Sustainability and Environmental Impact of Renewable Energy Sources (Issues in Environmental Science and Technology, Band 19) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0854042903 ISBN 13: 9780854042906

Verlag: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

The world's dependence on fossil fuels is widely acknowledged to be a major cause of rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Thus there is an urgent need to develop energy sources with lower environmental impact, with attention focusing on renewable energy sources. Concise, authoritative, up-to-date and readable, this book reviews various energy technologies, as well as taking a critical look at the political, social and economic aspects. Throughout, the emphasis is on renewable energy sources (wind, wave, solar, biomass, etc), but a discussion of fossil fuels and nuclear power is also presented. This timely book, written by recognised experts, will be welcomed by those in the energy industries as well as by policy-makers, consultants and engineers. Students and lecturers will also find the material invaluable.

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The series has been edited by Professors Hester and Harrison since it began in 1994.

Professor Roy Harrison OBE is listed by ISI Thomson Scientific (on ISI Web of Knowledge) as a Highly Cited Researcher in the Environmental Science/Ecology category. He has an h-index of 54 (i.e. 54 of his papers have received 54 or more citations in the literature). In 2004 he was appointed OBE for services to environmental science in the New Year Honours List. He was profiled by the Journal of Environmental Monitoring (Vol 5, pp 39N-41N, 2003). Professor Harrison's research interests lie in the field of environment and human health. His main specialism is in air pollution, from emissions through atmospheric chemical and physical transformations to exposure and effects on human health. Much of this work is designed to inform the development of policy.

Now an emeritus professor, Professor Ron Hester's current activities in chemistry are mainly as an editor and as an external examiner and assessor. He also retains appointments as external examiner and assessor / adviser on courses, individual promotions, and departmental / subject area evaluations both in the UK and abroad.

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Sustainability and Environmental Impact of Renewable Energy Sources

By R. E. Hester, R. M. Harrison

The Royal Society of Chemistry

Copyright © 2003 The Royal Society of Chemistry
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-85404-290-6

Contents

The Future of Today's Energy Sources Bernard J. Bulkin, 1, 
Sustainable Energy: Choices, Problems and Opportunities David Elliott, 19, 
Renewable Energy: Technology Considerations and Electricity Integration David Infield and Paul Rowley, 49, 
Landfill Gas and Related Energy Sources: Anaerobic Digesters; Biomass Energy Systems Adrian Loening, 69, 
Emissions Trading Schemes: Are They a 'Licence to Pollute'? Fiona Mullins, 89, 
UK Government Policy on Renewable Energy Brian Wilson, 105, 
Renewables, Sustainability and Precaution: Beyond Environmental Cost–Benefit and Risk Analysis Andrew Stirling, 113, 
Subject Index, 135, 

CHAPTER 1

The Future of Today's Energy Sources

BERNARD J. BULKIN

1 The 1973 Energy Crisis

Crises inspire change. In 1973, the oil embargo associated with the Yom Kippur war led many people to look at the technologies around energy and predict that radical change would occur. There were forecasts, taken very seriously, that by 2000 oil would be nearly gone. The internal combustion engine was seen as having reached the limit of its ability to develop. Environmental concerns over air pollution were also seen as driving the rapid growth of nuclear power, and there was considerable effort being expended on commercialization of solar energy. Yet even at that time, some futurists warned that 'energy crises' had occurred before, and rarely had the predicted outcomes. Examples were the energy crisis associated with the lack of sites for new water wheels, and those created in many places by lack of wood through deforestation.

The main outcome of the 1973 'energy crisis' was efficiency. In the United States, as shown in Figure 1, the fuel economy of the car fleet doubled between 1973 and 1980. Appliances also became much more efficient: the average new refrigerator in the United States by the late 1990s was nearly 300% more efficient than in 1973 (Figure 2). These changes, which took place relatively rapidly, have shown great staying power.

The other big outcome was a shift away from oil as a fuel, particularly for power generation. In 10 years, oil went from being 17% of US power generation to about 2.5%. The shift was technically possible (coal and nuclear were the big winners, but once this driving force was removed, nuclear growth slowed) and economically desirable.

However, the core technologies of how we generate and consume energy, and the fuels we use, did not change radically. Perhaps the biggest change on the generation side, the growth of combined cycle gas turbines, was less a technological breakthrough than the conscientious application of basic principles of thermodynamics, made possible by a combination of materials science and information technology. As far as use goes, cars are still powered by internal combustion engines (though with increased use of another old technology, diesel engines, in Europe), not by batteries or Stirling engines. Refrigerators look and function in much the same way today as they did 25 years ago.

There are lessons to learn from a look back of a quarter century. We see that radical change is possible. Doubling fuel economy of cars, tripling the efficiency of some major appliances, major changes in fuels (the UK went from 87% of its primary energy coming from coal in 1950 to 18% in 2001) do happen, and they are not fluctuations, but have long lasting effects. However, we also learn that the system has great resilience. There is a huge entrenched infrastructure which has great efficiency associated with it, and it takes major systemic shock (such as occurred in 1973) to upset it.

There are also important lessons on supply. Predicting the future supply of any fossil fuel is probably impossible. Supply over the timescales we can consider relate to margin — price minus cost — rather than to fundamentals of the geology of the planet. It is also difficult to predict either price or cost with any degree of accuracy, so the uncertainty in the difference is very great. In subsequent sections this will be illustrated with reference to developing an understanding of the current reserves of the major fuels used today, and views about the future supplies of these fuels.

2 How Fossil Fuels Have Affected Our Lives

Until the 19th century, human progress was limited by the amount of work that people could do in a day to feed themselves and their families. The economy was largely rural as a result. Beginning in the 19th century, people began to develop coal, oil and other stored energy sources to supplement solar energy. The results of plant and animal growth through solar energy, over huge areas and geologic time periods, coupled with violent geological upheaval, became available for human exploitation. Knowledge was required to develop machines capable of coupling these power inputs to human needs, and to be sure the great scientific work of the pioneers of thermodynamics and its application were critical. But what really changed the nature of how people lived on this planet was the several orders of magnitude increase of the energy sources that were available. There was, and continues to be, excess energy available to obtain more fossil fuels, to do research on how to exploit these fuels more efficiently, and to use them to drive change in cultures. Progress from that time until now has been 'like a flash explosion compared to the steady fires of the evolutionary record for previous millions of years'.

One of the most important results of industrialization based on these energy sources is abundant food. Odum has pointed out that it is an illusion, and a conceit of industrial society, that we are better at using the sun to grow food than our predecessors. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, we no longer eat food made completely from solar energy: we now eat potatoes made partly of oil! The same is true in the growth of animals for both meat and dairy products. This is not just the case on the farm, but also in the factories where farm machinery is made, fertilizer is manufactured, and in the universities where farming research is done on productivity. In effect, as Odum makes quantitatively clear, our society is developed around a 'fossil fuel subsidy', somewhat supplemented by a nuclear energy subsidy. In this paper, one of the questions we are looking at is: how long can this continue?

3 Energy Use in the World Today: Fuels and How They Are Used

Figure 3 shows a view of the energy use in the World. It is conveniently divided into four major categories: transport, power generation, industry/domestic/agriculture, and the small amount used to convert one fuel to another (e.g. energy cost of refining of petroleum into gasoline and diesel fuel). The figure shows not only the quantities for each category of energy use, but also the fuel mix of the category.

As is well known, transport is completely dominated by oil. All other fuels combined are not sufficient to show up on a graph this size. Clearly the oil business is very dependent on demand from the transport sector, and the transport sector is very vulnerable to any disruption of supply of oil, as the entire infrastructure is built around a single fuel source.

This is not the case for the other major sectors. Power generation is very...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Royal Society of Chemistry
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2003
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0854042903
• ISBN 13: 9780854042906
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 156
• Herausgeber: Hester R E, Harrison R M
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland