Almost everything we do today: the war in Iraq, in Lebanon, US politics, standard of living, vacations, food, depends on a mass amount of energy. Our global society uses, and abuses, the energy available to humankind in an unprecedented rate. The negative implications are many and highly important.
Let me tell you a little about our energy use:

Our personal economic desire is one of the most powerful forces in our lives. Most of us, in the US especially, seek a continuously increasing level of comfort and luxury as our natural right. To satisfy this powerful desire we consume lots of energy. In fact, most of our unprecedented economic growth in the last century is directly related to our use of easily available cheap energy.
We can not live a modern life without substantial amounts of energy. However, we depend more and more on external suppliers of energy, we compete with other large users for this essential but limited resource, and we destroy our global environment with the byproducts of this vast energy use.

The war in Iraq and our special interest in the Middle East, directly relates to the oil wealth in that region. We need their oil more than they need us.

Those of us who are upset that we are so much dependent on oil are the main beneficiaries of it. The middle class and the wealthy benefit out of all proportion from cheap energy. The cars we drive, the huge houses we heat and cool, the unprecedented quantity of unneeded things we surround ourselves with demands a lot of energy. Are we ready to give them away? No, we do not. What can we do?

Alternative energies, unfortunately, can make just a small dent in the energy picture. We must cut our use. Conservation and higher energy efficiency are crucial but our wasteful society is not ready, and not yet capable of change to make our world fit for our children. How many of us are buying energy efficient, smaller cars and reducing our driving? Or do other inconvenient things such as reducing our flying? (One of the largest energy using global activity)

We use energy as if there is no tomorrow: We mine iron in Australia, ship it for processing in Japan, ship the iron to China to turn it into computers and other products, ship computers to US ports by container ships, truck the containers to distribution centers, ship smaller packages to individual stores, and throw the packaging and other stuff into mass garbage damps.
China is almost surpassing us in Global Warming pollution because of us. Each of us is consuming most of what China produces, from computers to toys. We drive their economic growth, which drive their unending appetite for polluting energy- mostly highly polluting coal. China has probably the worse pollution in the world.

Our transportation depends on easy availability of low cost oil. Oil is a miracle fluid, it contains a very large amount of energy in a small space and can be easily, safely, and cheaply transported long distances. We have nothing that could replace it. Also, there is a limited amount of oil and there is an increasing international competition for it. Supply and demand are in balance now. Increased demand can lead to higher prices. World oil resources will soon decline despite all the discoveries of additional oil fields. They are too small to make a sustainable difference since global consumption is THIRTY BILLIONS BARRELS OF OIL A YEAR.

The immense amount of pollution generated by the mass use of energy is dispersed into our very thin layer of the atmosphere. This destabilizes the delicate balance of nature that was stable for millions of years. So who cares if our temperature increases a few degrees over a hundred years? Just think that if the global temperature increased by just one degree in a MILLION years the world could have been now a thousand degrees hotter!

Our energy dilemma is not a new problem suddenly discovered. Fifty years ago I studied this dilemma at the University of Washington. When I asked the professor what we are doing to reduce the enormous energy consumption and its negative impacts he said: “Nothing.” He told me that our elected officials have a short term view, interested mostly in reelection and are unable to think about global problems.
We still face the same political problem a half century later.

LET’S CONCENTRATE ON USA ENERGY USE.

It is difficult to grasp the energy story. The numbers are staggering; they are beyond our range of experience.
The US consumes the equivalent of thirty Trillion kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy a year. (A quarter of global energy). It is equivalent to one hundred thousands (100,000) kilowatt hours per person in the US. If we paid for it like electricity it would be $15,000 per person a year!
We pay it at the gas pump, we pay it in heating gas, we pay it in the food we eat, and restaurant we dine. Quarter of this energy comes from foreign oil suppliers. The US does not buy oil from the Middle East, but the rest of the world does. Since oil is a global market any disturbance in supply any place in the world impact most oil users.

The most important and cost-effective approach is to reduce our wasteful consumption As environmental scientist and previously Manager of the Solar Office for the State of California I fully support the use of alternative energies. Regrettably, alternative energies can not solve our energy problems. We need to use all practical technologies, but a lot of promising new technologies are not likely to make any useful contribution. Most new technologies fail to reach mass productions because of unforeseen production complexities and costs. At best, I estimate that alternative energies could supply 10% to 15% of our TOTAL energy in the next two decades. We need to do better than that and increase our investment in research and development of promising alternatives. But we must grasp that technology can not, again –can not, solve most of our energy problems. THE CRUCIAL THING IS TO REDUCE DEMAND!

Here are a few examples of alternative energy possibilities: It is disappointing that most of the support for alternative energies is from uninformed or profit motivated people, and not based on facts:

Ethanol consumes almost the same amount of energy is produces. THERE IS AS MUCH GREENHOUSE GASES RELEASED IN PRODUCING CORN ETHANOL AS SAVED IN REPLACING GASOLINE BY IT. Corn-ethanol also increases the price of many foods. Corn ethanol is inefficient, economically wasteful, and we should not continue to subsidize it.
Converting total plants to energy shows promise.

Hydrogen is NOT ALTERNATIVE ENERGY. It is a different form of energy. IT REQUIRES ENERGY to produce it! Currently we use natural gas; what will be the future source to make hydrogen?

Natural gas emits considerably less Greenhouse gases than oil, and oil - less than coal. Large quantities of natural gas are now freely discharged into the atmosphere in many oil producing countries. They don’t have use for it. It may be environmentally better to ship and consume it as energy, instead of using oil and coal, rather than just vent the gas into the environment.

Solar Electric systems: As an electrical engineer I have recently studied solar-electric systems in some depth. There is a myth that eventually roof systems would be available at low cost. I believe this is not the case. These systems are very expensive and produce little energy at the very high cost of one dollar a kWh. The high system price, which is now highly subsidized, can not go down much because of inherent technical and production limitations. Sun energy is relatively weak at ground level requiring large areas to collect it- many square feet of expensive materials. We can do little about the sun.
Large scale desert systems may be useful with more efficient technology. We should continue research to find superior technologies, but current technology should not be subsidized.

Wind energy is the only practical and already economical (6 cent a kWh) technology in mass use globally, but not in the US. We developed it and installed it in California a quarter century ago, but is spreading too slowly in the US because we want ideal systems. Some complained about their “unattractive” look and killing of a few thousands birds a year. The number of birds killed in the US a year from other causes, such as crashing into buildings and cars, is five hundred millions!

For those technology minded, there are inherent reasons why wind energy is now cost effective and used globally, while solar electric energy is expensive and barely used:
Three crucial things work in favor of wind energy:
1)The wind is concentrated by nature and is powerful in many locations, 2) a relatively small wind turbine blade capture the energy from an area fifty times larger than the blade, so the investment in material is low , 3) wind machines are simple technology and easy to produce.
Three things work against solar-electric systems:
1) Sun energy is weak everywhere, 2) collectors must be very large to capture the sun from large areas; 3) technology is complex and energy intensive.

Some US energy details:
We get 40% of our energy from oil, 23 percent from local coal, 23 percent from mostly local natural gas, 8% from nuclear, 3% hydro and 3% renewables.

About 40% of our energy goes to produce electricity, two third of it is wasted in the process.
Eighty percent of our oil energy in transportation is wasted, because car engines by their nature are highly inefficient, and are also gas guzzlers because they are heavy and poorly designed. Our domestic cars are the worse offenders.

Industry is the most efficient user of energy because many companies have worked very hard to reduce their energy use to cut costs.

Last year US paid $500 billions for eight billion barrels of imported oil. Global oil profit to oil exporters $750 billion. Globally, oil companies made 140 billion dollar profit on imported and domestic oil consumption. Try to grasp these immense numbers and the economic, environmental, and military damages associated with energy. (All numbers are for 2005 and are rounded for simplicity).

Conclusions:
Our energy use globally is too high and unsustainable. It must be reduced substantially. But human desire in the “advanced” world certainly, for more, better, bigger, is a serious obstacle to a practical solution.
As appealing as it may be, no individual effort to reduce our dependence on energy can make any dent in this global, massive energy/pollution problem. Only global government regulations and ENFORCEMENT may be able to force humanity to curtail somewhat its insatiable use of energy. Sustainable large citizens’ pressure on governments is crucial to curtail our wasteful consumption of energy and the grave environmental damages it causes.

Matania
4/07