[Hi, I’ll be right with you. Can’t help getting pretty dirty sometimes.]
We have bad news for you … or good news, depending on how you look at the subject.
We might be running out of our main energy source. In 2020, more than half of our World’s energy needs were met by oil and gas. We will let you guess which one we are running out of … both actually.
It is speculated that the oil and gas reserves we have right now will barely last us another half a century before we run out. So, what’s the game plan here? What are we going to do when we run out?
This is Imagine That and in this episode, we are going to take a look at how humanity would deal with running out of fossil fuels.
Energy is defined in physics as the capacity for doing work, like the electricity that powers our phones, the food that we eat to function, or the chemical energy of oil that makes our cars go.
Yes, this is a gross oversimplification of the subject but bear with us.
Energy has been an essential commodity for every living creature since the dawn of life on Earth. We need it to move, breathe and keep the temperature of our body stable.
Not only that, our ability to harvest energy from natural resources and use it to cook food, warm ourselves during winter and even use it to power tools is what got our species so far.
Finite resources are a crucial part of our lives, economy, and the advancement of human civilization. But you know what is wrong with finite resources … besides the fact that overusing them is probably ruining our planet? They are finite.
Before we get deeper into the subject, let’s get one thing straight. We are not running out of all fossil fuels. We still have plenty of coal to go around, which can be and is used to generate energy. But just as a thought experiment, we are assuming we ran out of all nonrenewable energy sources. No coal, oil, or gas. None.
Plus, even if we are not running out of coal, we should probably stop using it so much.
If we outlive our welcome on this planet and run out of finite resources, what method of generating energy will pick up the slack?
Let’s start with the renewable energy sources we already use. Hydroelectric power stations, wind turbines, and solar panels are already relatively well-established methods at this point and they provide us with a quarter of the electricity we use. So why don’t we just build a bunch of those?
Well, it’s not that simple. All these methods rely on outside factors to work at their full capacity.
Hydroelectric power plants can only be situated in certain places, turbines need wind at the place they are situated and solar panels need constant sunlight. There are places on Earth that don’t get sunlight for months.
[The present and the unborn generations of the United States and the world are heirs to one of the greatest energy discoveries of man, nuclear energy!]
What about nuclear energy? Nuclear plants alone provide around 10% of the electricity we use. This might sound like we are cheating because technically nuclear power too is a finite source. You need uranium to make it work. But it is becoming more and more recyclable, so we will go on and say it is not cheating.
To put it simply, a modest amount of uranium can be split and the released energy can be harvested in nuclear power plants for future use.
Nuclear fusion and fission can provide us with the energy we need, right? …
Well, actually we can only rely on fission for generating energy because fusion just makes things explode and that is the last thing we need in the middle of an energy crisis.
But the energy we generate from such small volumes of materials of resources is extremely promising. Take plutonium for example. It is produced by the nuclear reaction from uranium and is used as fuel for nuclear power plants. Just one gram of it contains 20 billion calories.
So, will nuclear power take the throne of fossil fuels as the main energy resource? Uhhh … maybe?
Nuclear power plants come with a number of problems. They take more than a decade to be built, require a big investment, and are kind of risky.
What happened in Chernobyl and Fukushima are still remembered to this day and the general public’s opinion on them is conflicting.
And lastly, let’s take a look at the future possibilities.
We already mentioned how our ability to extract energy from nature helped us, why don’t we do it in other ways?
A flash of lightning usually holds around 300 million volts of electricity. Can’t we just harvest that?
The issue with this method would be the same as the first three methods we mentioned. We don’t know when or where lightning will hit. And the batteries we have right now need to be charged slowly and lightning is anything but.
Volcanoes can also be promising in the future. An active volcano can generate approximately … well a lot of thermal energy if we find a proper way of harvesting it.
That’s what makes this subject kind of scary and interesting in the first place. We don’t know what we will do and there are countless possibilities.
Thankfully, there are people working on this issue already with more new renewable energy sources being utilized each decade.
But we better pick up the pace … because half a decade is not that much time.
Source: Interesting Engineering
WORD BANK:
run out of sth (v): cạn kiệt cái gì
speculate /ˈspek.jə.leɪt/ [C2] (v): dự đoán
reserves /rɪˈzɝːvz/ (n): trữ lượng
episode /ˈep.ə.soʊd/ [B2] (n): tập
define /dɪˈfaɪn/ [B2] (v): định nghĩa
gross /ɡroʊs/ [C1] (adj): cực kỳ (tiêu cực)
oversimplification /ˌoʊ.vɚˌsɪm.plə.fəˈkeɪ.ʃən/ (n): đơn giản hóa quá mức
bear with sb /ber/ (v): kiên nhẫn với ai
commodity /kəˈmɑː.də.t̬i/ [C1] (n): hàng hóa
since the dawn of sth /dɑːn/ [C1] (adv): từ buổi bình minh của cái gì
finite /ˈfaɪ.naɪt/ [C1] (adj): hữu hạn
get sth straight (v): làm rõ điều gì đó
assume /əˈsuːm/ [B2] (v): giả định
nonrenewable /ˌnɑːn.rɪˈnuː.ə.bəl/ (adj): không tái tạo
outlive sth/sb /ˌaʊtˈlɪv/ (v): tồn tại lâu hơn cái gì, sống lâu hơn ai đó
pick up the slack (idiom) (v): thay thế, thế chỗ, lấp đầy chỗ trống bị bỏ lại
relatively /ˈrel.ə.t̬ɪv.li/ [B2] (adv): khá, tương đối
well-established /ˌwel ɪˈstæb.lɪʃt/ (adj): phổ biến, phát triển mạnh
a bunch of sth /bʌntʃ/ [B1] (quant – informal): nhiều
unborn /ʌnˈbɔːrn/ (adj): chưa được sinh ra
be (the) heir(s) to sth /er/ (v): được thừa hưởng cái gì
cheat /tʃiːt/ [B2] (v): gian lận
modest /ˈmɑː.dɪst/ [B2] (adj): nhỏ
nuclear fusion /ˈnuː.kliː.ɚ ˈfjuː.ʒən/ (n): phân hạch hạt nhân
nuclear fission /ˈnuː.kliː.ɚ ˈfɪʃ.ən/ (n): tổng hợp hạt nhân
the last thing sb need/want (idiom): thứ ai đó không mong muốn
crisis /ˈkraɪ.sɪs/ (n): khủng hoảng
promising /ˈprɑː.mɪ.sɪŋ/ [C1] (adj): đầy hứa hẹn
take the throne of sb/sth /θroʊn/ (v): thay thế ai cái gì
conflicting /kənˈflɪk.tɪŋ/ (adj): mâu thuẫn.
extract /ɪkˈstrækt/ [B2] (v): chiết xuất, khai thác
a flash of lightning (n): một tia sét
pick up the pace (v): tăng tốc
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