![\"\"](\"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/energyflowtrends-web.png\" "\\"energyflowtrends-web\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe contribution of the alternative fuels is vastly smaller then even I had imagined. \u00a0 Even hydro-electric sources are way too little to be of any reasonable help replacing petroleum, natural gas and coal. \u00a0 Take away petroleum and you have not only eliminated motor vehicles for all practical purposes…you’ve killed off the airplane. \u00a0 Without petroleum and natural gas we just about have no industry left.<\/p>\n
But all that wasn’t the first thing that caught my eye here. \u00a0 Look…just look…at how much goes to waste. \u00a0 That’s the gray band on the graph.<\/p>\n
Think just of your automobile. \u00a0 Unless yours is an all electric model, it’s the heat from gasoline combustion that makes it move. \u00a0 That heat is almost entirely lost to entropy, in the form of waste heat. \u00a0 Very little of it actually moves the car. \u00a0 Most of it goes out the tailpipe. \u00a0 Some leaves via the radiator and some just radiates off the motor, drive train and exhaust pipes. \u00a0 And when you apply the brakes, the energy of your car’s motion is reduced to brake pad and disk heat and radiates into the air. \u00a0 Some electric and hybrid vehicles recapture some of that energy via “dynamic braking” \u00a0 (that is, you load the traction wheels with an electric generator which charges batteries). \u00a0 But even there, most of the momentum of the car is simply lost to heat, to entropy.<\/p>\n
Think you’re getting a better deal from an electric automobile? \u00a0 Just look at the lost energy in the electric grid. \u00a0 That’s what really shocks me here…how much energy is lost in electric power transmission. \u00a0 Every time you put a current down a wire you create a magnetic field. \u00a0 That field radiates out into space, and takes energy away from the current you are throwing down the wire. \u00a0 A\/C transmission recaptures some of that, by switching polarity so that the magetic field repeatedly collapses back into the wire and gives it a little extra jolt. \u00a0 I thought it was more efficient then this. \u00a0 But…jeeze…look at it. \u00a0 I suppose a lot of that is also heat loss in transformers and switches too.<\/p>\n
Entropy. \u00a0 You really have to admire its relentlessness. \u00a0 It’s like a tax on everything you do, every muscle you move, every breath you take practically.<\/p>\n
I have no idea what a post oil world is going to look like. \u00a0 I am not simply an optimist. \u00a0 I think I’m a little bit more of a realist then the doomsayers. \u00a0 Necessity as they say, is the mother of invention, and I am certain human ingenuity, curiosity, ambition, greed and just plain laziness will find a way to keep our factories and our vehicles in motion. \u00a0 Eventually. \u00a0 But that future is going to look very, Very<\/em> different from anything being imagined now.<\/p>\n