Energy - The Ultimate Problem (1976)

foreign [Music] we are going to run out of all fossil fuels available foreign [Music] s on fuels that took millions of years to produce 96 of our energy comes from burning coal oil and natural gas and it takes tremendous amounts of these fuels to provide the energy to keep things running third of the energy consumed by the world each year is consumed by the United States the way fossil fuels are being burned up they won't last for many more Generations Transportation depends on oil products but oil is also the basis of mechanized agriculture mechanization is increased Farm output tremendously and we depend on this food production but every advance in mechanization every new tractor and farm machine off the assembly line has meant increasing needs for oil products country dwellers City dwellers our vehicles need gasoline and diesel oil cars are the biggest single cause of our incredible thirst for oil and oil products oil production in the United States is about 4 billion barrels a year the oil is converted into gasoline and other products at oil refineries but these four billion barrels Supply only about two-thirds of America's increasing oil needs the rest has to be imported if oil consumption continues increasing at the same rate the United States will probably exhaust the oil supply of the entire world in about 60 years natural gas will run out even sooner and it isn't transported from country to Country in large quantities as oil is gas Burns clean which makes it a popular fuel for heating and cooking one form of energy we're depending increasingly on is electricity we in the power industry have a deep commitment to two things to supply the electrical energy to meet the needs of their communities we serve with the least possible adverse effect on the environment with generating electricity a great amount of another fossil fuel is used coal hole our supplies of unmined cool can last about 300 years but our electricity requirements keep increasing more and more electricity is being used but the demand for electricity is beginning to exceed the supply there are power shortages we could build new plants but that would burn up the cold faster we need more coal and more oil we are searching for new supplies we're drilling more oil wells but there are many people who don't welcome the environmental changes in oil industry might bring to their community the Continental shelves are rich sources of oil too but Coastal communities are worried about oil spillage and leaks and their effect on beaches and Wildlife mining for coal disturbs the land this is especially true of strip mining great holes are gouged out of the surface of the Earth to get at the core the land can't be fully reclaimed that coal companies have been converting old pits to lakes and restoring the surrounding land for agricultural use the search for more fossil fuels is necessary but it can have undesired effects on the environment you can see why environmentalists are worried about depletion of the world's resources but our way of life is based on the use of tremendous amounts of energy do we have to change our way of life or are there other options these plants use fission reactors which split uranium atoms to release heat energy this heat energy in turn converts water into steam which drives large turbo generators which produce electrical energy nuclear power will answer future energy needs nuclear plants Supply about 10 percent of our electricity that amount might double in 10 years but nuclear energy has its risks there's always the possibility of an accident which might release radioactivity into the air or land or water the warm Wastewater from reactors also has to be removed in some way dumping this water into rivers and lakes causes heat pollution which could be a threat to fish and vegetation but all around us are unused non-polluting natural forces that could be sources of energy the tides the wind geothermal energy from Steam produced by heat deep inside the Earth unfortunately large-scale use of these Natural Forces is a long way off Fusion reactors may be the ultimate answer in the fusion reactor we utilize the combination of atoms rather than the splitting of animals the sun's energy comes from Fusion enough of this solar energy reaches Earth to solve all of our energy requirements if solar energy could be economically harnessed there'd be no energy crisis we have one of the Laboratories who are working on the Practical utilization of solar energy uh in particular we are developing a concentrator that will produce heat and hopefully at some time electricity basically what we have here are funnels that take the solar heat concentrated on a blackened plate behind behind these concentrators and it produces then a warm liquid which can be used to drive an air conditioner it could be used to produce steam it could be used to heat your house the use of solar energy seems the best solution to our immediate problems the harnessing of Fusion Energy seems much further off scientists believe that laboratory models of fusion reactors will be available in 1990 however commercial Fusion reactor systems will not be operational until the 21st century nuclear fusion is a cleaner process than nuclear fission we've chosen nuclear power for some of our newest Plants but we're still going to be making a lot of our energy for coal from coal for many years to come so fossil fuels will still be needed for energy even with atomic power stations generating electricity the scarcity of the fossil fuels makes it imperative that we find ways of extending their availability and and improving the methods of extraction of the fossil fuels from the ground but now the answer to the depletion of our fossil fuel seems to be how to find more well the search for fuel from new places is on the oil companies would like to do more offshore drilling the Environmental groups would like to stop them and are lobbying for new legislation you know now that the energy party's over electric companies are telling people to use less after all those years of telling people to use more and more who's going to believe it problem is our way of life demands the immense consumption of energy we're used to it we've come to expect it I'm a social scientist and my studies involve how changes in the human population the growth of the human population affect our environment do we need to use this much energy couldn't we get by with less quality of our original limits on our use of energy what do we owe to the people who come after us Americans use more energy per person than people anywhere else in the world learning to use less energy conserving it is probably the most effective way now for us to extend our energy supplies can we do it do we want to do it conservation may be our only hope perhaps it's too late already the energy crisis is real it affects every one of us let's hope there's a solution to it because if there isn't our world's going to be very different and we may not like it