Renewable energy

Renewable energy comes from resources that can be renewed in a reasonable amount of time and not from fossil fuels, which will run out. Renewable energy includes wind power, solar power, hydropower, biomass, biofuel and geothermal energy. I have already written detailed blog posts about wind power and biofuel so this is just a fairly quick post to summarize the remaining alternative energies that exist for humanity to use instead of crude oil.

According to renewable global status report, 19% of the global energy consumption in 2014 already came from renewable energy and 22% of all our electricity was generated from energy produced by renewable energy sources (Sawin, 2014). Worldwide investments in renewable energy were $214 billion in 2013 with particular interest in renewable energy shown by USA and China (Sawin, 2014). The main advantage of renewable energy is that production of energy this way is much more environmentally friendly and causes less GHGs emissions in comparison to the conventional crude oil recovery methods. Furthermore renewable energy is not geographically constrained unlike oil, deposits of which are only found in particular countries on Earth. Thus each country can generate one type or another of renewable energy making it independent of the volatile oil prices, economically more stable and secure as well as providing energy securities regardless of geopolitics conflicts occurring elsewhere in the world and making the country “green”.

Below there is a video of how renewable energy is produced by all the methods that I have not discussed in details however I feel like a little summary of each method is nevertheless required in this post. Firstly solar power produces energy by converting the thermal energy emitted by the sun and well as the light energy into electricity. This is mainly done using solar panels. Hydropower uses the kinetic energy produced by flowing rivers and oceans on our planet to convert it to electricity. This is done using dams and it is possible because water is much more dense than air thus any flowing body of it produces kinetic energy that can be converted and other types of energy making it more useful for humans. Biomass is the biological material that one gets from currently living or recently living organisms on our planet via either combustion thus converting biomass to thermal energy or by converting it to different forms of biofuels by biochemical processes. Finally geothermal energy uses the fact that the Earth’s core is much warmer than the surface and regardless of the season or atmospheric temperatures, the temperature below the surface is always warm. This is partially due to the radioactive decay of the minerals found below the Earth’s surface that release a lot of heat during the decay. Thermal energy derived from the decay can also be converted into electricity and other useful energies for the society.

Renewable energy has seen increased popularity in our society especially as oil prices are rising and crude oil is running out. Many more investments and research have been done into different types of renewable energy. Even the developing countries and emerging economies are now starting to explore the field of alternative energies treating it as long-term investments into the future. Below there is an example of an advert from a brochure in South Africa promoting renewable energy.

Figure 1.

Source. South African brochure advert promoting renewable energy.

Arctic Prospective Oil Resources

In a world desperately thirsty for oil, the Arctic and its resources seems a very appealing option. With increasing demand for oil and increasing prices, there has been higher interest shown regarding the Arctic on the global scale. In 2008 US Geological Survey estimated that the are north of the Arctic Circle has 90 billion barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and 44 billion barrels of natural gas. This represents 13% of the expected undiscovered oil in the world (USGeological Survey, 2008).

The Arctic Circle appears to encompass 6% of the Earth’s surface, one third of which is found above sea level and another one third is in continental shelves beneath less than 500 m of water. The rest is deep ocean basins historically covered by ice (Gautier, 2009). Deep oceanic waters are known to have low oil potential at the moment but the continental shelves of the Arctic potentially have very high recoverable oil hidden within them. Until very recently the Arctic was seen as a very remote and technically difficult region to access with high costs of oil recovery. Whilst low-cost recovery oil was still widely available, little exploration was done in the Arctic. Some offshore wells have been drilled such as those in Mackenzie Delta, the Barents Sea, offshore Alaska and the Sverdrup Basin but even these were seen as economically unsustainable and hence were abandoned (Gautier, 2009).

However now there is an increasing interest in the Arctic due to various factors. Firstly after decades of substantial ice melting, the Northwest east passage can become a viable transportation route hence the Arctic becomes more accessible following the major decline in ice cover since 1987 (Harsem, 2011). Secondly in 2007 Russia planted a deep sea flag at the North Pole- Arctic region as an important evidence of leadership of the Kremlin. Third oil prices increases push for new discoveries to sustain high demand for oil. Finally in 2008 US geological study stated that about ¼ of the world’s undiscovered oil is probably located in the Arctic.

The exploration of the Arctic oil is still considered more technically challenging than any other environment. The USGS estimates that 84% of the oil and gas there is located offshore which means it is more difficult and expensive to recover than the oil and gas from onshore oil fields. Furthermore the US Geological Survey (USGS) did not consider economic factors such as the effects of permanent sea ice or oceanic water depth in its assessment of undiscovered oil and gas resources (USGeological Survey, 2008). Nevertheless all these difficulties don’t seem to scare the northern countries in the race to obtain these territories with the aim of exploration them for resources. The four Arctic countries- Russia, US, Canada and Norway are already looking to expand their activities in the Northern region whilst Iceland and Greenland are looking at becoming oil and gas producers. Figure 1 below shows the oil fields that are assessed by the USGS in their 2008 report about the Arctic oil. It is obvious that with oil being as highly valued resource as gold, new formations and the right of exploration could create major geopolitical conflicts between the countries involved. It is especially worrying as Russia and USA are involved- historical opponents and competitors against each other so perhaps we have a worry of another cold war approaching!? Russia has already landed some deep sea flags in the area to try and claim the northern territories.

Figure 1.

Source: USGS, 2008. Location of Arctic Basins assessed by the USGS.

Whilst little research is done to this day regarding the Arctic, its resources and whether they are economically sustainable to recover, evidence seems to suggest that the region certainly has a fair amount of unexplored resources buried under the surface. All of the northern countries that have potential access to the area are currently undertaking research into the area and its resources. Perhaps the Arctic oil is our solution to the problem of scarcity of oil and will push the peak oil point further away from what it could be otherwise hence oil is a worry for a very distant future. Also perhaps it could mean that non-conventional oil resources do not need to be explored just yet meaning high costs and likewise renewable energy is not the only solution.

Deathly Hollows

Before I move onto non-conventional oil and renewable energy, I just thought I’d a little blog post of the “documentary” I have watched about peak oil the other day. This program was filmed by National Geographic and it explores what would happen to our world if all of the oil run out immediately and before we adapted to other ways of obtaining energy. Although it is classed as a documentary, it is more of a fictional horror film of how society would not manage without oil. Most of it is obvious anyway but it is a good little horror film of the potential oil apocalypses and the deathly hollows of the absence of oil for our civilization today. I think it should be taken with a pinch of salt however it does portray well how important oil is in our every day life today which we might not even always realize.