Energy resources and their impact on economy Essay

Energy resources and their impact on economy - Essay Example The reason behind this is that the utilization of these forms of energy is heavily technologically dependent and these technologies are still in the stages of infancy. There are many difficulties in implementing these technologies, some of them being their higher costs and sophistication of usage procedures to the common layman. Coal is a fossil fuel that is formed in the earth's crust from slow metamorphosis of organic matter under high temperature and pressure conditions. The rate at which coal is formed is very slow and it takes millions of years for the formation of coal. Coal originally formed from ancient plants that after death were decomposed and somehow buried under layers of sedimentary rocks. With the passage of time more and more layers of sediments formed on this decomposed plant matter. This exerted high pressure and resulted in increase of temperature. Over millions of years these physical conditions caused coal to form from the elements carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, and mineral compounds that were present in the plant matter. Coal formation began during the carboniferous period known as the first coal age which spanned 360 to 290 million years before the present day. Coal deposits are fo... There exists a hairline difference between the terms "reserves" and "resources". Reserves are coal deposits that be extracted profitably with the application of technology where as resources are an estimate of the world's total coal deposits. All the resources may not be reserves because some of them are not commercially accessible. Total recoverable reserves of coal around the world are estimated at 1,001 billion tons-enough to last approximately 190 years at current consumption levels. Historically, estimates of world recoverable coal reserves, although relatively stable, have declined gradually from 1,167 billion tons at the beginning of 1990 to 1,083 billion tons in 2000 and 1,001 billion tons in 2003. The most recent assessment of world coal reserves includes a substantial downward adjustment for Germany, from 73 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves to 7 billion tons. (International Energy Outlook 2005) The coal reserves are geographically distributed as follows: Europe, in cluding all of Russia and other countries that made up Soviet Union, 44 percent; North America, 28 percent; Asia, 17 percent; Australia, 5 percent; Africa, 5 percent; and South America, 1 percent. (Speight 2003) A substantial quantity of coal consumed is burned in electric power stations to produce electricity. When coal is burned energy is obtained in the form of heat. In a power station that uses coal as the fuel, this heat converts water into super heated steam at high pressure which is made to rotate a turbine connected to a dynamo to produce electricity. The steel industry uses coke. Coke is a hard substance consisting of nearly pure carbon and is obtained by heating coal in absence of air. The coke is combined with iron