WHAT MAKES THE MOST OF OUR ENERGY NOW?

80% of our energy relies on non-renewable energy sources. Simply put it is mainly from the following fossil fuels.

• Coal
• Oil(petroleum and other liquids)
• Natural gas(methane with small quantity of other hydrocarbons)

Coal and natural gas are used for electricity generation while oil is used for transportation such as cars and ships.

So what are these are actually made of and why we need to replace these sources?

• Where does it come from?

Oil&Gas: organic remains of tiny organisms such as algae or plankton living in the ocean

Coal: vegetation, burial of plant material

*** Therefore countries with big reserves of oil or gas are countries close to the ocean 🌊 🤔.

• How is the forming process?

Oil&Gas: After the tiny micro itsy bitsy organisms die, they get deposit on the sea floor as a sedimentary rock shale with high organic content. Then the organic materials in the shale goes through increasing heat and pressure during burial and form kerogen. With sufficient time and the right range of temperatures, kerogen is further converted to oil. If higher temperatures continue to cook the oil it is converted to natural gas/gas.

Coal: Its deposit begin as spongy peat with relatively low carbon content. As it gets buried and compacted, the carbon content rises. With more time and burial coal passes through several forms, from peat to lignite(carbon content is less than 35%)to bituminous coal(45–86%) and finally some cases to anthracite(more than 86%). So higher amount of carbon content is desirable as a electricity source. Because smaller volume, more heat, less ash waste.

To wrap this up, let’s see what these have in common.

Both source of carbon dioxide ( 🧨💣🔫🔪🪓 harm of our Mother Earth)

Takes million years to form so definitely non-renewable! It will be finished some day then we will lose much of our energy electricity and life.

Therefore as long as we are using these fossil fuels as our big energy source, our earth will be damaged more due to greenhouse gas and etc. Plus big reliance on those limited amounted resources are risky in the future. We need to use more renewable energy such as solar, wind, water and earth core energy. High cost, unstable and unpredictable conditions make these hard to beat fossil fuels. More improvement is needed. Fortunately many researchers and engineers are working on the improvement of renewable energy utilization and replacement of fossil fuels.

The earth we have is so beautiful and we have to make it last longer as possible!