Energy Sources

Question 1

Describe the patterns of usage of coal in the UK.

Answer 1

• Was the dominant energy source, in 1900 supplied over 95% of demand.
• By late 1900s, still about half of UK energy.
• More recently, coal being replaced, UK wanting to phase out coal by 2025.

Question 2

Describe the environmental impacts of coal, including general and egs.

Answer 2

• Greenhouse gas emissions when burned. Coal accounts for 40% of GHG production from fossil fuel.
• Coal mining can require removal of large amounts of soil, leading to erosion and loss of habitat.
• Coal mining causes acid mine drainage, which causes heavy metals to dissolve and seep into ground and surface water.
• Great Smog of Londonin 1952, London strangled by a thick fog for 5 days, killed 12,000 people. Raised awareness of environmental damage of coal.

Question 3

What is the future of coal?

Answer 3

Being phased out due to environmental damage. UK want to be coal free by 2025. However this is leaving coal workers vulnerable and without jobs.
BUT LICs still using it massively, so it isn’t decreasing overall.

Question 4

What are the environmental impacts of oil?

Answer 4

• Fracking - injection of fluid at high pressure into rock can cause earth tremors. Also blamed for leaking large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Uses large amounts of water, which it can contaminate.
• BP deepwater horizon oil spill, largest marine oil spill in history. In 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico. Still leaking in early 2012.

Question 5

What are the environmental impacts of nuclear power? Give an eg.

Answer 5

• No greenhouse gases.
• Produces radioactive waste, needs containing properly as it can maintain radioactive and dangerous for thousands of years.
• eg Chernobyl 1986, Soviet Union, due to a flawed reactor design. Caused an explosion and fires, releasing at least 5% of the radioactive reactor core into the environment. It contaminated crops, grazing animals, rain, fish in lakes. Still cannot live in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

Question 6

What are the general environmental impacts of energy usage?

Answer 6

Enhanced greenhouse gas emissions, increase in average global temperatures, as well as more extreme global weather events, with droughts and floods more likely.

Question 7

Describe the environmental impacts of an example of energy transport.

Answer 7

• 2,500 acute oil spills since 1990 on Norwegian shelf, damage to ecosystems.
• Trans-Alaska pipeline, 800 miles long, blocks migratory routes of animals eg Caribou, damaged fauna to be built, possibility of large leak which would devastate environment.