World Energy Resources
Remaining reserves of fossil fuel are estimated as:
| Fuel | Proven energy reserves in ZJ (end of 2009) |
|---|---|
| Coal | 19.8 |
| Oil | 8.1 |
| Gas | 8.1 |
These are the proven energy reserves; real reserves may be up to a factor 4 larger. Significant uncertainty exists for these numbers. The estimation of the remaining fossil fuels on the planet depends on a detailed understanding of the Earth's crust. This understanding is still less than perfect. While modern drilling technology makes it possible to drill wells in up to 3 km of water to verify the exact composition of the geology, one half of the ocean is deeper than 3 km, leaving about a third of the planet beyond the reach of detailed analysis.
However one should keep in mind that these quantitative measures of the amount of proven reserves of the fossil fuels do not take into account several factors critical to the cost of extracting them from the ground and critical to the price of the energy extracted from the fossil fuels. These factors include the accessibility of fossil deposits, the level of sulfur and other pollutants in the oil and the coal, transportation costs, risky locations, etc. As said before easy fossils have been extracted long ago. The ones left in the ground are dirty and expensive to extract.
Read more about World Energy Resources: Renewable Resources
Famous quotes containing the words world, energy and/or resources:
“I am fairly tired—bored beyond endurance—by the world we live in, and its ideals, and am ready to say so, not violently, but kindly, as one rubs salt into the back of a flogged sailor as though one loved him.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“In the west, Apollo and Dionysus strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that lead to convention, constraint, oppression. Dionysus is energy unbound, mad, callous, destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law, history, tradition, the dignity and safety of custom and form. Dionysus is the new, exhilarating but rude, sweeping all away to begin again. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus is a vandal.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men,—those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)