Energy Sources renewable vs non-rewnewable

• Renewable – can’t be exhausted

• Solar • Geo-thermal• Tidal• Wind• Hydro

• Non-renewable-can be exhausted

• Fossil fuels (oil, coal etc)• Nuclear

How much do we use?

• World energy consumption

• US energy consumption

How much do we use?

How much do we use?

• Almost 95% of the energy we use comes from non-renewable energy sources!

• One of these days we will run out, and then what?

• What are some short and long term answers to this question?

Fossil fuels

FOSSIL FUELS• Carbon or hydrocarbons (a compound made of hydrogen

and carbon) found in the earth’s crust• Formed from the bacterial decay of plant and animal life in

ancient (a few hundred million years ago) seas.• The decomposing material was covered with mud and

sediment • This increased the pressure and temperature on the

material and deprived it of oxygen.• A variety of hydrocarbon molecules are created in solid,

liquid and gas states.• The gas and liquid could travel through the porous rock and

collect in geological traps (rock features that prevent further movement of the hydrocarbons).

Petroleum traps

Why is there oil in Texas?

A little history….

• 1859 Colonel Drake(a title he adopted to impress the locals) first drilled for oil and found it in Titusville, PA.

• Area was already known to have many active surface springs or seeps. Oil had been fond by accident via drilling for water.

• Other wells were drilled and the oil was refined into kerosene.

• Oil was soon found in Ohio, Indiana, California and Texas.

Triumph Hill oil field in PA

What about Kentucky or Tennessee?

Oil in KY

• Well that didn’t really happen but there are oil fields in KY and TN!

• Largest in KY is Big Sinking, spanning Estille, Lee, Powell and Wolfe counties.

Current KY oil reserves

US Oil Reserves

All good things must come to and end…..

• It looks like there is a lot left, but it won’t last very long.

• It takes about 11 years from the time an oil reserve is discovered until the oil reaches production.

• Also, the production of any energy resource has to be economically feasible; it can’t take more energy to get the energy produced than the energy itself produces.

• Q∞ denotes the amount of a resource available for all time, until it is exhausted

M.K. Hubbart: The Nostradomus of petroleum

• Predicted Q∞ to be 165 X 109 barrels of oil for the US in 1956 (this did not include Alaska or other “non-conventional sources).

• Much smaller value than his contemporaries and he predicted that US oil production would peak between 1966 and 1971 and then fall off, independent of anything the oil industry did.

• Not a popular prediction, but it rang true, US oil production peaked in 1970.

Hubbart Curve

Oil production around the world

World Oil Production