Energy and the Environment

Robert A. Ristinen, Jack J. Kraushaar, Jeffrey T. Brack

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781119800279
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Energy

Energy and the Environment

Examine the tension between energy production and consumption and environmental conservation with the latest edition of this widely read text

In the newly revised Fourth Edition of Energy and the Environment, the authors deliver an insightful and expanded discussion on the central topics regarding the interaction between energy production, consumption, and environmental stewardship. The book explores every major form of energy technology, including fossil fuels, renewables, and nuclear power, wrapping up with chapters on how energy usage affects our atmosphere, and the resulting global effects.

The latest edition includes new figures and tables that reflect the most recent numbers on conventional and renewable energy production and consumption. The history and current status of relevant U.S. and international governmental energy legislation is discussed along with the text. Readers will also find:

• A thorough introduction to the fundamentals of energy and energy use in industrial societies, including the forms of energy, scientific notation, and the principle of energy conservation
• A comprehensive exploration of fossil fuels, including petroleum, coal, and natural gas, along with their history, world production, and remaining future resources
• Discussion of the pros and cons of nuclear power, it's rise in China, and it's fall elsewhere, and a history of power plant accidents
• A practical discussion of heat engines, including their thermodynamics, energy content of fuels, and heat pumps and engines
• In-depth examinations of new innovations and rapidly increasing use of renewable energy sources, including solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass energy, along with updates on battery technology and alternative energy storage techniques
• Detailed discussions of the atmospheric effects of our energy usage on scales both local and global; reports from the International Panel on Climate Change; the carbon budget, carbon capture and storage, and geoengineering

Perfect for either graduate or upper-level undergraduate students of physics, environmental science, and engineering, Energy and the Environment is also an indispensable resource for anyone professionally or personally interested in climate change, energy policy, and energy conservation.

1
Energy Fundamentals, Energy Use in an Industrial Society

1.1 Introduction

Energy enters our everyday lives in many different ways. The energy in the food we eat maintains our body temperature and lets us walk, talk, lift things, and toss Frisbees. The use of energy in food has been essential for the existence of all humankind and animals throughout our evolution on this planet. In some developing countries, the supplying of food for energy and nutrition is a difficult task that requires most of the waking hours of the population. Food acquisition is just as essential in the more developed countries, but because of the greater mechanization of agricultural production, the effort of only a relatively small number of persons is devoted to obtaining food. This leaves most of the rest of us free to pursue other activities throughout our lives.

Energy in forms other than food is also essential for the functioning of a technical society. For example, in the United States, many times more energy in the form of engine fuel goes into the agricultural enterprise than is obtained in the useful food Calorie content of the food produced. Prodigious amounts of energy are also used to power automobiles, heat homes, manufacture products, generate electricity, and perform various other tasks. In order for our society to function in its present patterns, vast amounts of coal, natural gas, and oil are extracted from the earth and burned to provide this energy. To a lesser extent, we also derive energy from hydroelectric plants, nuclear reactors, electric wind generators, and geothermal plants, and, of course, we all benefit enormously from the energy obtained directly from the sun.

The fossil fuels, coal, natural gas, and oil, supply about 81% of the energy used in the United States. These resources evolved hundreds of millions of years ago as plant and animal matter decomposed and was converted under conditions of high temperature and pressure under the earth's surface into the hydrocarbon compounds that we now call fossil fuels. Since the beginning of the machine age, industrial societies have become increasingly dependent on fossil fuels. A 150 years ago, the muscular effort of humans and animals played an important role in the American economy, and firewood supplied most of the heat energy. Now only a small fraction of our energy comes from firewood, and we rely much less on the physical effort of people and animals. The process by which we have moved to our present dependence on coal, oil, and natural gas is illustrated in Figure 1.1, where the energy consumed in the United States each year from various sources is shown in terms of quadrillion British thermal units (QBtu) for the years 1850 to 2019. The definition of QBtu will be given in Section 1.6.

Figure 1.1 Various forms of energy consumed in the United States since 1850. This type of graph is called a semilogarithmic plot, an explanation of the scales is given in the Appendix.

Source: Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, U.S. Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census, 1975; U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review, October 2020. The wood data set from 1850 to 1950 is from the first source. The wood data set from 1950 to 2019 is from the second source; it includes wood, black liquor (a byproduct of the wood‐based paper production process), and wood waste.

Should we be concerned that so much of our energy is now coming from fossil fuels? Here are two of many factors that should cause concern.

First, the fossil fuel resource is limited in amount. The fossil fuels were produced by solar energy hundreds of millions of years ago, and when they are gone, there will be no more. It is true that the fuels are still being formed, but at an entirely negligible rate compared to the rate at which we are consuming them. We first began consuming the fossil fuels at an appreciable rate only about 150 years ago. How long will they last? On a global scale, total use of fossil fuels is still rising. In the United States, only the use of coal has significantly decreased in recent years. We will still have some coal for a few centuries, but at our present rate of use, natural gas and oil will be in short supply more quickly. While modern extraction techniques have increased the available global supply of these fuels, it is not enough to change the overall situation presented in Figure 1.2, which shows the narrow blip of our fossil fuel use set against a...