Abstract
SOME conclusions from the reports given at the third World Power Conference as to how long petroleum, coal, natural gas and water power will last in the United States, have been issued by Science Service, Washington, D.C. There is a possibility of a shortage of domestic petroleum so early as 1940, and by 1945 the shortage may be serious. There is no cause for alarm in the figures reported, but wasteful methods of drilling and using are deplored. The question of coal conservation is considered immediate and urgent. The life of the coal resources at the recent maximum demand is about 2,000 years. With the probable increased demand of the future, the life may be measured in hundreds of years only. For natural gas the known domestic reserves are seventeen to twenty times the annual consumption. For water power, only a small percentage of the total potential hydro-electric power has yet been developed; but in making estimates, many other factors have to be considered in connexion with navigation, recreation, wild life, soil conservation, etc. One of the reports suggests the possibility of replacing all the ‘manufactured gas', usually made from coal, with the by-product gas of petroleum refineries. The second most important gas resource of America is the nearly 200,000 million cubic feet of gas which has been stripped of all the condensable constituents that can be used in motor fuel. In the generation and distribution of electric power, engineers have effected notable economies in fuel consumption and the use of materials. This is a conservation step in the right direction, but many engineers think that more careful engineering is required in the mining of coal to reduce waste. Power is also used for purposes that constitute only a waste of what the engineers have so economically produced.
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Estimates of Future U.S. Power Supplies. Nature 138, 611–612 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138611d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138611d0