20th century technology developed rapidly. Communication technology, transportation technology, broad teaching and implementation of scientific method, and increased research spending all contributed to the advancement of modern science and technology. Due to the scientific gains directly tied to military research and development, technologies including electronic computing might have developed as rapidly as they did in part due to war.
Time | |
2000BC |
|
200 BC |
|
C1st |
|
C10th |
|
1113 |
|
1200-1300 |
|
1600s |
|
1700s |
|
1769 |
|
1800 |
|
1831 |
– Electricity had huge influence on telecommunications, rail road and households |
1838 |
|
1853 |
|
1860 |
|
1870 |
|
1876 |
|
1884 |
|
1888 |
|
1900 |
|
1905 |
|
1921 |
|
1927 |
|
1935 |
|
1953 |
|
1957 |
|
1960 |
|
1960s |
|
1978 |
|
1980 |
|
1981 |
|
1984 |
|
1989 |
|
1996 |
|
2003 |
|
2009 |
|
2010 |
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2011 |
|
2012 |
|
Links between fossil fuel use, technological development and industrialisation
Our experience with fossil fuels in 20th century has lead it to be the driver of industrialisation and urbanisation (determinant of how we live today)
Drivers and dominance of fossil fuels
- Dominance of fossil fuels amongst the world’s energy sources is nonetheless the result of particular, fundamental superiorities that these fuels have over their alternatives (affordable and reliable)
- Abundance
- High gravimetric (J/kg) and/or volumetric (J/m3) energy density
- Relative ease of extraction and processing
- Technical innovation in end use devices (innovation)
Abundance
Abundance of fossil fuels depends on complex interplay of factors:
- Incomplete knowledge of the physical magnitude of the resource
- Our technological capacity to find, extract and process the resource
- Its market value (not dependant solely on demand bc other primary resources can be used to transformed to the same secondary energy).
Interplay of product substitution and amount of ‘proven economic reserves’
Energy Density
The amount of energy stored in a given system or region of space per unit volume
Fuels | Energy density | Technologies | Energy density (nominal capacity) |
Peat | 15 MJ/kg | Windmill | 50 kW |
Wood | 18 MJ/kg | Steam engine | 10,000 kW |
Coal | 20-30 MJ/kg | Coal PC | 750,000 kW |
Natural gas | 45 MJ/kg | Coal IGCC | 600,000 kW |
Oil | 50 MJ/kg | Natural gas (IGCC) | 550,000 Kw |
Nuclear | 1,400,000 kW | ||
Biomass, BFB | 100,000 kW | ||
Wind on-shore | 100,000 kW | ||
Wind off-shore | 200,000 kW | ||
Solar CST | 250,000 kW | ||
Solar PV | 10,000 kW |
Favorable impacts
- Stopped deforestation
- Transition to passenger vehicle improved the sustainability of transport energy systems as it replaced the horse drawn carriage
- Mechanisation
- Abundant food from freed up land for agriculture
- Fraction of land cultivated to grow feed for horses and draught animals in 1900 was ~25% of US and 33.3% of UK
- Free human labour
- Increasing mechanisation of labour has improved the working environment for generations of people (transform human existence)
Unfavourable impacts caused by fossil fuel use
- Environmental problems from GHG and health problems from the emissions of pollutants, such as:
- Oxides of sulphur
- Oxides of nitrogen
- Unburnt hydrocarbons
- Community problems (global and local political problems)
- Socioeconomic disparities between high and low users of energy
- Geopolitical tension based on the uneven distribution of energy resources
- Development of weapons of mass destruction
Technological Impacts
- Some great inventions in end use devices first took place without any initial intent of using fossil fuels
- Partnership between fossil fuels and key end use devices, both fuel and technology evolved symbiotically to achieve continuously higher levels of overall system performance
- Production of steel
- Production of coal gas for lighting, heating and cooking (aka town gas, syn gas)
- Kerosene for lighting displaced by coal gas
- Watt’s reciprocating steam engine
- Steam turbine with significantly higher reliability and above 40% thermal efficiency and reliable and affordable generation of electricity
Fossil fuels and agriculture
Transition
- Transition from dominant sources of agricultural power took 50 years
- Fossil fuels are a part for modern farming
- Power agricultural farming
- Process farming products
- Synthesis of fertilisers and pesticides
- Fossil fuels displace human and animal power (decline from 1850, over 60%)
- Mechanisation occurred significantly
Inorganic fertilisers
- Soil additives that aids the growth of plants
- Can be organic or inorganic in nature
- Before fossil fuels, used animal /plant manures: Guano and Crop rotation; potash
- Increase production of fertilisers to support the demand for food production required to feed growing population
- Inorganic nitrogen-based fertilisers invented using Haber-Bosch process
- Roughly 40-50% of the world’s population is now sustained by food production using inorganic nitrogen based fertilisers
Without fertilisers
- Increase in the cost of food
- Reduction in the availability of food
- More deforestation
The energy intensity and its historical variation
- Energy intensity: measure of the energy efficiency of a nation’s economy.
- Calculated as units of energy per unit of GDP.
- High and low energy intensity
- High energy intensities indicate a high price or cost of converting energy into GDP.
- Low energy intensity indicates a lower price or cost of converting energy into GDP.
- Factors influence an economy’s overall energy intensity
- Requirements for general standards of living and weather conditions in an economy. A country with an advanced standard of living is more likely to have a wider prevalence of such consumer goods and thereby be impacted in its energy intensity than one with a lower standard of living.
- Energy efficiency of appliances and buildings, fuel economy of vehicles, vehicular distances travelled, better methods and patterns of transportation, capacities and utility of mass transit, energy rationing or conservation efforts, ‘off-grid’ energy sources, and stochastic economic shocks such as disruptions of energy due to natural disasters, wars, massive power outages, unexpected new sources, efficient uses of energy or energy subsidies
- Energy intensity
Energy/GDP | Energy consumption(EJ = 1018 Joules) | Million metric tons of CO2 global | |
1850 |
18 MJ/$ 1990 |
20 EJ |
10 MMt |
1900 |
20 MJ/$ |
45 EJ |
500 MMt |
1950 |
20MJ/$ |
100EJ |
1000 MMt |
1975 |
16 MJ/$ |
250 EJ |
5000 MMt |
2000 |
14 MJ/$ |
450 EJ |
6800 MMt |
“An Illustrated History of Energy” 29 August 2012. HowStuffWorks.com. 06 November 2012.