www.enreport.com

Yesterday, I was reading that new book titled “Energy for a Sustainable World: From the Oil Age to a Sun-Powered Future” by Nicola Armaroli and Vincenzo Balzani.

The book looks pretty interesting, and the figure from “De Rebus Bellicis”( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rebus_bellicis) is quite interesting. However what was the funny and witty(or weird) thing was the human-energy algebra done by the writers.

In Chapter 3, “Energy in History”, the writers compare the Roman society and modern society.They first assume human power like a traditional source of power in Watts(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt) , like Watts in CFL or light bulbs. They claim:

• A (slave) people can work constantly at a rate of 50-80 W (in short bursts 800W momentarily p.29)
• Working animal ranges from 300W (oxen) to 700-800W (for good horse, p.27)

So what is the cost of modern life in terms of slaves? Answers are:

• Washing machine: 800W : 10 human slaves
• Electrical heating: 2.5 kW: 30 human slaves
• A small European Cutter: 3.5kW (work done with this cutter for one hour equals to a work done by 4 human slaves in whole day-10-12 hours I guess)
• A medium sized car: 80 kW consumes the energy equivalent to 1000 human slaves
• A Boeing 747-400 needs 80 MW to take off = 1 000 000 human slaves

And it claims, an average Italian citizen has as many as 55 energy slaves 24/7.

They also carried out a cost of energy by slave and gasoline. Since a slave can produce an amount of 800Wh in one day (in 10 hours constantly) and one liter of gasoline’s energy content is 12.9 kWh. So 1 liter of gasoline’s energy = 16 human slaves in all day. That means €0.03 for one human slave/day.

See how cheap the services granted by fossil fuels and modern technology.

Reference:

Energy for a Sustainable World, Nicola Armaroli and Vincenzo Balzani, Wiley -VCH. , 2011

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3527325409/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=1278548962&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0470209836&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=01TSXV71YMTZMH8Q2R6D

• it would take more than 400 years of biodiesel use to "pay back" the carbon emitted by directly clearing peat for palm oil
• The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a hungry person for a year;
• first new U.S. reactor is only scheduled for 2017
• average U.S. household now has 26 plug-in devices
• Only 4 percent of the energy used to power a typical incandescent bulb produces light; the rest is wasted
• China is expected to build more square feet of real estate in the next 15 years than the United States has built in its entire history, and it has no green building codes or green building experience.
• modern American refrigerators use three times less energy than 1970s models
  
  Baris's note : such a shame : "we can subtract a coal-fired megawatt every time we add a wind-powered megawatt". Coal works 6500-7000 hours/year, where wind hardly sees 3000 hours/year. It's capacity factor!

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/12/seven_myths_about_alternative_energy?page=full

• Energy demand forecasts are down from 1.3% to 1.2% in this study


• Fossil fuels will provide 80% of global energy demand by 2030


• Power generation will see the fastest growth


• Energy for transportation: Flat in developed countries, doubles in developing ones


• CO2 emissions rise 30% from 2005 to 2030

Also new section, called “The Energy Imperative,” outlines the need for an integrated set of solutions that includes improved energy efficiency, development of all economically viable energy sources, and cost-effective steps to curb emissions

A very interesting page for general energy models. You can download and use them for policy analysis. Check the elibrary for useful papers.

Check:

http://www.millennium-institute.org/resources/elibrary/index.html#models

World Energy Projection system is an old model that Department of Energy, US once used for some of their projections. It looks like more of an accountant's balance sheets, but you can download and check the validity of the model for fun, it will be a good exercise.

Model can be downloaded from here and documentation is here. In the document you can find the relevant informations about using the files.

"The World Energy Projection System (WEPS) was developed by the Office of Integrated Analysis and Forecasting within the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the independent statistical and analytical agency of the U.S. Department of Energy. WEPS is an integrated set of personal computer-based spreadsheets containing data compilations, assumption specifications, descriptive analysis procedures, and projection models. The WEPS accounting framework incorporates projections from independently documented models and assumptions about the future energy intensity of economic activity (ratios of total energy consumption divided by gross domestic product [GDP]), and about the rate of incremental energy requirements met by natural gas, coal, and renewable energy sources (hydroelectricity, geothermal, solar, wind, biomass, and other renewable resources). Projections produced by WEPS are published in the annual report, International Energy Outlook."

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/weps/
Doc: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/modeldoc/m05097.pdf

One of the many questions regularly discussed in Turkey is whether the energy demand projections are faulty or there is an "age-old" program that doesn't fit today's world. To challenge this question and to show that results are a product of inputs, I made an approximation to Turkish Energy Ministry's MAED results of 2004. The following excel sheet is a result of my work. What I basically did was to take the published forecasts from the ministry's web site and make the appropiate approximations. By permission, I posted it on several forums. And no one criticized it, and I received emails for how to use the model or methodology!
The main point in this work is as long as you put economic realisations model corrects itself. At the end even some Nobel price winning economists do not owe their success to that software or this software but a bunch of simple equations.
The following forecast assumes 2009 is not a negative growth year.
My forecast for March is as follows (for total energy):

And electricity demand is as follows


Excel file is here, use with permission ( The economic and demographic growth rates are not reflecting the real values)