Energy development

Energy development is the field concerned with providing abundant and accessible energy to all humans.

Dependence of humanity on external energy sources

Humans depend fully on external energy sources to live and thrive. The food we eat is almost totally produced courtesy of an energy infusion from the sun. The clean water we drink is brought to us largely courtesy of a hydrologic cycle driven by the sun. All the following more advanced activities require additional external energy sources:

• Cooking
• Lighting
• Traveling by other than human power
• Firearms
• Machinery including manufacturing and computers
• Electronic communications

Increased levels of human comfort and freedom require increased dependence on external energy sources. Energy development therefore embodies the idea of increasing human comfort and freedom by researching and implementing increasingly Energy may be stored in many forms and free energy may be converted between these various forms. A method of energy storage may be chosen based on stability, ease of transport, ease of energy release, or ease of converting free energy from the natural form to the stable form.

Chemical

Some natural forms of free energy are found in stable chemical compounds such as fossil fuels. Most coinsurances of chemical energy storage result from biological activity, since biological systems store energy in the form of chemical bonds. Man-made forms of chemical energy storage include hydrogen fuel and batteries.

Gravitational

The construction of dams is a method for storing energy in a gravitational field. Other examples are the counter-weights on elevators.

Electrical

Electrical energy may be stored in capacitors. These are often used to produce high intensity releases of energy (such as a camera's flash)

Current state and goals of energy development

Fossil fuels--oil, coal and methane--are the main energy sources currently used by humans. They have the advantages of storing well and being relatively easy to extract. Because they are not generally viewed as ideal sources due to limited supply and polluting characteristics, thousands of papers have been written and experiments done on alternative energy sources. A few of these alternatives are already supplementing fossil fuel. A goal of energy development is to develop one or several alternative energy sources to a level capable of replacing the fossil fuels, which are being consumed at a rate far exceeding the rate at which nature is replacing them. A major worry of industrial societies today is that our supplies may become more difficult and costly to extract(as in the Peak Oil theory) before our alternatives have sufficiently developed, causing anything from a long-term economic recession to a Malthusian catastrophe.

Fifty years ago it appeared that nuclear fission would provide cheap electricity without pollution. Several thousand years supply of uranium is in known reserves if we can design safe breeder reactors. But several disappointments have limited fission to about 17 percent of the world's electric production.

• Many of the early prospectors, miners and processors of uranium ore had a high incidence of cancer.
• Cost of the fuel rods has risen rapidly, due to protecting workers and a more limited amount of high grade ore than originally projected.
• Several breeder reactors have been built, but shut down, as they were judged unsafe.
• Most of the public has developed a considerable fear of nuclear as a result of bad judgement and several accidents and close calls. The public is also worried about disposal of the spent fuel rods and decommissioning of old nuclear power plants that are no longer cost effective.

Electric production by fusion may still be 20 years or more in our future. Some are optimistic that helium-3 which can be scraped from the surface of some of the planets, moons and asteroids in our solar system will soon make electric generation by fusion practical.