Exergy, an International Journal 2 (2002) 125127

www.exergyonline.com

Viewpoint article

Energy crisis or exergy crisis?

Marc A. Rosen
Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Industrial Engineering, Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto, ON, M5B 2K3, Canada
Received 18 December 2001

Abstract
The author explains his views that we need to avoid the confusion and misleadingness of the term energy crisis when describing certain
energy-related problems, perhaps through use of exergy crisis as an alternative, if we are to address such crises properly and effectively when
they arise in the future. 2002 ditions scientifiques et mdicales Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
From time to time over the last three decades, we have
heard about energy crises. The term has become widely used
in technical as well as non-technical circles. Yet the term
energy crisis is itself quite ambiguous and confusing. Clarity
is needed if we are to understand the term energy crisis and
act appropriately. I feel exergy provides one avenue to such
clarity, and explain why in this article.

2. What do we mean by energy crisis?

When asked what is meant when we say we have an
energy crisis, the response usually is something like, We
are experiencing a shortage of energy.
This explanation, however, is even more confusing and
potentially misleading than the term energy crisis itself.
Energy, after all, is a conserved quantity, so the energy
that we use in a process or device is still present after
the use is completed. In fact, lots of waste thermal energy
is emitted from facilities and buildings. I discussed this
issue extensively in an earlier article in this series [1].
Furthermore, immense quantities of energy in the form of
solar radiation are continually streaming into the earth. So
how can there be a shortage of energy?
Regarding solar energy, some will correctly assert that
the earth emits to space energy in the form of long-wave
radiation, approximately equal in amount to that received

This is the third in a series of viewpoint articles by the author on exergy

and related matters.
E-mail address: mrosen@ryerson.ca (M.A. Rosen).

from the sun, in order to maintain its present state. But

my point here is simply that the incoming solar energy is
available for our utilization and that, more generally, we
certainly cannot experienceor have ever experienced
a shortage of energy.

3. Problems with the term energy crisis and the role of

exergy in its clarification
I believe that the use of such an imprecise term as
energy crisis is not only misleading and confusing, but
also is potentially detrimental to societies and countries. To
address a problem effectively and appropriately, one must
first fully understand the nature and characteristics of the
problem. The term energy crisis, I contend, totally muddles
our understanding of the real energy-related problems that
we face, thereby reducingsometimes dramaticallyour
ability to respond properly.
Furthermore, I contend that the concept of exergy can be
used to avoid many of the pitfalls associated with the term
energy crisis, and clarify what we mean when we use the
term in the first place. To explain and justify this contention,
we will now consider some of the energy crises of the past.

4. Examples from the past

There were two energy crises in the 1970s. During these
crises, oil scarcities existed due to intentional reductions
in oil production by OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries. People were lined up at gas pumps
in many countries trying to fill up their cars. But, as

1164-0235/02/$ see front matter 2002 ditions scientifiques et mdicales Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.
PII: S 1 1 6 4 - 0 2 3 5 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 5 6 - 0

126

M.A. Rosen / Exergy, an International Journal 2 (2002) 125127

mentioned earlier, these were not energy crises, as most of

the energy that was available to the public before the crises
was available during it. The commodity for which there were
supply crises, therefore, appeared not to be energy, but rather
energy forms capable of delivering a wide range of energy
services (like oil could), in other words exergy.
Certainly there were other factors involved in the energy
crisis, like the threat to national security of not having
reliable supplies of oil and the negative impact on consumers
and the country of unusually expensive oil prices. In my
view, however, the critical problem in referring to the
situation as an energy crisis is that the crisis was about
exergy, not energy.
Others have taken a similar view about the term energy
crisis being more an issue related to the second law of
thermodynamics than energy. For instance, a 1973 article
by renowned thermodynamics researchers Joseph Keenan,
Elias Gyftopoulos and George Hatsopoulos focused on
entropy rather than exergy [2]. In fact, they chose for their
article the subtitle The Entropy Crisis, and wrote that
they did so in suggestive distinction to the fashionable
characterization of the problem as The Energy Crisis .
Similarly, Noel de Nevers and J.D. Seader wrote in 1980 [3],
Although the public is slowly being educated to think about
the energy crisis, we technical people understand perfectly
well that the real problem is the entropy crisis . Further
on they write, We will probably be well advised not to
confuse the public by telling them about the entropy crisis,
but certainly all technical people must be aware of this. I go
further than de Nevers and Seader and suggest that entropy
crisis would be confusing also, and not just to the public
but to technical people too. Hence, I prefer the term exergy
crisis as an alternative to energy crisis.
The more recent energy crisis that received widespread
publicity occurred in 20002001 in California. During this
crisis, electricity supply shortages were experienced at times
of high demand. The state had to resort to rotating blackouts
and, when available, very expensive electricity imports. This
crisis was not a shortage of an energy resource, but rather of
an energy currency that is not found naturally, but produced.
Thus, the crisis was a shortage of a sufficient capacity for
electricity generation, and appears to be caused by the partial
deregulation of electricity markets in California in a manner
that allowed shortages to develop during certain economic
and market conditions.
References to energy crises continue to exist at present.
For instance, the President of the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers (ASME) for 20002001 recently
published a commentary entitled On Americas Energy
Crisis, in which a range of energy challenges are discussed
[4]. That commentary is accompanied by a general position
paper by ASME International on energy policy that calls for
and offers direction in developing a national energy strategy
for the US [5].
Relative to the topic of this article, the key point is,
I believe, that the crisis is not over energy, but rather

over a high-quality energy form that can conveniently and

economically be used to provide a wide range of services.
In particular, it is the high-quality nature of electricity, that
is its exergy, which is critical here. We would hardly be
concerned, I am confident, if electricity were a low-quality
energy form.

5. What about the future?

There will likely be future energy crises. It is instructive
to speculate about the nature these may take, and to consider
them from the exergy perspective of this article.
One type of energy crisis that is anticipated to occur
sooner or later relates to the fact that much of the energy
resources that we rely upon, like fossil fuels and uranium,
exist on the earth in finite quantities. We will likely not actually run out of these resources. Rather, it is possible that
we will experience a crisis when conveniently obtainable and
relatively inexpensive supplies of these energy resources begin to dwindle.
Another type of future crisis may be linked to growing
environmental concerns, and relate to energy only indirectly.
Energy-related environmental concerns, like global climate
change, acid precipitation and air, water and land pollution,
may cause us to restrict our use of environmentally impacting forms of energy. And this action may occur even if supplies are available of reasonably priced energy resources.
Yet, energy services will still be required, and consequently
energy-related activities like production, storage, transport
and use will still be necessary.
I believe that it will be exergy, regardless of what form
it takes, that will be soughtprovided the exergy can be
utilized with no or little environmental impact. In other
words, to find less environmentally damaging ways to satisfy
the energy services we need or desire, we will need to
find, among other factors like increased efficiency, alternate
energy resources that are useful (i.e., have high exergy).
The commonality between these possible future energy
crises and ones from the past is, I feel, associated with the
fact that any energy crisis involves a problem that relates to
a lack of exergy (in one form or another). Charles Berg put
it another way in 1980 when, in addressing possible ways
to use the second law, he wrote [6], The energy crisis
demands that we extract from fuels all that can be extracted,
given our existing technical knowledge and the prices of all
other resources. The key point relative to this article is that
it is exergy that identifies what can be extracted, not energy.
In approaching the end of this article, I find it interesting,
but not surprising given the power of exergy analysis in
assisting efficiency-improvement efforts alone, to note that
research on and applications of exergy methods usually
increase due to energy crises. For example, Adrian Bejan,
an eminent researcher in exergy, stated in a 1988 article [7],
Interest in [exergy analysis] was awakened by the energy
crisis of the early 1970s, even though the methodology

M.A. Rosen / Exergy, an International Journal 2 (2002) 125127

itself is considerably older. In that article, which had the

interesting title A Second Look at the Second Law and
reviewed areas of notable development in thermodynamics,
the author also noted that the development in modern
thermodynamics that has received the most attention is
exergy analysis. Expressing a similar idea, Tadeusz Kotas
wrote in the preface to his 1995 book [8], There can be
little doubt that ever since the so-called Energy Crisis in the
early 70s, there has been a steady growth in the interest in
exergy analysis.
Once the term energy crisis is clarified and, perhaps
better, replaced by exergy crisis, I feel that we will have
come a long way in our ability to address energy-related
crises that arise in the future. But with this understanding,
a separate question arises: Given the exergy supplies we
have access to on the earth, can we really have an exergy
crisis? Although intriguing, this is a different topic, one that
lies beyond the scope of the present article. However, I will
address that topic in a future article in this series.

6. Some concluding thoughts

Overall, I believe that if one word were to be used to
describe what an energy crisis is actually about, it would be
exergy.
Also, all energy crises seem to involve economics. But
it is specifically what is of value that is important, and in
general exergy, not energy, is consistently of value.
Furthermore, most energy crises seem to focus on a particular form of energy, like oil or electricity. A generalization

127

of this observation indicates that only those energy forms

that have high exergy could possibly be considered as a focus of an energy crisis.
Consequently, I prefer the use of the term exergy crisis
over energy crisis, both to allow us to address such crises
effectively and to avoid confusion and misleadingness.
Acknowledgements
Financial support was provided by the Natural Sciences
and Engineering Research Council of Canada and is greatly
appreciated.
References
[1] M.A. Rosen, Exergy conservation: An alternative to conserving the
already conserved quantity energy, Exergy Internat. J. 2 (2002) 5860.
[2] J.H. Keenan, E.P. Gyftopoulos, G.N. Hatsopoulos, The fuel shortage
and thermodynamicsthe entropy crisis, in: M.S. Macrakis (Ed.),
Energy: Demand, Conservation, and Institutional Problems, MIT Press,
Cambridge, MA, 1973, pp. 455466.
[3] N. de Nevers, J.D. Seader, Lost work: A measure of thermodynamic
efficiency, Energy Internat. J. 5 (1980) 757769.
[4] J.R. Parker, On Americas energy crisis, Mech. Engrg. Power (June,
2001) 23.
[5] ASME International, General position paper on energy policy, Mech.
Engrg. Power (June, 2001) 34.
[6] C.A. Berg, Process integration and the second law of thermodynamics:
Future possibilities, Energy Internat. J. 5 (1980) 733742.
[7] A. Bejan, A second look at the second law, Mech. Engrg. 110 (5) (1988)
5865.
[8] T.J. Kotas, The Exergy Method of Thermal Plant Analysis, Reprint edn.,
Krieger, Malabar, FL, 1995.