Fossil fuel energy infrastructure

As described in Chapter 1, our 200-year-old fossil fuel energy infrastructure is obsolete. It functions by extracting fuel materials from the earth s crust and combining them chemically with oxygen from... 

Basically, the entire global energy (and energy related) infrastructure, especially in the United States one, relies on fossil fuels. 

The time lag for new technology infrastructure ensures that use of fossil fuels for energy generation and hydrogen fuel cannot go to zero over a short-term period. If 50% of the world electricity supply can be achieved by 2050 with renewable resources, the need for fossil-fuel combustion (X) can be reduced by the potential growth of nuclear energy utilisation. 

For these reasons, CO2 capture and disposal remains an attractive option for the medium to longer term if the current pattern of energy supplies continues, based on the existing fossil fuel Infrastructure and reliability of associated technologies. 

The current energy infrastructure in the Netherlands (see figure 1) can be characterised as rigid and inflexible. For decades, capital-intensive units such as power stations and oil refineries have converted one specific type of fossil resource into only a few products most coal is converted into electric power, some 90% of crude oil is turned into transport fuels and natural gas is used to generate electric power and heat. At a short term a feedstock change cannot be realized for any of the facilities in this energy infrastructure. Long-term feedstock modification options are limited and often prohibitively expensive. 

---