Powering the Future: A Scientist’s Guide to Energy Independence

Section I. Conventional energy sources

I use the term conventional to mean those energy sources that dominated the 20th century, are familiar to us, and therefore seem conventional. These are the fossil fuels—oil, gas, and coal—as well as water power from rivers and streams, and nuclear power.

In working through the energy issues myself, I kept needing to refer back to the broad view of how much energy each source provided and might provide in the future. Table SI.1 and Figure SI.1 provide a quick summary, which you may want to refer back to. I also found it hard to conceive of energy amounts this large, so I tried to express them as something I could imagine. That’s why Table SI.1 shows how many Boeing 747 round-the-world trips each amount ...