(Book Review for Energy in Everyday Life class GEDN049_41)
Daniel Yergin’s book, The Quest, may be a thoughtful writing that he points to a central question of what is going to fuel transportation happen within the future? The book starts with the Persian Gulf war of 1990 till 1991 and goes up to present which doesn't have an equivalent quite material. Since 1990, the planet has been changing tons, but the events and characters are less striking and too early for the people to form a dramatic narrative towards it. Generally, this book is trying to open up the mind of the reader towards what is going in a way forward for energy appear as if over subsequent 50 years. Furthermore, he also addressing the very issue that we will never foreseen how our future are going to be, such as, are we running out of oil? Is gas might be the answer? How about global warming, is it a danger? Can solar energy be the solution? With this type of issues coming within the mind, he addresses all of those during a chapter or series that blend histories and a few analysis.
To start, he mentioned about the energy’s centrality to the fashionable world. For many of human history, the labour and animals were the only source of energy, which that symbolizes the bounds on what proportion energy we could use. Since the late 18th and early 19th century, humans consume the facility of steam and coal to run machines. Within the year 1957, an excellent engineer who is understood as the father of the nuclear Navy, made a calculation that a century earlier, within the early years of the economic era, 94% of the world’s energy was provided by the labour men and animals. Meanwhile the remaining 6% made up by water and fossil fuels. Then after several years, the amount had reversed. Coal, oil and gas supplied 93% of the world’s energy. He also acknowledged that the majority of the materials adanced of the modern age would be impossible without this type of energy revolution.
On the opposite side, the trend of energy usage is continuously increasing. this will be seen because the incontrovertible fact that global GDP is currently reaching 65 trillion dollars and should rise to 130 trillion in only few decades ahead. This might find yourself the energy consumption that would increase 30 to 40 with the increment of worldwide GDP. The very issue on finding the relying energy to run them is getting serious. Lately, predictions of the top of oil have thus far been wrong and Yergin predicts they're going to still be wrong. However, Yergin reminds us, a warning that the planet would run out of fossil fuels sometime after 2000, probably by 2050. Besides, oil production today is large at about five times greater than it had been in 1957. Addition, coal remains the central source of electricity rather than fuel. With that, fossil fuels still make up about 80% of the world’s energy mix. With natural gas, shale gas and new technologies becoming more relevant and significant, fossil fuels are likely to play central role for this coming decades.
Over the past decade, we've seen a sequence of initiatives to scale back oil dependence in transportation like biofuels, electric, or gas vehicles. In the US, they constitute about 10 percent of motor fuel on a volumetric basis. Around 2008, the electrical car increased themselves new prominence and commitment even though it's not a replacement concept by then. From now of view, electricity seems destined to play the efficient transportation role in upcoming years. Yet, it's informed that expectations vary whether the electrical car are going to be a distinct segment vehicle or a mass market product considering it's very costly. Then comes the competitor with the natural gas. In some parts of the world, natural gas has been an alternate fuel for an extended time. Its prospect of abundant volumes of low-cost natural gas made them a replacement contender in transportation market. All this results in the very issue, will natural gas gain share in transportation or by generating electricity that goes into electric vehicles?
Not only that, he also points out the difficulties of expanding other source of energy like wind, solar, bio-fuels and nuclear beyond a distinct segment market. Solar and wind energy, however, are still very expensive and maybe more crucially intermittent. It is an enormous investment. Nuclear energy on the other hand perhaps the foremost promising carbon-free technology to scale up, but it too has its problems. It needs huge start-up costs, waste disposal and in fact the fears of the general public about nuclear catastrophe. Furthermore, politics make it worse since they're inevitable part of the energy business. Government holds the large role to play since the general public costs and benefits are often affected. Hence this issue cannot come off the fence very easily.
Thus needless to say, he clearly expects renewable sources of energy generation, instead of fossil fuels to be of growing significance in years to return. Even though a lot of his words in the book discussing the longer term access to fossil fuels are vastly positive. Overall, this book demonstrates that Yergin is primarily being optimist when it involves the future of energy security. Referring back to the past, he demonstrates with apparently difficulties; declines in oil production, onset global climate change, impact of Middle East politics upon petroleum. He concludes with the words that creativity is at the hearts of the quest, it's the maximum amount about the human spirit as it about technology which is why this is often a quest that will never end.
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