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The world has an energy problem. This energy problem began to develop when man invented fire. Initially, it developed very slowly, imperceptibly, when there were very few people in the world and people were relatively uncivilized. At that time, most of the energy consumed by humans was energy spent on activities aimed at survival.
But times have changed and the number of people has increased as well as technological prowess. Eventually, mankind has learned to burn fossil fuels – coal, natural gas and oil – to produce energy in ever increasing amounts. These fossil fuels were plentiful and could be mined cheaply from the ground. To this day, civilization on Earth relies heavily on the burning of fossil fuels.
It is worthwhile to put in perspective how these fossil fuels were developed. Coal, gas and oil are the result of long dead plants and animals that have been transformed over millennia into deposits of fossil fuels that remained buried underground until humanity discovered them.
This is the most important question. What was the energy source that produced these fossil fuels?
It was the sun.
All plants and animals, whether dead or alive, ultimately draw their energy from the sun. It is the energy of sunlight that drives the building of plant mass, and some of these plants have been eaten by animals and transformed into animal mass. So coal, gas and oil can all be treated as fossilized energy from sunlight. It is worth noting that the fossilized solar energy is concentrated. The energy content of fossil fuels is surprisingly high. This is why a gallon of gasoline can power your car for 25 miles, but sunlight constantly bombarding your car’s solar panel cannot move it 25 inches.
Likewise, biofuel is also concentrated energy from sunlight. But biofuel is not fossilized, but it is solar energy produced very recently.
By looking at this, we can better understand our impending energy problem. Fossil fuels are limited and are not quickly regenerated. It took millions of years to produce the coal and oil that the world consumes, and at some point all of this fossilized solar energy will be exhausted.
Biofuels differ from fossil fuels only in the time it takes to convert solar energy into concentrated sunlight that we can use. It only takes a few months to grow sugarcane, corn or any other crop that can be turned into biofuel. Biofuels are therefore completely renewable, creating a sustainable source of concentrated solar energy every year. Biofuels can therefore potentially provide a solution to the energy problem.
But they’re not, at least not alone. Biofuels are an important part of the solution to the energy problem, but only part.
Why? The main problem is supply. The world simply cannot produce enough biofuels to completely replace all the fossil fuels the world is currently using. In fact, the total amount of biofuels the world can produce will never come close to the present consumption of fossil fuels.
So how do you solve this energy shortage – can it also be called concentrated renewable sunlight shortage? I think the answer is to develop alternative ways to quickly capture solar energy and use or store it.
The Earth receives a lot of solar energy – more energy in one hour than the world uses in one year – but very little of that energy is captured and used today. Developing new technologies that can convert more solar energy into energy that we can use in real time is the key to solving the looming energy problem. Investing now in alternative energy technologies – and in particular in technologies that can produce more useful energy from sunlight in real time – will be the most important part of our future fossil fuel replacement.
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Source by Steve Stillwater