Most reputed geologists warn us that we will hit the oil shortage wall within 30 to 50 years, but the fast-rising consumption by the Asians, especially the Chinese, will possibly shorten that timeframe (the Chinese oil consumption has increased 50% from January to July 2004 alone!). We'll have natural gas for about the same period (former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney, head of an American think tank on energy, said in a conference 5 years ago that "between 1,300 and 1,900 new electricity plants should be built in the United States by 2020 in order to meet the ever-increasing demand and that most of them would be powered by natural gas). Only coal will have a longer lifespan: about 2 centuries. But coal is the most polluting resource, produces greenhouse gas emissions and the most harmful fossil energy source for our health; do we really want to go back to the 19th century's resource?
To give you an idea of what coal represents for human health, know that at the end of the 19th century, in London, a collision occurred between a ferry and a tow boat on the Thames River that flows through the city. The toll: 25 deaths. But what is most extraordinary is that only 2 out of 25 died drowning. All the others died poisoned in the water! And the main cause of that toxicity was, you guessed it, coal, then used as THE energetic resource which was the source of the industrial revolution in Great Britain. At the beginning of the 20th century, we have progressively abandoned this combustible for oil, because it was considered to be cleaner. Proof that everything is relative...
In this beginning of the 21st century, China, who does not possess any oil, builds each year electric plants powered by coal equal to the total electrical capacity of the state of California... A California per year and it doesn't still doesn't meet demand, with all the health problems related to coal.
Electricity and hydrogen
Electricity and hydrogen are not energy sources. They are energy transports. So, in order to produce electricity or hydrogen, a form of energy or another is needed. Most plants that produce electricity in the world use a fossil resource for energy. And that will only increase. The majority of the large water streams in the entire world have already been used to produce hydro-electricity (there is over 40,000 dams on the planet) and future projects will be more and more expensive. For example, the plants built in the sixties in Quebec cost us less than 3 cents per kilowatt/hour. Actual projects should cost us over 8 cents and even 10 cents. All the easiest dams to build have been already, costs will only increase in a big way. There is, of course, renewable energy like solar and wind, but these energies cannot replace fossil resources, within a short period of time, to produce the fantastic quantities of ever-increasing energy that we consume.
The mirage of nuclear energy
Last week, I was surprised to read, in an interview done by a journalist from the daily paper La Presse with a representative from the Ballard company (who specialize in research and fabrication of hydrogen batteries) that believed the solution in producing hydrogen was to build new nuclear plants! Like if this solution was viable from an ecologic standpoint!
More and more governments, like President Bush's, are talking about starting to build nuclear plants. However, uranium resources are also depleting, which won't solve the problem at all. If we multiply the number of plants by 10, which wouldn't solve the energy shortage problem, far from it, the uranium 235 reserves which is what is used in actual nuclear plants, will be depleted after 5 to 15 years.
To give you an idea of what coal represents for human health, know that at the end of the 19th century, in London, a collision occurred between a ferry and a tow boat on the Thames River that flows through the city. The toll: 25 deaths. But what is most extraordinary is that only 2 out of 25 died drowning. All the others died poisoned in the water! And the main cause of that toxicity was, you guessed it, coal, then used as THE energetic resource which was the source of the industrial revolution in Great Britain. At the beginning of the 20th century, we have progressively abandoned this combustible for oil, because it was considered to be cleaner. Proof that everything is relative...
In this beginning of the 21st century, China, who does not possess any oil, builds each year electric plants powered by coal equal to the total electrical capacity of the state of California... A California per year and it doesn't still doesn't meet demand, with all the health problems related to coal.
Electricity and hydrogen
Electricity and hydrogen are not energy sources. They are energy transports. So, in order to produce electricity or hydrogen, a form of energy or another is needed. Most plants that produce electricity in the world use a fossil resource for energy. And that will only increase. The majority of the large water streams in the entire world have already been used to produce hydro-electricity (there is over 40,000 dams on the planet) and future projects will be more and more expensive. For example, the plants built in the sixties in Quebec cost us less than 3 cents per kilowatt/hour. Actual projects should cost us over 8 cents and even 10 cents. All the easiest dams to build have been already, costs will only increase in a big way. There is, of course, renewable energy like solar and wind, but these energies cannot replace fossil resources, within a short period of time, to produce the fantastic quantities of ever-increasing energy that we consume.
The mirage of nuclear energy
Last week, I was surprised to read, in an interview done by a journalist from the daily paper La Presse with a representative from the Ballard company (who specialize in research and fabrication of hydrogen batteries) that believed the solution in producing hydrogen was to build new nuclear plants! Like if this solution was viable from an ecologic standpoint!
More and more governments, like President Bush's, are talking about starting to build nuclear plants. However, uranium resources are also depleting, which won't solve the problem at all. If we multiply the number of plants by 10, which wouldn't solve the energy shortage problem, far from it, the uranium 235 reserves which is what is used in actual nuclear plants, will be depleted after 5 to 15 years.