Energy Use & Developing an Energy Plan Research Paper

Energy Use & Developing an Energy Plan - Research Paper Example The Energy Policy Act of 2005 has helped a lot in encouraging use of sources that have more positive outcomes than others by loan guarantees and incentives given. Introduction Energy in a system may take on various forms such as; kinetic, heat, potential and light. The law of conservation of energy says that energy may neither be destroyed nor created. Hence, the sum of all the energies in the system is a fixed. A pendulum is commonly used in illustrating law of conservation of energy (Messenger et al, 2007). The different energy sources have advantages and disadvantages. It’s clear that no source of energy is completely positive or negative. Therefore, it is important for consumer and all stakeholders in general should weigh the pros and cons of the different source so as to come up with the most beneficial source that is less harmful to the environment. 1. The law of conservation of energy, which is a law of physics, was first developed in the 19th century. It states that en ergy amount in total, is an isolated system stays fixed over time. In this law, it is said that total energy is conserved over time. Furthermore, it means in an isolated system that energy is localized and can vary its location on the inside of the system. Moreover, it implies that energy form can change within the system. This is to say, chemical energy can convert to kinetic energy, although it can be neither destroyed nor created. Furthermore, two initially isolated systems can be in a logic manner composed into a single isolated system if they have no mutual or external interaction. In this case, the total amount of energy of the composite system is same to the respective sum of the total energy amount of the composite system. Consequently, system energy is said to b additive (Messenger et al, 2007). Similar the internal energy is called extensive quantity for a homogenous system in its own thermodynamic equilibrium. The definition of energy was broaden in the 20th century. Mate rial particles which possess rest mass, were generally approved as containing equivalent energy amounts. Moreover, they are not conserved and perish into kinds of energy that lack rest energy such as potential and kinetic energy. A good illustration is that a positron and electron can perish together into photons of electromagnetic radiation. In addition, non-material kinds of energy can die into ponderable matter. This type of transformation process within an isolated system, neither total mass nor the total energy vary over time, even if the matter content may change. Moreover, energy conservation and mass conservation, all this still applies as a law in its own right. 2. Natural gas, coal and fossil fuel are the world commonly used energy sources. About 65 billon barres of petroleum is consumed in the world each day. It is projected that the consumption will increase to 99 billion barrels per day by 2015. There is about 5,149.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserve is not us ed up. This is more than oil but less than coal. Furthermore, 23.3% of natural gas is used in the United State. Moreover, natural gas has several advantages; its less polluting since it burns clean as compared to oil and coal, it also produces 70% less carbon dioxide compared to fossil fuels, it is not a pollutant thus it helps in quality improvement of water and air, another advantage is that natural gas has