Source: University of Arkansas blog of sustainability.
Fossil fuels, including coal, petroleum, and natural gas, are the go-to boogeyman of the green movement. They are known for their huge amount of greenhouse gases when burned for energy. Leading to our dangerously changing climate. Besides that, the methods used to access these fuel sources (which are fracking, tar sands and extensive mining) can be significantly damaging to the environment.
In other words, civilization’s addiction to fossil fuels is trashing and it’s poisoning our planet. But we are still leveraging them for energy! Let’s understand why…
No. 1: Efficiency
One relevant fact about the fossil fuels is that they are fantastic at their job! That is, producing energy. Earth’s fossil fuels reserves were formed over millions of years as the organic material of plants and microorganisms were compressed and converted into deposits of carbon, basically reservoirs of condensed energy. That’s why the fuels are incredibly energy dense, which means a little bit of a fossil fuel can produce tons of energy for tons of places.
This energy dense quality made Europe to adopt wood instead of coal as a fuel source. And this sudden increase in the energy sources available was one of the factors that led to the industrial revolution.
No. 2: Convenience
As said before, fossil fuels are the result of natural processes of millions of years. While it takes more time to transform wood into coal, these fossil fuels have passed this transformation time already and so, they are ready to be used. In order to unlock better sources of energy, first you need to think of the efficiency levels of each of these sources. This means that it’s key to understand the way they are collected, transformed and stored before you can even start to consider about using them. Fossil fuels, in the other hand, do not require innovation at all. So, the process of collecting and storing the energy into fossil fuels has already been accomplished. That’s why they are also known as “ready-made” because they can leverage their energy anywhere, anytime.
No. 3: Logistics
The last factor that makes fossil fuels attractive is fact that they have been the main source energy in much of the world for the past two centuries. These years may not seem like such a long time in the scheme of things, but these 200 years were more remarkable than most due to the industrial revolution.