Growth in energy consumption

Figure 2 illustrates that except for the anomalies related to the World War II, Canada s economic growth as measured by real (or uninflated) gross domestic product has been accompanied by nearly parallel growth in energy consumption. 

With these two fundamental concerns in mind, it is quite clear that the major priority will have to be given to energy efficiency. In order to reduce the growth in energy consumption and the associated pollution. 

Although the economic downturn in Asia that began in mid-1997 has lowered expectations for near-term growth in the region, almost half the world s increase in energy consumption is still projected to be in developing Asia. 

Figure 2. Economic growth and energy consumption in Canada (1940-1970)...

Figure 5 shows the result. If the historical relationship between economic growth and energy consumption continues and if the economic forecast is approximately correct, then by the year 2000 Canada will be consuming over 20 quadrillion Btu s compared with slightly over 5 quadrillion in 1970. This is less than one-third of United States consumption today. On a per capita basis, it would mean that for each of the 35 million Canadians assumed at that time, about 585 million Btu s would be consumed annually compared with about 250 million today. (Again the competent economists quoted earlier suggest that per capita consumption in the United States will reach 450 million Btu s as early as 1985.)... 

It is also apparent that the exponential growth in electricity consumption per capita cannot be sustained world wide indefinitely. The economic growth of the world depends strongly on the availability of electricity and transportation. Therefore, it behooves the world population to use the most appropriate technologies to seek the optimum mixture of available large-scale energy resources to provide the most sustainable supply of electricity and transportation fuels. 

The National Power Survey projections of electric power generation, when translated into primary energy demand based on energy conversion efficiencies now demonstrated and anticipated during the next several years, indicate a continuing growth in fuel consumption in the form of... 

In some sectors (power generation and refineries) new environmental requirements will stimulate the growth of energy consumption and CO2 emission (e.g. new DESOX installations). 

The gates and and OR are a little bit more complicated than that. They take two bits at the input and return only one bit at the output. The simple fact that one bit is lost, or erased, in the action of these gates, has deep thermodynamics consequences. It is related to irreversibly, entropy growth and energy consumption, as we will see in the following sections. The truth tables for the gates and and OR are shown in Tables 1.2 and 1.3, respectively. 

The first part of the report analyzed the nation s fossil-fuel reserves in some detail, estimated the growth of energy consumption, and related them to the need for development of nuclear energy. It maintained that fossil fuels supplying most of the energy in the United States would be exhausted in the not-too-distant future. Using different combinations of energy estimates, the report predicted that low-cost readily available domestic supplies would be depleted in 75 to 100 years and total supplies in 150 to 200 years. 

An interminable number of studies have been performed to predict future energy consumption patterns, resources, imports, and prices. If the predictions of higher oil prices had been accurate in the late 1970s, or if the oil price had stabilized at its peak in 1981, the biomass energy iadustry would have exhibited much greater growth than it has (128). 

---