Eighty-five percent of commercial energy used in the United States is derived from fossil fuels. The worlds' consumption of energy is fourteen Terawatts per day, an average of two and two tenths kilowatt per person. However, the average person in the U.S. consumes eleven kilowatts (Lackner and Sachs 219). As a country that consumes copious amounts of energy in comparison to the average, I feel our citizens should be more informed about current energy policies; including the direction of research being performed to make our country more energy and cost efficient. Research and development for material sciences is pertinent to the production of new energy storage devices. As the push for utilization of renewable energy sources gains momentum we need to familiarize ourselves with the pros and cons of different energy solutions. Whether its a different type of power plant to power our cities or an alternative fuel source for our cars. If we remain informed we can do our best to make sure our interests and the ecosystems are protected. Alternative fuels for automobiles include: hydrogen, fully electric, hybrid-drive systems, and bio-diesel. These fuels all have their drawbacks. Hydrogen is difficult to store, electric and hybrid-drive cars have battery longevity and power issues(Bullis, “Batteries” Pg. 2). Lastly, bio-diesel unfortunately cannot sustain high-demand production due to us not eating enough fried foods and not growing enough corn.
The most viable alternative grid power sources are currently nuclear fission, solar harvesting, and wind harvesting. Nuclear power has been branded dangerous and risky especially since the incident at Three Mile Island. The meltdown at Three Mile Island prompted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission(NRC) to impose costly revisions and safety measures that the nuclear industry claims stunted their growth for two decades (Bullis, “Regulations” Pg. 2). Past solar power systems weren't very efficient and didn't work well on cloudy days or during indirect sunlight hours. Recently new materials and systems have been invented to make solar solutions far more efficient and cost effective. While wind energy harvesting systems may not be possible in a lot of areas due to weather or terrain, areas they are utilized in only have a little bit of noise and an obstructed view to complain about ( Pasqualetti, Pg. 382). Both wind and solar harvesting share a common drawback that bears attention. While a Nuclear plant can deliver energy constantly without interruption to the grid, solar and wind plants only make power while the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. We lack the battery technology to keep the grid stable between peak cycles. The Earth receives one hundred and seventy-thousand Terawatt/hrs from the sun, humans could run everything on a fraction of that energy(Lackner & Sachs, Pg 218-219). All that the material sciences need to refine new battery technologies is a little bit of money and time. Soon we could be harvesting the sun's awesome power.
Ignorance to change in energy policy and divided attention in research and development will not help the world with its energy issues. We must gather information and choose a direction, for few resources are inexhaustible. First off, before the issue of grid power is settled, the issue of vehicle fuel needs to be addressed. The average range for fully electric cars on the market today is about two-hundred miles per charge. A large SUV with a twenty-four gallon gas tank that gets twenty-two miles to the gallon has a range of five-hundred and twenty-eight miles on one fill up. The range of these electric cars depend upon state of the art battery technology. Current battery prototypes for these cars are extremely volatile and have a tendency to crash after a few charges, becoming useless. Research on new battery technology has been stunted by lack of support and funding. Mostly because current electric models lack speed and power in comparison to the internal combustion engine. Newer battery prototypes are being developed that utilize carbon nano-tubes, an extremely strong and versatile material, as the electrodes in these new cells. Bullis notes that batteries equipped with these carbon electrodes can run thousands of cycles without loss of performance and the delivery rate for electricity is greatly increased(Bullis Pg.2). The process of making these new batteries is quite expensive but still useful. The increased output of the battery allows larger vehicles that require more horsepower to use hybrid drives. Though this new technology is still large and bulky its a major step for battery science. Until now there wasn't really an electric solution for larger, more massive vehicles such as garbage trucks and buses. This new generation of electric cars need a higher maximum charge so they will get more miles per charge. Rate of output is important for two reasons. Increased charge/discharge rates means faster charging and faster power delivery giving the vehicle improved acceleration. With time and advancing battery technology we could have electric cars with speed, power and longevity. Money will be saved and the environment won't face a threat as long as the electricity we use is as clean as we can muster.
Hydrogen has been hailed as an option to reduce carbon emissions. Unfortunately for Hydrogen powered cars the conversion uses the standard combustion engine and just replaces the fuel. Harvesting and storing hydrogen is about four times as expensive as processing petroleum into gasoline. Not to mention, in order to collect this hydrogen, we use natural gas and in the process, are still polluting(Romm Pg. 3). The disadvantage of converting your combustion engine to hydrogen means that your car's engine won't last as long, because the modern internal combustion engine has been fine tuned to run on gasoline as efficiently as possible. Cars running on hydrogen have a tendency to backfire and run with lower horsepower. Not only does a greener way to produce hydrogen and an easier way to store it need be found, but the new filling station installations would be quite costly because hydrogen cannot be stored in tanks like gasoline. Hydrogen is a gas unless under extremely high pressure and more volume is needed to store the same amount of energy. Hydrogen needs to overcome storage, synthesis, and utilization problems before it can be a viable option for alternative automobile fuel.
Bio-diesel uses spent cooking oils and fats to synthesize a diesel fuel. Alternatively, biodiesel can be produced from almost any plant matter but the production of such crops that would be large enough to raise prices of food due to lack of space and water(McKenna Pg. 1). In order to sustain your need for fuel you have to go around and collect used oil and fat from restaurants, using up that sweet fuel in the process. In a few select places such as California and New York there are actually companies that have made a profit from collecting from restaurants and redistributing the fuel after it is processed. Some gas stations have a bio-diesel or diesel/bio-diesel mix you can buy at about the same price of normal diesel. Unfortunately this isn't possible everywhere. Either there aren't enough fast food outlets, the plant production costs are too high or the demand for the green fuel isn't high enough to make an oil collecting and processing business profitable. In the end bio-diesel is just another solution that has too many limits and still produces toxic exhaust.
Hybrid-drive cars use both gasoline and electricity to scoot their users about. A hybrid car has two drive trains, one powers the wheels using an electric motor and the other utilizes a small gasoline combustion engine. The gas motor will only rev up when the driver needs to accelerate from a stop or demands high speed from the car, otherwise the gas engine runs at low rpm keeping the battery charged. This system allows the gas engine to do the heavy lifting that the relatively low-output battery cannot accomplish. When the car is keeping a steady pace the electric motor will do all the work, saving gas. This allows the car to maintain speed and acceleration standards while keeping its gas mileage sky-high. The gas/electric hybrid is the best we've come up with so far, the 2004 Prius lets off only ten percent of the exhaust of a conventional gas driven car and gets anywhere from the EPA's estimate of fifty mpg all the way up to seventy mpg (Berman Pg. 1)for the most talented gas savers.
Currently The Department of energy in the United states does not have a minimum amount of energy required to be produced by renewable sources. Most of our grid power comes from either coal plants, natural gas plants or hydroelectric plants in a few small areas where it's convenient. Obviously these coal and natural gas plants put out emissions and add to the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere. Grid power from coal and gas is how the U.S. Has run this country for a long time and we are not unfamiliar with the dangers of digging deep underground for what we need. Mining underground for minerals such as coal will always come with the dangers such as collapse and mineral inhalation causing death and disease.
Nuclear power can be extremely clean and efficient, unfortunately the waste it produces takes extremely long amounts of time to decay into inert materials safe enough to just throw away. Fortunately the volume of this material is relatively small in comparison to the carbon outputs of coal power facilities. Most of the time the nuclear waste is stored on-site and remains of no consequence. While Nuclear power remains a viable possibility for future grid power, when a facility has a leak or meltdown the whole area around it becomes contaminated by radioactive material. Even though hundred of nuclear facilities have been running since the mid twentieth century only a few incidents have occurred that resulted in casualty and the ruin of real estate. Most notably three mile island and Chernobyl where the cooling systems failed due to human error or lack of proper maintenance. Most recently a lack of foresight resulted in a catastrophic melt-through at the nuclear plant in Fukoshima. When the plant was built it was built on reclaimed land that was geologically unstable and an earthquake shifted the earth underneath the reactor, causing a leak in the cooling tanks. The radioactive fuel in the reactor to melt and sank through the cracks into the environment. This resulted in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission placing new, strict requirements on U.S. nuclear plants. After Three Mile island the NRC required all nuclear power stations to be able to cool their reactors without outside grid power for at least four hours. After Fukoshima that time period has been increased to seventy-two hours(Bullis, “Regulations” pg. 1). As long as people are afraid of nuclear meltdowns, the industry wont receive support and funding for the large initial investment needed to build new plants.
Solar plants and wind-harvesting fields only require space and maintenance but can only produce energy in obviously intermittent periods. Even more advanced battery technology is required to meet the Department of Energy's cost needs. Currently a battery that will deliver one kilowatt hour will cost you eight-hundred to twelve-hundred dollars and weigh ten to twelve kilograms. The DoE requires a decrease of cost by at least two hundred and fifty dollars per kilowatt hour in order to use batteries for backup power(Bullis “batteries”). Without this decrease in price it would be cheaper to just build a natural gas plant or pump water uphill to let gravity spin the turbines for reserve/emergency power, instead of using batteries to store excess energy from solar or wind production.
Over all, with the evidence I have seen, new battery technology seems to be the future. With advanced batteries that have higher yield and longer lifetimes we could be converting solar energy to electric current and run our grid as well as our cars, with minimal consequence to the environment.
Bibliography
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Romm, Joseph J. “Hype about Hydrogen”Technology Review. 17 March. 2007. MIT.
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McKenna, Phil. “All Washed up for Jatropha.” Technology Review. 9 June. 2009. MIT
Bullis, Kevin. “A Recent Guide to Battery Advances.” Technology Review. 29 June. 2010. MIT. <HTTP://www.technologyreview.com/energy/25660/page1/>.
Bullis, Kevin. “New U.S. Regulations Proposed in Response to Fukoshima.” Technology Review. 15 July. 2011. MIT.<http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/2700/>
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