220 billion joules, and me and me and me ...

[freddau]

A preface for an Atlas on energy

August 2011

author site: www.manicore.com - contact the author: jean-marc@manicore.com

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NB: this text constitutes the preface to a book on energy authored by Yves Mathieu, an oil specialist who publishes an "Atlas of energy". I reproduced below the version sent to the editor, in a book which will be published ... I do not know exactly when!

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220 billion joules, and me and me and me ...

220 billion joules, or about 60.000 kWh, is now the energy that each French person consumes in a year, on average of course, to allow what we classically call our "way of life". We do not realize how amazing this value is. In comparison, our body, at the rate of 2000 Calories per day (the energy is contained in food), absorbs about 850 kWh per year, or 60 times less. And above all, our organism can only restore a small fraction of this energy in mechanical form: from 5 to 100 times less, depending on age and physical form.

In other words, between the effort made daily by all the machines that ensure our material comfort, from the stamping press to the elevator, from induction hobs to wood saws, from bulldozers to lamps, from telephone relays to boiler, from the truck to the assembly line, and what our own muscles are capable of providing when they are in good condition, we will find a factor of 300 to 5000. A 100 horsepower car engine provides, at full power, the same tractive effort as 1000 pairs of legs!

Now energy is nothing else, by definition in physics, than the mark of the change of state of the world. Energy manifests itself when there is a change in temperature, speed, shape, chemical or atomic composition, in short when the initial state and the final state are different. Using energy or transforming the environment is, by definition, the same thing. Oil, gas, coal, and to a lesser extent wood, hydroelectricity and other renewable energies have therefore enabled each Frenchman to multiply by 500, in order of magnitude, his ability to transform the environment. This means, as desired, multiply by 500 the available material flows to make housing, factories, roads, and machines of all kinds, or even multiply by 500 - sometimes by much more - the speed of execution or the power of the machines once built (try to set in motion a rolling mill or an airliner just by asking men to pedal!), or by this same multiple the heat stored by a house or a material worked in the factory.

Conversely, imagine for a moment that our world is suddenly deprived of petroleum products, electricity (which amounts to removing coal, gas, uranium and waterfalls), and gas. We can then have an unlimited number of machines already built, they become unable to provide any work. It would be the end of the manufacture of almost all of the manufactured products, of the telephone, of transport (and therefore of the supply to the cities of all that is consumed there, food included), hospitals, banks (because without computer modern banks all go bankrupt in the minute), of any activity as soon as it is dark (because end of lighting), of the cold chain (and therefore end of food preservation over a long period), and, wherever you turn, nothing could work as before.

It would also, of course, be the end of the means of action of the police and the army to prevent riots that would start everywhere: there would no longer be vehicles to transport the police! In short, without energy, the Western world instantly returns to the Middle Ages.

This role of pillar of material civilization played by energy, however, escapes most of my fellow citizens. Why ? In the speeches relayed by the media, our abundance is generally attributed, by choice, to human genius - these are the inventions that have changed our lives - or to economic measures - by promoting "activity", we promote abundance. But we could well urge everyone to rack their brains and inject billions into the economy, we could never reach the same level of consumption without stocks of fossil fuels! A machine without energy is no longer of interest, and, better still, without the machines that work for us, we never would have had the time necessary to study, develop, and disseminate so massively the discoveries we take advantage.

This energy abundance is now coming up against two physical limits, which will lead more and more to apparently incomprehensible economic developments, but which become so if we remember the place of energy in the creation of physical flows whose monetary value makes up the GDP. The first is that the extraction over time of any given stock once and for all can only increase, go through a maximum and then decrease. This mathematical law condemns the annual extraction of oil, gas and coal to cap one day before decreasing inexorably, the whole question being to evaluate the time horizons and the level of production to the maximum, and after.

The second limitation is that the by-product of the use of these fuels, namely carbon dioxide, is now emitted in such quantities to the atmosphere that it will lead to a disturbance in the magnitude of the planetary climate, with a gap of a few decades to a few millennia between maximum emissions and maximum consequences. Understanding energy better has therefore become imperative for anyone wishing to think about the future, even if the field is apparently as foreign to kWh as the healthcare system or the organization of professional streams. I hope this Atlas will contribute!

[freddau]

220 billion joules

It's staggering

[dedeleco]

Half in heating, the rest in the car, food, TV, industry, etc.
In addition to the increasing CO2, there are enough varied fossil fuels to burn all the oxygen in our atmosphere !!

The KWh is not expensive less than 0,1 €, enough to climb 1 ton at the top of the Eiffel Tower as said citro !!!

And at the moment each square meter perpendicular to the beautiful sun of this afternoon, receives 2 KWh per hour !! free energy wasted while it can be stored to heat the winter for free !!
see what works at www.dlsc.ca
https://www.econologie.com/forums/chaleur-d- ... 28-20.html
https://www.econologie.com/forums/post210892.html#210892

We can still keep an almost free energy, solar, without pollution, without CO2, local, in perpetuity, if we want !!

[Christophe]

(...) And above all, our organism can only restore a small fraction of this energy in mechanical form: from 5 to 100 times less, depending on age and physical condition.

Waw never would I have believed that there was such a difference between “muscle performance” of individuals!

Rather, he meant: according to physical activity?

[Ahmed]

Some remarks on this summary:

1- "In short, without energy, the Western world instantly returns to the Middle Ages."
In reality it would be much worse, because the Middle Ages, although having only a reduced availability of energy, was organized according to this latter.

2- "This energy abundance now comes up against two physical limits"
Plus a third, rarely perceived, which is the destructive intensity resulting from the use of this enormous amount of energy.
I do not know if the author underlines it in the body of the book, but already he notes that, I quote:
"Oil, gas, coal, and to a lesser extent wood, hydroelectricity and other renewable energies have therefore enabled each French person to multiply by 500, in order of magnitude, his capacity to transform the environment."
(by the way, why does it exclude from this list nuclear energy?)

[dedeleco]

In addition to the CO2 which, at a few%, will suffocate us in the heat, the worst is to burn all the oxygen we breathe, with something other than C (H2), perfectly possible with petroleum and fossil fuels without limits under earth (because natural and spontaneous underground storage over nearly a billion years).

[Remundo]

220 billion joules

It's staggering

Oh you should know that the Joule is a "small" unit of energy ...

it is the energy contained in a mass of 2 kg at 3,6 km / h.

In one kg of petrol, there are already 35 Joule.

But that does not detract from the text which, through this large figure, effectively calls to mind the energy voracity of modern societies.

Because you can't get comfort without energy. It remains to use the cleanest energy possible and to avoid waste.