Energy

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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, maglev

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

Bacteria

Certain species of bacteria (such as geobacter) deposit electrons onto electrodes placed in their environment. Much work is still being done on optimizing the systems, but microbial fuel cells already provide a cheap and very resilient form of energy. A $40 system developed by Dr. Peter Girguis and Dr. Helen White has shown itself capable of producing 96W of power[3]. This system used inexpensive charcoal electrodes and can run for years and years without maintenance. Since then, a new strain of geobacter bacteria has been developed that has a power output eight times greater than previously known strains[4].

In a post-scarcity world, microbial fuel cells could be synergized 11px-Wikipedia_logo.jpg with composting toilets to create a system that disposes of human waste, fertilizes plants for food and also generates electricity.