Let's start with the first question. 1
What is energy. 2
I noticed that when I ask this question to students they usually have a terrible giving an exact definition 3
and I must say it is not easy so the scientific definition for energy would be like this, the capacity 4
of the system to perform work. we humans use energy to do some work. 5
We use energy for heating air and water. 6
We use energy for transportation of people and products by cars, trains, trucks and even planes. 7
We use energy to produce foods and products. 8
We use energy to illuminate our houses and streets. 9
We use energy to watch TV, do our laundry, working on computer and surfing internet at this moment. 10
You are consuming energy by watching this. 11
video 12
energy appears in many forms in our daily life like gravitational energy or kinetic energy or even 13
mechanical energy or electrical energy, heat radiation, wave energy, chemical energy and nuclear energy 14
total amount of electrical energy is always conserved in the form of energy may be change in the time 15
but the total amount doesn't change. 16
This mean that if we want energy to work for us we usually convert it from one form to another form 17
An example is the electrical motor. 18
This is a tool in which we convert electrical energy into mechanical energy , the unit of energy is joule 19
so that power is the energy per time and it expressed in watt one watt is one joule per second in our 20
course we will use more practical unit which is generally used to express electrical energy which 21
is kilowatt hour. one kilowatt hour equals to the electrical energy of power of kilowatt being used for 22
one hour one kilowatt hour. 23
equals 3.6 million joules 24
the energy problem the world as we know today is based on the capability of humans to convert the 25
energy from one form to another form 26
Most technological developed nations are also the once which you have access to and are using the most 27
energy per capita 28
for many people believe that the biggest challenge for humankind in this century is tackling the energy 29
problem why do we have a problem. 30
the first challenge is that humankind is facing supply demand problem that demand is growing constantly. 31
The world population is still rapidly growing and some studies predict world of population of 9 32
billion around 2040 in reference to the 7 billion people living on this planet today. 33
All this people. 34
will need energy which increases the global energy demand. 35
In addition the energy consumption per capita is linked to the living standards of the country. 36
In 2010 in the same United State at around 230 kilowatt hour of energy per capita 37
per day was used 38
otherwise countries in Africa like Nigeria for example only use 1/10 of this energy at around 39
23 kilowatt hour bad day per capita in this graph. 40
You see the living standard expressed in human development index the darker color , the more developed region. 41
However the light color in this figure is getting darker by. 42
the years 43
in many countries. 44
the living standard is rapidly increasing like China and India where approximately 2.5 billion people 45
already. 46
These people represent more than a third of the world population. 47
both increasing world population and increasing living standards will increase the energy 48
demand the international energy outlook in 2013 predicts that energy consumption will increase by 56 49
per cent by 2040 in reference to 2010. the increasing demand in energy has economic impact as well. 50
If there is more demand for product while supply doesn't change much that product. 51
will get more expensive 52
as an example we show a plot of the annual average price for the oil and barrel normalize to the value 53
in dollar. 54
first, You can see that price went up during the oil crisis in the seventies in this decade. 55
Some countries stopped producing and trading oil for while. the second era of higher oil pricing is started 56
as the beginning of this millennium due to the increasing demand from you new growing economics the 57
oil pricing had been sufficiently increased. 58
The second challenge humankind is facing related to the fact that our energy infrastructure heavily 59
depends on the fossil fuel like oil and coal and gas. 60
Fossil fuels are nothing but millions and millions of years of solar energy stored in the form 61
of chemical energy. 62
The problem is that humans deplete literally deplete these fossil fuel faster than they are generated 63
through the photo-process in nature so that fossil fuel are not sustainable energy source in coming century 64
we will see that we are running out of the oil and gas if we continue our rate of consumption. 65
Another barrier is that it's technological more challenging to get the fossil film out of reserve 66
currently left the government and companies are willing to take higher risks like we have seen in the 67
Gulf of Mexico spills in 2010. the third challenge is that by burning fossil fuel we produce 68
the so-called greenhouse gas or GHG like carbon dioxide that additional carbon dioxide created by humans 69
activities is stored in our oceans and the atmosphere most scientists saying that they increase in carbon 70
dioxide is responsable for global warming and climate change which can have destructive consequences 71
so humankind is looking for alternative energy resources like solar and wind.