Type: lecturenote
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History of Energy Use 2
Reading Notes:
Chapter 6: Fossil-Fueled Civilization
Source: Smil, Vaclav. 2017. Energy and civilization: a history. 2nd ed. Cambridge (Mass.): the MIT press.
- The Energy Shift and Its Consequences
- Modern vs. Preindustrial Societies: Old societies used instant sun energy, which was always coming in. Modern life runs on diffing up huge energy reserves (fossil fuels) that will run out and cannot be quickly replaced.
- Fossil Fuel Power: Even by 2015, fossil fuels still made up 86% of the worl’s main energy supply.
- The Good: Using this energy led to big improvements in farming, factories, transport, and communication. This helped create wealth and a better average life for many people.
- The Bad: This huge energy use has caused serious problems. The main worry is wide-ranging environmental damage, especially fast global farming.
- How Much Energy We Use
- Production Boom: Producing fossil fuels had grown incredibly fast. For example, natural gas production multiplied by 1,000 times from the 1880s to 1991.
- Getting Better: We are now much better at converting energy. The average efficiency worldwide went from only 20% in 1900 to over 50% by 2015.
- Real Energy Increase: Because of this improved efficiency, the actual useful energy available grew by more than 30 times during the 20th century.
- Personal Use: In rich countries, people now use much more energy than ever before. For example, the USA,‘s annual energy use per person was nearly 300 GJ/year in 2000.
- Energy in Work and Life:
- Farming: Modern agriculture needs fossil fuels for machines and indirectly for fertilizers. The process that makes nitrogen fertilizer (Haber-Bosch) uses about 1% of all global energy, but it is key to almost 40% of the world’s food supply.
- Factories: Electricity changed factories dramatically, especially by letting workers use small motors on individual machines instead of central steam power systems. Steel production is the world’s biggest energy-consuming industry sector.
- Travel: New transport methods are much faster and more reliable. Trains cna go over 100 km/h. Jet planes allow people to travel between almost any major cities in the world within one day.
- Communication: Almost all modern communication methods, like telephone, radio, and film, depend on electricity. Since 1970s, tiny, powerful microprocessors have been used everywhere, leading to a huge growth in personal computers and mobile phones.
- Wealth, Well-bein- and the Environment
- Slowing Down Energy Use: In countries like the USA, France, and Japan, energy use per person has generally stopped growing since the mid-1980s or 1990s, even through their economies kept growing. This is partly because they moved energy-heavy industries abroad (offshoring).
- The Energy-Life Link: Getting rich requires a lot more energy. However, once a country reaches a certain level, using even more energy does not really make the quality of life (health, education, etc.) any better.
- Global Warming: The biggest environmental issue is that burning fossil fuels releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide. Scientists agree that this human-caused increase in greenhouse gases is causing rapid climate change.