Fossil Fuel

The fossil fuels are coal, oil, natural gas and their refined derivatives. Fossil fuels currently provide more than 85% of all the energy consumed in the United States, nearly two-thirds of the electricity, and virtually all of the transportation fuels.

Fossil fuels are the principal source of the greenhouse gases currently 'fueling' global warming. Breathing Earth shows the current carbon dioxide emissions of every nation on the Earth.

According to the US Department of Energy (DOE), Innovative technologies can make the future production and use of fossil fuels more efficient and environmentally cleaner. This same source says fossil fuels will likely remain the mainstay of global energy production well into the 21st century.

Oil

The term "global oil-production peak" means that a turning point will come when the world produces the most oil it will ever produce in a given year and, after that, yearly production will inexorably decline. The graph above shows the shape of a global oil production curve peaking around 2007. The peak is the top of the curve, the halfway point in the consumption of the world's oil and gas resources, meaning half the world's oil will be left. That's the half that is much more difficult to extract, far more costly to get, and of much poorer quality. Additionally, extraction of oil from the remaining sources such as tar sands and shale oil is extremely destructive environmentally, leaving waste lands akin to the mountaintop removal associated with coal extraction in Appalachia. A documentary, A Crude Awakening - The Oil Crash, provides a vivid picture of the situation we face.

Coal

Coal is the other fossil fuel. One quarter of the world’s coal reserves are found within the United States, and its energy content exceeds that of all the world’s known recoverable oil. Coal is also the workhorse of the nation’s electric power industry, supplying more than half the electricity consumed by Americans. Unsurprisingly, coal related research is a prime component of the US energy program.

Coal is one of the most environmentally destructive energy resources, both in the methods of its extraction from the earth and the pollutants and greenhouse gases generated by its consumption in energy production. The DOE research and development program discusses pioneering more effective pollution controls for existing coal-fired power plants and an array of new technologies that would eliminate air and water pollutants from the next generation of power plants. Research is also underway to capture the greenhouse gases emitted by coal plants and prevent them from entering the atmosphere. The program does not mention eliminating the environmental impacts associated with the extraction of coal from the earth. Appalachian Voices shows the impact of mountaintop removal to reach coal veins in West Virginia.

Carbon Sequestration

"Carbon sequestration" is the term given to a suite of technologies that can remove CO₂ from large point sources, such as power plants, oil refineries and industrial processes, or from the air itself. The CO₂ can then be stored in geologic formations such as depleted oil and gas reservoirs, deep coal seams or saline reservoirs. As a note of reality, it should be acknowledged that roughly 25 billion tons of carbon dioxide are produced each year. That is a lot of storage.

Because carbon sequestration holds the potential both to reduce emissions of CO₂ from point sources and to remove CO₂ from the air, sequestration research has grown over the last five years from small-scale, largely conceptual studies, to one of the highest single technology priorities. Without successful CO₂sequestering for both point and moving sources, fossil fuels will remain a principal source of global warming.

One last point about fossil fuels is frequently overlooked in the emphasis on the generation of CO_2.The creation of CO₂ takes up oxygen from the atmosphere. If all the fossil fuels were burned by humanity, much of the oxygen in the atmosphere would be replaced by carbon dioxide. The only reason we have oxygen to breathe is that most of the carbon in the world is underground.

Sequestering the CO₂ generated by the burned fossil fuels will not put that oxygen back in the atmosphere. For that to happen, the oxygen would have to be first separated out.

The alternative is to just take out the carbon, which is what many natural processes do. It can also be stored in plants, trees and soils by increasing their natural carbon uptake. These means of separating out the carbon alone would not adversely affect the oxygen levels in the atmosphere.