Energy in itself is an incomprehensibly big concept. It encompasses so much in this world that its difficult to even talk about. It is however, not an entirely new concept. From early Neanderthals using fire, to people in the industrial Revolution implementing the use of Coal on a large-scale, Energy has been at the forefront of our progression through time. Now more than ever though, energy is the hottest most talked about subject out there. Our hopes and future dreams quite literally lie with the development and implementation of new age technologies.
The Spirit Of Ireland is one company that we looked at who are trying to be on the Crest of the wave in terms of implementing new age technologies. Thankfully they gave a short presentation a short while after we had talked about them in class. It was nice to see the people who were actually involved, and how they dealt with the pressure of an open floor discussion, which I might add, had a very probing Q&A time. For me it certainly un-earthed some discrepancies within their operation. They were quite uncomfortable towards the end. It makes me ponder the question, If a new company is to start within this sector, should they be under-taking a project of this magnitude? Should they not have extremely professional people within their ranks to ensure that they do not come across as Cowboys when the public asks questions. I think so anyway. that’s enough about them.
Might be a bit what they were like?? ha, sorry, funny image!
When people think about oil running out they never really think about it. Nobody stops to look at the finer details of it all. When you do this its really quite frightening what you find out. The use of oil goes much further into our lives than just a fuel. We benefit from petro-chemicals in such a way that it would be difficult to comprehend what exactly life would be like without them. If they were gone we would be in deep trouble, not only from the point of energy security, or food security, but also medicine security, or consumer goods security, or the security of any and every facet of what we consider to be our everyday life.
If you take for example this simple image below. All of the coloured objects in it have been manufactured with the help of petro-chemicals. Eg. Curtains(Synthetic man-made fibers), Canned Food(food additives), Camera(Ethylene), Washing up Liquid(Made from petro-chemicals). Its staggering really just how much we use oil for.
The million dollar question really is, What will happen to life as we know it, once oil is gone?
If I step back for a moment a look back at a lecture slide I found particularly comical, the Petroleum interval.
It’s exciting to think about future generations looking back at our time on this earth now. What energy sources will they be using to power their world and will they have learned from our mistakes. 
But for the moment I guess we are going to have to put up with implementing world-wide use of solar/wind/wave and geothermal energy sources.
Ireland for example at the moment has only about 10% energy self-sufficiency, if we were to take advantage of the wind energy that passes us every single day, this figure would certainly be at least 3 times what it is now. It would require some strong and innovative engineering and also a very strong government to back it all up, Ireland could certainly move forward in terms of energy production.
Other new types of energy production which I found very interesting was one which Bill Gates is funding. It involves using a core of depleted uranium. Very cool idea, that will have serious long-term potential if it works.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid42529855001?bctid=8596453001
And also just as people were getting caught up in the use of Lithium within batteries they go and use ordinary everyday metals to form a great new battery. A little dangerous to say the least but still has massive amounts of potential. The idea basically employs the use of basic physics and chemistry along with 700 degree molten metal. They find that the metal is able to hold a significant amount of charge. Scientists involved say that a battery the size of a shipping container could deliver a Megawatt of electricity. That’s enough to power 10000 100 Watt light bulbs for several hours. If they could adapt this technology for use with electricity generation from wind energy, it would definitely have significant world-wide applications.
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