OUR WASTE OF FUEL
As was shown in a previous chapter, we utilize very little of the energy in coal. Our steam railroads squander from 94 to 96 per cent of the coal they burn and our best turbine power plants throw away about 80 per cent. The coal we burn in domestic furnaces is most wastefully squandered. Maybe we shall learn how to use the energy in coal more efficiently and make it last longer, but eventually it will all be gone and then what are we going to do?
Of the other fuels available, petroleum takes the leading place, but we are hardly more economical in our use of this fuel and our oil supplies are diminishing much more rapidly than the stores of coal. In 1919 the United States produced 376,000,000 barrels of oil and consumed 418,000,000 barrels, having had to draw on Mexico for 42,000,000 barrels. Natural gas cannot last much longer and peat bogs are estimated at about half of one per cent of the coal supplies. Where shall we turn for heat and power when all these stores of energy are gone?
It has been estimated that the water powers of the earth, if fully developed, would probably supply about half of the energy that we now get out of coal. This is a never-failing supply of energy, and no doubt before we have begun to scrape the bottom of our coal magazines every river on earth that is capable of turning a wheel will be doing so to the limit of its capacity. Then there will be a readjustment of the manufacturing centers of the earth and remote regions such as Iceland, for instance, which has more available water power than Switzerland, will hum with machinery, while such countries as Great Britain, which is relatively poor in water powers, will have to give up manufacture and revert to agricultural pursuits.
But are there not other powers that can be used? If we could capture all the energy of the winds we should have ample power to do all the work that is now done on earth with a large margin to spare. It has been estimated that the winds contain 5,000 times as much energy as is obtained from coal, but how may we capture so fickle a power as the wind. It is so variable, sometimes exerting enough power to lift houses from their foundations and uproot giant trees, and again sinking to an absolute calm. In some places wind power is turned into electricity and then stored up in batteries; but the cost of doing this is high and at present uneconomical.