The fossil energy indicates the energy which one produces starting from rocks resulting from the Fossilisation of the living beings: Oil, Natural gas and Coal. They are present in limited quantity and nonrenewable, their combustion involves Gaz with greenhouse effect.

Formation

During geological times, less 1  % of the Organic matter (biomass) was hidden in the ground, or formed a deposit at the bottom of the Lac S and of the Océan S. It was then transformed into Kérogène, then out of fossile fuels: Oil, Natural gas or coal.

History

During 20th century and XXIe century, the use of fossile fuels allowed the industrial development large scales of certain areas of the world. Fossil energy replaced the energy of the water mills and the thermal energy produced by the combustion of wood. The fossile fuels also allowed a development without precedent of the Automobile and the Avion, and thus of the Road transport and the Air transport.

Future

Today, the use by humanity of considerable quantities of fossile fuels is at the origin of an important imbalance of the Cycle of carbon, which causes an increase in the concentration of Gaz to greenhouse effect in the terrestrial atmosphere and, consequently, involves climate changes.

In addition, the fossile fuel reserves of planet are fixed and, at the current rate/rhythm of consumption, their exhaustion must be considered. In spite of the violent polemics, this fact is recognized today, as well by the scientists as by the industrialists, except for some chronological nuances. The difference in expiry amounts in decade. In the particular case of the Oil, one speaks about oil Pic or Pic of Hubbert.

To give an order of magnitude the speed of use of fossile fuels, it is considered that, with the current rhythm, humanity will have exhausted in less than 200 years the reserves accumulated during several hundreds of million years (to fix the ideas, one will take 200 million years, knowing that the Carbonifère lasted approximately 60 million years). One notes thus that humanity exhausts the fossile fuel reserves approximately a million times more quickly than than nature put to constitute them.

  • the Air pollution: due to fossil energies; the total is the black curve, oil the blue curve (1800-2000)

Classification

No classification

Conventional

The conventional fossile fuels represent the near total of the current consumption of fossil energy:

Nonconventional

Among nonconventional fossile fuels, one can quote:

  • the oil shales () containing Kerogen, which must still be pyrolyzed

  • the tar sands () contain asphalts
  • the bituminous sands contain Bitume
  • the hydrates of methane
  • the Tourbe is a little separately, its training cycle amounts in thousands of years, which halfway places it between the fossil fuels (whose formation amounts in million year) and the renewable ones.

See too

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Simple: Fossil fuel

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