Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, 2021a

8 Fossil Fuels 117
Also, the very disruption of losing such a critical resource without
adequate advanced preparation may damage our capabilities. The
short answer is: we simply do not know. The question mark in Figure
8.1 is the most fair statement we can make.
Note that Figure 8.1 is not intended to predict a particular future path.
But it can serve to to counterbalance the prevailing optimism about a
technologically marvelous future by providing a sanity check so that
we might acknowledge that we really do not know. How can it be wrong
to say that we do not know what the future holds? Yet, accompanying
this uncertainty is a glimmer of hope: if the future is so uncertain <strong>and</strong>
unscripted, then perhaps we have the power to write the script <strong>and</strong> set
ourselves onto a viable <strong>and</strong> pleasant future path. If we elect to do so, it
is of paramount importance that we do not ignore limitations imposed
by nature in the process.
8.2 Overview: Coal, Oil, <strong>and</strong> Gas
8.2.1 Coal
Coal—which looks like black rock—is the remnant of plant matter
deposited, turned to peat, <strong>and</strong> heated/compressed by burial to form a
mostly-carbon substance that can be combusted with oxygen to generate
heat. The heat can be used to make steam, which can then power
Or the heat may be
used directly for materials processing, like creating molten steel in blast
furnaces.
Fossil fuels are found in three principal forms: coal, oil (petroleum), <strong>and</strong>
natural gas. 6
6: Think of the three forms of fossil fuels
They are essentially a form of ancient solar energy that
as solid (coal), liquid (petroleum) <strong>and</strong> gas
plants once captured <strong>and</strong> stored as chemical energy to be locked away (natural gas).
underground for many millions of years. 7 Sporadic, low-level use of 7: It is in this sense that the word “fossil” is
fossil fuels dates back millennia, but modern use began in earnest in the appropriate: ancient remnants of life buried
eighteenth century with coal in Britain. Figure 8.2 makes clear that the underground.
use of coal did not really gather steam until the mid-nineteenth century,
when industrialization took off. One may suspect that much of the rise
in the use of fossil fuels is simply a reflection of population growth, but
this turns out to be wrong. The right-h<strong>and</strong> side of Figure 8.2 divides
the amount of fossil fuel use by global population to show that energy
use per capita has also risen steeply over this time period, so that the
exponential-looking phenomenon in the left panel is a combination of 8: 15 TW of fossil fuel use divided by nearly
more people <strong>and</strong> more use per person. Today, the global average rate of 8 billion people is about 2,000 W per person.
use of fossil fuel use is a little over 2,000 W per person. 8 From Figure 8.2, Compare to the U.S. total energy appetite
of 10,000 W per person.
we may say that coal really ramped up starting around 1850, oil around
1915, <strong>and</strong> natural gas around 1970. 9 9: All of these sources were first used much
earlier, but at insignificant levels. Natural
gas makes a meaningful appearance starting
around 1920, but heavy use began 50
years later after pipeline infrastructures
were in place.
machinery or turbines for producing electricity. 10 10: ...covered in Chapter 6
© 2021 T. W. Murphy, Jr.; Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Lic.;
Freely available at: https://escholarship.org/uc/energy_ambitions.