Transportation:Is energy a personal issue or a public issue?

According J.D. Chapman of Geography and Energy Longman Scientific & Technical, transporters need to seek "a compromise between spped and energy(costs)"[1]. The lowest energy consumption are associated with bulk freight at low speed; whereas, high energy consumption is related to passengers traveling at a high speed, as seen by figure 1.

 [1]

Figure 1: Energy costs v. Speed in Transportation

Referring to the figure above, cars fall into the worst performance vehicles category, which is one of the top means of transportation for the general public. Even buses, trains, and helicopters consume a lot of energy. It is highly impractical to use bicycles or planes to get to work, thus cars buses and trains are the best option to travel but this means higher energy consumption. Based on this diagram, there is no good performance vehicle for passenger transportation.

On the other hand, freight transportation has a lower energy cost compared to passenger transportation with a tanker being the best means of transportation.  However, "most people travel with their own cars in the United States[2]." a tanker is not suitable for people, so what is the best method for traveling?  There is not really a good answer because all passenger vehicles appear to have a high energy cost.

The better question is whether the passenger transportation is a public issue or a personal issue. Is there a lack of public transportation such as buses, trains, subways, taxis, etc.? In some cities there is limited public transporation, but overall in the United States there is a sufficient amount of public transit availble. However, "most people travel with their own cars in the United States [2]." This can be seen in table 1 below.

Table 1: Passenger vehicles

[3]



The use of cars is probably because a lot of people do not want to pay money on a day to basis to ride the subway or take a taxi/bus. Some people claim, public transportation is gross or full of germs and they would only resort to taking public transportation if they had no other way to travel. Passenger planes are used if there is a need to travel long distances.

It is important to note that most of the general public is lazy, so walking or riding a bicycle would be nearly impossible to make a rule.

To summarize, if you view transportation in terms of passenger vehicles than the cost of energy consumption would be very high for both personal users and the general public. Because both are high, there would not a significant decrease in energy consumption if everyone started using public tranportation, such as buses. We should focus our efforts into creating "greener vehicles" to diminish the cost of energy instead of debating if energy is a personal or public issue.





[1]http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch8en/conc8en/energymode.html
[2]http://www.immihelp.com/newcomer/publictransport.html
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_the_United_States

Real vs. Fake Issues

According to McKay, wind turbines are causing a social issue or aesthetic issue. People claim that wind turbines are killing too many birds, but in reality turbines kill about 30,000 birds/year, where traffic kills 1,000,000 birds/year in Denmark. Furthermore, 55 million birds/year are killed by cats alone. A shocking number! In fact, Kuwait has a total of 363 species of birds, but only 1 has been introduced by humans. 101 species are rare or accidental and 8 of them are globally threatened [1]. Thus, it is safe to say  the number of birds killed by wind turbines in Kuwait can be almost negligible.

Is this a real reason to avoid wind turbines? No, considering the statistics based on the death of birds by wind turbines, it seems realistic that wind turbines could be installed. The real reason to be hesitant of wind power would be price or property issues (neighbors and aesthetics).

However, I think Kuwait should focus their attention on solar power and PV farms due to the amount of sun and lack of rain. As seen by our red stack green stack analysis, wind power does not make up much for production, so arguing about wind turbines should not be an issue. I think if Kuwait installed a lot of PV farms, there would be much improvement in energy production as opposed to wind power.







[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_of_Kuwait

What is feasible?

Based on our Red stack, Green stack analysis, Kuwait should be able to produce more energy than it consumes. However, according to McKay, Kuwait consumes about 330 kWh/d/p, which is a difference of 203 kWh/d/p. This could be because most of our numbers were estimated by using ratios from different countries, due to lack of information found on Kuwait.  Also, in our red stack analysis, numbers calculated were fairly lenient (average numbers), meaning some numbers could have actually been more than calculated. Imports were also not included in the production of energy. In the green stack analysis, economic, social, and environmental constraints were considered for the wind. And some of our "green" energy would not be compatible. For instance, Kuwait would most likely not use both deep and shallow offshore wind, mainly based on aesthetic reasons. Energy production numbers were very generous; for example, the PV farms energy (based on solar) was calculated to be 3497 kWh/d/p because Kuwait is assumed to be mostly all desert with a lot of sun.

Now we have to consider if it is even feasible for Kuwait to implement these energy production systems. Cost is probably the most important factor for Kuwait where they have a GDP of $131.3 billion, and a revenues/expenditures budge of $72.94 billion and $43.13 billion, respectively [1]. Obviously, Kuwait could not afford to put solar heating and PV farms over all their desert,  but surely some is feasible (perhaps a quarter making it 875 kWh/d/p).

Wind may not be too feasible because wouldn't want them ruining their backyards. Offshore wind might also not provide enough power for the amount needed to make much of a profit of it.  Tide power  and geothermal could be feasible based on our calculations .If we perform a similar ratio from the UK to Kuwait using McKay's numbers, our numbers decrease tremendously.

Thus our green stack boils down to as shown below:

Figure 1: Feasible production

The total production reduces to about 358 kWh/d/p, a huge decrease. However, this appears to still have a slightly higher production value compared to the energy consumption of Kuwait. Again, there was limited information to project the amount of energy consumption and the production is Kuwait's potential (Kuwait has not actually implemented all of these energy production systems).

If we really want to help, Kuwait cannot survive of just renewables alone. Some fossils fuels have to be used or something like Nuclear seriously needs to be considered.

[1] https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ku.html

Red stack v. Green Stack Analysis

Total consumption (red stack): 127 kWh/d/p
Total production (green stack):3553 kWh/d/p -- mainly due to PV farm

Energy of Kuwait: Food, Farming, and Fertilizer

Food, Farming, And Fertilizer:

Kuwaitis love their food and a very generous with food to the guests. They drink a lot of tea often with milk as an additive. They like meats such as mutton, chicken, and fish served and prepared in large amounts.[1] So how much does this food cost in energy?

The average 65kg person consumes about 2,600 "Calories" per day. This converts to roughly 3kWh per day of consumption. [2]

This 3kWh of energy is what we consume but there is much more behind this number. 3kWh of energy is the minimum for a vegan who eats only plant life. Looking further, calculating energy it takes to get the average daily dairy from a cow is about 1.5 kWh per day. This is considering how much a cow uses in energy to get you dairy products you consume [2].

Other daily Consumptions; 

Eggs/ 2 Per Day: 1 kWh

Another large contributor to the energy of food is meet. The average annual consumption of meat in Kuwait per person is 82 kg per year. [3] This number breaks down to about .23 kg per day or 1/2 lb of meat per day per person. When considering that the actually meat in processing the average meat eaten is about 140 kg per. Converting that using average human consumption.

140 kg *   3kWh/d / 65kg  = 6.5kWh/d

Meat (Sheep/Chicken/Fish): 6.5 kWh/d

With the vast majority of the food imported as shown in Figure 1. There is very little farm land and fertilizer to accommodate for therefore considering the farming and fertilizer in Kuwait to be negligible.

Figure 1. Cereal Imports and Food Aid for Kuwait. [3]

When adding up all the energy for food in Kuwait the total energy per person that we have calculated comes to about 12 kWh per day.

Food: 12kWh per day

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Kuwait
[2] MacKay Book
[3] http://earthtrends.wri.org/pdf_library/country_profiles/ene_cou_414.pdf

Energy of Kuwait: Gadgets

Gadgets:

Gadgets play a major large role of energy consumption in this technology filled era. A person always has a phone on them with a TV running while being on the computer. This has an effect on energy consumption. Kuwait City is similar to any other industrialized country when it comes to using gadgetry. Below in figure 1 is the typical energy consumed by using different types of gadgets.

 

 Figure 1. List of Gadgets and Energy They Use. [1]

 

For the gadget calculation we will take the main gadgets that are used on a daily bases.

Laptop Computer 16W

Computer Box 80W

LCD Display 34W

Bed Side Clock Radio 1.9W

TV 100W

Microwave Clock 2W

Mobile Phone Charger 5 W

Understanding that some of these will be used more than others and other gadgets will be also used we will add these up to find our average gadget use per day.

 

Total: 239 W

Converting: Using 40 W = 1 kWh/day

6kWh/day Per Person

 

 

 [1] MacKay Book

Solar Heating

Since there is not much about Kuwait's capability of using solar energy we are going to make some assumptions from Mckay's book. We are going to make the assumption that households are approximately the same size in the UK and Kuwait. Mckay assumes that each person has 10 m^2 of roofing to put solar panels on for heating. Since the average household size in the UK is much less than in Kuwait we need to account for this. We take the 2.3 average household size for UK and an average of about 8 for Kuwait [2][3]. Also there is a difference in the average size of the house. The UK's average house size is 91 square meters while Kuwait's average house size is about 185.8 square meters [4][5]. We can use these comparisons for a good average for amount of solar panels per person for heating. This gives us about 5.87 m^2 per person.

If we take this number and multiply it by 275 W/m^2, that is found from the map above, we get 38.16 kWh/day per person.


[1]  Mckay's Book
[2]  http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/downloads/40house/chapter03.pdf
[3]  http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/family/Publications/mtelhaddad.pdf
[4]  http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_UK_house_size
[5]  http://housing.justlanded.com/en/Kuwait/For-Sale/3

PV Farm Posibilities of Kuwait

PV Farm:

Figure 1. Kuwait Desert. [1]

 

Figure 2. PV Farm in Nevada Desert. [2]

Most of Kuwait is in entirely flat and dry barren desert of sandy plains. Along with this vast land area that is not being used is a strong average raw power of sunshine of 200 W/m^2. [3] PV farm seems to have a very plausible energy solution with these two components. As you can see Figure 1 is a picture of the current desert in Kuwait and Figure 2 is an example of a PV farm possibility that is located in Nevada. It is assumed that the efficiency of an average solar panel can be considered at 15% efficiency.

Taking 17,820 km^2 to eqaul the area of Kuwait. Assuming that about 17,000 km^2 of that is desert land and then about 80% of that being able to be used for PV farms.

13,600 km^2 = 13,600,000,000 m^2 = Available PV Farm Area

Dividing this by the population of Kuwait (2.8 Million) to get 4,857 m^2 per person of available PV farm area.

4,857 m^2 * 200W/m^2 * (15%) = 145,710 W per person

Converting;
3497 kWh/day per person






[1] http://www.flickr.com/photos/saleh100/4185439792/
[2] http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/08/first-solar-solar-power-california-socal-edison-550-megawatts.php
[3]http://ipac.kacst.edu.sa/eDoc/2010/190174_1.pdf
[4] MacKay Book

Wave/Tide Energy

After doing research on the Persian Gulf it seems that there is not much tide energy. Shown from the map below it seems as if there is just too many obstructions for tide to enter the Persian Gulf.

Figure 1. Map of Wave Energy: Persian Gulf. [1]

As seen from this map, the waves in the Persian Gulf have very low energies around Kuwait. This was taken from one day but we are going to assume that this is customary of the Persian Gulf. Kuwait has about 430 km of coast line so if we use 50 KJ/m per wave and assume that a new wave comes every 30 seconds then we can calculate the amount of energy that can be produced per day. Therefore, there is 50 KJ/30 sec which gives us approximately 1.67 W/m per wave. In any day with our assumptions there is 120 waves in every hour and with 24 hours a day we get that there is 2880 waves every day. This gives us a production of 4809.6 Wh/m per day produced by waves. Converting this it gives us 4.8096 KWh/m. If the entire coastline is has wave generators there would be 2068128 KWh produced per day. Now if they are only 50% efficient and they only cover 50% of the coastline so that there is still some tide then we could get 25% of that total number. This gives us 517032 KWh per day. Kuwait has a population of 2,794,706 which gives us approximately 0.185 KWh/day per person.

[1] http://www.surf-forecast.com/breaks/Mangaf/weather_map

STUFF: Kuwait

[1]
With Kuwait being the small country it is, IT is often hard to find a lot of information on there specific consumption. Knowing that they are very Industrialized around the area of Kuwait city, it safe to say that Kuwait uses a lot of stuff per person. With majority of people in Kuwait living in the region that they don't necessarily call home but a place where they are looking to hit it rich in the oil industry, the people of Kuwait are fairly large users of stuff.

Following the example from the McCay Book of Britains usage of stuff, it is concluded that the oil driven country of Kuwait is most likely slightly higher in the division of usage of stuff.[1]

Kuwait Stuff: 50+ mWh/d



[1] http://cchronicle.com/2010/06/book-review-the-story-of-stuff-by-annie-leonard/[2] McCay Book

Geothermal energy production in Kuwait

"Geothermal energy comes from two sources: from radioactive decay in the crust of the earth, and from heat trickling through the mantle from the earth’s core"[1]. Also accoridn to  McKay,  there is an optimum depth at which we could suck out heat, which was found to be 15km below the earth. An idea heat engine would deliver 17mW/m^2. And the world population density of 43 people per sq km. would make it 10kWh per person per day (if all land area were used).  The population density for Kuwait is 167.53 using the population of Kuwait (2985000 people) divded by the sq km of Kuwait (17818km^2) [2].

Now we can determine the geothermal power for Kuwait based on McKay's numbers: 2.422 kWh/d per person.

[1] McKay book.

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density  

Biomass production in Kuwait

Biomass consists of food, biogas, wood, waste, and landfill gas.

Currently no energy production from methane gases being released from landfills. However, on going projects are researching ideas to diminish methane being released from the air [1].

We can also assume no energyy production is coming from plants or like species, because there is only a minimum of forests in Kuwait as shown by the pie chart [2].

Thus, we can conclude the production due to biomass is negligible for Kuwait.



[1] http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/environment/region-fails-to-utilise-potential-of-landfills-1.617298

[2]http://earthtrends.wri.org/pdf_library/country_profiles/for_cou_414.pdf


Further sources ( 0 kWh/d per person for biomass production is the average number found by these sources)
http://arabclimateinitiative.org/knowledge/sustainable_energy/ALi%20Ebraheem%20Hajiah-Energy%20Efficient%20Building.pdf

http://www.iea.org/stats/renewdata.asp?COUNTRY_CODE=KW

http://www.map.ren21.net/PDF/ProfilePDF.aspx?idcountry=90


http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.EGY.PROD.KT.OE????

http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2010/key_stats_2010.pdf

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/kuwait/combustible-renewables-and-waste-metric-tons-of-oil-equivalent-wb-data.html

http://www.kpc.com.kw/newscontent/media/enews/44/images/BiFuel-e.pdf

Light in Kuwait

Light energy consumption is mainly through the household and work. The brightest domestic light bulbs use 250 W, where bedside lamps use 40 W [1]. How much power does the average person use in the day using incandescent or fluorescent lights? In Kuwait the average size of the home is around 2000 sq. ft, with approximately 8 people per household [2][3]. However the average square footage for the US home is about 2700, and the number of light bulbs for an average household in the US is about 45 [4] [5]. So, doing a comparison, the number of light bulbs for a Kuwait home is about 33 light bulbs.Thus, 20 incandescent lights with a power of 2kW used 5h would equal 10 kWh and 13 low-energy lights (.13kW) 5 hours per day would equal .65kWh-- a total of 10.65kWh energy per day per home. Because the average household is 8, this number will divided by to get kWh per day per person, which is about 1.33kWh/d per person.

Also, assuming that the workplace uses "1.3kWh/d per person", we can determine the total energy consumption for lighting in both the office and household [1]. A total of 2.63 kWh/d per person is the consumption of light.

According to McKay, street lights and traffic lights are negligible in the UK.  Consequently, there are limited roadways  and traffic lights in Kuwait, so it can be concluded that they are negligible as well.








[1] McKay
[2]http://housing.justlanded.com/en/Kuwait/For-Sale/3
[3]http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/family/Publications/mtelhaddad.pdf
[4]http://www.infoplease.com/askeds/us-home-size.html
[5]http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/22/earlyshow/living/home/main2965734.shtml

Hydropower in Kuwait

Kuwait only has a few seasonal rivers, thus dams are near impossible for Kuwait. In fact, the average annual rainfall for Kuwait is only 4.3 inches [1].

Thus, we can conclude Kuwait does not benefit from Hydopower.

[1]http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/pageinfo_pays.php3?Pays=KUW&Opt=climate

Off shore wind in Kuwait

What is the theoretically available wind power density from this area?

Assuming the wind power is about 18 knots or 20.71 mph, we can find the possible number of off shore wind turbines power potential [1]. We can also assume that average wind turbine blade rotor diameter is about 110m [2]. Wind turbines must also be placed 5 times the rotor diameter apart. We also know the coastline of Kuwait is 499 km, or 499,000m [3]. So if we divide the coastline by the rotor diameter with correct spacing, we can find the number of wind turbines, which results into about 907 wind turbines.

In order to find the wind power density, we use the following equation:
  Power per Unit Area of Land= (Pi/400) (rho)(V)^3

where V is the velocity. We can then plug in our value of 20.71 mph or 9.26 m/s into our equation given that the density is still 1.222 kg/m^3. Using those given values, the power per unit area of land is equal to 7.608 W/m^2. If we multiply this by the area which is 10000m by 499000m, it will be equal to the available amount of power.

Thus the power is  approximately 37.9 GW or 15.16 kWh/d per person for shallow  or 30.32 kWh/d per person for deep shore. But it is assumed that power unit area of 3 W/m^2 for offshore wind farms, which would mean 5.05 kWh/d per person for shallow or 10.1 kWh/d per person for deep.


Following McKay, how many tons of concrete and steel will it take to pull this off?

According to McKay, to create 48 kWh/d per person  in the UK it would require 60 million tons of concrete and steel, so performing a ratio between the UK and Kuwait it will yield the amount of concrete and steel needed in Kuwait. The amount of concrete and steel for Kuwait is about .03832 million tons.




[1] http://www.windfinder.com/forecasts/wind_persian_gulf_akt.htm
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine
[3] http://www.indexmundi.com/kuwait/coastline.html

What is the potential wind energy availability in Kuwait?

The average wind speed for Kuwait is approximately 4.6 m/s [1]. However, 1.5 m/s was added to this number to compensate for the Weibull Distribution. (At greater speeds, there is a greater power output.) In order to find the power per Unit Area of Land, the velocity of 6.1 m/s and the density of air at a constant value of 1.22 kg/m^3 is plugged into the equation below:

Power per Unit Area of Land= (Pi/400) (rho)(V)^3

where rho is the density and V is the velocity.

The result of power due to wind is 2.175 kg/s^2, which is pretty average for wind power. This is equal to 2.175 W*s/m^2. Now converting to kWh/m^2 per day and then multiplying by 80% of the area of Kuwait land we get 206712 kWh. This gives us 0.074 kWh per person per day.





[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148105000145

Car Energy Life-Cycle Analysis

The mazda3 car has used approximately 55000 kW-h in about three years. However, the energy use to manufacture this car is approximately 76000 kW-h [1]. Is it worth it? In order to justify the cost of manufacturing, based on about 18,000 kw-hr per year, the car would have to be used for 8 years.  (Note: This energy consumption was based on a consumer's current vehicle in the United States.)


[1] McCay book.

Energy Consumption By Planes in Kuwait

In order to find the amount of energy consumed per person by way of plane in Kuwait assumptions needed to be made. The first assumption was that the average Kuwaiti travels the same distance per day via plane as an American. This assumption was made because the average distance is such a small number and they only have one large airport. This leads me to believe that this country and airport are similar to a state in the United States. Also this is a very small number relative to other energy uses, so a little discrepancy will not through off the overall number very much. In this case, according to mycarbonfootprint.com the average american travels 1055 miles/year. With some conversions and an assumption the the average commercial aircraft burns 36 miles per gallon for each passenger we can find what the average energy consumption per day is.

Figure 1. Energy Consumption By Plane Per Day.

This value seems pretty small compared to the average 330 kWh that are used per day by each Kuwaiti. At the same time when all options are taken into consideration cooling will probably consume the majority of this number considering the climate in Kuwait.

Energy Consumption By Cars in Kuwait

Kuwait

Figure 1. Population Density of Kuwait. [3]

To begin to look at the energy consumption by cars in Kuwait it is necessary to look at how far the average driver drives on average in each day. This number is affected by where the population of Kuwait resides. Looking at the population density map in figure 1, it shows that the vast majority of people live in the area surrounding Kuwait City. While the population of all of Kuwait is nearly 2.8 million, the population of the Kuwait City metropolitan area is nearly 2.4 million. There fore we will consider the traveling by car for Kuwait City to estimate the energy consumption by car. The area of Kuwait City Metro Area is 200 km^2 (77.2 sq mi). With this we will assume that the average distance traveled per day is about 50 km (30 miles).

Kuwait has roughly 1 car for every 2 people so there for about 1.4 million cars [2]. So dividing that by 2 because only every other person has a car we come up with the average travel by day per person by car to be 25km (15 miles). For the distance per unit of fuel we will consider 22 miles per gallon (9.353 km per litre) with the mix of new more efficient cars and older more affordable cars. Lastly to discover the energy per unit fuel for the calculation of energy consumption by car we will an energy per unit mass equal to 8kWh per kg. With a density of .8 kg per liter we achieve 7 kWh per liter. Now simplifying this into the energy per day equation.[1]

                                                     = 25km/day        X 7 kWh/litre

                                                        9.353km/litre

                                      

Average Energy Used Per Day by Car Per Person   =19 kwh/day

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwait_City

[2]http://www.q8nri.com/home/2010/10/10/statistics-reveal-one-car-for-every-two-persons-in-kuwait/

[3]http://www.bestcountryreports.com/Population_Map_Kuwait.php