The Environmental Impact of Energy Use The Fossil Fuels: Oil, Gas & Coal

1. The Environmental Impact of Energy Use • The Fossil Fuels: Oil, Gas & Coal • Environmental Issues of Production • Removing fossil fuels from underground sources can lead to subsidence at the surface – particularly from coal extraction. Underground rock collapses causes the surface to sink. This can lead to depressions or even holes in the ground surface, and structural crack to buildings at the surface which may have to be supported – or abandoned. • Tips of coal waste (the unwanted material brought to the surface along with the coal) can form massive hills of unconsolidated (loose) material. The Aberfan disaster of 1966 in S. Wales occurred when a week of heavy rainfall lubricated a waste tip on the valley side. The mound gave way – and fell onto the village, burying 144 people, including 116 children in the local primary school.

3. Environmental Issues of Transporting • Crude oil, being lighter than water, creates huge oil slicks if oil tankers run aground or break up in heavy seas. This can ruin tourists beaches for years to come as sticky oil is washed ashore. It has a devastating effect on marine life and sea birds by coating them in oil. The Exxon Valdez disaster on the coast of Alaska in 1989 had polluting effects for the next 20 years. • French Oil slick Link • British Oil slick Link • Environmental Issues of Energy Use • ACID RAIN – rain is naturally slightly acidic, but the burning of fossil fuels releases carbon, sulphur and nitrates – all of which combine with moisture in the atmosphere to produce carbonic acid, sulphuric acid and nitric acid. Acid Rain leads to a number of devastating consequences in areas downwind of the fossil-fuel burning centres.

6. Acid Rain solution 1 Dropping lime on lakes to ‘neutralise’ the acid

7. Acid Rain solution 2 Add limestone ‘filters’ to power station chimneys (Would need to quarry more limestone from National park beauty spots)

8. Acid Rain solution 3 Make people use less electricity and petrol so there is less coal, oil and gas burnt to cause air pollution.

9. Account for the pattern of heavy concentrations of Acid Rain in Europe Why should Finland and Sweden feel particularly aggravated by the Acid Rain they are experiencing? Acid Rain in Europe Why is it particularly difficult to reach international agreements to reduce the impact of acid rain?

10. Environmental Issues of Energy Use • b) NUCLEAR ENERGY – the key issues surrounding nuclear energy focus on safe use of a radioactive fuel. When operating ‘normally’, nuclear energy is a clean energy source – it creates heat without burning anything – so there are no emissions and no carbon dioxide produced. In this sense it is very environmentally friendly. • However, the radioactive nature of its fuel lead to 3 major concerns • 1. Safety of Power Station Operation. The Chernobyl disaster of 1986 shows what can happen when a nuclear power station suffers a fire and explosion. A fire in one of the reactors could not be put out, the safety systems failed, and the plume of smoke rising from the power station was highly radioactive. Much of western Europe was exposed to radioactive fall-out over the next 2 months. The area around the nuclear power station in the Ukraine is still uninhabitable and the town of Chernobyl remains lethally radioactive. The disaster led to 57 deaths directly, and an estimated further 4000 from cancer – typically thyroid cancer in adolescents.

11. 2. What to do with radioactive waste. All nuclear power stations use uranium ‘rods’ which get ‘coated’ with plutonium – which stops the rods working efficiently. Every so often the rods are removed and sent for ‘reprocessing’ – which strips off the 5% plutonium, and new rods are created from the still-useful 95% of uranium. This is what takes place at the Sellafield reprocessing centre in Cumbria. However – plutonium is one of the most deadly chemicals on the planet. A small amount could wipe out an entire city. And it is the basis for nuclear bombs. The amounts are small – all the plutonium produced in 50 years of British nuclear energy could fit into two semi-detached houses. However there has been no solution for the safe disposal of this deadly waste – other than to bury it in concrete containers – and hope there isn’t an earthquake. No new nuclear power-stations have been commissioned (ordered) in Europe since 1986. Until the last 2 years. Why?

12. Sellafield is one of the few places in Britain where locals are not against nuclear waste being stored there. Why? What benefits does the Sellafied Reprocessing Centre bring? What are the arguments against this operation?

13. 3. Terrorist Threats to nuclear material. Since 9/11 governments around the world have been terrified of the thought of terrorists creating a nuclear disaster. They could do this by flying a plane/blowing up and existing nuclear power-station; getting hold of nuclear waste and releasing it in a major city or a water supply (a ‘dirty bomb’) leading to widespread radiation danger; or getting hold of plutonium to make their own nuclear weapon which could be fitted on a missile and targeted at anywhere around the world within missile range.

14. Environmental Issues of Energy Use • c) FUELWOOD – In many LEDCs the main source of domestic fuel is wood. It is often children who are sent out a number of times a week to collect fuelwood. Sometimes it is used directly as wood, other times it is converted into charcoal – which gives more heat for industrial processes like metal-smelting. This has many consequences: • children spend so much time collecting firewood that they don’t attend school, don’t get an education, and stand little chance of breaking out of the poverty cycle • deforestation leads to soil exposure – and increased soil erosion from washing away in the rainy season, and being blown away in the dry season • deforestation results in landslides on steeply angled slopes. This can bury villagers and destroy farmland. • BBC Link Java Deforestation • deforestation reduces the water-cycle, removing the suppliers of moisture into the atmosphere – so the air becomes drier and clouds are less likely to form. The local climate changes from a moist one to a dry desert one – resulting in DESERTIFICATION

15. Collecting the weekly firewood supply

16. Masese village on the outskirts of Jinja. UGANDA,has installed a biogas energy scheme. Waste from 40 houses is collected in the biogas tank. Locals use the gas for cooking. Outcome: sewage is prevented from going into Lake Victoria and less charcoal is used - so reducing deforestation and maintaining the trees

17. Somalis have an opportunity to switch to sun power using solar cookers . Sun Fire Cooking is distributing in Somalia a very efficient solar cooker. The Sun Fire Cooking butterfly-design solar cooker is * large, sturdy (50 kilos), long-lasting and cooks much more quickly than other solar cooker designs. * as fast as a gas or electric stove because of the size of the parabolic mirrors. * healthy and clean with no choking smoke. Families can boil drinking water, avoiding many diseases. Our solar cooker saves Somali households an average of $20 per month in charcoal costs. The solar cooker pays for itself in less than one year and should give twenty years of free solar cooking. Draw 2 mind-maps. One to show the negative impacts on a community of relying on fuelwood. The second to show the benefits to be achieved from switching to a biogas or solar cooker alternative.

18. POTENTIAL OF RENEWABLE ENERGY SUPPLIES TO MEET THE ENERGY GAP • Flow Resources… • Solar • Wind • Wave • Tidal • Bio-mass • Appropriate technology • Alternative energy sources should aim to be….. • Reliable • Give a continuous supply of energy (24 hours a day / 52 weeks a year) • Be a competitive price compared with stock resources (oil, gas etc) • Be applicable in all parts of the world • Not create additional environmental ‘costs’ • Be acceptable to the public