The "energy crisis" and other energy-related problems, along with the battle over what energy sources we will use really has little to with energy, and a whole lot to do with entropy - the concept that energy becomes more and more dilute and unavailable for use over time, and that energy has "quality" (e.g. electricity and mechanical power are among the highest-quality forms of energy, while dilute light and heat are less usable and of lower quality.)
Entropy is the reason that "just-in-time" solar energy is "expensive" compared with super-concentrated fossil fuels that have been made and stored by natural processes over millions of years. It is the reason that people don't succeed in "sticking it to the man" by inductively coupling power lines to get free electricity or putting up antennas to harness the energy in radio waves.
The Sun sends 1.74 * 1017 watts to Earth on a continuous basis, which ends up being the equivalent of all of the world's conventional oil reserves, past and present, every 30 hours of so. But how much does solar currently contribute to our industrial energy system? It's all about availability. Now it is beginning to be a lot about greed as well.
We don't need more coal-fired power plants, we just need to use energy better by taking advantage of the billions of watts of waste heat thrown off by power plants. One of the most sad facts about our situation now is that we are fighting over what energy sources we will use to meet our future needs - coal vs. wind, etc. Many people in the world want to increase the combustion of coal, despite the whole greenhouse effect situation, and the fact that the waste heat thrown away at American coal-fired power plants is more energy (in pure energy terms, not considering entropy) than is used in all of Japan.
I estimate that it is about 4 PWh/year thrown away by American coal burners (that's four times ten to the power of 15 watt-hours) based on the fact that all U.S. electricity production is about 3 PWh/year and coal accounts for half of that, and coal-fired power plants are 30-40% efficient at converting heat into electrical energy.
So instead of burning all of this valuable gas in forced-air furnaces and converting all of that clean-burning methane into 72°F warm air, let's get some electrical energy out of it first, then use it to heat our homes, and shut down the coal burners!
Entropy is the problem, not energy. Rocky Mountain News.
