. Americans are wealthy because we individually have huge power resources in our homes and in our vehicles. In poverty-stricken nations a lot of people rely on candles to light their way. They use their backs or a cow to plow their fields. Power- rich countries can undertake major projects like dams. Those without power resources can’t even dream of such major projects. The real energy question really isn’t about drilling or not drilling as the politicians would have us believe. The fact is, if the world runs out of energy, we’ll be faced with poverty, pestilence and the worst energy wars imaginable.
Final answer? In my opinion, we have to use every
possible solution, every ounce of energy on the planet until our ingenuity
and science can find a better way. If we make a bit of a mess until we find
it, so be it. |
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