With Energy Independence being a hot topic right now, and the House voting on CO2 regulations, I am going to start a series of posts that I hope will be interesting and thought provoking. Some of what I will write may focus on Coal but that is because I work at a Coal Mine.
Q: What percent of U.S. energy comes from Coal?
A: 50%
Q: What percent of Utah energy comes from Coal?
A: Over 90%
Q: On average, how many pounds of coal does each American use everyday?
A: 20 pounds
- 1/4 of the worlds coal reserves are found in the United States
- Currently, Oil supplies 40% of the United States total energy
- More than 99% of fuel we use in our cars and trucks is from Oil
- Currently, Hydroelectric power is the leading form of renewable energy
- All renewable energy forms (biomass/biofuels, geothermal, hydroelectric, solar, and wind)
currently generate 10% of the United States energy.
(data gathered from the U.S. Department of Energy)
I guess the reason I am going to start these posts is because I see and hear a lot of people jumping for joy because we are 'GOING GREEN'. I am not against green energy but I (for lack of a better word) fear what it will cost, us as Americans, to go green. I also feel that it is unfair for our Federal Government to subsidize the Green Industry while choking out our current energy producers with regulations, fines and oversight. I also wonder how many people think about how a windmill is made; you need steel or other metals which come from a steel plant that needs fossil fuels to make the wind mill with the lowest cost possible.
I really just want all of us to think about the costs that come with going green and decide is it really worth the cost or should the Green Industry and Fossil Fuel Industry try to find a better solution.
One last comment; I was watching a documentary on Global Warming the other night and the were giving figures like, 'the levels of CO2 now are higher than they have ever been in the last 50 million years'; this sounded like a large number 50 million years; I decided to calculate what percent of all earth history is that, well it comes out to be 1% if you use the current age of the earth 4.6 billion years. After realizing that that is not very much, and I am sure they embellished the number a little bit, I thought, we need to see more data than we are and put it into a more realistic time frame.
Well, I hope I get some good comments from this post and the ones to follow.
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7 comments:
Good post, dude. I am also skeptical about this stuff. I will look forward for more posts from you about it.
I think I'm about to open myself up for a lashing here and remember that I consider you guys good friends but I figure that if you are doing a post like this than you are looking for some dialog so here it goes.
So even if by some remote chance this whole global warming thing is fake, how can creating a self sustaining alternative to something that you have to pull out of the earth and burn be that bad.
And of course you'll have to use fossil fuels and steel to make wind mills but once its built than you have something that makes energy on its own. Right?
I think the whole "green" thing is beyond ridiculous. Now I have all the extra "coal facts" to back my opinion. Thanks for sharing some of your intelligence!
Brad,
We are totally not friends anymore! Just Kidding!
I do not want to be miss understood, I do realize that humans are having a negative affect on the planet; the question is how much and what should we do about it. I agree with you that renewable energy sources are good and eventually we will run out of coal, oil, and natural gas so we need to plan on that and prepare. My thoughts are; biofuels are a waste of tax payers money, hydroelectric can not get any bigger because we have built pretty much all of the dams we possibly can, and wind and solar are very expensive and inconsistent. The Federal Government uses tax dollars to pay for the construction of wind and solar farms but hell would have to freeze over for the Feds to help a coal mine or an oil company. If renewable energy is viable then the private sector should be able to finance it. Maybe nuclear energy is the answer, I really don't know. In summary, I think renewable energy is good but I do not think what we currently have is the answer and we should push forward with caution while we have an ailing economy. Let me know your thoughts, because I don't think I am right these are just my opinions.
So, I'll throw my hat in the ring. Whatever that means.
So, I agree with Brad on a what he mentions. Why would you not use this opportunity when there is labor force available to try to ween our dependence on limited energy sources.
Granted, not everyone wants a windmill farm in their backyard, yet, I heard rumor that areas in the Great Salt Lake, or the north shore could support wind farms that could produce large amounts of power. A quick google search turned up these two pages:
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D98SJN900.htm
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20061004/ai_n16759805/
And if it takes some fossil fuels to produce the steel, manufacture the parts, and transport the windmill, wouldn't the long term benefits be more than worth it?
There is large talk of Solar out here in Colorado, mainly due to our number of sunny days per year. There are solar panels sprouting up everywhere. There are huge fields of them out by the airport, as well as surrounding multiple government buildings. I don't know statistics, but I have heard, through work, that if you install enough panels on your house, you can actually sell power back to the provider.
I do agree that bio fuels do not work for us, at least not from the corn crop that we try to get it from. Look at Brazil, they use sugar can, which is easily processed into bio fuels. There is work to try and convert algae and grasses to bio fuels here. If we could get a material that is easily processed, such as the sugar in Brazil, I think bio fuels could work.
Sorry for going on and on. I'm by no means and expert, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn this week. The time to put the money and forces into alternative fuels is now, when we have the manpower for it.
Wow. Good comments everyone, and without being obtrusive and combative also!
I think everyone needs to understand how much our current resources provide for our current needs, but when push comes to shove, there is only so much of those resources available and it would be nice to have some "back-ups" for when they will no longer provide adequately for us. If we toss in the towel and never search or experiment with other forms of power we'll be "S.O.L." when what we have runs out.
I say, use what we have while we have it, but all the while be preparing and creating other options for when we'll need them-kind of like having food storage. We build up food storage for when our resources for our physical needs are unable to be met due to a disaster or job loss, etc. and then we have something to fall back on when we need it. We even have to use a bit of the food storage while we rely on our regular sustenance, to experiment with it if a time comes that we might need it and so that it doesn't go bad and go to waste as well. Hopefully my crappy analogy made sense to someone, at least it did to me.
I 100% agree with you Jeremy! To continue your analogy with food storage; we do not buy more food to store when we do not have money to do so, such as times when the economy sucks. We need good affordable solutions. Neil, you brought up Brazil using sugar cane. At first one would agree that this is fantastic, but after contemplating what the ramifications are, one would realize that sugar cane also has a negative affect on the earth like climate change does. When farmers can make a lot of money on sugar cane they try to grow more and more which causes more deforestation (amazon). When all farmers are focusing on sugar cane, Brazil then needs to import more food for the people, which in turn makes other countries expand farming and increasing deforestation. With all of this deforestation more CO2 is released into the atmosphere from the decaying plants and then climate change increases.
All I am saying is that there is probably no solution that has no affect. We need to use our brains to find the most effective solution.
Thank you everyone for your comments. I hope we have all learned more about the issues, I know I have. We need more civilized debates on these types of issues; I don't think anyone is right or wrong, we all need to learn more and make the most educated decisions possible.
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