From IEEE Spectrum:
Thanks to Colby Cosh for the pointer.
Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Oil, Wind Power, Hydropower, Solr Power, Coal, Electricity, Environment, Energy, Politics
The fact that energy sources and uses are stated in so many different kinds of terms is increasingly seen as not merely an annoyance but as a serious impediment to public understanding of critical choices. In an effort to get matters onto a more intuitive, citizen-friendly basis, a number of experts have hit on the convenient fact that the world at present consumes about 1 cubic mile of oil (CMO) per year. Among these experts are Ed Kinderman and Hewitt Crane at SRI International, in Menlo Park, Calif., who are preparing a book for Oxford University Press that will be built around the idea of normalizing all energy units to 1 CMO (4.17 cubic kilometers).And here's what they came up with:
One dramatic way of portraying their results is to ask how many alternative energy sources—say coal-fired plants or solar panels— it would take to produce the equivalent of one CMO.
Thanks to Colby Cosh for the pointer.
Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Power, Oil, Wind Power, Hydropower, Solr Power, Coal, Electricity, Environment, Energy, Politics
Comments
Also the basic logic of the comparison is odd... how can you replace one year's worth of oil with energy spread over 50 years?
These points aside though, I'm glad someone is trying to make a simple comparison between energy sources.
I think the 50 year factor was meant to reflect that if you built the various technology installations, they would operate for 50 years while the "CMO" just lasts one year. However, it does seem to confuse the issue. A wind turbine, PV cell, or dam (if it would last 50 years) would require no additional fuel, whereas the nuclear plant needs a small amount of fuel each year and the coal plant needs huge amounts of fuel. In fact this raises a whole different question: How many cubic miles of coal does it take to equal a cubic mile of oil?
Initially, this looks like a simplification but the more I look at it, the less value it seems to have.
It seems likely to me that you could more easily try and complete parts of each solution. Make some dams, and some solar cells, and some wind, etc. It seems like wind power has the closest cost to oil according to the wiki article.