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University Distinguished Professor
Michigan State University, Dept. of Chemical Engineering
Human well-being is a direct function of power consumed, or the rate at which work is done. The relationship between rate of energy consumption and rate of wealth production should not surprise anyone. The faster work is done (more power consumed), the more wealth that is produced. It is impossible to think of a single wealth-producing activity that does not require work—the expenditure of energy. The great increase in the world’s wealth since the Industrial Revolution is the obvious outcome of using fossil fuels to provide the energy for machines to do work. We got rich in the last couple… [more]
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University Distinguished Professor
Michigan State University, Dept. of Chemical Engineering
It is clear that the Age of Oil is winding down. Worldwide, the rate of discovery of new oil reserves peaked in the 1960s and in the US our peak rate of oil discovery occurred in the early 1930s. In recent years the world has used about three barrels of oil for every barrel of new oil reserves discovered. Thus we are living largely on past oil discoveries. There is still a lot of oil in the world, and we will still be using a lot of oil decades from now. But it will be increasingly expensive both economically and… [more]
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