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:
“Just kids! That’s about the craziest argument I’ve ever heard. Every criminal in the world was a kid once. What does it prove?”
—Theodore Simonson. Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr.. Jim Bird, The Blob, responding to the suggestion that they not lock up the teens pulling the alien “prank,” (1958)
“Three elements go to make up an idea. The first is its intrinsic quality as a feeling. The second is the energy with which it affects other ideas, an energy which is infinite in the here-and-nowness of immediate sensation, finite and relative in the recency of the past. The third element is the tendency of an idea to bring along other ideas with it.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“The poor tread lightest on the earth. The higher our income, the more resources we control and the more havoc we wreak.”
—Paul Harrison (b. 1936)