Energy

From AdCiv
Revision as of 03:33, 23 April 2010 by Balatro (Talk | contribs)

Jump to: navigation, search
The sun (image from SOHO spacecraft)

The energy available from solar and geothermal alone far exceed our current and likely future energy requirements and could sustain humanity indefinitely. The amount of energy that falls on the earth from the sun in a minute is what humans currently use in a year across all nations and industries.

Steadily increasing energy efficiency 11px-Wikipedia_logo.jpg due to improved system design and increasing cultural awareness should become a significant factor in our energy usage.

The issue currently is commercial economics. The bottom line is that with the current economic framework it is still 'cheaper' to pump oil out of the ground and burn it to produce power than use other more plentiful, renewable and environmentally benign sources. These alternative energy sources are sitting right in front of us waiting to be harnessed. It may be that open-source methods can by-pass the incumbent economic system to enable plentiful, environmentally-friendly power.

Solar two cropped.jpg

We have these major sources of energy available to us, in no particular order and not including fossil fuels that we currently rely on for the majority of our energy today:

Solar:
[1] 11px-Wikipedia_logo.jpg photovoltaics 11px-Wikipedia_logo.jpg, solar thermal 11px-Wikipedia_logo.jpg (such as power tower & [1], ocean thermal energy conversion 11px-Wikipedia_logo.jpg, SHPEGS and solar updraft tower 11px-Wikipedia_logo.jpg). Prospective: Space solar power 11px-Wikipedia_logo.jpg including solar power satellite 11px-Wikipedia_logo.jpg, ubiquitous PV and stratospheric solar array

Wind:
land-based wind turbine, off-shore wind turbine. Prospective: jet-stream sky windmills 11px-Wikipedia_logo.jpg

Ocean:
wave, tidal, ocean currents

Hydro-electric

Nuclear power:
fission Nuclear fission fission http://www.adciv.org/upload/thumb/4/4d/Wikipedia_logo.jpg/11px-Wikipedia_logo.jpg (currently employed). Prospective: nuclear fusion 11px-Wikipedia_logo.jpg, accelerator-driven thorium-fuelled energy amplifier 11px-Wikipedia_logo.jpg, and Travelling wave reactor 11px-Wikipedia_logo.jpg

Geothermal:
shallow geothermal heat pumps 11px-Wikipedia_logo.jpg, volcanic related geothermal and deep geothermal - Enhanced geothermal systems 11px-Wikipedia_logo.jpg (EGS). See also Future of Geothermal Power (in the US) published by MIT 11px-Wikipedia_logo.jpg and Google's funding of enhanced geothermal [2]

Biomass (carbon-neutral):
biofuel (algae), compost methane, fermented crop waste, algae, sustainable wood, and clean burning of: organic waste, animal dung and rubbish