Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Fossil fuel outlook

I've been researching energy efficiency recently. It has to do with a book I'm coming out with soon. It's presently in editing stages and coming along really well.

As a result of research for the book I also became interested in how much fossil fuel energy is available for our future use. I had to research it and the numbers I found aren’t what the gas and oil companies are making part of their ads.

These numbers are as of 2012 and they are US reserves we’re talking about. They are the official numbers which include fracking. These numbers haven’t been updated either and I think it’s for good reason they haven’t. For oil there were 29 billion barrels of proven reserves, we go through about 7 billion barrels per year. On natural gas there were 322 trillion cubic feet, we use about 26 trillion cubic feet per year. http://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/crudeoilreserves/

I know there were some additional reserves that have been found. The thing is all of them together add maybe a year that we have available. Regardless, we’re going to have a problem and it’s going to be sooner rather than later.

If you know what's coming, you can prepare for it. Hopefully we don’t run out but if these numbers are correct we’re are going to be importing every last bit of fossil fuel starting about 2020. Personally, I would hope more will be proactive about energy use. I'm preparing for what looks like will be the eventuality by trying to make my house even more energy efficient.