Hello, I'm Dr. 
Sam Shelton and this is Energy 101. 
What I'm going to do today at the first 
module is to give you an overview of what 
we're going to talk about in this class. 
that's covering the basics of energy. 
We'll look at the topics and the 
discussions that we're going to have. 
Hopefully when you, when we're covering 
one topic and you say gee he didn't 
answer such and such a question that 
you'll know from the topics that I'll be 
talking about it later. 
So let's let's just see why. 
Why we're interested in energy here 
first, and w-, how I cho-, chose the 
topics, in order to try to interpret 
what's going on in energy in the US in 
particular today. 
it's, energy is in the news a lot, almo-, 
hardly a day goes by there's not some 
article. 
And in front of any newspaper that you 
want to pick up, or online edition that 
you see that doesn't have an article on 
energy. 
gasoline is approaching four dollars a 
gallon. 
It's bouncing around. 
Down to the mid three dollars up to four 
dollars. 
that obviously is used, so that hurts 
everybody's pocketbook, means they don't 
have money to spend on something else. 
we have the revolutions going on in the 
Middle East, with dictators and 
governments being overthrown, and riots 
in the street, and total destruction of 
cities and infrastructure. 
And we had the. 
Fukushima nuclear power meltdown. 
What does that mean? Does that mean 
that's the end of nuclear power and when 
we look at that closely we say there's no 
reason we need to build nuclear power 
with the kind of risk we're talking about 
here. 
not only from the safety risk viewpoint 
but from a financial risk 'cuz because 
when you're talking about $10 billion or 
so for a nuclear plant, that's a 
substantial economic hit when you lose a 
nuclear plant. 
Shale gas you heard that shale gas will 
give us energy independence. 
Is that true or not. 
We'll talk about that and like we saw 
with the advent of electric cars that 
have come out in the last year or two. 
That electric cars solves our global 
warming issue from an automobile 
viewpoint because they have zero 
emissions, co2 emissions. 
We'll talk about that and find out that 
actually is not quite true when we look 
at, look at that further. 
And, the, I'll be presenting a lot of 
data and a lot of facts that 
then lead to conclusions. 
I don't like before my comments to be the 
thought of as opinions to be fact based. 
I like the old saying that I base my 
opinion on facts. 
And if the facts change, I'll change my 
opinion. 
What do you base your opinion on? So, 
don't get too bored with the facts, but 
try to interpret them in the context of 
what it all means when you are looking at 
questions that come up about oil 
independence, energy independence global 
warming, climate change. 
revolutions in the Middle East, oil 
imports, etc., etc. 
So, why is energy so, of such interest to 
us? 
Why is it on the front page every time, 
every day? Well these are the driving 
issues in energy, the reason that we all 
get so interested in it. 
number one we have dollars flowing out of 
the U.S. 
for imported fuels and it's about one 
billion dollars a day. 
That's 1 billion dollars a day flowing 
out of the US for essentially oil. 
It's where you'll find that it's an oil 
issue and it's not a coal and natural 
gas, but it's oil. 
So, that obviously is an economic issue. 
When you have a, it's responsible for 
half of our balance of payments deficit 
that we are running every year, so that's 
about $400 billion a year that we're, 
we're shipping out of this, US, in order 
to import oil in particular. 
National security. 
We learned about the national security of 
depending on certain regions, 
of the world for oil back in the 70s 
when, when OPEC nations in the Middle 
East didn't like our politics toward and 
international stance toward Israel. 
And they cut off our oil supplies, for 
imported oil supplies. 
And having lived through that era, as a 
matter of fact that's when I got into 
energy, it was a very difficult time, 
and we could talk on and on about that 
issue. 
And of course from a security issue, 
certainly, if we ever get into a war and 
that happens to us somebody decides 
that's a substantial supplier to us to 
cut off their oil supplies to us it'll 
have a great national ins-, security 
issue. 
And finite or, resources, what are, 
what's the situation there? You know, we 
talk about running out of oil. 
Are we in danger of running out of oil 
and if we do obviously we got some 
serious problems there. 
We've got environmental issues that are 
mentioned briefly. 
We got air, air pollution, ground 
pollution, climate change, and water 
issues. 
There's a big linkage between water 
consumption and availability and energy 
as we'll learn later on. 
So, those is the reasons that we're so 
interested in energy. 
This tends to be on our political radar 
almost every day. 
so, just running through some of the 
topics in a broad way, we we'll talk 
about energy and society. 
Where we use energy and why we use it, 
energy and economy, the linkage there, 
we'll talk about energy supply type and 
source, what types of energy do we use 
and where do they come from, we'll talk 
about the pricing of energy, we'll talk 
about renewable sources for energy. 
Ethanol is a renewable source. 
wind is renewable. 
Solar and ocean energy. 
We're not getting this, any energies, 
essentially, from ocean, at this point. 
But, ethanol, wind, and solar are sup-, 
beginning to supply a some energy that 
makes some different. 
We'll look at the physical laws of 
energy. 
What are the limitations that, that laws 
of nature put on us about what 
technologies can we explore and what is 
possible and not possible. 
We'll look at electric power 
technologies. 
When we need all the Power we use for 
various things, from lighting, to 
electric motors, to computers. 
where do we get that electricity from, 
and what's the technologies to produce 
that electricity, and wh-, what's the 
fuel source? Transportation technologies, 
that's 
Mainly oil oriented. 
We use most of our oil for 
transportation. 
And then energy efficiencies. 
Lots of ways we can reduce our energy 
consumption by using that energy more 
efficiently. 
So we'll hit that topic also. 
So, those are some of the topics that 
we'll cover in a broad sweep manner. 
some of conclusions we'll reach, just to 
tease you a little bit, is that is that 
energy use is coupled tight, tightly 
coupled to the economy, it's linked. 
How much energy is coupled to the 
economy. 
If we improve the economy, the energy 
consumption goes up. 
National security is linked to oil 
imports specifically. 
oil is not saved, this might surprise 
some people. 
Oil is not saved by wind energy, solar 
energy or nuclear energy. 
We'll find out why, but just in a 
nutshell, it's because we don't use any 
oil to produce electricity, and all of 
those technologies produce electricity. 
We'll get into that more as we move 
through. 
Electric cars it turns out, do not reduce 
CO2 emissions and that's because they may 
not come out of the tailpipe of the car, 
but they get electricity from the grid. 
That electricity has to be generated back 
at the plant, 
and CO2 emissions occur there. 
there are lots of long term options to 
change that, but for the next 10 or 20 
years, that's just the reality. 
And finally, there's no silver bullet for 
an energy solution. 
So we've got to take a look at all of 
these technologies, and all the options, 
in order to figure out what the best 
energy policy should be and develop an 
energy policy that works. 
So that's the, that's the big overview of 
what we'll be talking about, and I hope 
you find it interesting and stay with us. 
Thank you.