Energy Sources – Energy Choices

What are the best energy choices? The best depends on many factors, including what sources are available, reliability, convenience for storage and use, cost, efficiency, and environmental considerations. Each energy source has its benefits and limitations. Making wise energy choices means balancing these factors - understanding the primary energy resources; how they are converted into the fuels we use every day, the efficiencies involved, and the relative costs and benefits of those fuels. There is no simple answer. But with a growing world population hungry for energy, we will need to tap into all of our energy sources, and develop new technologies that find, make and use energy more efficiently to meet the growing need for both energy and a clean environment.

The diagram below was developed at Lawrence Livermore National Labs and it summarizes the U.S. energy sources, uses and process losses. It is a bit complicated, but contains a lot of useful information.

It shows that most of our energy needs are being met by nonrenewable energy sources – oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium (nuclear). This is because these energy sources are more reliable, affordable, and convenient to use than most renewable energy resources. A lot of work will be needed to find new deposits of these energy sources and address their environmental concerns – something our energy industry is doing every day. With new technologies that find and use these energy resources more effectively – and with wise use - they will be available to us for use for many decades to come, if not longer.

We also need to invest in new technologies that make the renewable energy resources more reliable, affordable, and available for our everyday use. Increasing these energy resources is critical to meeting our future energy needs.

The Lawrence Livermore Lab diagram also shows that huge amounts of our energy is lost during electricity generation, when we use transportation fuels in our vehicles, and when heating our homes. Out of 26.5 Quads of energy used for transportation, 21.2 Quads of energy are lost due to inefficiencies. Less than 50 percent of the total energy we use is turned into useful work! Of course, these energy transformations cannot ever be 100 percent efficient, but research into improving electricity generation, home heating, and transportation efficiencies could help us use our current fuels much more wisely.