CAMBRIDGE GEOGRAPHY A2 REVISION - ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT: SUSTAINABLE ENERGY SUPPLIES. Presentation suitable for Cambridge A2 level students. It contains: key terms and definitions, topic summary, additional works and suggested websites.

1. CAMBRIDGEA2
GEOGRAPHYREVISION
ENVIRONMENTALMANAGEMENT
12.1SUSTAINABLEENERGYSUPPLIES

2. KEYTERMSANDDEFINITIONS
Energy crisis is a serious shortage of energy that interrupts domestic supplies
and impacts on all sectors of the economy.
Fossil fuels are fuels consisting of hydrocarbons (coal, oil and natural gas),
formed by the decomposition of prehistoric organisms in past geological
periods.
Renewable (sustainable) energy is sources of energy such as solar and wind
power that are not depleted as they are used.
Energy mix is the relative contribution of different energy sources to a
country’s energy production/consumption.
Proved reserves of oil are quantities of oil that geological and engineering
information indicate with reasonable certainty can be recovered in the future
from known reservoirs under existing economic and operating conditions.

4. KEYTERMSANDDEFINITIONS
Reserves-to-production (R/P) ratio is the reserves remaining at the end of
any year divided by the production in that year. The result is the length of
time that those remaining reserves would last if production were to
continue at that level.
Supply shock is a significant interruption to supply due to an environmental,
economic or political event.
OPEC is the abbreviation for the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting
Countries. The current members are Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,
United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Libya, Nigeria, Venezuela, Angola and
Ecuador.
Peak oil production is the year in which the world or an individual oil-
producing country reaches its highest level of production, with production
declining thereafter.

6. KEYTERMSANDDEFINITIONS
Geopolitics are political relations among nations, particularly relating to
claims and disputes pertaining to borders, territories and resources.
Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the USA’s reserve supply of oil, which should
last for about 3 months in the event of severe interruptions to imported oil.
Energy pathways are supply routes between energy producers and
consumers, which may be pipelines, shipping routes or electricity cables.
Resource nationalisation is when a country decides to place part or all of
one or a number of natural resources (e.g. oil and gas), under state
ownership.

7. U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve

8. KEYTERMSANDDEFINITIONS
Oil sands, also known as tar sands or extra heavy oil, are naturally occurring
mixtures of sand or clay, water and an extremely dense and viscous form of
petroleum called bitumen.
Environmental impact assessment is a document required by law detailing
all the impacts on the environment of an energy or other project above a
certain size.
Non-renewable energy sources are energy resources that are not replaced,
or are replaced only very slowly by natural processes.
Biofuels are fossil-fuel substitutes that can be made from a range of agri-
crop materials including oilseeds, wheat, corn and sugar.

9. There are many environmental benefits to replacing oil with biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel. For one, since such
fuels are derived from agricultural crops, they are inherently renewable—and our own farmers typically produce
them domestically, reducing our dependence on unstable foreign sources of oil. Additionally, ethanol and biodiesel
emit less particulate pollution than traditional petroleum-based gasoline and diesel fuels. They also do not
contribute significant greenhouse gases to the global climate change problem, since they only emit back to the
environment the carbon dioxide that their source plants absorbed out of the atmosphere in the first place.

10. TOPICSUMMARY
Non-renewable sources of energy are the fossil fuels and nuclear fuel.
Renewable energy can be used over and over again. Renewable energy
includes hydroelectric, biomass, wind, solar, geothermal, tidal and wave
power.
At present, non-renewable resources dominate global energy. The
challenge is to transform the global energy mix to achieve a better balance
between renewables and non-renewables.

12. TOPICSUMMARY
Energy demand is primarily governed by the size of a country’s population
and its level of economic development.
The key factor in supply is energy resource endowment. Some countries
are relatively rich in domestic energy resources while others are lacking in
such resources and heavily reliant on imports.
The use of energy in all countries has changed over time due to a number
of factors. The fossil fuels dominate the global energy situation.
There has been growing concern about when global oil production will
peak and how fast it will decline thereafter.

14. TOPICSUMMARY
Between 1998 and 2008 global oil production increased 11% compared with
35% for natural gas, 49% for coal, 13% for nuclear energy and 22% for
hydroelectricity.
There are a number of technologies that can improve the use and prolong
the life of fossil fuels. These include coal gasification, clean coal technologies
and the extraction of unconventional natural gas.
No other source of energy creates such heated discussion as nuclear power.
Hydroelectricity dominates renewable energy production.
The newer sources of renewable energy that make the largest contribution to
global energy supply are wind power and biofuels.
The ‘big four’ HEP nations of China, Canada, Brazil and the USA account for
almost 50 per cent of the global total.

16. TOPICSUMMARY
The worldwide capacity of wind energy is approaching 100 000 MW. Global
wind energy is dominated by a relatively small number of countries.
Biofuels are fossil fuel substitutes that can be made from a range of agri-
crop materials including oilseeds, wheat, corn and sugar.
Geothermal energy is the natural heat found in the Earth’s crust in the
form of steam, hot water and hot rock.
From a relatively small base, the installed capacity of solar electricity is
growing rapidly. Experts say that solar power has huge potential for
technological improvement, which could make it a major source of global
electricity in years to come.

17. Iceland's Nesjavellir geothermal power station.
Geothermal plants account for more than 25 percent of the electricity produced in Iceland.

18. TOPICSUMMARY
In developing countries about 2.5 billion people rely on fuelwood,
charcoal and animal dung for cooking.
It is the newly industrialised countries that are increasing their energy
demand by the fastest rate.
Increasing energy insecurity has stimulated exploration of technically
difficult and environmentally sensitive areas.
Huge tar sand deposits in Alberta, Canada and Venezuela could be critical
over the next 50 years as the world’s production of conventional oil falls.
As energy companies have had to search further afield for new sources of
oil, new energy pathways have had to be constructed.

20. ADDITIONALWORKS
1. Look at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s website (www.iaea.org). Go
to the Nuclear Non-proliferation section and then the Chronology of Events
subsection.
a. Make a note of the dates the present nuclear powers tested their first atomic bombs.
b. What has the IAEA been doing to try to ensure that other countries use nuclear power for
generating electricity only and not for preparing to build a nuclear bomb?
2. Look at the latest BP Statistical Review of World Energy
(www.bp.com/statisticalreview). Use the energy charting tool to create custom
charts for your own analysis of the global energy situation.
3. Look at OPEC’s website (www.opec.org) and discuss this organisation’s latest
views on the world energy situation.
4. What are the government’s current views on nuclear energy in the country in
which you live?
5. For the country in which you live, find out which forms of renewable energy
are used and how much they contribute to total energy production.

22. SUGGESTEDWEBSITES
www.bp.com/statisticalreview
www.worldenergy.org
www.peakoil.net
www.aspo.org
www.greenpeace.org.uk
www.opec.org