Here is a summary of latest info that I have been tracking on oil, nuclear energy and hydroelectric power.
Nuclear power could see an addition of 150-250 Gigawatts by the end of 2020 (the year not the decade, so before 2021). China alone could add 100 Gigawatt. Hydroelectric power should increase by 33% to 4000 TWH.
Oil production will likely continue to increase through 2020 based on oil recovery technology and development of oilsands, Bakken like oilfields, deepwater oil (in Brazil) and oil shale. Reducing fossil fuel usage will require replacing it with nuclear power, hydro power, wind, geothermal and solar power and energy efficiency. Waiting to run out of producible oil, coal and natural gas will disappoint those concerned about carbon and air pollution.
1. Company owner Harold Hamm said he believes the Bakken and Sanish/Three Forks formations taken together could contain 24 billion barrels of oil. Continental spokesman Brian Engel said his company has its own models for estimating oil reserves. Over 169 billion barrels of oil in place. Continued improvement in drilling tech can increase the recoverable oil.
2. North Dakota is currently on track to 700,000 barrels of oil per day in 2014-2017
3. Australia has what appears to be a duplicate of the Bakken field with current estimates of 5-11 billion barrels of recoverable oil based on current tech.
4. Paris basin could have more recoverable oil than the Bakken oil field
5. Iraq oil production now over 2.7 million barrels per day. It increased about 350,000 barrels per day over the last two weeks. Iraq is targeting 12 million barrels per day in about ten years. Some think they may only get to 6 million barrels per day in ten years.
6. Toe heel air injection could prove out by 2015 to enable over 20 billion more barrels of oil from the oilsands.
7. China has a catalyst to convert shale oil directly into transportation fuel. The US has about 2 trillion barrels of oil recoverable oil shale.
8. Thermoelectrics could improve to enable waste heat recovery at 15-20% level
9. Japan lowers the cost of Uranium extraction from seawater using cloth and persimmon juice
Japans outline of a plan to scale up uranium from seawater extraction is described here.
10. China is likely to increase its nuclear generation target for 2020 to 112 GWe. China plans to start exporting nuclear reactors in 2013. The lower cost (half of what France and the US charge) could enable other countries to firm up tentative plans and increasing nuclear reactors to about 1000 nuclear reactors by 2030.
11. Worldwide there is an installed capacity of 777 GWe supplied 2998 TWh of hydroelectricity in 2006. This was approximately 20% of the world’s electricity, and accounted for about 88% of electricity from renewable sources. There is an estimated 8500 TWh commercializable hydropower in the world based on current technology and prices. Current projects in China and the rest of the world appear likely to have 4000 TWh of hydropower in 2020.
13. The IEA world energy outlook for 2010-2035
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Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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