Some questions for the day...
1. How is understanding the current world population and expected growth, the relationship between per capita energy use and HDI, and HDI and ecological footprint essential to understanding how humans use resources at unsustainable rates?
2. What are the nine sources of energy listed on the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory? What are the three largest sources of energy? What are the two major uses of energy? How are the sources of energy split between the two major uses of energy? How much electricity does the US import (net)? What is the approximate % loss of energy throughout the system from start to finish?
3. What factors drive our current energy portfolio (ei why petroleum, natural gas, and coal)? Why highly concentrated energy particularly important ot the transportation sector? Does the US have large reserves of petroleum, natural gas, or coal? What is a reserve? How does US oil production stack up on the world scene? How does the number of producing oil wells stack up on the world scene? Is the US a major producer of coal and/or natural gas? How does current US production of oil relate to production in the past several decades? What is institutional inertia? How does institutional inertia determine (at least partially) our current energy portfolio?
4. What factors drive current interest and potential future increases in alternative energy? How does the current volatility, current high market price, and foreseeably high market price for petroleum increase interest in alternative fuel sources? How has the is the cost of production domestic petroleum production changed in recent years? How is the cost of production domestic petroleum production expected to change in the future? What does Prof. Low mean by "sourcing concerns" when talking about petroleum? Why is this an issue in determining our future energy mix? What are the major pollutants that are emitted during the combustion of fossil fuels? How are do the pollutants differ based on the fuel (petroleum, natural gas, coal) used? What new regulations have just been implemented that might have an effect on the nation's future energy portfolio? How does the push toward a more sustainable society drive current interest and potential future increases in alternative energy?
5. What is the utility of dividing electricity generation sources into baseload, peakers, uncontrollable and predictable and uncontrollable and unpredictable? How to biomass, coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, natural gas, tidal, geothermal, solar thermal, solar PV, and wind fit into these categories?
6. Why is there so little room for large improvements on the generation side of the energy equation?
7. Why is it difficult to compare the environmental, social, and human health consequences of different mechanisms of generating energy?
8. Why is it important to consider the end use of at the generation stage for certain situations? Why is it relatively rare that our systems actually do this. What are some of specific examples of particularly good generation-consumption fits?
9. What is a fuel cell, how does a fuel cell work, and why do you look foolish if you say or insinuate that fuel cells generate energy?
10. What is "the grid"? A shift from less sustainable, traditional baseload and peaker plants to more sustainable uncontrollable and unpredictable will require what changes in "the grid"?
11. What is general anthropomorphized attitude of the American electricity consumer? Why is it important to understand the requirements of electricity generation and distribution? What is a "smart grid"? What specific improvements to existing grid infrastructure will be required to meet the needs of a uncontrollable sustainable energy generation mixes? Which of these challenges will be easier (or harder) to accommodate in the near future?
12. When considering a holistic approach to energy, why is minimizing energy conversion important? How can energy infrastructure be redesigned to address the increasing use of electronic devices that run on direct current? What are examples of directly using mechanical energy to do work instead of using mechanical energy to generate electricity which can then be used to do work?
13. What is co-generation? What is an example of co-generation?
14. What are some examples of "low-hanging fruit" that could be used to reduce energy consumption? What are some examples of the "high-hanging fruit" that could be used to reduce our energy consumption?
Slides from lecture are on Sakai. I will post information on the final exam once I finish writing it.
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