ENERGY

Engineering for Sustainability

• Two main challenges:

• Providing a safe, affordable, abundant, and reliable supply of

energy to all.

• Supplying the world’s unmet – and still growing – energy needs

while protecting environmental quality and ensuring adequate
energy resources for the future.

Engineering Applications in Sustainable Design and Development, Striebig/Ogundipe/Papadakis

 3

Energy and Society

• Key terms:
• Derived demand: our demand for an energy fuel or an energy
producing technology results from a primary personal or economic
need for a service that energy provides.
• Energy services: e.g., lighting, transportation, space heating,
refrigeration, telecommunications, plowing fields, cooking,…

Engineering Applications in Sustainable Design and Development, Striebig/Ogundipe/Papadakis

 4

Energy and Society

• Energy ladder model: how quantity and quality of energy
used in a household change as incomes rise.
• When incomes are low, only the most critical energy
needs of the home are met, using fuels that are typically
polluting and harmful to human health.
• When households climb the ladder, they benefit from a
wider variety of energy services, they transition to higher
density fuels and increase their overall energy
consumption.

Engineering Applications in Sustainable Design and Development, Striebig/Ogundipe/Papadakis

 5

Energy and Society

Engineering Applications in Sustainable Design and Development, Striebig/Ogundipe/Papadakis

 Energy
• Resource • Process

• Energy Resources in Nature

• Water, sun, wind, coal deposits, oil deposits, natural
gas deposits, growing biomass, uranium ore deposits Extraction
• Primary Energy
• Water, sun, wind, coal, oil, natural gas, harvested
biomass, uranium ore Conversion
Can be simultaneous with
• Secondary Energy (or, energy carrier) extraction

• Electricity, gasoline, natural gas, ethanol, charcoal

Distribution
• Final energy (at point to use)
• Grid electricity, batteries, gasoline, natural gas,
charcoal
Consumption
• Useful energy
• Work performed, heating, light
 IPCC Energy Primer

Energy System
Energy System vs. Energy Flows
• Energy System
• Service Driven
• Energy Flows
• Resource Driven
World Energy Flow

World Energy/Carbon Flow 1990

IPCC Energy Primer
Primary Energy to Produce Useful Light
(incandescent bulb, traditional generation)
Strategies to Reduce Primary Energy
• New, more highly efficient coal/gas fired power plant
technologies
• From 35% to 50% conversion efficiency
• Compact fluorescent bulbs
• 10% efficiency (electricity to light)
• Incandescents – 2% efficiency
• Which will have the bigger reduction on primary energy
needed for one unit of useful light energy?
New, more efficient power plant

Compared to 320 primary units

Compact fluorescent bulb

20 20

Compared to 320 or 224 primary units

Energy Scale
 15

Energy and Society

• Energy intensity: energy consumed per monetary unit of gross
domestic product.
• A country that has an economy based on subsistence agriculture will
require less energy for its economic production than an industrialized
nation producing steel, chemicals, and manufactured goods.
• When societies first industrialize, their energy intensity and energy use
per capita jumps up.
• As industrial societies grow, their energy intensity goes down due to
efficiencies of scale, while energy use per capita goes up with
standard of living
• As industrial societies mature, their energy intensity goes down due to
efficiencies of scale and increased service sector, and energy use per
capita also decreases as standard of living levels.

Engineering Applications in Sustainable Design and Development, Striebig/Ogundipe/Papadakis

Energy Intensity

https://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/graphics/2014-08-19-energy-consumption-per-capita-and-energy-intensity.html
 17

Energy and Society

Engineering Applications in Sustainable Design and Development, Striebig/Ogundipe/Papadakis

 18

Energy and Society

• Energy poverty: when a large proportion of households
lack access to the formal energy sector.
• Unable to access or afford commercially provided energy
• Rely on gathered biomass or on limited purchases of kerosene,
charcoal and batteries.
• Social costs: negative impacts experienced by a society
as a whole.

Engineering Applications in Sustainable Design and Development, Striebig/Ogundipe/Papadakis

 19

Energy and Society

Engineering Applications in Sustainable Design and Development, Striebig/Ogundipe/Papadakis

 20

Energy and Society

• Energy security: the ability of a nation to protect itself
from the economic, political, and social disruptions of an
interrupted supply of a critical energy resource, of the
failure of an important energy infrastructure, or of rapid
and steep changes in energy prices.

• Controlling energy demand, energy efficiency and

conservation

Engineering Applications in Sustainable Design and Development, Striebig/Ogundipe/Papadakis

 21

Energy and Society

Engineering Applications in Sustainable Design and Development, Striebig/Ogundipe/Papadakis

 22

End use of energy in U.S.

Engineering Applications in Sustainable Design and Development, Striebig/Ogundipe/Papadakis

 23

U.S. Primary Energy Use (2011)

Engineering Applications in Sustainable Design and Development, Striebig/Ogundipe/Papadakis

Energy Density

Engineering Applications in Sustainable Design and Development, Striebig/Ogundipe/Papadakis

Energy Density
Ultimate Sources of Energy
• Incident from the Sun
• Fossil Fuels
• Biofuels
• Wind
• Hydro
• Wave
• Solar
• Remnant from Solar System Formation
• Tidal
• Nuclear
• Geothermal
• Electricity, hydrogen, ethanol, e.g., are energy carriers
Global energy supply (IPCC 2008)
Fossil Fuel Amounts
• Occurrence
• Physical presence of the substance in the environment
• Resource
• A known or estimated deposit of sufficient quality/quantity that it
may recoverable at some point if technological and economic
conditions allow
• Reserve
• An accurately known deposit capable of being recovered
economically using current technology

Engineering Applications in Sustainable Design and Development, Striebig/Ogundipe/Papadakis

 32

Fossil Fuel Amounts

IEA World Energy Outlook 2013

Reserve to Production – (BP 2015)
Proved reserves – (BP 2014)
Potential reserves – (USGS 2012)
Renewable pathways (IPCC 2008)
 37

Energy and the Environment

Engineering Applications in Sustainable Design and Development, Striebig/Ogundipe/Papadakis

 38

Direct and Embodied Energy

• Direct energy: provides an energy service that we need.
• For example: electricity for lighting, natural gas for industrial
processes, and diesel for transportation.
• Embodied (indirect) energy: represents all of the energy
required to fabricate, package, ship, and sell a product

Engineering Applications in Sustainable Design and Development, Striebig/Ogundipe/Papadakis

Energy Return on Investment
(EROI or EROEI)
Fossil fuels
Energy Delivered ÷ Energy  Oil and gas 11 to 18
Expended to Deliver the  Natural gas 10
Energy  Coal (mine-mouth) 80
 Bitumen from tar sands 2 to 4
 Shale oil 5
Other nonrenewable
 Nuclear 5 to 15
Renewables
 Hydropower >100
 Wind turbines 18
 Solar Flate plate 1.9
 Solar Concentrating collector 1.6
 Solar Photovoltaic 6.8
 Ethanol (sugarcane) 0.8 to 10
 Corn-based ethanol 0.8 to 1.6
 Biodiesel 1.3
Comparison of high & low EROI economies
 41

Energy Sustainability
• Energy curtailment: efforts to reduce the demand for
energy by changing people’s need for energy services.
• Measures to prevent energy from being used when it is not
needed.
• Measures to prevent the loss of energy.
• Energy efficiency: the performance of a piece of
equipment that uses energy or transforms it from one
state to another.
• The productivity of technologies that convert an energy input into a
more useful or usable form.

Engineering Applications in Sustainable Design and Development, Striebig/Ogundipe/Papadakis

 43

Energy Sustainability

Engineering Applications in Sustainable Design and Development, Striebig/Ogundipe/Papadakis

 44

Energy Policy
• Performance standards
• Voluntary certification
• Emerging technologies
• Renewable portfolio standards
• Texas passed in 1999: 5,880 MW by 2015 10,000 MW by 2025
(goal)
• In 2015 Texas has >14,000 MW of wind, ~350MW of solar
 46

Key Points
• We can diversify our resources by substituting cleaner
and more renewable forms of energy for electrical,
mechanical, and thermal energy.
• We can enhance energy conservation by making our
systems more efficient, by recovering otherwise wasted
energy, and by inventing devices and materials that curtail
the amount of energy required.
• We can rethink the scale and distribution of our energy
technologies to take better advantage of small-scale
energy generation.
Rebound effect
• Jevon’s paradox
• Increases in resource use efficiency lead to increases in resource
consumption
• Khazzoom-Brookes postulate
• Efficiency can lower cost, thereby spurring use
• Energy efficiency encourages greater energy use for same cost
• Energy efficiency spurs economic growth, which increases energy
use
• “backfire effect”
• >100% rebound
Alaska North Shore Oil (Prudhoe Bay)
Prudhoe Bay EROI over time --
• Increased cost of enhanced oil recovery (EOR)
• Primary, secondary, and tertiary recovery (EOR)
Fracking (Hydraulic Fracturing)
• Purpose: To create fissures in “tight oil formations” –
impermeable shale – in order to allow oil/gas to flow
• Inject fluid under pressure
• Fluid is 90% water, 9.5% sand, and 0.5% chemical additives
• Pressure creates tensile stress large enough to fracture
the brittle rock. Sand grains in the fluid serve to prop open
cracks after pressure is relieved
Extent of Fracking in US for Nat Gas
Extent of Fracking in US for Oil
Fracking has made US top Oil & Gas Producer