Environmental Problems, Their Causes, and Sustainability 1

Coal-firedelectricitySynthetic oil andgas producedfrom coalCoalOil sandOilNatural gasNuclear power17%58%100%92%86%150%Figure 17-16 CO 2 emissions per unit of energy producedby various fuels, expressed as percentages of emissionsproduced by burning coal directly. (Data from U.S.Department of Energy)286%thick and sticky heavy oil with a high sulfur contentand that smells like asphalt. It was created when conventionaloil escaping from its birthplace was degradedinto tar by bacteria and groundwater.Oil sands nearest the surface are dug up in whatlooks like a war zone by gigantic electric shovels andloaded into house-sized trucks that carry them to upgradingplants. There they are mixed with hot waterand steam to extract the bitumen, which is heated inhuge cookers to convert it into a low-sulfur syntheticcrude oil suitable of refining. Heating the cookers requiresvast amounts of natural gas that reduces the netenergy yield for the oil. Two tons of oil sand are stripmined for each barrel of oil and 3 barrels of water areneeded to extract each barrel of bitumen.Bitumen in deeper deposits of oil sand can be removedby underground processing. This involves usingone well to inject steam into the underground oilsands to loosen the bitumen and another well to suckthe bitumen out. This leaves the land largely undisturbedand eliminates the need for giant tailings pondsto store water, sand, and clay left over from surfacemining.Northeastern Alberta in Canada has about threefourthsof the world’s oil sand reserves, about a tenthof them close enough to the surface to be recovered bysurface or underground mining. Improved technologymay allow extraction of twice that amount.Currently these deposits supply about a fifth ofCanada’s oil needs and this proportion is expected toincrease. Because of the dramatic reductions in developmentand production costs, in 2003 the oil industrybegan counting Canada’s oil sands as reserves of conventionaloil. This means that Canada has 15% of theworld’s oil reserves, second only to Saudi Arabia.U.S. Department of EnergyIf a pipeline is built to transfer some of this crudesynthetic crude oil from western Canada to the northwesternUnited States, Canada could greatly reducefuture U.S. dependence on oil imports from the MiddleEast and add to its income. Other fairly large depositsof oil sands are in Utah, Venezuela, Colombia,and Russia.Bad news. Extracting and producing oil sands has asevere impact on the land and produces more waterpollution, much more air pollution (especially sulfurdioxide), and more CO 2 per unit of energy than conventionalcrude oil. Also, costs are skyrocketing becauseit takes so many highly skilled workers to buildand operate an oil sands site.Another potential source of oil are deposits of oilshale, which are neither oil nor shale rock. Instead, oilshales are fine-grained sedimentary rocks (Figure 17-17,left) containing a solid combustible mixture of hydrocarbonscalled kerogen. It can be distilled from crushedoil shale rock by heating it in a large container to yieldshale oil (Figure 17-17, right). Before the thick shale oilcan be sent by pipeline to a refinery, it must be heatedto increase its flow rate and processed to remove sulfur,nitrogen, and other impurities.Estimated potential global supplies of shale oil areabout 240 times larger than estimated global suppliesof conventional oil. But most deposits are of such a lowgrade that with current oil prices and technology ittakes more energy and money to mine and convertkerogen to crude oil than the resulting fuel is worth.Producing and using shale oil also has a much higherenvironmental impact than conventional oil.Figure 17-18 (p. 362) lists the advantages and disadvantagesof using heavy oil from oil sand and oilshale as energy resources. Overall, do you believe theadvantages outweigh the disadvantages?Figure 17-17 Natural capital: oil shale rock (left) and the shaleoil (right) extracted from it. Big U.S. oil shale projects have beencanceled because of excessive cost.http://biology.brookscole.com/miller14361