The End of Cheap Energy
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Transcript of The End of Cheap Energy
The End of Cheap Energy
August 27, 2010
Fred DuennebierEmeritus Prof. Geology & Geophysics
UH Manoa
G & G TGIF Seminar
Special Thanks
To every one for their input and frank discussions.
To all those who are seriously dedicated to finding solutions before its too late. Good luck.
To my family for their patient support.
• The END of cheap ENERGY?
• Why is this important?
• What makes Oil so important?
•What about alternatives?
• The Future- Sustainability- When might transition start?
ONE VIEW: "The technology at hand to tap the planet's vast energy resources is … improving faster than ever. We can economically dig, dam, pump, and purify all the energy we like."January, 2006, Preface, The Bottomless Well, Huber and Mills
ANOTHER VIEW:"Petroleum geologists have known for 50 years that global oil production would "peak" and begin its inevitable decline within a decade of the year 2000. Moreover, no renewable energy systems have the potential to generate more than a tiny fraction of the power now being generated by fossil fuels."
Dieoff.com
Peak Oil
Since I was born, the rate of oil production has increased ten-fold.
Hubbert’s Peak
Will production drop soon? Has enough new oil been discovered to keep up the supply? When production begins to decline we will be at “peak oil”.
Why is oil so important?
• FACT: Oil supplies about 90% of the energy we use in Hawaii, and about 97% of the USA’s transportation energy.
• CLAIM: Survival of civilization, except for the most primitive societies, now depends on the availability of cheap energy for our support systems.
Every American uses the energy equivalent of about 150 "servants" working 24-7.
Everything is cheap today because oil is
cheapcheap.
Human muscle supplies less than 0.2% of the energy used in the economy.
We can't support ourselves without cheap energy.
One person can perform useful work at a rate of about 1 KWh per day - about what’s required to keep a 100 W light bulb going for 10 hours.
We pay about 25¢ per KWh for electricity on Oahu - so we get the equivalent energy of a hard-working person for 25¢ per day.
What makes me say that energy is cheap?
Energy and Power
Power = energy per unit time
1 Watt= 1 kg m /s3 = 1 Joule/s
Energy = kW h (kiloWatt hour)
1 KWh/day is a good reference - one person
People Power has been replaced by fossil power
Big deal!
We can ride bikes instead of cars, change our lights to CFLs, turn down the air conditioner, use electric cars…..
Not so fast… Doing lots of little things might end up doing very
little to solve the problem.
Modern agriculture requires more than ten units of fossil fuel energy for every unit of energy eaten. Take away fossil fuels, and productivity will decrease greatly.
“Soil is the catalyst used to turn oil into
food.”
“Soil is the catalyst used to turn oil into
food.”
About 85% of our food and staples come to Hawaii on ships that burn oil. The average North American meal
travels 1,500 miles before it gets to your plate.
NO LIGHTSNO COMMUNICATIONNO GASOLINENO REFRIGERATIONNO ELEVATORSNO FOODNO WATERNO HOSPITALSNO MONEYNO SEWERS
Without oil, Hawaii has no electricity
Maintenance of Infrastructure requires energy
About 80% of Hawaii’s electricty is generated from oil.
A basic premise of this talk is that petroleum will not be able to meet our energy needs for long after we hit peak oil.
After that time the supply will DECREASE and will no longer be able to meet the demand for energy.
Hawaii imports the energy equivalent of about 1 million barrels of oil per week.
At 1,700 kWh/ barrel of oil, that's the equivalent energy supplied by about 250,000,000 people working HARD.
AND we pay more than $5 BILLION/YR for fossil fuels, about the cost of rail…
CAN WE REPLACE OIL?
Without oil or a large supply of other cheap fuels, we will have serious difficulties finding (or affording) enough energy to maintain our current lifestyle!
What alternatives are there?
What are the qualities of a “GOOD” energy resource?
• Lots of it, widespread - solar• Renewable - like trees, OTEC• High energy density - like nuclear• Low price - like natural gas• Low cost-of-use - like oil• High net energy - ??• Easy to transport - like oil• Easy to store - like oil• Always available - like oil• Safe - like OTEC• Environmentally friendly - like geothermal• Secure - like solar
Can “unconventional” sources of fossil fuels satisfy our liquid
fuel needs?
• Tar sands
• Oil shale
• Natural Gas Liquids
• Oil from Coal
Mountain Topping to get at coal
Over 700 miles of Appalachian streams have been ruined already in coal mining.
Peak Coal: 2023
Do we have enough coal?
DOE Estimate of Global COAL Production (2009)
Peak in 2011
What about non-fossil alternative sources of Energy?
• At LEAST one "good" energy resource is needed that has a large NET ENERGY.
• Do any alternatives have the energy density, portability, storability, convenience, and profit margin of oil?
What is Net Energy??Every living thing must find more energy than it
consumes or perish. Excess energy is used for growth or is stored.
Net energy is the energy available minus the energy invested to get it.
Some people use ERoEI instead:ERoEI=Energy obtained/Energy invested
Net Energy = EO - EI = (EROEI - 1), if EI=1
What?….
Consider Your Budget:
Gross Income
Net Income= Gross - taxes
Fixed Costs
Luxuries
If your net income is greater than your fixed costs, you can take that vacation to
Hawaii.
Consider the Energy Budget
Gross Income: Total energy in the fuel supply
Taxes: Energy needed to produce and deliver
Net Income= Net Energy: what’s left to be used
Fixed Costs: Energy necessary to sustain civilization
Luxuries: Energy needed for economic growth
If energy net <= Fixed costs, NO GROWTH
SOLAR
all fossil fuels, PV, wind, passive solar, OTEC,
hydro, wave, ….
GEOTHERMAL - heat in the earth
NUCLEAR - [solar], fission, fusion
PLANETARY MOTION - tides
BASIC sources of energy:
Let's look at various sources and see how they might satisfy the demand.
George W. Bush in his State of the Union Address: "A simple chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen generates energy which can be used to power a car, producing only water, not exhaust fumes…
"The first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen and pollution-free."
but… let's dig a bit deeper.
HYDROGEN
Hydrogen fuel does not exist in nature.
All the hydrogen is tightly bound to other elements - like oxygen (H2O).
Making hydrogen FUEL requires energy to pull the hydrogen away from whatever it is attached to.
About 80% of hydrogen fuel is generated from natural gas by heating it.
Hydrogen fuel can be generated directly from water by hydrolysis.
electrolysis
ENERGYInvested
ENERGYReturned
combustion
EROEI~0.6
Hydrogen fuel may be an excellent way to store energy. It's equivalent to a charged battery.
But, hydrogen is NOT an energy source. The energy to produce hydrogen - or any fuel - MUST come from a source that has a net energy much greater than 0.
Other alternatives?
Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative
Target: using energy efficiency and renewable resources to supply 70% or more of Hawai’i’s energy needs by 2030.
In THEORY, there is a large enough renewable energy resource in Hawaii to satisfy all of our electrical needs.
The Sopogy Thermal Solar Array at Keahole generates 2 mW on 3.8 acres in the Mohave desert. It would take more than 800 of these to generate Oahu's current electricity capacity on 3,200 acres, BUT the sun doesn't always shine… STORAGE, EQUALIZATION
Hot Oil Energy Storage
Photovoltaic (PV)
Can advances in direct solar energy devices make them contenders in the energy picture?
Recent thin-film technology is very promising and production could double today's total generation capacity within two years.
This PV array on Kauai can generate 700,000 KWh anually.
Less than 2 KWh/panel /day
Optimistic numbers suggest ~0.5 KWh/day /KW installed
50@ 1.5 MW Wind Turbines are located on the slopes of west Maui
Puna Geothermal produces 30 MegaWatts, or 720 MWh/day, and its ALWAYS available.
Can "biomass" schemes for using plants to create liquid fuels be scaled up to the level needed to make a difference? These schemes use oil and gas "inputs" (fertilizers, weed-killers, machines) to grow the biomass crops to be converted into ethanol or bio-diesel fuels. Is there a net energy "profit"?
Biomass for ethanol production
corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced;
switch grass requires 45 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced;
wood biomass requires 57 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
for biodiesel production,
soybean plants requires 27 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced
sunflower plants requires 118 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.
Algae?
Oil Palm Plantation
10 MWOTECPilot PlantTo be installed2013
NUCLEAR ?• Using current
technology (fission) we would need 2 new 1 GWatt plants to satisfy Hawaii’s current electrical and heating (oil and gas) needs.
• Nuclear may be the only way to keep the lights on.
FUSION?
Chuck Helsley, a former Director of HIGP, is working hard on fusion.
IF they can get funding, and IF all goes well, he thinks they can have their first plant in 10 years.
But - not likely in the USA…
Pelamis 750 KW
Do Energy Conservation and Improved Efficiency
Help?
Certainly they don't hurt, but they can't solve the problem.
In his 1865 book The Coal Question. In it, William Stanley Jevons argued that increases in efficiency in the use of coal would tend to increase the use of coal. Hence, it would tend to increase, rather than reduce, the rate at which England’s deposits of coal were being depleted.
Jevons Paradox
Mass Transportationcan help, but it requires a large user base and
change in mindset.
Examples of energy use -
How much energy do our major users require?
• 2,100 acres of PV cells + storage
• almost twice the perimeter of Oahu in wave energy + storage
• OTEC: 17 @ 100 mW plants
• Geothermal: 68 @ 30 mW Geothermal plants
• Nuclear: 2 @ 1 GW plant
• 1,133 @ 1.50 mW wind generators + storage
• 1,556,656 acres of sugar cane
To supply Oahu's current electricity needs (1,700 MW
capacity) would take:
There are more than 700,000 vehicles registered in Hawaii.
Each uses about 40 KWh/day, that comes to a total of ~20M KWh/day.
To switch from using gasoline to grid electricity in our vehicles would demand that the generating capacity on Oahu would need to increase by ~50%. Batteries cost ~$30,000
Electric cars??
To fly a 747 to Hawaii from California would require the energy
equivalent of:
• 5 1/2 days of one Maui wind generator energy at full capacity
• 25 minutes of an OTEC plant energy
• 44 acres of sugar cane (ethanol)• 468 acres of corn (ethanol)• 25 acres of soy (biodiesel)
1 gallon/sec; (13,000 kWhr)/5.5 hr flight
BUT
Airplanes can't fly on electricity (yet).
To store the energy needed to fly a 747 for one hour in lithium ion batteries would require batteries
weighing 5 times the weight of the plane.
To fuel a container ship from California to Hawaii
requires:
• 1 day of OTEC plant
• 71 days of Maui wind generator time
• 247 acres of sugar cane
• 468 acres of corn
• 157 acres of soy
• 4 days of geothermal energy
Development of alternatives to oil will require (among other things)
• energy storage systems
- batteries
- fuel cells
• distribution systems
• infrastructure transition
• new energy sources and technologies
• construction of large plants
• carbon sequestration if coal or natural gas used
This is a GLOBAL PROBLEM
World Population and Oil Production
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s of
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/day
World Population,millions
Oil Production, 10,000barrels/day
Cheap energy has made the population explosion possible. The expansion of human civilization is strongly linked to access to cheap, high-quality energy sources. World now uses ~13 trillionWatts, roughly 1,000 barrels of oil per second.
How much time do we have?
WHAT IS BEING DONE TO REPLACE OIL?
We spend more money every ten minutes buying gasoline than we do on alternative energy R&D each year.
The NIH gets a yearly budget increase greater than the whole annual budget of the Department of Energy.
www.private-eye.co.uk
Governments the world over provided around $45 billion to renewable energy technologies in 2009.
BUT….
Fossil fuel subsidies got $557 billion in 2008, reported the International Energy Agency.*
Hawaii’s energy initiative of 1977
projected that we should be free of oil by 2010.
Since then, our use of oil has risen by about
40%.
The US Navy has an initiative to cut oil use in vehicles by 50% by 2015.
The US military says:
“Bt 2012, the surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels/day.”
GREENWASHING
In MY opinion:
Many of the efforts in “green” renewable energy prospects are motivated by potential for profit - not the need for change.
Much of the hype implies that the problem is solvable or solved. Some of these projects might even work, but which ones?
Nearly all alternatives have an achille’s heal - cost, scalability, net energy, dependence on other resources, etc.
Peak Oil Task Force
geologic time
1 million years 1 secondEarth history compresses into 75 minutes(Your fingernails grow 50 miles in 1 sec)
Nature took about 10 minutes to store all the fossil fuels in the earth.
We will burn most of it in less time than it takes to explode a firecracker.
Most of the people alive today will see the end of the oil age.
SUMMARY• No alternative or combination of alternative
energy sources can replace oil without a huge development effort - and it isn’t obvious that ANYTHING will replace oil.
• Civilization without cheap energy will be much different than it is today.
• Does civilization have the incentive to develop new energy sources while there's still time and energy available?
• At the very least, there will likely be a serious gap in energy available starting soon.
Modern Arab saying: “My grandfather drove a camel, my father drove a Ford, I fly a jet plane, my son will drive a camel.”
What's the most critical problem facing humanity?
Probably not energy
Not the economy
Not food supply
Not the environment
Not global climate change….
All of these would be mitigated if we could only control
HUMAN POPULATION“If we don’t control the
earth’s population, nature will do it for us,
and nature will have no pity.*
Nature will NOT honor your rights to life, liberty and the
persuit of happiness.*heard on broadcast of Nobel Debate on Technology, MIT president’s speech
MAHALO !
OIL
We’re out of time….
MORE?
Google: "peak oil""peak oil books"
andhttp://www.withouthotair.com/
ERoEI
• ERoEI MUST be greater than 1 to supply ANY net energy.
• All energy storage processes - charging batteries, making hydrogen fuel, etc. REQUIRE energy (ERoEI < 1)
The United States is more dependent on oil than any other country, and Hawaii is more dependent on oil than any other state.
Hawaii is the “canary in the coal mine” for peak
oil.
What is sustainability?• Something is ecologically sustainable if it doesn’t destroy the environmental preconditions for its own existence.
• The goal of most sustainability efforts is to sustain our current society with minimal disruption and pain.
“Get your facts first and then you can distort them as you please.” Mark Twain
sustainability
When conditions are changing rapidly, the probability of reliably forecasting the future is very low.
What can we expect in the future?
Before getting deeper into the problem, we need to understand the difference between energy and power.
Energy is the stuff matter has that allows it to be used to do work. The spin of a wheel, heat of the sun, movement of water, chemistry of fuels, etc.
POWER is the amount of energy being used per unit time.
Power is measured in Watts, or kiloWatts (kW: 1000 Watts), and a useful unit of energy is the kW-hour (kWh), or the amount of energy used in an hour if the power is 1 KW. One kWh of electricity costs about 25¢ on Oahu. One kWh/day is equivalent to a single 40 W light bulb burning all day.
One person doing heavy work burns about 1 kWh/day. Thus if you personally use 10 kWh/day, you have the equivalent of 10 "servants" working for you.
So… You get the electrical energy equivalent of one hard-working person at a cost of 25¢ per day, or $7.50 per month.
! CHEAP !
Pie in the sky
This is the future that we’ve all been conditioned to expect, with
a strong requirement for and dependence on cheap energy.
Optimistic
Local, self-sustaining, low-energy communities
[who makes the bicycles?]
Worst Case
Complete collapse of civilization as we know it
population
“If we don’t control the earth’s population, nature will do it for
us, and nature will have no pity.”*
World population is growing by ~ 80 million people per year; 99% of the growth is in developing countries. USA now has over 300,000,000 people.At this low rate, (~1.3%) the population of the world DOUBLES about every 53 years.
*heard on broadcast of Nobel Debate on Technology, MIT president’s speech
The red patch in this California Google Earth image is Lake Tahoe. All of the oil still in the Earth would fit in Lake Tahoe.
San Francisco
www.popin.org/pop1998/4.htm
TODAY
1990
1960
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2100 12
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4
2
0
New Stone Age
BronzeAge
Iron Age
MiddleAges
8000BC
6000BC
4000BC
2000BC
0001AD
2000AD
Population and demand for energy and other resources is growing. Can the earth support this growth? Is growth sustainable?
Biological populations, like yeast, increase until
resources necessary to sustain the population are no longer
available, until the environment is poisoned, or until parasites, disease,
competition or predation limit the population.
Are we smarter than yeast?
We could limit our own population by choice.
Will we?
Fortunately for the world economy, nobody is paying
attention.
Example: America in 1950
• World’s foremost oil producer• World’s foremost oil exporter• World’s largest exporter of
machine tools and manufactured goods
• World’s foremost creditor nation• Self-sufficient in nearly all
resources
America in 2008• World’s foremost oil importer• World’s foremost debtor nation• World’s foremost importer of
manufactured goods and non-petroleum resources
• Manufacturing jobs fleeing to other countries
energy comes in many flavors
Electrical
base load
coal, nuclear, oil
hydro, geothermal, biomass, OTEC
intermittent
solar, wind, wave
Transportation
oil, natural gas
biomass: biodiesel, ethanol, methanol
Say that 1 acre of energy is required.
How much land area is actually required to return the required energy for different values of ERoEI?
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1 3 5 7 9EROEI
SO
UR
CE R
EQ
UIR
ED
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UR
CE R
EQ
UIR
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Implications:
1) A low ERoEI product cannot be a primary energy source.
2) A process with a low ERoEI must be sustained by a high ERoEI energy source.
The general case is that the source required can be anything - not just acres.
Yeast Population in a 10% sugar solution (wine). Population increases until resources are gone or until waste products poison the yeast.
WINE MAKING
Oil Production by Country
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/Day
AlgeriaIndonesiaIranIraqKuwait1LibyaNigeriaQatarSaudiArabUAEVenezuelaNorwayUKAngolaArgentinaAustraliaBrazilCanadaChinaColombiaEcuadorEgyptGabonIndiaMalaysia MexicoOmanRussiaSyriaUSA
Is oil production reaching its peak? US production is decreasing at ~ 8% per year.
Saudi Arabia
Russia
USA
IRANChinaMexico
World Oil Production
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1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
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Its difficult to tell when the peak in production will occur because reserves are kept secret.
Oil prices rose >20% 38% in the last year, and doubled almost tripled since 2003.
CONSIDER a product, A, with an ERoEI of P.
If A is a crop, and we assume that no other primary energy sources are available, then ALL energy needed to produce A must come from A.
The number of acres required to produce a unit of energy must also include the acres needed to produce that crop, and the acres needed to produce that energy, and so on.
Bneeded toproduce A
Cneeded
to produce
B
Energy A
ERoEI = 4TOTAL AREA REQUIRED
TO SUPPLY A: 1.33 A
Energy AB
needed toproduce A
Cneeded
to produce
BERoEI =0.6
TOTAL AREA REQUIRED TO SUPPLY A: INFINITE
Energy Density Isn’t Everything
How will people in cities get food?
Who will rescue refugees if the crisis is global?
Who controls the oil reserves? Much is controlled by NATIONAL oil companies - countries that aren't very stable and don't like us much.
ERoEI is often difficult to calculate, and it changes with the environment.
Proponents of particular fuels routinely calculate high ERoEI values, while detractors calculate low values.
If we ASSUME that the ERoEI is infinite - that NO energy is required to produce the product - we can look at the BEST POSSIBLE conditions for use of that product.
As we will see, the best possible may not be good enough…
This is a power series.
If one energy unit is required for consumption
How much energy must be harvested? (TR)=TA?
TR= Total Required
NE= Net Energy = Energy out – Energy in
P=ERoEI
ERoEI~Net energy +1
TA E * G * P n
n0
TA E * G *1
1 1P
TR NE
NE 1
Overview
• Hawaii’s Energy Situation: Dependence on Oil
• Oil Demand: Worldwide Competition for Oil
• Oil Supplies: Are We Running Out?
• What’s Driving High Prices?
• Oil – Issues and Implications for Hawaii
• Some Energy and Policy Options for Strategic Change of Hawaii’s Energy Situation
Petroleum Consumption Sectors
Sources: State of Hawaii – DBEDT, 2004; and U.S. Energy Information Administration, State Sources: State of Hawaii – DBEDT, 2004; and U.S. Energy Information Administration, State Energy Data Report, 2002 (Latest).Energy Data Report, 2002 (Latest).
Air Transport 31%
Ground & Water Transport
29%
Electric
Utilities 26%
Other 14%
Air Transport 9%
Ground & Water Transport
59%
Electric
Utilities 2%
Other 30%
Hawaii – 2003Hawaii – 2003 U.S. Average – 2002U.S. Average – 2002
Electricity Generation by Source 2003
United StatesUnited States HawaiiHawaii
Bagasse0.65%
Oil76.38%
Coal15.52%
PV0.02%
Solar WH1.62%
Hydro0.53%
Geothermal1.67%
Wind0.11% MSW
3.50%
Coal51%
Nat. Gas17%
Nuclear20%
Hydro7%
Other RE2%
Oil3%
Sources: HECO and KIUC RPS Reports, Sources: HECO and KIUC RPS Reports, FERC Form 1 or Annual Reports to PUC, FERC Form 1 or Annual Reports to PUC, and IPP reports to US EIAand IPP reports to US EIA
Source: USEIASource: USEIA
Nonconventional Oil Reserves
• Oil, or “tar” sands
• Ultra-heavy oils
• Gas-to-liquids technologies
• Coal-to-liquids technologies
• Shale oil
Global Trends in Crude Oil Quality
Sources: Sources: J. Shore, World Fuel Conference, in J. Shore, World Fuel Conference, in State of Hawaii DBEDT -- State of Hawaii DBEDT -- September 2003. September 2003.
30.0
30.5
31.0
31.5
32.0
32.5
33.0
33.5
34.0
34.5
35.0
1981
1983
1985
1987
1989
1991
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
AP
I G
ravi
ty,
Deg
rees
0.85
0.97
1.09
1.21
1.33
1.45
Su
lfu
r C
on
ten
t, W
t %
30.0
30.5
31.0
31.5
32.0
32.5
33.0
33.5
34.0
34.5
35.0
1981
1983
1985
1987
1989
1991
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
AP
I G
ravi
ty,
Deg
rees
0.85
0.97
1.09
1.21
1.33
1.45
Su
lfu
r C
on
ten
t, W
t %
• few of us would trade the comforts and freedoms we enjoy today for life as a serf on a baronial estate, or even for the pre-electricity, pre-petroleum life of a mid-nineteenth-century farmer.
Consider hydrogen
“The hydrogen promises a cleaner, less fossil fuel dependent future. Having a hydrogen economy means first that cars will be using fuel cells or hydrogen-powered internal combustion engines that create zero greenhouse gases, zero pollution and provide more energy than the current fossil fuels.”
The ECONOMIC ARGUMENT:
MAYBE, but the problems associated with exploiting these resources include
- high cost of production
- high carbon release
danger of climate change
- requirement for large amounts of water
- heavy pollution, environmental damage
“There's almost certainly enough coal left for us to do the atmosphere (and by extension, ourselves) serious damage. But the really epic crash may not be in the climate, it may be in human civilization, which is by now entirely dependent for its growth and complexity on relatively cheap, relatively abundant fossil fuels. The absence of extreme global warming will be of little comfort if we end up in a post-apocalyptic Mad Max hellscape.”
Net Energy Energy Recovered - Energy Invested
Energy invested includes all energy required for production of the product:
miningconstructionfarm equipmentfertilizerinsecticidesirrigationharvestingtransportationrefining, etc.
It does NOT include the energy inherent in the fuel - such as the energy supplied by the sun or wind.
One estimate is that a stable hunter-gatherer group needs a source of energy with a net energy ~10.
Technological cultures likely need even more.
If your primary energy source has a net energy of 1.0, then you need to find twice as much of that energy than you actually need, since much of the energy you produce must be used to produce more.
1)OAHU ELECTRICITY:
HECO needs the capacity to generate 1,800 MW of electricity to satisfy Oahu's current peak demand.
2)TRANSPORTATION:
• cars and trucks
• A 747 burns about 1 gallon of jet fuel per second. 850 aircraft/day
• A container ship burns 260 barrels of heavy fuel oil per day.
A container ship uses the energy equivalent of 247 acres of sugar cane to go from California to Hawaii.
United 747
Airplanes that bring our tourists to Hawaii and keep the economy going use large amounts of petroleum.
Are we ready for a world without cheap energy?
• Could this be a serious threat to modern human civilization?
• Without oil, can the current population be supported?
• Should we have begun planning decades ago?
• Is it too late?
Global Energy Sources
86%