Hello. Well, this is our final module lecture,
on Energy 101. And I'd like to do a quick wrap up, and
overview today to kind of see, want to make some sense out of all of these
details. And all of the deep dives that were done
and looking at a lot of detailed information.
So I'm going to flash through a lot of it, because we've seen the slides and
spent significant amount of time on them, I just want to remind us, of, of the
information that we have, and try to put a wrapper on it here at the end.
so what are the energy issues? Why are we even interested in in energy?
Why is it a major issue in the news and political issue and world issue?
Well in the US it's be for two reasons. Number one, carbon emissions.
And number two oil, independence. Oil dependence, where we're dependent
upon oil produced outside the US that we have to buy, at about a billion dollars a
year going out of this country. And so those are the two primary issues.
There's some other smaller issues, for instance the small issue due to nitric
oxides and hydrocarbon emissions from a power plants or from automobiles we've
made a lot of headway on that. And I won't say it's solve, but having
been, lived in Los Angeles area back around 1970 it was really difficult.
And you go out there now and it's a whole another world.
So, and the same way in Atlanta. So we've made a lot of headway on, a lot
of the energy issues, but these are the two big ones that we're faced with now.
Carbon emissions that has dealing with carbon, climate change and oil
independence. So I want to refocus and uh,understand
why we're looking at all of this. the carbon dioxide issue I think is best
described or best shown by this slide right here.
by here's a metric tons over here, and metric tons that is emit of carbon that's
emitted each year by different countries and notice China.
This is China and this is the US. The next one's the US and the carbon
emissions are a worldwide issue. It's not like smog.
Smog was a local issue, and still is to some degree.
It takes place in the urban areas, in Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York, et cetera.
But you go out in the country 30 miles away and it's fine, so it's a that small
with a local issue. Carbon dioxide is an international issue,
world issue. When we emit carbon dioxide it, it
changes the climate in Europe, in Japan, in China, everywhere and vice versa.
So we have to look at not just the US but everywhere.
And what's frightening to me about this chart is as you can easily see is where
China is headed. they have three times more people than we
have, they're trying to get their population up on the economic curve and
lifestyle, are all comforts that we have. And to do that, they're having to utilize
a lot of energy and pertain, produce it quickly.
So, all the other countries, you notice, are down here.
Now, when you add all these up they are significant, don't get me wrong.
But you have to add the a lot of them up to equal either the US or China and so,
we, we need everybody's help, but if we don't get the cooperation of China and do
something ourselves, then we're in, we're in deep trouble.
Notice that the US dropped here and that is we noted due to mostly the economic
recession that we were in. And now the recession is coming out, is
beginning to pick back up. we have gotten more efficient but anyway
this, this shows why carbon dioxide is a problem and we need to face the facts
about how we can deal with that. the second one is US oil dependance, and
this is best shown by this graph, which I use a lot.
And this shows the this shows the the red is the oil imports, and the yellow is the
lo, US oil production in the lower 48 and this the magenta is the Alaska oil
production and just this we had a big increase in oil production in Alaska back
here. In the 80s, late 70s, we've had a big
increase in oil production in the lower 48.
So you notice, no find lasts forever, every all oil deposits are finite.
everybody, there's only a finite amount of oil in the ground.
Now, if we spend more money, we can get more of it out, but then it becomes an
economic issue. But we've seen this kind of increase
before, we saw it in the Alaska find, and that is diminishing in the 20 years
later, 30 years later you can see that we get a much smaller amount than we did
back here. And the heyday of the Alaskan oil
production but the problem is of course the the imports, which are represented by
the red. And of course, up here is the total US
consumption and with again leveled off due to the economic era.
So those are two charts that I think both summarize the issues that we have to deal
with, and carbon emissions and oil dependency.
I'm going to flash through, well let's first what, so what can we do to solve
these issues. Number one, we've got to understand the
energy system details. We can't solve a problem until we
understand the details. And well then we need to develop the
energy technologies, and develop means commercialize them, not scientific
research in the lab, we need that and we need to continue doing that.
We're doing that, and need to continue, and probably do more of it.
But those are long term solutions that, that hopefully will come to the
commercial marketplace 20 years from now. and then we've gotta deploy the
solutions. So we, it doesn't do any good to develop
the technology if we don't deploy it, but this is, this, this requires policy.
I haven't said much about policy, but I'm going to mention it today.
Because number one, why did I mention it? Because I'm technologist, I'm not a
policy expert. But no mater what kind of technology we
develop its all for null unless we deploy it and, and we're not going to deploy it
unless we have a policy. And that's the, the new takeaway from
this summer so this flashing through the energy system details that we've covered
we I divided them into three categories. Number one, the society's use.
what we use the energy for where, where we get it from.
The, we have to get it from the, a natural source somewhere and then the,
the process to convert it from the natural form we find it to the form that,
that we want it to make our lives better. So we covered all three of these boxes
and different categories but different times but that is is the sum and
substance of the the three parts of our energy system in the US as well as most
countries. And so what what are the conversion
process laws. just flashing back the we have some laws
that say you can't just convert one energy to another without some
restrictions. the first law says the total energy
cannot be create or destroyed we'll talk about that and this is called the First
Law of Thermodynamics just like the total mass cannot be created or destroyed is
the exact same scenario. And the second law says that, all forms
of energy do not have equal value. Now one thing I probably didn't stress,
when I said equal value here, I'm not just talking about economic value.
I'm talking about thermodynamic value for instance, you can't burn coal or natural
gas or oil, and convert 100% of that thermal heat energy into a high, a higher
form of energy like electricity. That's what the second law tells us.
And it's just a natural law so we have to to upgrade energy, upgrade some of that
heat to a higher grade like heat to electricity.
We have to downgrade some of it. So that's the reason we have to throw a
lot of the energy away that, from combustion when we put it into a power
plant to generate electricity. the analogy there is an ounce of gold has
more value than an ounce of silver, not just economically, but also in this case
thermodynamically in how we use it. so energy use where do we, the other box
is on the right hand side is where do we use energy?
it's approximately a 50, a third, a third, a third split.
We have buildings for heat and, heat to heat and cool our buildings.
We have manufacturing process to make the products we want and we have
transportation. So those are the three sectors we have to
deal with and we've talked about each one of those.
Another, another major point is we cannot have economic growth of any significance
without an energy increase. And the best way to decrease energy
consumption and decrease CO2 emissions is to have an economic recession and that's
exactly what happened here where we're, we're talking about the change from one
year to the other. This is a percent change in the energy
consumption and the gross prod, national product for the US and you can see it,
that the economy dropped gross national product and the energy consumption
dropped. So when it goes up, when the economy is
growing, our energy consumption is growing.
and we really, we can [UNKNOWN] that somewhat, but we're a little bit stumped
as how we can ever decouple that. oil imports again is the other issue here
and this it shows the trend. we are making some headway recently due
to the increased oil produstion and decreased oil use.
and here since the recession, but it has started to, it hasn't started clicking up
yet. it's come up a little bit in the last
several months but not dramatically. So there's some, the trend is in the
right direction but we've seen that before.
This drop was due to oil going up by a factor of 3 or 4 in price back in the
late 70's, early 80's and the US power plants getting off of oil for
electricity. So we saved a lot but that was a one time
effect so why do we need oil? Since oil is a problem, well we use oil,
so we need to look, we looked at how we used oil.
Transportation dominates it, with[ manufacturing being number two, by a long
ways back. And then we we, one of the points that I,
that I made was that there's a confusion a lot of times regarding oil versus
petroleum. And you seeing a lot about petroleum use
and imports rather than oil, but petroleum includes oil Natural gas
liquids like butanes, propanes, ethanes, et cetera, and ethanol.
And those ethanol used in cars does displace oil on a one to, almost on a
one-to-one basis, on a 1.3 to one basis or so.
But natural gas liquids doesn't really dipla-, displace oil, so we need to
understand the difference there. When you read something, whether they are
talking about petroleum imports and independence or oil independence,
independence, there, there is a difference, we talked about that.
Ethanol is one that is I said displaces oil, not on a one to one basis because a
gallon of Ethanol or a barrel of Ethanol will not displace a barrel of oil because
it has about 30% less energy. But there has been dramatic growth in
ethanol out here and you can see that it's gone from about 300,000 to almost a
million up here just in the last 5 years or so, 6 years had a dramatic increase.
But it still thoroughly is a a little over 5% of our transportation of over to
coarse use, that's that's corn ethanol. And there is some issues with corn
ethanol. It does, really doesn't too much for CO2
reduction because of the energy used to produce the ethanol, and 40% of our corn
grown in this country is used for ethanol driving up the prices of food.
So that's an issue use with ethanol. Put ethanol is a petroleum fuel, and this
shows the petroleum production that includes Ethanol here natural gas liquids
that come out with natural gas and you compress them in their liquids and oil.
So sometimes natural gas liquids and Ethanol are included as petrol-, in the
petroleum lump with oil. And people do that for, through their own
purposes by basically they try to make a point they want to make, then sometimes
its legitimate and sometimes its very misleading.
So you just need to be aware that the difference between petroleum and oil.
and regarding imports energy in, independence is still about oil out here,
oil, oil, oil. you can see this is the energy used by,
that we, energy we use, the US uses for and crude oil, and natural gas, and
natural gas liquids. And coal, and in renewable and the blue
is what we produce in this country and the magenta is what we import and
actually if it's below zero like it, like it, our coal is that means we're actually
exporting. So, were exporting a little bit of coal
and generating a lot more but oil you can see this is outside the US.
Oil is, we're importing about 60% of oil, 50%, 60% depending on whether you want to
count North America or the US, and there's a lot of new options there.
You have to dig into the details, but we do import some natural gas and that's
dominantly from Canada which is a stable source and there's not much of it also.
So we're in pretty good shape and everything but oil is the point that we
saw there. What about shale gas?
Well you see a lot of what I call hype about shale gas, and for a lot of good
reasons. And valid reasons but I just want to,
want to point out this last point, that's one of my favorite things I've learned,
not favorite but one of the true reasons I've learned over my long life and that
is, things are rarely as good or as bad as they first appear.
So, shale Oil such shale gas, shale gas initially was estimated to have a reserve
of about 800 trillion cubic feet that was down there to be recovered from shale and
horizontal drilling and frack, fracking. they in 2011, they all the sudden dropped
it to, to less than 500 dramatic drop. And that was because the US Geological
Survey didn't agree with EIA, that estimate of 827, and EIA admitted that US
Geological Survey probably knew better than they did and then they dropped the
number. So you know, it's how much is there and
what the economics will be over the long term and the environmental consequences
of fracking and getting it out. It is yet to be determined, but it's a
large source that hopefully we can get, get economically and utilize.
so the conclusions on energy independence is, US is dependent on imported oil.
but the US is independent for coal and gas, for all essential purposes.
So that means our electric power is coming from a fuel source that we
produce. But our oil consumption, primarily in
transportation is not. and one thing we gotta realize is that
this oil that we're dependent upon, is we're not in control of the price.
that's controlled by primarily Saudi Arabia which dominates OPEC.
And it is price of the oil is set by the world supply and demand.
So if we increase or when we increase oil production it does not have a significant
effect on oil price because our production is still a small percentage of
the worlds. And if we increase production and cause
the price, the world price to go down. Saudi Arabia the Middle, some OPEC
countries will decrease and have shown this over and over again.
decrease production to offset it, and keep the supply about the same.
So, it does make us more independent. By when we increase production, but it
doesn't have a significant impact on price that we pay.
So, the concluding point here is that regarding oil independence, or energy
independence, is that there are no silver bullets for energy independence.
We've got a lot of work to do and there are some things we can do about it.
And we'll look at those further what about carbon emissions?
Well, the bottom line on carbon emissions is that we can, we if we generate solar
use solar, wind, and nuclear for electric power generation.
Then we will reduce carbon emissions then, because we'll be getting from those
clean carbon sources rather than, coal and natural gas in particular, natural
gas being cleaner than coal. Another thing we can do is higher mileage
vehicles that, thanks to policy is in the works with bumping our required mileage
standard on vehicles in this country up to 20, up to 55 miles per gallon by 2025.
And we started having mileage requirements back in the 70s when mi, the
vehicle mileage was about 12 or 13 miles a gallon.
so now it's in the high 20s depending on how you count it.
And we're, we're scheduled to go to 55 that's technologically is certainly
possible, and Europe essentially is already there, in the vehicles they have.
another option is cellulosic ethanol for transportation, that comes in things like
polk wood, and trees, or grasses. And so that, that's got a ways to go to
become economically viable, however. But it, there's a lot of work and some
commercial plants opening up. And of course, higher efficiency in
electric heating and air conditioning is, is a primary thing that can be done.
That reduces our electrical consumption and thereby, reduces carbon emissions.
there, there are minimum EP, minimum DOE, EPA efficiency standards for space
heating and equipment and air conditioning equipment.
Just like there are minimum efficiency requirements on, in miles per gallon for
our vehicles, and those have made a big impact.
We've moved the efficiency up for things like, refrigerators and the air
conditioners, and the heating system up dramatically and, and lighting also.
And we got a we can even continue to improve that.
There again that's energy policy, that's a minimum efficiency standard that's set
by the Department of Energy and the EPA. The option of course is for Electric
Generation that's clean of carbon is Photovoltaics.
We one nice thing about these people like is each, each homeowner, if it's on their
home owns their own power generation plant.
It's difficult to have enough roof air to supply all of your power, but you can
make a big dent in it. central power towers.
It has these characteristics of the central's utility station, power
generation station such as natural gas such as a natural gas power generating
plant or coal power generating plant. But it uses the sun reflected off of
mirrors and up to a central boiler, and it boils the water from the sun heat
rather than from the combustion of fuels. regarding, regarding wind and solar
there's one point I want to make here, I'm going to show you two maps.
That's the the, this one is the wind map, and this one is the solar map.
One, one point I probably didn't I don't think I made made originally when we went
through this is that the wind power density varies from region to region in
the US by a factor of 10. In other words, if you look out here if
you look out there, the wind density is energy density is about ten times what it
is over in here. You know, the south and the east is all
green pretty much green. The darker the green the less there is,
and so the wind energy is primarily out here from the economical collection view
point generation view point is out at the Midwest, so that's were most of the wind
power plants are out there that's, that's not true with the solar.
notice for solar, it's much more uniform. And here, the kilowatts hours per day
that falls on a fixed area is it goes only by about a factor of two from four
to about seven. So it is better out here in the
southwest, then you have in this for instance, the Southeast, but it's not a
factor of 10 like wind energy. So, there is a much more uniform
opportunity for solar energy, gen, electric generation of a, across the
nation than there is wind generation. and so just in summary for the US energy
sources, the point I want to wrap up here with this slide is that we are dominated
by coal, natural gas, and oil utilization.
This is the percent of our energy that we get from each of those sources, and and
then we've got wind over here, we've got solar over here, and we've got hydro, and
we've got biomass. You can see, we've got a long way to go
to replace this big chunk that, of energy we get from coal, natural gas, and oil
that produces our carbon emissions to replace them by our renewable and clean
energy sources. this represents trillions of dollars of
infrastructure, and you don't the whole country doesn't walk away from trillions
of dollars of Investment and re-, replace it with trillions of dollars worth of
energy conversion processes that, and equipment that uses renewable energy.
It can be done, but there's huge economic penalty to pay when the US and the
economic situation that they're in and debt.
That's debatable where the, whether we have the will or the financial resources
to make that happen. so again the US energy issues are carbon
emissions and oil dependence and the one thing I want to emphasize here on this
final wrap up is that I haven't said much about but I want to stress the importance
of it, is that we need energy policy. We need a comprehensive energy policy,
needs to be implemented and executed, but that policy's got to be based on facts.
What this course has been about is trying to talk about the facts.
I'm not a policy expert that, that's the reason I've stuck with the facts.
But the, we cannot make much headway without a comprehensive energy policy.
But that policy has got to be made, got to be based on facts, so much of the
policy that we have. Our is is dominated by lobbyists to in,
to congress for to lobbying for different industries and they're not interested in
the national good particularly in a lot of cases but their own industries good.
For instance, be it the nuclear industry, be it the solar industry, the wind
industry, the oil industry, or the coal industry, each one is up there lobbying
for an energy policy that helps their industry.
And that's unfortunate, because we need, need to understand all of, all of this
energy facts. And be able to, to dissect the statements
that are made and that we read so much of.
So a lot of which are misleading at best. So its been great and, I've enjoyed being
with you and I hope that I'll see you again.
Take care.