The Truth About Alternative Energy

In order to understand where we stand with regards to alternative energy (energy derived from sources that do not use up natural resources or harm the environment), one first must understand the magnitude of various energy sources that are currently consumed each year.

Imagine a mile. Now imagine a mile wide by a mile long by a mile deep. This is a cubic mile. In order to make comparison easier between these various energy sources, all the units are in cubic miles of oil (CMO), meaning the amount of energy equivalent to that provided by a cubic mile of oil. (These numbers came from my Chemical Engineering in Society class, and I am sure they are credible.)

World Energy Use Per Year (CMO)

Oil:                  1.16

Coal                 0.99

Natural Gas      0.78

Hydro              0.15

Nuclear            0.19

Biomass           0.15
(burning wood, etc.)   

Biofuel             0.01

Wind&Solar     0.02

Total                3.45

This is the magnitude of our energy appetite. Although there has been a great push towards wind and solar energy, they still make up less than one percent together.

Here are some cost estimates for replacing the oil alone (1.16 CMO) with alternative energies:

• Solar: $80 Trillion (not to mention the threat to national security this poses since China produces and controls 95% of the world's supply of Rare Earth Metals)
• Wind: $5 Trillion to build. We would need to build 1000 2-Megawatt wind machines every week for the next 50 years to get them all built.
• Nuclear: $50 Trillion. We would need to build 2,500 900-Megawatt plants.
• Hydro: we don't have enough suitable rivers to create enough hydro-electric power. (We could maybe double current production.)
• Biofuel: Cost ??, but we would need to turn 25% of the cultivatable land into cropland for biofuels.

 Basically, it would take a lot of money, and physically a long time before we could substitute alternative energy sources for oil, not to mention natural gas and coal. Besides this, there are a lot of controversies about these sources of energy, such as there being hundreds of thousands of birds of prey killed each year by wind turbines; food shortages associated with using our cropland for growing fuel; the environmental and civil costs of building dams, real and imagined risks of nuclear plants and nuclear waste, and more.

Here are the numbers for the currently-known reserves for fossil fuels (which make up 85% of our energy sources):

Coal: 125 years at current consumption rate (the rate's increasing, but so are the number of reserves)

Petroleum: about 44 years of known reserves, but the amount of accessible reserves is increasing
Natural Gas: total amount left is unknown, but the amount of known reserves continues to grow

Besides these constraints on our resources, there are a slew of environmental impacts from using fossil fuels (which I'll leave for another post).

While it is true that we need to come up with alternative energy sources because fossil fuels will not last forever, the truth is that if we were to just stop using them, there would be about 60-70% unemployment OVERNIGHT. The cost of energy would double or more. If no one buys cars or fuel, no one travels, and the economy shuts down.

In short: availability of cheap energy drives the standard of living. The price of energy will steadily increase as we have to work harder to mine fossil fuels, and as the resources continue to shrink. While we need to find alternative ways of providing energy, it is important to recognize the magnitude of the task we are talking about, and the costs of switching to alternative energies.