Fossil fuels

Non-renewable energy comes from sources that will run out or will not be replenished in our lifetimes—or even in many, many lifetimes. Most non- renewable energy sources are fossil fuels: coal, petroleum, and natural gas. Carbon is the main element in fossil fuels. For this reason, the time period that fossil fuels formed (about 360-300 million years ago) is called the Carboniferous Period. All fossil fuels formed in a similar way. Hundreds of millions of years ago, even before the dinosaurs, Earth had a different landscape. It was covered with wide, shallow seas and swampy forests. Plants, algae, and plankton grew in these ancient wetlands. They absorbed sunlight and created energy through photosynthesis. When they died, the organisms drifted to the bottom of the sea or lake. There was energy stored in the plants and animals when they died. Over time, the dead plants were crushed under the seabed. Rocks and other sediment piled on top of them, creating high heat and pressure underground. In this environment, the plant and animal remains eventually turned into fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and petroleum). Today, there are huge underground pockets (called reservoirs) of these non-renewable sources of energy all over the world. Advantages and DisadvantagesFossil fuels are a valuable source of energy. They are relatively inexpensive to extract. They can also be stored, piped, or shipped anywhere in the world. However, burning fossil fuels is harmful for the environment. Wh...

One of the most widespread beliefs about fossil fuels — oil, natural gas and coal — is that these substances started out as dinosaurs. There’s even an oil company, Sinclair, that uses an Apatosaurus as its icon. That dino-source story is, however, a myth. What is true: These fuels got their start long, long ago — at a time when those “terrible lizards” still walked the Earth. Fossil fuels store energy in the bonds between the atoms that make up their molecules. Burning the fuels breaks apart those bonds. This releases the energy that originally came from the sun. Green plants had locked up that solar energy within their leaves using photosynthesis, millions of years ago. Animals ate some of those plants, moving that energy up the food web. Others plants just died and decayed. Any of these organisms, when they die, can be turned into fossil fuels, notes Azra Tutuncu. She’s a geoscientist and petroleum engineer at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. But it takes the right conditions, including an oxygen-free (anoxic) environment. And time. A whole lot of time. The coal we burn today got its start some 300 million years ago. Back then, dinosaurs roamed the Earth. But they didn’t get incorporated into coal. Instead, plants in bogs and swamps died. As this greenery sunk to the bottom of those wet areas, it partially decayed and turned into peat. Those wetlands dried out. Other materials then settled down and covered the peat. With heat, pressure and time, that peat transfor...

We understand today that humanity’s use of fossil fuels is severely damaging our environment. Fossil fuels cause local pollution where they are produced and used, and their ongoing use is causing lasting harm to the climate of our entire planet. Nonetheless, meaningfully changing our ways has been very difficult. But suddenly, the COVID-19 pandemic brought trade, travel, and consumer spending to a near-standstill. With billions of people recently under stay-at-home orders and economic activity plunging worldwide, the demand for and price of oil have fallen further and faster than ever before. Needless to say, oil markets have been in turmoil and producers around the world are suffering. The idea that the pandemic could ultimately help save the planet misses crucial points. First and foremost, damaging the world’s economy is not the way to deal with climate change. And in terms of oil, what will take its place? We haven’t found a good substitute for oil, in terms of its availability and fitness for purpose. Although the supply is finite, oil is plentiful and the technology to extract it continues to improve, making it ever-more economic to produce and use. The same is also largely true for natural gas. Until that moment, I hadn’t thought enough about how my experience and background give me a clearer view than many on the promise and challenge of moving to a cleaner energy system. I have gained a wide-angle view of the energy industry as I’ve moved through my career, workin...

There is a lot of debate about the continued exploration and mining rates for. Considering that almost all of our systems of power are designed to work with them – changing to another energy source is expensive and complicated. That isn’t the real problem with Below are 25 Interesting Facts About Fossil Fuels Fact 1: All fossils fuels are the result of plant decomposition that happened millions of years ago – under water. The most recent discovery of an untapped oil field was discovered in Alaska. The ice is thought to have covered a sea that existed millions of years ago. See also How Fossil Fuels Work Fact 3: Prospecting for oil requires measuring the type of rock that is beneath the Earth’s surface. Scientist drill to remove a core sample, and then examine the strata levels to determine if there is evidence of the plant decomposition needed to have created the crude oil. Fact 4: Crude oil is found in underground areas called reservoirs that can be turned into products such as gasoline and electricity. Fact 5: Fact 6: Natural gas is a form of methane. It gets trapped in pockets where plant decomposition has occurred. It can be underground, but it can also be above ground if the organic compounds in the water source of are the right type. New experiments are working to discover how to harvest methane from the waste products of animals such as cows. Fact 7: Fossil fuels are not a renewable resource even though we have not located all of the reserves there are in the world....

Energy production – mainly the burning of fossil fuels – accounts for around three-quarters of global The world therefore needs to shift away from fossil fuels to an energy mix dominated by low-carbon sources of energy – renewable technologies and nuclear power. What does our energy mix look like today? What countries have the ‘cleanest’ energy mix? And are we making progress in shifting towards a low-carbon energy system? This article focuses on the breakdown of energy sources: how they vary across the world and how this is changing over time. In the energy domain, there are many different units thrown around – joules, exajoules, million tonnes of oil equivalents, barrel equivalents, British thermal units, terawatt-hours, to name a few. This can be confusing, and make comparisons difficult. So at Our World in Data we try to maintain consistency by converting all energy data to watt-hours. We do this to compare energy data across different metrics and sources. Today when we think about energy mixes we think about a diverse range of sources – coal, oil, gas, nuclear, hydropower, solar, wind, biofuels. But If we look back a couple of centuries ago, our energy mixes where relatively homogeneous. And the transition from one source to another was incredibly slow. In the chart shown we see global primary energy consumption dating back to the year 1800. This earlier data is sourced from Vaclav Smil’s work Energy Transitions: Global and National Perspectives. 1 Data from 1965 onwa...