Energy Part One - Existing Technology

Since before college, energy has interested me. If you look at any country, there is a direct correlation with the amount of energy it consumes and the prosperity it enjoys. When man figured out how to use the burning of coal or oil to create motion, he eliminated the need of slavery or beasts of burden in the civilized world. This is no coincidence, it is a direct cause and effect. Shortly thereafter, we achieved flight and put man on the moon. However, since we put man on the moon, the environmental restrictions to energy seems to have slowed progress in the world. Since then, progress has been limited to low energy technology like data processing and birth control.

Currently, there are only a few major sources of energy: Fossil Fuels, Hydroelectric, Geothermal, Wind, Solar, and Nuclear. This energy can either be used directly at the source, or converted into electricity and used on the grid.

Currently, about 85% of our consumption is from fossil fuels of one source or another. This is fine for now, but there are environmental concerns such as sulfur and nitrates getting into our atmosphere, leading to acid rain and smog, spills, fires, and the hyped-up Carbon Dioxide. There are coal reserves readily available for centuries to come, but it has a high sulfur content, leading to acid rain, Oil is cleaner, but much more scarce, and will continue to become more and more expensive to extract as supplies dwindle.Natural gas is available, but only on a local level. Being a gas, it is difficult to transport. Local cities may have natural gas systems, but not where it is unavailable.

Hydroelectric power is clean, but there is the ecologic issue of damming rivers, blocking fish migration routes and flooding vast swaths of productive land historically near the rivers. However you feel about hydroelectric, this is another finite source. There are only so many rivers that are economically viable to produce electricity.

Other renewables such as biomass, wind, solar, and geothermal are prohibitively expensive. Even with the massive government grants, those sources have proved unable to supply a tiny fraction of the population's energy needs. The energy is simply too dilute to compete with fossil fuel's cost to operate. However, solar does have a great niche in local power uses. A blinking stop sign in the country or isolated cabin can be ran on solar, disconnected from any power source.

That leaves us with nuclear power, of which I will go into on the next part of this series.