Alternative Energy sources

Question 1

Describe Shale Gas

Answer 1

• Natural Gas trapped in fractures and pores of sandstone and shale
• Extracted by hydraulic fracking, chemical water breaks apart rock and gas is cooled and extracted
• Extracted mostly in USA Texas
• Uses lots of space, can cause earthquakes, contaminates and lowers groundwater levels
• Emits greenhouse gasses such as methane
• Linked to animal deaths

-Lower Carbon footprint than coal and increases energy security

Question 2

Describe Tar Sands

Answer 2

• Mix of sand, clay, water and bitumen
• Must be strip-mined as it is too thicc to pump from ground
• mostly occuring in alberta Canada
• Very expensive, 10-12 dollars per barrel, 2 dollar for conventional oil
• 5 water barrel per barrel of oil
• Carbon sequestration decreases, deforrestation
• Carbon emissions
• Increases energy security, increases jobs and boosts economy, vital revenue for local economies, makes fuel stop gap to use for renewable energy
• 470 km^2 of taiga has been removed, 1.8 million contaminating waste water, sharp decline in caribou within extraction sites/extinction expected in 2040

Question 3

Describe Oil Shale

Answer 3

• Oil bearing rocks permeable enough to have oil pumped directly
• pressurised underwater with lots of heat
• Done in Colorado (approx 800 barrels)
• Very expensive due to heat, 2 barrels of water per barrel of oil, health implication for those in range
• Carbon removed from storage and is emitted through extraction process and in the oil
• Removal of vegetation cover, 1 tonne of waste rock per barrel, overuse of water resources
• Creates jobs
• increases energy security and is domestic source for USA

Question 4

Describe Deepwater oil

Answer 4

• Oil and gas found offshore deep in water
• Offshore drilling in oil rigs
• Done in gulf of Mexico (200,000 barrels of oil and 5.1 million m^3 of gas per day) and Brazil (aims for 500,000 barrels a day ny 2020)
• Offshore spills (e.g. deepwater horizon), long distance from shore (saftey bad), expensive
• Extraction and use of product releases lots of CO2
• Oil spills cause ireversible damage to local ecosystem
• Increases energy security
• increased jobs
• big boost to economy

Question 5

Give the 2010 and 2015 statistics for conventional and unconventional fossil fuels (in millions of barrels)

Answer 5

2010:
-Conventional: -Oil:5 -Gas:4
-Unconventional: -Oil:1.2 -Gas:5
2015:
-Conventional: -Oil:5.2 -Gas:4
-Unconventional: -Oil:3 -Gas:7

Question 6

What are the future projection regarding unconventional sources of energy

Answer 6

-By 2030 unconventional sources will rise by a factor of and extraction of unconventional oil will exceed conventional oil

Question 7

Why are unconventional oils used in place of conventional ?

Answer 7

conventional oil is soon to run out (soon in the overall time scale) and unconventional will have to be used as an alternative

Question 8

Why are unconventional sources not used as often as conventional ?

Answer 8

• Typically more expensive

- Have worse environmental impacts which can lead to worse social impacts

Question 9

List main point for “assess the role of un-conventional fuels as a contributor to the worlds energy use”

Answer 9

deepwater oil:
-Brazil:
–“one of the largest oil finds ever”
–expected 500,000 daily oil barrels by 2020
-USA:
–200,000 oil barrels per day through the gulf of Mexico
–5.2m^3 of gas per day
Tar Sands:
-By 2030 could meet 16% of North America’s oil
-70% of extracted oil exported to USA
-28% of Canada’s oil
-increase by 5 million barrels of gas a day and 2 million gas barrels a day in 2015
By 2030 it is projected that:
-unconventional gas will be produced more than convention by 3x
-the extraction of unconventional oil will stand to exceed unconventional sources