Sustainable Energy Supply

Course goals

• will have gained an understanding of the main concepts in Energy Science.
• will have a basic understanding on all major sources of energy supply (fossil, nuclear, renewable), the main energy vectors, and what energy services they provide
• will have learned to integrate knowledge into energy scenarios
• will be able to perform basic calculations on energy conversions

Content

This lecture is encyclopaedic in nature. It presents the students with a full overview of all the major energy sources, their conversions, and their use in end-use energy services. We start with an introduction that introduces key concepts in energy science: primary energy, quality of energy, energy return, the relation between energy and economic growth, and those between energy, climate change and sustainability. Subsequently, we give an overview of all major energy resources: pre-modern energy, coal, oil, gas, hydropower, nuclear, modern biomass and biofuels, solar photovoltaic, wind energy. In addition, attention is given to the main energy vectors: hydrocarbon fuels, electricity and hydrogen. The role and prospects of carbon capture and storage is also discussed. For each subject, the dynamic interplay and co-evolution of energy, society and the environment is emphasized. In any lecture we take a particular form of energy or energy vector and discuss it from a natural resource perspective, from a technical perspective, i.e. the means to produce and convert the resource, and the key technologies on the end-user side, and finally we discuss the impact on society.
 
During the tutorials the students will learn to perform basic calculations on energy and energy conversions. Furthermore, in order bring the interplay between energy sources and conversions in the energy system, and understand change in time and the technical and societal constraints, students will work in small groups to create an energy scenario for a country of their choice. Within the context of their scenarios, students will be asked to individually do a deep-dive on a specific energy subsector and write a short (2000 word, offline) essay on how that sector develops in the group scenario.