Ending Dependence on Oil

Posted: November 28th, 2013

Ending Dependence on Oil

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Ending Dependence on Oil

Excessive consumption and dependence on oil as a source of energy has become a major global issue especially due to diminishing deposit of oil. Currently, many drilling companies have to drill deeper in search of oil than before since the oil levels have gone down. More so, burning of fossil fuel, oil, has continued to pose a major threat to the environment due to emission of carbon monoxide in the air. However, oil continues to be the most reliable source of energy since it is more available than any other source. However, other alternative sources continue to be developed, but have not proven to be sufficient to replace oil as the major source of energy. Alternative sources of energy provide one of the solutions to reducing human dependence on oil over the long term, but are not likely to eliminate dependence on oil in the short-term.

When talking about oil as a source of energy, many think of it in terms of transport, which is the most popular use of oil. However, oil is used in many other ways, where it is used as a raw material for producing other items that we need on a day-to-day basis. In addition, it is used almost in all aspects of our lives concerning energy such as cooking gas, lighting, and production in the factories to run other machineries. Oil is the one source of energy that can be modified to suit any purpose concerned with providing power. This makes it hard to end human dependence on oil since it would mean halting a lot of operation in the whole world. Therefore, eliminating dependence on oil may not be easy considering the world is growing larger, while the alternative sources of energy are picking up slowly. For instance, as the world gets richer and developing countries continue to develop, there is more and more demand for oil to run vehicles where many result to buying them when they have money. This means that as the world gets richer, demand for oil increases. Therefore, as demand increases, there will be need to have enough sources of energy, meaning that if alternative sources are not developed and produced faster than the increasing demand for energy, there will be continued dependence on oil (Giampietro, Martin, Ulgiati, 2012).

Developing alternative sources of energy has not proven to be cheaper considering the research and designing required to come up with new alternatives. More so, the alternative sources are minimal to serve the whole globe (Giampietro, Martin, Ulgiati, 2012). This makes it quite hard to eliminate dependence of humans on oil. However, there has been progress considering some of the alternative energy sources have only come up recently when the world has realized the danger posed by continued excessive consumption of fossil fuel. In addition, with the diminishing deposit of oil, eventually, replacing fossil fuel with other alternative sustainable sources of energy may not be a choice to make; rather, it might be a necessity due to increased demand for energy. Therefore, despite the alternative energy sources being expensive to produce in large quantities, they will play they are bound to play the major role in ending human dependency on oil. Therefore, it is evident that the increasing demand for energy and increased harmful environmental impact of burning oil demand an alternative source of energy that can be sustained by the planet.

On to the other hand, oil is also proving to be quite expensive since the drilling firms have to go deeper in search of oil. The search for oil is proving harder since more and more oil wells are near drying up. This has led to increasing prizes of oil. It is no wonder that oil seems to continue rising in terms of prize, more so considering the increasing demand for oil. This is evidenced by the fact that oil-producing companies such as Saudi Arabia and United Arabs Emirates have continued to prosper from oil, which is their major source of income. Considering this fact, there will be need for another source of energy to end the consumption of oil. The alternative sources of energy that are currently under use include solar energy, biomass energy, wind and among others have proven to be a good sustainable source of energy (Cherubini, 2010). However, in order for them to end dependence on oil, they will have to be produced in large amounts.

However, despite the alternative methods being utilized, to end dependence on oil will take more than that. Another solution will be developing technologies that require less energy to run as well as designed to run on other sources of energy. Much use of fossil fuel has been due to heavy machinery and vehicles that require a lot of energy to run. If such machineries were designed to consume less fuel, the consumption of oil would be reduced. There have been efforts to reduce consumption of oil in cars and other machineries, but this has not reduced the consumption of oil globally.

Oil occurs naturally, and all that has to be done is to mine and refine it. With other alternative sources of energy, many processes have to be taken before it becomes a reliable energy. These processes are quite expensive to go through, and when it is done, not enough has been produced. There are many alternative sources currently being developed with some managing to go as far as the theoretical part, but are to be produced and used. Many of these alternative sources have required huge government subsidies to develop as well as produce. This makes it hard to produce them to a large quantity enough to replace oil in meeting demand for energy. More so, despite the alternative sources being developed, they are not always effective as oil in terms of fitting many forms of power (MacKay, Hafemeister, 2010).

Fossil fuel is by far the major source of energy in the whole world. It is used in almost all forms of energy including lighting, cooking powering factories and mainly in the transport industry as well as a raw material to many products. This makes it harder to cut dependence on oil. Currently, many alternative energy sources have been sought while others are under research. Considering the ever-increasing demand for energy, as more and more people require oil for their daily activities, alternative sources of energy will only replace oil if only they are able to grow faster than the increasing demand. However, this is not possible in the near future, hence, it will not be possible for alternative sources of energy to end human dependence on oil (Giampietro, Martin, Ulgiati, 2012).

References:

Cherubini, F. (2010). The biorefinery concept: Using Biomass Instead Of Oil for Producing Energy and Chemicals. Energy Conversion and Management, 51 (7): 1412-1421.

Giampietro, M., Ramos-Martin, J., & Ulgiati, S. (2012). Can we break the Addiction to Fossil energy? Energy, 37 (1): 2-4.

MacKay, D. J. & Hafemeister, D. (2010). Sustainable Energy—Without the Hot Air. American Journal of Physics 78 (2): 222.