WHAT ARE THE ENERGY OPTIONS FOR THE FUTURE?

The oil is steadily rizing in prize and the oil resources are being depleted. Here is a survey of the viable energy options for the future.

In spite of the oils steadily declining, the earth fo not lack energy. There are more than enough energy, but the energy is divided on many different sources. Therefore different sources must be combined to furnish the societies of the earth with enough energy.

The energy will be taken out  from primary sources in the first place. However, it is not allways practical to used the energy as taken out, and much of the energy will be converted to secondary sources that then are used in homes, industry, agriculture and vehicles.

Energy economization

The world is consuming much energy without getting any use or comfort from it. An importent part of the solution is to use the available energy more echonomically. That means two things. All types of energy consuming technology must be made more effective so that the same use or comfort can be achieved from less use of energy. Then one must reduse activities or reduce the use of goods that produce very little joy or use, but consume great amounts of energy.

More effective vehicle engines can spare much energy. More-light-weighted vehicles will need less energy. Heating and lighing only those rooms in a house that are in use at any time can also spare energy. Very much energy can be saved by having more effective production logistics for many goods.

Primary energy options for the near future

Solar electricity production: Solar energy is perhaps the cleanest enrgy source. Electricity can be produced directly from the sun rays by means of photovoltaic cells. The most used current technology is currently constructed from cilicone semiconductor plates. These are fairly heavy and areal consuming, and give around 17 per cent effectivity, that is: 17% of the solar energy is converted to electricity.

Thin film photovoltaic cells is a newer technology. They are light and flexible, and therefore can be mounted on much more types of surfaces that the traditional silione cells. The simplest thin film products too have up to 17 % efficiency.

There also exist thin film and solid crystalline photovoltaic units that have a much higher efficiency, up to 40%. These are made of many layers of different semiconductor material so that more frequencies of the sun rays can be converted.

For the time being these high performance units are fairly expensive, but they are smaller than a simper type with the same capacity and therefore useful for applictions where the simpler type do not fit in.

Solar heating: The heat form the sun can be used directly in many applications, by concentrating in with mirrors or lenses. For example can it be used to convert salty water to fresh water or for other types of destillation processes.

Nuclear fission: Nuclear power is probably inevitable if the earth shall not reduce its energy consume considerably. Nuclear power is very clean if everything works well, but very dirty and hazardious if anythig goes really wrong. Theoretically material suitable for nuclear fission can give the earth all the energy it needs for a few hundre years. Even though nuclear fission seems to be inevitable, it should ideally only be used to gain that top amount of energy that other sources do not manage to give. By now very much ingenuity is excerted to make new types of reactors.

One type are reactors based on the element thorium as energy source and where the atoms are cracked by  shooting neutrons form an accelarator. The neutrons from the accelarator are first absorbed by thorium atoms to give 233-U. Then the 233-U is craced when hit by new neutrons. This type of reactor cannot go into an uncontrollable fission process, because only the small amount of 233-U that are ateadily produced can be cracked. There is also enough thorium available for enregy production to furnish the world with all needed enrergy in a coulle of hundred years, and thorium is therefore a goof medium therm enrgy source.

Wind power to produce electricity: Wind mills or wind turbines to drive electric generators are by now current technology, and such devices are steadily more set up around the world both to deliver elctricity to single households or feed current into the grid. However, there is a prcatical and ebonomilal limit on the amount of energy that can be taken out that way. These installations also worsen the estetic value of the landscape , can kill birds and cn also make unpleasant noice. Wind turbines is a small part of the solution, but not more that a small part if the environment shall not be gravely disturbed by these installations.

Hydro-electric power: Hydro-electric power stations that utilize the descend of water from mountains or in rivers as the source of energy is one of the oldes technologies for enegy outtake. There are still many magazines of water in the mountains and descending river streams not utilized for this purpose that can still be utilized. However, such installations disturbe the environment and environmental conciderations should pose limit of how much more hydro-electric power should be utilized. A further utilization of hydro-electric power is a porat of the solution, but shuold ideally only be a small one.

Wave power and tidal power to make electricity: The forces in the waves can be used to make electricity. This can be done by boyants at the sea surface connected mechanically to a firmly placed device that tratsforms the undulating motions of the boyant caused the the waves to circular motions in a pivot that then is driving a generator. It can also be done with some sort of funnels into which the waves press the water and the water streaming through the funnel is further driving a turbin with a connected generator.

The tidal water make powerfull streams at somme placesm for example through narrow passages into bays or fiords. The strong stream of the tidal water can be used to produce electricity by using suitably made turbins connected to generators.

The use of wave power and tidal power is a small part of the solutions, but only a small one because the wave and tidal patterns are suitted for electricity productions only at special places, and because also these installations disturbe the environment and the traffic of marine vessels.

Wind power to drive boats: This is the oldest way of driving a boat together with muscular power. Sail-boats are the traditional way of utilizing the wind for this purpose. Using sail for commercial traffic is concidered old fashioned or obsolete. This is a misconception. Even the gretest tankers and bulk carriers can be driven effectively by sails. Modern technology can be used to make the rigging of the sails  and steady adjustments of the sail rig fully authomatic. Fully authomatized saiships will probably be a common ingredients of the future commercial marine traffic.

Wave power to drive boats: It is psssible to utilize the movement in the waves to drive boats foreward, and even in a very simple way. The technology consists of arrays of vertical flaps that can swing up and down with the water passing up and down by the wave motions. The water will then excert a forse on each querely positioned flap that has a horisontal component and that component will drive the boat foreward.

Fuel made from grown crops: In many countries crops of crabohydrate-rich plant sorts are grown to make fuel like ethatnol (ordinary alcohol), methanole or bio-diesel. The crabohydrates (sugar, starch or cellulose) in the crops are fermented or processed in other ways to make those fuel types. To grow crop only for making fuel can only be a small contribution to the energy supply of the world, because it uses cropland that is necessary to grow food. Extencive growing of growing crops for fuel production can actually make a serious shorage of food, boost food prizes and create a hunger cathastophy for the poor people around the world.

Waste burning to produce electricity: The human activity produce enormous amounts of waste daily. Both households and agriculture produce great amounts of aste that can be burnt to produce heat that again can be converted to electricity. Much of this waste is by now let to rotten or is just burnt without utilizing the heat. By burning much more of the waste form human activity in electric power plants, a great amount of energy can be captured and converted to electricity.

If the burning of waste is done in a clean way, the ashes from the process can probably also be used as agrigultural fertilizers. Thus the vaste utilization will have a double use.

Wast burning to produce heat: The heat from waste burning can also be used directly. It can be used in networks that distribute warm water for heating and it can be used in steam locomotives. Steam locomotives are regarded as something very obsolete, but in certain areas that have alot of waste from the growing of crops, from timber production and timber processing, the use of the waste to power steam locomotives can actually be the economically most viable way of getting rid of the waste and to power locomotives.

Heat pumps: All aeks, the sea and all soil contain energy as heat, but the heat has a to low temperature to be used directely. Heat pumpse are actually reverced refrigators that take low temperature heat from the environment and converts it to heat of higher temperature that then can be used for heating buildings and other purposes. Heat pumps rquire som input of energy as electricity, but they delver more heat energy that that put in. Het pumps can contribute with much of that energy needed for heating.

Earth heat: Deep in the ground the temperature is allways high. By drilling deep enough you can pump down water and get up water with excatly that temperature you wish and then use the warm water for heating or production of electricity. This source of energy is enormous, but the drilling of dep enough tunnels and the depositing of tubing down and up in the drilled tynnels is expensive. Still, this energy source will probably be an important contribution to the energy supply in some areas.

Coal burning: The coal resources of the world can last longer than the oil resources. Therefore much of the use of oil today can be replaced by burning of coal, especially for electricity production. This solution is however bad for the future climate and produce also toxic wastes that are a threat to the health of people living in areas wher coal is heavily utilized as an energy source. The oil should ideally not be replaced by more hevy utilizantion of coal, but it is a real danger that this is indeed what will happen.

The ultimate primary energy solutions

Warm nuclear fusion: The ultimat solution to the Earth's energy need is probably fusion of hydrogen isotopse into more heavy nuclei. By such a process enormous enrgy is produced, and the amount of the necessary isotopes can last in several thousand years. To get a controlled fusion reaction that yiealds more energy that put in has however proven to be very difficult, and eben more difficult will et be to buikd a rector that is operating in a commercial fashion.

Noclear fusion is probably the ultimate solution, but may be 50 - 100 years ahead in time.

Cold nuclear fusion: According to experiments repeated and verified many times, nucler fusion can occur at low temperatures in crystal matices of various kind where fusable material is trapped inside the crystals. The process of this type of fusion is however not well understood or perhaps not understood at all, and it is very difficult to decide if could fusion can be utilized for energy production. Still, cold fusin may be a process that give astounishing resulats in the comming years.

Reactors that yield high quantities of enrgy has been reported to work in laboratory conditions, but they have not been proven stable enogh to be used commercially. The process seems to go on for some time, and then the crystal matrices are disturbed in such a way that the process stops.

Hydrino energy or blacklight power: According to a hypotesis and an approch to a new physics theory called CQM (classical quantum mechanics) a hydrogen atom can collapse to a state where the elctron lies even nearer to the kernel than i the ordinary ground state, a hydrino, and such a collapse can set free great amounts of energy.  A jumps to such a low energy state, can according to predictions from the theory occur by means of  certain catalysts that can catch the released energy and then release it for further use.

The CQM is contradicted by standard quantum theory and has some mathematical flaws. The process predicted by the theory has however been observed and replicated by experiments done in respected research institutions, and prototypes of reatcors are said to be working.

It is therefore a chance that the so-called blacklight energy can give a great contribution to the need for energy on Earth in the future. Some scientists believe that the process called cold fusion in reality is energy from the collapse of hydrogen atoms to hydrinos, and not fusion at all.

Secondary energy source options

Most alternative energy sources produce electricity. But electricity from a grid is not practical for every type of  use. Therefore the electricity must be converted to other energy sources that then can be used for the direct work.

Hydrogen produced by primary electricity: The most probable secondary energy source for use in the future will probably be hydrogen. Hydrogen can be used to drive motors for any vehicle and mashinery. Hydrogen will be produced by elctrilycis using electricity from a primary source. The problem with hydrogen is the storage. Hydrogen can be stored in high pressure tanks, but the pressure needed to get enoigh hydrogen into the tanks are so hugh that the tanks will pose a risk. However, hydrogen can be absorbed into the crustal matice of certain metals and metal alloys, for example palladium, and great amounts of hydrogen can be stored in the matice under low pressure. Utilization of such tanks will probably be standard in the near future.

Batteries charged up by primary electricity: Another way of convering the enrgy, is to charge up batteries. Battery technology is steadily improving, and soon tehere will be batteries for powering cars that can store the sam amount of energy as an average car fuel tank.