WSRL.ORG / Rural Colorado Energy Issues - July. 2005 - Revised Feb. 2008 - Page 1 Is there anyone out there that doesn't believe that the Iraq & Afghanistan wars are about oil and energy? Recent reports put Iraqi deaths in the 600,000 area. This doesn't include the thousands of brave soldiers that have either died or been severly injured as a result of Iraq or Afghanistan conflicts. Without energy, however, there would be no modern society. The United States is one of the largest per capita consumers of energy on the planet. Where does the energy come from? Should you or do you care? Unless you are prepared to return to a stone age type existence or engage in World War III, I would venture that energy is or should be near the very top of your priority list. How much energy do I need? What forms of energy are the cheapest? How long will energy supplies last? In today's market environment, every US business and citizen competes with every other world business and citizen for a limited supply of available energy and energy related feed stocks. Along side the simple market concept of energy are additional issues such as green house gases, global warming, air & environmental pollution and so on.
12-15-08 - Dr. Chu Named Energy Secretary -
Dr. Chu - From Lawrence Berkeley An important event for this page is certainly the appointment of Dr. Chu from the California Lawrence Berkeley energy labs to be U.S. Energy Secretary. This appointment places a person of pure science and engineering into an office usually held by a more politically oriented person. As can be seen from the link to the Wall Street Journal shown on the right (Nightmare), this appointment is already causing controversy.
Energy Crunch Starting 2008 -
Gasoline & Diesel - Small $2000 - $4000 dollar vehicles are on the verge of being manufactured in large quantities in both China & India. Projections are for the manufacture and sale of many millions of vehicles in both countries. This will only add to the already tight and limited world-wide fuel supply, This country is in desperate need of a nation-wide public transportation system based around rail technologies. As detailed by researchers, travel by the automobile and the airplane are the two most inefficient and wasteful means of transportation. Electric Power - The clock is ticking. In this region, Xcel has canceled construction of their IGCC plant and the government has largely withdrawn from the zero pollution "FutureGen" project. TriState's new plants in Kansas have, of course, also be canceled. This does not leave many options on the coal front. On the east coast, officials are now predicting rolling blackouts starting in the 2010 - 2012 time frame. On the Western Slope, the myopic REA's are still pushing Geoexchange systems which do little but transfer energy use from natural gas and propane to coal produced electricity. Energy needs are both immediate and large. It's widely held that renewables don't have a chance of scaling quickly enough to meet energy needs. At this rather late date, there is still no talk, at least locally, of nuclear, distributed generation or combined heat and power technologies.
Energy Units Conversion & Calculators -
Many things you purchase at the grocery store are valued in dollars per pound of weight. This makes cost comparisons easy. Energy quantities and related costs can be compared in a very similar manner. I have found the easiest way is to convert everything to BTU's. Common values given in BTU's for various items include; Electrical kWh = 3412 BTU's per hour (the per hour measure is usually dropped), Natural Gas = 1000 BTU's per cubic foot, Coal = 11,000 BTU's per pound of weight and so on. All of these conversions and comparisons are greatly aided by going to a website that specializes in conversions in addition to the Wikipedia site. EIA also has an energy calculator that can be downloaded (Excel) from this address or in the free OpenOffice file format (ODS) from this address.
Energy Data Sources -
One of the best sources of energy information is the Nation Master and CIA World Book sites gives a good amount of data. For a shocking picture of where the U.S. is in terms of petroleum usage and supply, the British Petroleum site is a good one. The BP site slide show is particularly unnerving for oil (650K Power Point or Open Office). For general information, the Federal Energy Information Administration site is a good source.
Political & Environmental Forces -
It seems that today the use of energy is being attacked from all directions. The U.S. pays vast sums of money to Arab suppliers of petroleum products only to see a less than grateful attitude from them for doing so. In terms of traditional domestic fossil fuels, global warming promises to greatly complicate their use in a multitude of expensive ways. While other developed nations have concentrated on building a national infrastructure to greatly limit the use of fossil fuels, the U.S. has done little in this regard and as a result is in great peril from a major foreign energy flow curtailment. It seems that the Federal Government has been blind to these obvious dangers since the 1973 oil embargo. Each day that passes means that the U.S. is in greater danger and is deeper in debt to those who only goal is to increase the price of their products.
U.S. Energy Labs -
It is suprising to me that, given the tremendous resources and talents present in the national energy labs, the U.S. is not in much better shape, energy wise, than it is. It seems that solutions to energy problems are everywhere but few of these solutions have made to the commercial applications world. What is most troubling is the lack of apparent understanding by politicans of the great dangers the U.S. now faces. A recent presentation by the Lawrence Berkeley Lab on global warming is most sobering. The U.S. can not wait for decades to solve problems. The need is both immediate and major in scope. Given our current course and attitude towards energy, I can't say I have a lot of faith in the long term survival of this country or the human race.
Energy Corridor News 1-08
The final West-wide Energy Corridor technical documents been made available on the West-wide website. The documents include a general overview in addition to design, construction and operation details of energy transmission lines in the newly designated corridors. Of interest is technical coverage of cross country hydrogen transmission lines. The write-ups typically include an interesting history of each energy type in addition to the technical information. The documents have been mostly created by the Argonne National Energy Labs and are of high quality. The documents can be downloaded from the West-wide Corridor site.
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Dr. Chu Links
Updated Dec. 2008 Energy Links
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