CAMBRIDGEA2GEOGRAPHYREVISION

ENVIRONMENTALMANAGEMENT12.1SUSTAINABLEENERGYSUPPLIES

KEYTERMSANDDEFINITIONSEnergy crisis is a serious shortage of energy that interrupts domestic supplies and impacts on all sectors of the economy.Fossil fuels are fuels consisting of hydrocarbons (coal, oil and natural gas), formed by the decomposition of prehistoric organisms in past geological periods.Renewable (sustainable) energy is sources of energy such as solar and wind power that are not depleted as they are used.Energy mix is the relative contribution of different energy sources to a country’s energy production/consumption.Proved reserves of oil are quantities of oil that geological and engineering information indicate with reasonable certainty can be recovered in the future from known reservoirs under existing economic and operating conditions.

KEYTERMSANDDEFINITIONSReserves-to-production (R/P) ratio is the reserves remaining at the end of any year divided by the production in that year. The result is the length of time that those remaining reserves would last if production were to continue at that level.Supply shock is a significant interruption to supply due to an environmental, economic or political event.OPEC is the abbreviation for the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The current members are Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Libya, Nigeria, Venezuela, Angola and Ecuador.Peak oil production is the year in which the world or an individual oil-producing country reaches its highest level of production, with production declining thereafter.

KEYTERMSANDDEFINITIONSGeopolitics are political relations among nations, particularly relating to claims and disputes pertaining to borders, territories and resources.Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the USA’s reserve supply of oil, which should last for about 3 months in the event of severe interruptions to imported oil.Energy pathways are supply routes between energy producers and consumers, which may be pipelines, shipping routes or electricity cables.Resource nationalisation is when a country decides to place part or all of one or a number of natural resources (e.g. oil and gas), under state ownership.

U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve

KEYTERMSANDDEFINITIONSOil sands, also known as tar sands or extra heavy oil, are naturally occurring mixtures of sand or clay, water and an extremely dense and viscous form of petroleum called bitumen.Environmental impact assessment is a document required by law detailing all the impacts on the environment of an energy or other project above a certain size.Non-renewable energy sources are energy resources that are not replaced, or are replaced only very slowly by natural processes.Biofuels are fossil-fuel substitutes that can be made from a range of agri-crop materials including oilseeds, wheat, corn and sugar.

There are many environmental benefits to replacing oil with biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel. For one, since such fuels are derived from agricultural crops, they are inherently renewable—and our own farmers typically produce

them domestically, reducing our dependence on unstable foreign sources of oil. Additionally, ethanol and biodiesel emit less particulate pollution than traditional petroleum-based gasoline and diesel fuels. They also do not

contribute significant greenhouse gases to the global climate change problem, since they only emit back to the environment the carbon dioxide that their source plants absorbed out of the atmosphere in the first place.

TOPICSUMMARYNon-renewable sources of energy are the fossil fuels and nuclear fuel.Renewable energy can be used over and over again. Renewable energy includes hydroelectric, biomass, wind, solar, geothermal, tidal and wave power.At present, non-renewable resources dominate global energy. The challenge is to transform the global energy mix to achieve a better balance between renewables and non-renewables.

TOPICSUMMARYEnergy demand is primarily governed by the size of a country’s population and its level of economic development.The key factor in supply is energy resource endowment. Some countries are relatively rich in domestic energy resources while others are lacking in such resources and heavily reliant on imports.The use of energy in all countries has changed over time due to a number of factors. The fossil fuels dominate the global energy situation.There has been growing concern about when global oil production will peak and how fast it will decline thereafter.

TOPICSUMMARYBetween 1998 and 2008 global oil production increased 11% compared with 35% for natural gas, 49% for coal, 13% for nuclear energy and 22% for hydroelectricity.There are a number of technologies that can improve the use and prolong the life of fossil fuels. These include coal gasification, clean coal technologies and the extraction of unconventional natural gas.No other source of energy creates such heated discussion as nuclear power.Hydroelectricity dominates renewable energy production.The newer sources of renewable energy that make the largest contribution to global energy supply are wind power and biofuels.The ‘big four’ HEP nations of China, Canada, Brazil and the USA account for almost 50 per cent of the global total.

TOPICSUMMARYThe worldwide capacity of wind energy is approaching 100 000 MW. Global wind energy is dominated by a relatively small number of countries.Biofuels are fossil fuel substitutes that can be made from a range of agri-crop materials including oilseeds, wheat, corn and sugar.Geothermal energy is the natural heat found in the Earth’s crust in the form of steam, hot water and hot rock.From a relatively small base, the installed capacity of solar electricity is growing rapidly. Experts say that solar power has huge potential for technological improvement, which could make it a major source of global electricity in years to come.

Iceland's Nesjavellir geothermal power station. Geothermal plants account for more than 25 percent of the electricity produced in Iceland.

TOPICSUMMARYIn developing countries about 2.5 billion people rely on fuelwood, charcoal and animal dung for cooking.It is the newly industrialised countries that are increasing their energy demand by the fastest rate.Increasing energy insecurity has stimulated exploration of technically difficult and environmentally sensitive areas.Huge tar sand deposits in Alberta, Canada and Venezuela could be critical over the next 50 years as the world’s production of conventional oil falls.As energy companies have had to search further afield for new sources of oil, new energy pathways have had to be constructed.

ADDITIONALWORKS1. Look at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s website (www.iaea.org). Go to the Nuclear Non-proliferation section and then the Chronology of Events subsection.

a. Make a note of the dates the present nuclear powers tested their first atomic bombs.b. What has the IAEA been doing to try to ensure that other countries use nuclear power for generating electricity only and not for preparing to build a nuclear bomb?

2. Look at the latest BP Statistical Review of World Energy (www.bp.com/statisticalreview). Use the energy charting tool to create custom charts for your own analysis of the global energy situation.3. Look at OPEC’s website (www.opec.org) and discuss this organisation’s latest views on the world energy situation.4. What are the government’s current views on nuclear energy in the country in which you live?5. For the country in which you live, find out which forms of renewable energy are used and how much they contribute to total energy production.

SUGGESTEDWEBSITESwww.bp.com/statisticalreviewwww.worldenergy.orgwww.peakoil.netwww.aspo.orgwww.greenpeace.org.ukwww.opec.org