Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
more powerful, lighter, and more efficient prime movers
(see section 8.4), and it became a mass reality with the
increasing affluence accompanied by greater amounts of
leisure time.
The complexity of the systems that have evolved to
produce, convert, distribute, and consume energies in an
affluent civilization is revealed by looking at the essential
attributes of fossil energy industries, the contribution of
nonfossil conversions, the grand patterns of energy utili-
zation, the energy costs of energy, materials, products,
and services, and the considerable, but ultimately futile,
opportunities for energy conservation.
The modern commercial production of fossil fuels can
be charted with acceptable accuracy almost from its very
beginnings. Important coal-mining nations in Europe
and North America have fairly good output statistics
going back to at least 1850, and nineteenth-century hy-
drocarbon production is recorded even more accurately
(USBC 1975; Etemad et al. 1991; Mitchell 1992). The
inevitable uncertainties and omissions are probably less
important than the cumulative errors inherent in con-
verting the raw fuel data to energy equivalents. An often
cited reconstruction of worldwide fossil fuel production
spanning the years 1860-1953 (UNO 1956) probably
overestimates the total pre-WW II output, but the error
is no greater than 5%-10%. Better figures are available for
post-1945 production in the United Nations World En-
ergy Supplies series until 1979 and in the Yearbook of
World Energy Statistics from 1980 as well as in annual
publications by the Energy Information Agency and BP
(2006).
A semilogarithmic plot of global fossil fuel production
shows a rise from about 2.5 EJ (80 GW) in 1850 to 22
EJ (700 GW) in 1900 and nearly 330 EJ (10.44 TW) in
2000, when hydro and nuclear electricity (converted us-
ing thermal equivalents) added about 50 EJ to TPES of
roughly 380 EJ (fig. 9.1). This spectacular rise can be
broken into four distinct periods. There were three
generations of exponential rise averaging 4.3% a until
the beginning of WW I. Then a spell of slow increases
and temporary declines before WW II was followed by a
resumption of vigorous growth (nearly 4.5% a year) that
lasted until OPEC's first round of crude oil price
increases in 1974. During the following decade average
growth slowed down to about 2%, and between 1984
and 2004 it declined further, to about 1.25%. The British
9.1 Fuels and Fossil-Fueled Electricity: Energy
Production and Trade
Perhaps the clearest long-term exponential trend that can
be traced since the onset of the fossil-fueled era is the
growth of the total primary energy supply (TPES),
encompassing fuel extraction and primary electricity gen-
eration. Its smooth progression has been interrupted
only by wars or severe economic setbacks. This aggregate
growth has been driven by, and has in turn stimulated,
increased unit sizes for individual techniques and com-
plete production systems. It has resulted in the gradual
concentration of outputs and in extensive transportation
and distribution systems creating strong national and
international dependencies and a global market. Qualita-
tive changes have been no less obvious. Production of
hydrocarbons has grown much more rapidly than the
mining of coals, and a higher proportion of fuels has
been converted to electricity, the most convenient and
flexible of all energies. Improvements in performance
extend to entire systems. All these trends and accom-
plishments are assessed in this chapter.
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