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Can Energy Production Scale?

Can Energy Production Scale?. Our Waveform of Consumption. Choices and Challenges for the Current Century. Three Main Challenges. Electricity Production:  per capita consumption is increasing faster than energy efficiency Electricity Distribution:  Aging grid already at capacity

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Can Energy Production Scale?

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  1. Can Energy Production Scale? Our Waveform of Consumption Choices and Challenges for the Current Century

  2. Three Main Challenges • Electricity Production:  per capita consumption is increasing faster than energy efficiency • Electricity Distribution:  Aging grid already at capacity • Fuel Usage:  3.5 Billion gallons a day (would be more if not refinery limited)  400 million gallons a day in the US

  3. Production and Consumption on the Century Timescale

  4. A Century of Change (1900 (=1) vs 2000) • Industrial Output: 40 • Marine Fish Catch: 35 • CO2 Emissions: 17 • Total Energy Use: 16 • Coal Production: 7 • World Population: 4 No More Fish by 2100 at this rate of Consumption

  5. Waveforms of Growth

  6. The Terrawatt Power Scale • Currently we are a 14.5 TW Planet

  7. The Earth Limited Scale • Scaling from the last century leads to the absurd: 235 TW of required Power • Well, what kind of facilities/infrastructure would need to be built to generate 235 TW of Power?

  8. Option 1: • Build 40,000 more of these worldwide:

  9. Hey What about World Wide Wind? • We would need to build 50 million of these 5 MW machines • This requires 75 Billion Tons of Steel  whoops, we ain’t got that much Steel left

  10. Option 3: Pave the Deserts • We only need 30 million square kilometers spaced out continuously in each time zone. • Note that the entire Sahara desert is 9 million square km.

  11. More Earth Limitations • Total fuel cell production limited by amount of accessible platinum on the planet; 500 million vehicles  lithospheric exhaustion in 15 years • Higher efficiency PVs limited by accessible amount of Cadmium or Gallium or Indium • Conventional Transmission media limited by available new Copper • Clear need for Carbon based materials (fiber, nanotubes) to overcome this.

  12. Business As Usual Scenario • Population stabilizes to 10-12 billion by the year 2100 • Total world energy use from 2000 to 2100 is 4000 Terra Watt Years (Current world use is about 14.5 TW years) • 40 TWyr is compromise between current 14.5 TWyr and scaled 235 TWyr

  13. Conventional Oil/Gas Unconventional Oil Coal Methane Clathrates Oil Shale Uranium Ore Geothermal Steam - conventional 1000 TWy (1/4 need) 2000 5000 20,000 30,000 2,000 4,000 Ultimately Recoverable Resource

  14. Hot Dry Rock Sunlight/OTEC Wind Energy Gulf Stream Global Biomass 1,000,000 9,000,000 200,000 140,000 10,000 Other Possibilities In Principle, Incident Energy is Sufficient  but how to recover and distribute it in the most cost effective manner?

  15. 20 KW power buoy 5 MW Wind Turbine LNG closed cycle Wind Farm PV Farm Stirling Farm Pelamis Farm 850 Tons per MW 100 Tons per MW 1500 MW sq km 600 MW sq km 50 MW sq km 40 MW sq km 30 MW sq km Dollars Per Megawatt per unit Land use per unit Material Use

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