Monografía 2evaluación

Is there enough energy in the world to cover human necessities?

The world population of today is estimated to be around 7 billion people. The world population has had a continuous growth since half way through the fourteenth century. It is expected to reach an oustanding number of 10,5 billion people by 2050. This could reach to overpopulation, which would mean threats to the ecosystem. Problems like global warming and pollution will only get worse by the population expansion. You could already see a big difference between 2000 and 2005 with an amazing 383,047 million people in the entire world in five years. During the twentieth century there was the greatest increase in population ever seen, this was because there was such a change in the way of living of people. It was also due to the mortality rate as it increased because of sanitation and new medicines, also due to an increase in agriculture. It went from the year 1700 to the 2000 ten times more people. All around the world, the worlds population has slowly been declining since 1963 when it was a 2,19%, but growth remains very high in places like Latin America and The Middle East. In some places there is a negative population growth so it balances out.

The USA is probably the place that uses most energy in the whole world. This is due to the amount of people that live there. They use about 87,216 kWh when India only use 6,280 kWh a year. This big difference is because the USA is a very industrialised and India is not.

Regional energy use (kWh/cap.)
	kWh/capita		Population (mil)
	1990	2008	1990	2008
USA	89 021	87 216		305
EU-27	40 240	40 821
Middle East	19 422	34 774		199
China	8 839	18 608		1 333
Latin America	11 281	14 421		462
Africa	7 094	7 792		984
India	4 419	6 280		1 140
The World	19 421	21 283		6 688

This shows us that there are big differences between different countries in energy use. As I said before, this is only due to countries that are more industrialised and are more rich. We could also observe that in China there is almost five times more population than in the USA but they use 1/8 of the energy that the USA use.

The worlds energy consumption increase over 5% in 2010. There was a slight decrease in 2009. This strong increase is the result of two converging trends. Industrialized countries which had experienced decreases in energy demand in 2009 have now recovered, almost having a historical trend. China and India did not change the demand, and have continued their high demand of energy. This drop in 2009 was all due to economic crisis.

In 2008 the total energy that was being consumed in all the world was 132,000 TWh. This is about 15 terawatts. This amount of energy to form with renewable energy would mean you would have to create a specific amount of solar energy, wind power, geothermal energy, biomass, hydropower and ocean energy.

It has been calculated that more than half of the energy has been consumed in the last two decades since the industrial revolution. This is despite advances in efficiency and sustainability. Because of such high increase in the population, the annual CO2  has increased a 10% and so has the gross energy production.

There is an estimation of the remaining non-renewable energy worldwide with the remaining fossil fuels of and estimated 0,4 YJ which is not that much considering what we use every year. The available uranium left is about 2,5 YJ.

Renewable energy comes from natural resources which are naturally replenished. As of 2010 about 16% of global energy consumption comes from renewable energy.

Solar energy is one way out of trouble, our earth receives and incredible supply of solar energy. The sun is just an average star, which has been up there for about 4 billion years. In one minute, it provides enough energy to supply our needs for one year. In one day, it provides more energy than we could consume in 27 years. Apparently you could say that three days of the amount of radiation strikes on our earth, is equivalent to the amount of energy stored in all fossil energy sources. Solar energy has a great potential if everyone agreed with it, but because not everyone wants to make changes in their way of living it makes it more difficult. People don’t want to spend a bit of money just to make better our planet.

            Another source of renewable energy is Hydroelectricity which is electricity generated by hydropower. This is made by the use of the gravitational force of falling or flowing water. It is said, that it is the one most used in the world from renewable energy. It makes 16% of global electricity. It is produced in 150 countries. The bigges hydroelectricity plants are in China, Brazil and in Venezuela. Moving water is a very powerful source of energy responsable for lighting entire cities, even countries. It all started with the Greeks then they created kinetic energy from the water wheels. This source of energy consists of a water reservoir enclosed by a dam, so when the gates open the water will flow through and the turbines will spin and this will make electricity.

           

Wind power is another source of renewable energy. Wind power is growing at a rate of 30% annually, and it has a capacity of 238,000 megawatts. It is used in Europe, Asia and the United States. Wind power ir one of the most promising new energy sources. They are very expensive to build. As we have such technology now a days, wind energy could provide 20% of America’s electricity with turbines installed on less tan 1% of its land area, this would also mean that less tan 5% of the land would be occupied by wind equipment. This would leave 95% for everything else. Windmills have been around for about 1500 years, and now it has become affordable and even cheaper than fossil fuels. There are many places around the world that offer wind-generated electricity for only 2 to 3 cents per kWh. So in one household you could have 25% of your electricity from wind power and only spend $4 to $5 dollars a month. The Price of wind energy is now dropping so more people use it.

Biomass was a predominant fuel until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Now it has a small share in energy supply. It has gone up to about 220 GW used for heating in places like Spain, Germany and Poland. This term of energy refers to organic matters that store energy through the process of photosynthesis. It now exists in one form as plants, it may be transferred through the food chain to animals. This can be converted for everyday use in processes like combustion. This is when it releases the carbon dioxide stored in the plant. Many of these fuels that are used today come in the form of wood products or dried vegetation. It has become a widely used source of renewable energy in the last two decades.

         There are many different forms of renewable energy, some other one could be tidal energy, ocean termal energy, wave energy, and hot fusión energy. Tidal energy uses the gravitational energy from the attraction of the sun., earth and moon. Ocean termal energy is when it exploits the greatest collector of solar energy on earth, the sea. Wave energy is when the waves crash and turbines spin, this is originated by the wind, which is driven by sunlight.  Hot fusión is not 100% renewable because it uses hydrogen, but hydrogen is so abundant that it is considered to be so much that it is limitless, especially for human purposes.

            All renewable energy forms have advantages and disadvantages. We can not really assure that all these energy sources could give us 100% of energy that we need, but it could give us most of it and it would mean that we would not damage the atmosphere like we are doing now. Like most renewable sources, none of these could really compete with inexpensive fossil fuels at the time. 

These sources of energy can really help the change from non-renewable energy to renewable energy. This is environmentally friendly energy, this would improve our planet and would mean that we would not be in danger of not having energy. Most of these sources of energy have low costs and are easy to run. All of these have the potencial to avoid us having trouble when there arent many non-renewable energy sources left.  At the moment these energy sources are a bit more expensive than fossil fuels.

I have reached a conclusion that, yes there is enough energy in the world to cover human necessities, because our necessities in fact are taking a small proportion of the energy we consume, the rest is a waste.