key: cord-0059398-mdvqvy5a
authors: Sharma, Raj; Pareek, Vishnu
title: Wrapping It All Up—What Next?
date: 2020-10-16
journal: The World of Energy
DOI: 10.1007/978-981-15-6724-7_7
sha: a0aa23b80fb5e9c65f91545fd5e5c67657555c89
doc_id: 59398
cord_uid: mdvqvy5a

Energy drives life. All life. In all its manifestations. Life requires work. Energy is the capacity to do work. Power is the rate of doing work—how fast. Invention of the steam engine in the Eighteenth Century, fueled by coal enabled Man to do work at a speed and scale never seen before. Industrial revolution had begun and the seeds of modern-day life sown.

This is just shifting system boundaries and a classic example of NIMBY-Not In My Back Yard! Electric vehicles still must be charged every so often from electricity produced elsewhere by whatever means with their own environmental impacts. Further, electric vehicles require Lithium-ion batteries which can weigh up to 100 kg for a 300-mile range (gasoline tank equivalent). About 10% component of this (10 kg) is Cobalt, which still must be mined and refined; and, most of the rest is Lithium Oxide, which must be extracted from Lithium Carbonate. These processes, and endof-life disposal of batteries, (will) have their own environmental and social impacts. End to end accounting is a must -there are no quick and easy solutions!

As things stand today, there is no replacement for fossil fuels vis-a-vis the life we lead. They will continue to dominate the energy mix in the foreseeable future, at least over the next many decades; perhaps even hundreds of years. But, then, who knows?! It is almost impossible to predict the future, except to say that energy will continue to play a pivotal role in our lives. Watt, Otto, Diesel, Edison, Einstein, Ford, Rockefeller, Oppenheimer, and many others, could not have predicted the future then about what the world is today. Even fifty years ago, no one could have predicted the internet and its impact on the world today. As we write this, no one could have predicted COVID-19 a few months ago and its impact on the world. Figure 7 .1 presents a graphic about a possible future? Perhaps, five million years from now "Men (will be) extinct?". Who knows?!

All energy, alternate energy included, is governed by, and must obey, certain laws of Nature, called Laws of Thermodynamics, which cannot be violated.

There is a cost to everything, and a price must be paid.

There is no free lunchcaught between a rock and a hard place!

Humanity's birthday

Mars' moon Phobos disintegrates 800,000,000

End of mul cellular life 100,000,000,000,000,000,000

Earth plunges into the Sun THE END

Mayan end-mes (again)

Niagara Falls disappear 500,000

Asteroid strike likely Plutonium becomes safe New Ice Age

New North Star #2

Mount Rushmore erodes

Earth's orbit becomes unpredictable 600,000,000

End of photosynthesis Total solar eclipses impossible 2,800,000,000

The end of life 

Energy today and tomorrow