TOPIC: ENERGY AVAILABILITY, QUANTITY AND QUALITY certainty can be recovered in the future from known reservoirs under

existing and economic operating conditions.

The energy sources in use include; fossil, renewable, and fissile
energy sources.
The fossil energy sources are oil, gas, and coal; the renewables e.g.
wind, solar, and biomass; and the fissile energy sources are uranium
and thorium.
The Middle East is the dominant oil province, covering 63% of the
conventional oil reserves.
Conventional oil is equivalent to approximately 60 years of current
production.

Availability and quantity The reserves and resources of conventional gas are comparable in
size to those of conventional oil, but the global gas consumption is
i) Fossil fuels
lower than that of oil.
The availability of fossil fuels and fissile energy sources are described
The gas reserves are not evenly distributed around the globe: 41%
in terms of reserves and resources, and geographical distribution.
are in the Middle East, and 27% in Russia.
If resources are found in only a few world regions, limited access to
Conventional gas reserves and resources are equal to approximately
those regions may adversely influence the security of supply.
120 years of current production.
Fossil energy and fissile energy sources have one thing in common
Presently, natural gas and coal have almost equal shares in global
i.e. they are exhaustible.
energy production and consumption (second only to oil).
They are generally categorized in terms of proved reserves and
Natural gas is generally produced from conventional gas occurrences
resources.
onshore and offshore
Proved oil reserves- refers to the estimated quantities that
Coal reserves are rather evenly spread around the globe: 25% are in
geological and engineering information indicates with reasonable
the USA, 16% in Russia, and 11.5% in China.
Coal resources are deemed to be several times larger than the
reserves, but some of them may be low-grade and/or hardly
mineable.
The worldwide coal production is roughly equal to the gas
production and only second to that of oil. Coal is produced in deep
mines (hard coal) and in surface mines (lignite).
ii) Fissile fuels
For the nuclear energy, Thorium reserves significantly exceed those
of uranium.
It is also considered to be easier to obtain than uranium. While
uranium mines are enclosed underground and thus very dangerous
for the miners, thorium is taken from open pits, and is estimated to
be roughly three times as abundant as uranium in the Earth's crust.
iii) Renewable sources
The availability of the renewables wind, solar, and biomass are far
more conditional. They are bounded by geographical constraints,
e.g., wind and solar energy, as (long-distance) transport of electricity
based on wind or solar energy is very costly.
Renewable energy sources are by definition infinite, although their
potential is bounded by geographical constraints.
These sources are even larger than the traditional fossil fuels and in
theory can easily supply the world's energy needs.
For example, the available wind energy estimates range from 300 TW
to 870 TW. Using the lower estimate, just 5% of the available wind
energy would supply the current worldwide energy needs.
Most of this wind energy is available over the open ocean. The oceans
cover 71% of the planet and wind tends to blow more strongly over
open water because there are fewer obstructions.
It is estimated that 89 PW of solar power falls on the planet's surface.
While it is not possible to capture all, or even most, of this energy,
capturing less than 0.02% would be enough to meet the current
energy needs.
Barriers to further solar generation include the high price of making
solar cells and reliance on weather patterns to generate electricity.
Also, current solar generation does not produce electricity at night,
which is a particular problem in high northern and southern latitude
countries.
Energy Quality
Energy quality is the contrast between different forms of energy, the
different trophic levels in ecological systems and the propensity of
energy to convert from one form to another.
It refers to the empirical experience of the characteristics of different
energy forms as they flow and transform.

In other words not all energy sources and fuels are of equal economic
productivity. These differences in productivity are termed energy
quality

Some fuels can be used for a larger number of activities and/or for
more valuable activities. For example, coal cannot be used to directly
power a computer while electricity can.

The productivity of a fuel is determined in part by a complex set of

attributes unique to each fuel: physical scarcity, capacity to do useful
work, energy density, cleanliness, amenability to storage, safety,
flexibility of use, cost of conversion, and so on.

Fuel and energy quality is not necessarily fixed over time as changes
in technology in terms of both new techniques of production and new
products and activities change the opportunities for using fuels.

However, it is generally believed that electricity is the highest quality

energy vector followed by natural gas, oil, coal, and wood and other
biomass in descending order of quality. This is supported by the
typical prices of these fuels per unit of energy, which is one way of
measuring relative energy quality.