General Overview

I found a great website that discusses oil and alternative energy. It talks about all of the different types of energy known to us today.


Alternative Energy Sources


Nonrenewable
Oil sands, heavy oil
Natural gas
Coal
Shale oil
Gas hydrates
Nuclear fission
Geothermal1
Ocean thermal energy conversion
1. Renewable for space heating


Oil sands/heavy oil. The energy process of oil is not very efficient. The net energy that is recovered is not very efficient. Also even though there are large amounts of oil in many countries, it is not enought to sustain the 76 million barrels of oil the world consumes on a daily basis.

Natural gas. Made of methane (CH4). It is the cleanest of the fossil fuels to burn. This is why it is preferred over coal many times. Natural gas is used as a substitute for gasoline or diesel sometimes, for internal combustion engines. It is moved through piplines. The total energy in reserves of natural gas is roughly about the same as the world's oil reserves.

Coal. Coal is harder to handle and transport than oil, and has less energy density. But coal can replace oil in electricity in power plants. But to use it as a liquid fuel for vehicles would be too expensive. There are still many environmental problems with coal as well, even though it has gotten much better. There is more coal reserves in the world than oil though.

Shale oil. Shale oil is not very common. One major problem with this is there is no oil in shale oil. There is also a very large problem with waste disposal. Also the net energy recovery is not very high. Shale oil is not a very likely choice for a solution to our energy problem.


Nuclear fission. This can potentially be very dangerous and is still undetermined whether it could be a major energy source in the future. It has safety and environmental problems as well. It is not a renewable source of energy becasue uranium reserves are limited. But nuclear fission could replace oil.

Geothermal energy. There are places in the world where there is steam that can turn a turbine to generate electricity. But this source could only be a small contibuter of energy because there are not that many places that are hot enough to generate energy.

It doesn't seem like there are a lot of good options for energy sources in the world today. Hopefully this will change in the near future.

Here is the website, it has a lot of good information:
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/Youngquist/altenergy.htm