(IEEE Spectrum, Image Bryan Christie Design)
I'm reasonably sure that the average person in the modern age has an appreciation for the precious resource that oil is. What I'm reasonably convinced the modern 'joe sixpack' doesn't aprreciate is just how incredibly energy dense oil is. In an effort to better communicate with the public about energy concerns a group of scientists have developed a more easily understood 'currency of energy'. Namely, a cubic mile of oil. There is an article in the IEEE Spectrum magazine outlining their efforts here. How does the cubic mile of oil relate to our current energy consumption? Well, we consume, globally today, roughly 1 cubic mile of oil per year. There is an estimated 45 cubic miles of oil left in the world. So just what exactly would it take to create the equivalent energy of our annual global consumption of oil? Alot.
There are of course a set of reasonable assumptions that go along with this, click the image the source image in greater detail.
"Assumptions: The Three Gorges Dam is rated at its full design capacity of 18 gigawatts. A nuclear power plant is postulated to be the equivalent of a 1.1-GW unit at the Diablo Canyon plant in California. A coal plant is one rated at 500 megawatts. A wind turbine is one with a 100‑meter blade span, and rated at 1.65 MW. A solar panel is a 2.1‑kilowatt system made for home roofs. In comparing categories, bear in mind that the average amount of time that power is produced varies among them, so that total energy obtained is not a simple function of power rating."
The human race is in dire need of energy innovation in both generation and consumption. Fortunately, people seem to be finally awakening to this reality. It will be no small task to replace this consumption with alternative sources. The future will be interesting indeed.
There are of course a set of reasonable assumptions that go along with this, click the image the source image in greater detail.
"Assumptions: The Three Gorges Dam is rated at its full design capacity of 18 gigawatts. A nuclear power plant is postulated to be the equivalent of a 1.1-GW unit at the Diablo Canyon plant in California. A coal plant is one rated at 500 megawatts. A wind turbine is one with a 100‑meter blade span, and rated at 1.65 MW. A solar panel is a 2.1‑kilowatt system made for home roofs. In comparing categories, bear in mind that the average amount of time that power is produced varies among them, so that total energy obtained is not a simple function of power rating."
What is unfortunately hard to make out from this image is that those equivelencies are for that many dams, nuclear power plants, solar cells or coal plants operating for 50 years.
The human race is in dire need of energy innovation in both generation and consumption. Fortunately, people seem to be finally awakening to this reality. It will be no small task to replace this consumption with alternative sources. The future will be interesting indeed.
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