Global energy consumption in the last half century has increased very rapidly and is expected to continue to grow over the next 50 years. However, we expect to see significant differences between the last 50 years and the next. The past increase was stimulated by relatively “cheap” fossil fuels and increased rates of industrialization in North America, Europe, and Japan; yet while energy consumption in these countries continues to increase, additional factors are making the picture for the next 50 years more complex. These additional complicating factors include the very rapid increase fuel economy in energy use in China and India (countries representing about a third of the world’s population); the expected depletion of oil resources in the not-too-distant future; and the effect of human activities on global climate change. (more…)
The relationship of gross national product per capita to energy consumption per capita for most countries of the world correlat ...
The long-term prospects for the U.K. economy are inevitably uncertain, and the most recent Department of Energy long-term proje ...
Transportation is another sector that has increased its relative share of primary energy use. This sector has serious concerns ...
The development of the ‘‘new’’ wind and solar technologies is of great importance for the future contribution of RESs to energy sup ...
To determine the effects of past climate trends on global energy consumption, the econometric equations providing the degree day el ...
The long-term prospects for the U.K. economy are inevitably uncertain, and the most recent Department of Energy long-term projection puts forward three scenarios for the next 30 years with GDP growth rates of roughly 2.5, 1.5 and 0.5% p.a. The highest value corresponds to slightly less than the 1948 - 72 average, the central value is close to the long-run average over the last 80 years, and the lowest figure is similar to the performance during the current recession since 1973. (more…)
Following the recent completion of three nuclear power plants, there is now some 9.6 GW of nuclear capacity in the United Kingd ...
Global energy consumption in the last half century has increased very rapidly and is expected to continue to grow over the next ...
Most major oil and gas firms engage in both upstream (i.e., hydrocarbon exploration and production) and downstream (i.e., hydro ...
Energy is consumed by various segments of the economy, including households, commercial establishments, manufacturing enterpris ...
World energy use has increased steadily over the past several decades. Much of the growth in world energy consumption has been ...
One of the most important aerodynamic effects on energy consumption required to keep a body moving through a fluid is the aerodynamic drag force. The drag must be overcome by the thrust of a propulsion mechanism, which in turn is consuming energy. Everything else being equal, the higher the drag, the more energy is consumed. Therefore, for energy efficiency, bodies moving through a fluid should be low drag bodies. To understand how to obtain low drag, we have to first understand the nature of drag, and what really causes it. (more…)
The next time you hear an airplane flying overhead, look up, and pause for a moment. What you see is a machine that is heavier than ...
Plate tectonics is conceptually simple. It treats Earth’s outer shell as made up of approximately 15 rigid plates, about 100 km thi ...
The most fundamental process from an energy systems standpoint is heat transfer to (or from) a working fluid. This unit operation t ...
Mixing is a process where two or more liquids or gas phase components are brought together and combined to form a uniform compositi ...
Hydraulic turbines have two main classifications: impulse and reaction. The impulse turbine generally uses the velocity of the wate ...
After lighting, personal computers (PC) and monitors have the highest energy use in office environments. Studies have shown that the power management of computers and monitors can significantly reduce the energy consumption per capita, saving hundreds or thousands of dollars per year in electricity costs. The energy consumption of computers and monitors will be needed by the amount of energy to work and how they are used is determined.
The installed base of approximately 71 million personal computers and 2.5 million workstations in 2000 consumed 17.4 and 1.8 TWh, respectively. (more…)
Green computing has forced even the largest companies to rethink and refocus to use energy more efficiently. We have low-power ...
It is known that laser printers print faster, but swallow a large amount of energy, even if the printer is in the energy saving ...
Power generation and distribution networks are built with spare capacity to meet peak periods of energy consumption is usually ...
The office copy machines (photocopier) is everywhere. Seven millions unit are in used in the United States and more than 1.5 mi ...
The pace of innovations in batteries has not matched the remarkably fast evolution in the development of portable electronic techno ...
The volatility in oil prices since the early 1970s is a remarkable feature of energy economics. Annual fluctuations in the oil price level, as measured by the absolute value of year-to-year price changes, averaged only 1% in the 1949–1970 period; from 1970 to date, these fluctuations increased dramatically, reaching an order of magnitude of 30% per year. Even in the relatively stable period from 1986 to 1997, oil prices were more volatile than other primary commodities. (more…)
In the post-World War II period, until the beginning of the 1970s, oil price fluctuations were very small. From 1949 to 1970, a ...
The focus of this section is on the quantitative assessment of the impact of oil price fluctuations on inflation. For that purp ...
The evolution of oil prices is typically subject to a very high degree of uncertainty, given the extremely volatile nature of c ...
Most major oil and gas firms engage in both upstream (i.e., hydrocarbon exploration and production) and downstream (i.e., hydro ...
There are many possible reasons for suspecting market failure in a product like gasoline. Throughout the world, the exploration ...
Federal Excise Taxes placed on specific energy sources tend to reduce energy demand for these energy sources in both the short and the long run. The federal government imposes excise taxes on almost all petroleum products (including petroleum additives) and coal (see Table 1). The federal government also imposes federal excise taxes on many transportation uses of methanol, ethanol, natural gas, and propane and imposes a fee on electricity produced from nuclear power plants and nuclear power electricity. (more…)
Economists have overwhelmingly favored fuel taxes over fuel economy standards as a means to reduce fuel or gasoline consumption ...
Taxation of energy in the United States, the federal government does not impose an energy tax or a general sales tax that is br ...
Analysis of future light-duty transportation energy use require estimates of the impact of fuel prices on travel and fleet fuel ...
Various provisions in the federal income tax treat energy producers more or less favorably than other businesses. By changing t ...
A number of countries have vehicle tax incentives programs designed to reward purchasers and owners of alternative fuel-efficient v ...
Power generation and distribution networks are built with spare capacity to meet peak periods of energy consumption is usually a time when demand for heating and / or cooling is particularly acute accommodate. Normally, peak electricity demand in some cases last just a few hours every year. And while the networks have always had to cope with peaks in recent years, the electricity consumption during peak hours has increased dramatically in the afternoon. (more…)
Here, the sensitivity of energy demand to climate is measured two ways. The first method uses elasticities that provide simple summ ...
HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning) systems vary depending on the complexity of room units size from single rooms ...
To determine the effects of past climate trends on global energy consumption, the econometric equations providing the degree day el ...
After lighting, personal computers (PC) and monitors have the highest energy use in office environments. Studies have shown tha ...
The office copy machines (photocopier) is everywhere. Seven millions unit are in used in the United States and more than 1.5 mi ...
Although technology change (usually involving an improvement in energy efficiency) is not inherently a geographic process, it does not occur uniformly over geographic space. Consequently, mathematical modeling and behavioral and innovation diffusion studies by geographers have improved our understanding of the pervasive phenomenon of technology energy efficiency change in energy markets. Similarly, creative government policies in Germany since 1990 have led to a faster rate of adoption of renewable energy sources, compared to the United States. (more…)
The development of the ‘‘new’’ wind and solar technologies is of great importance for the future contribution of RESs to energy sup ...
Renewable energy sources cannot run out and causes so little damage to the environment that its use does not need to be restric ...
In Europe, modern renewable energy sources technologies were explored thoroughly for the first time after the oil embargo/ price cr ...
Government expenditures on energy R&D, energy conservation have risen steadily over the past decade, but only two countries, Japan ...
"Spain has great potential but lack geothermal legislation and investment." Besides being clean, renewable and friendly, easily man ...
Geographers researching the development of nuclear power have shifted emphasis from commercialization, cost, risk, public acceptance, and power plant siting in the 1950s through the early 1980s to reactor decommissioning and radioactive waste disposal since then. With nuclear power development on hold in most countries, attention has also been given to nuclear weapons facilities and weapons proliferation in an increasingly dangerous world. (more…)
Nuclear fission and fusion Research and Development continues to account for nearly half of the total spending by IEA countries, al ...
Sir Arthur Eddington’s general address on subatomic energy at the 1930 World Power Conference in Berlin stirred the imagination of ...
Although technology change (usually involving an improvement in energy efficiency) is not inherently a geographic process, it does ...
World energy use has increased steadily over the past several decades. Much of the growth in world energy consumption has been ...
Renewable energy sources cannot run out and causes so little damage to the environment that its use does not need to be restric ...
Energy quality is the relative economic usefulness per heat equivalent unit of different fuels and electricity. One way of measuring energy quality is the marginal product of the fuel, which is the marginal increase in the quantity of a good or service produced by the use of one additional heat unit of fuel. These services also include services received directly from energy by consumers. Some fuels can be used for a larger number of activities and/or for more valuable activities. For example, coal cannot be used directly to power a computer whereas electricity can. The marginal product of a fuel is determined in part by a complex set of attributes unique to each fuel: physical scarcity, capacity to do useful work, energy density, cleanliness, amenability to storage, safety, flexibility of use, cost of conversion, and so on. But also the marginal product is not uniquely fixed by these attributes. (more…)
Statistics on national production levels and indicators of environmental pressure have been collected during the past few decad ...
The long-term prospects for the U.K. economy are inevitably uncertain, and the most recent Department of Energy long-term proje ...
Energy is consumed by various segments of the economy, including households, commercial establishments, manufacturing enterpris ...
In terms of aggregate health effects, household solid fuel use is currently the most important source of indoor air pollution i ...
From prehistory until the Industrial Revolution, most energy sources used by humans were localized (i.e., available within 5–10 mil ...