The world energy demand is ever increasing?

Question

The world energy demand is ever increasing although the main source of energy supply is getting scarce, i.e. oil and gas.. Discuss why these types of alternative energy are still unacceptable. Is the problem with renewable energy purely technical? Or does it have problems related to politics and globalization
geothermal energy
biodiesel
biofuels
liquefied natural gas
liquid nitrogen
steam generators
geothermal energy and etc

Answer 1

Actually, Active5, all current forms of electrical energy generation are using steam to drive the generators. Even Nuclear power stations are just glorified steam engines. The problem with alternatives is the 'base load', the continuous production of alternating current at a steady rate. Electricity must be generated continuously, as we have no satisfactory method as yet of storing the huge quantities of direct current which would be needed for a base load draw. Things like geothermal, either in hot spring areas like Rotorua in New Zealand, or the deep hot rock areas of Australia, are seriously being considered, but are generally a long way from the national grid. However, if the deep rock system in South Australia works, that is a minor problem, as there are mines in the area which will help pay the cost by buying lots of power. I hope the rest of the world is doing similar research.

Answer 2

The problems with alternative energy sources are technical. We do not know how to make enough energy at low enough cost with any of those alternative methods. We can make small amounts of energy at comparatively high cost, but not nearly enough for the world to give up oil and gas, even if we were willing to pay a very high cost.

By the way, liquid nitrogen is not an energy source in any sense. Perhaps you intended to say liquid hydrogen.

Answer 3

Actually, there is really no shortage of oil, it's just costs more than it used to because more recent supplies are harder to recover.

Geothermal, biofuels, wind power, solar power are not so much unacceptable as they are uneconomical, that is they cost more than conventional fuels.

LNG is not really an alternative it is just a way to transport a conventional fuel (natural gas) over long distances where there are no pipelines. The problems with LNG are entirely political.

I'm not sure how liquid nitrogen would be considered a source of energy, same with steam generators.

Answer 4

Geothermal energy = Limited in availability. You have to have naturally occuring sources of thermal energy to tap. Most of the easy sources have already been found. You can say similar things regarding hydroelectric.

Biodiesel/Bioethanol = In many cases not economic without government subsidy. In some cases not even technically feasible (don't have the technology yet). Until technology allows us to derive fuel from switchgrass or waste biomass, it requires the use of agricultural food crops.

LNG = Not a renewable source of energy. Plentiful today but like oil will become dependent on a handful of producer nations who control the supply.

The other things you mention aren't really alternative energy.

Answer 5

You missed out nuclear. Nuclear power is by far the most efficient source of power we have access to and it isn't going to run out any time soon.

The problem is it's vastly unpopular due to a shaky safety record.

Coal is also a resource that won't run out any time soon, but it's unpopular due to recent demonization of carbon emissions.

Steam generators are what is used in any heat based power generation: the heat source (nuclear, coal, whatever) heats some water, which is forced through turbines which spins the generators.

Geothermal energy is only locally available to a few lucky places.

Liquid Nitrogen takes more energy to create than it can generate.

And I believe biofuels are currently the victim of petroleum companies keeping them down, but that might be untrue, it's just an instinct.

Answer 6

The basic premise is wrong in that energy is not getting rare and the real problem is poor engineering. Poor engineering has been the rule in energy related matters because it has been assumed good engineering does not matter and for a long time good engineering did not matter at all because so little energy was actually being used. If good engineering was adopted energy would not be a problem at all and would be low cost, clean and available for anyone to use.

Answer 7

I totally disagree with Larry M.

He doesn´t realize that before, the Us citizen had more buying power to have the oil...

Now, between a US worker (who needs a lot of oil since his car is one of the most inefficient in the world) and an indian manager of a company with 20 people... the indian manager has a higher buying power and wins the bet !

There is a limit output for oil which we haven´t reached but we are close... and we use by far more oil than we discover new reserves... and those new fields require always more efforts and costs to be extracted. A good example for that are the sandoils in Canada

Answer 8

while I dont disagree with you on on what you say..

the only problem we have here in the US is a refining problem.. we dont have par say an energy problem.. we just are not making enough of keep the price down to what we like

Answer 9

I help out by donating to energy efficiency projects like this one http://mygreenproject.blogspot.com/