Direct Use: Current and Future Prospects More geothermal energy is directly used as thermal energy than is used to generate electricity, both in the United States and worldwide.. Direct
Trang 1can be cascaded such that the wastewater and heat
from one is the input heat source to the next An
ex-ample is the cascading of systems used for electricity
generation, fruit drying, and home heating Finally,
the distance between the geothermal source and the
plant or user should be minimized, as there can be
sig-nificant transmission losses in heat as well as high
costs for pipe, pumps, valves, and maintenance
Electrictity: Current and Future Prospects
The United States leads the world in electrical
gener-ating capacity The U.S installed geothermal
electri-cal generating capacity has moved from 2,228
mega-watts in 2000 to 2,534 megamega-watts in 2005 to 2,958
megawatts as of 2008 This U.S generating capacity
is spread over seven states but is concentrated in
Cal-ifornia As of 2008, California had 2,555 megawatts
of generating capacity The other states with
geother-mal electrical generating capacity are Alaska; Idaho,
with one plant of 13-megawatt capacity; Hawaii, with
one plant that delivers 25 to 35 megawatts,
supply-ing about 20 percent of the island’s electrical needs;
New Mexico, with a 0.24-megawatt pilot project
on-line and a 10-megawatt station that was expected to
come online in 2009; Nevada, with seventeen
geother-mal power plants totaling 318 megawatts of capacity;
and Utah, with one plant with a capacity of 36 mega-watts
As of 2009, projects totaling 3,960 megawatts of ad-ditional generating capacity were at least at stage one
of development; that is, they had secured rights to the resource and had begun initial exploratory drilling Many of the projects were farther along than that, with some in the facility construction and production drilling stage These projects are located in thirteen different states Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming will be added to the list of states with geothermal electrical-generating facilities when these are all completed
As of 2009, Alaska had four projects totaling 53 megawatts at least at stage one Arizona had one proj-ect of 2-megawatt capacity under development Cali-fornia continued to expand its capacity, with twenty projects totaling 928 megawatts under development Colorado had a 10-megawatt plant at stage one of de-velopment Florida had a plant of 0.2-megawatt capac-ity under development Hawaii had an 8-megawatt ex-pansion project under way Idaho had six projects under development, which would increase its gener-ating capacity by 251 megawatts Nevada had forty-two projects under development, which would add 1,082 megawatts and more than quadruple its current gen-erating capacity New Mexico had a 10-megawatt plant under development Oregon had eleven projects un-der way, totaling 297 megawatts of capacity Utah planned to added 244 megawatts to its generating ca-pacity with six geothermal electrical generating proj-ects Washington had one project of unspecified ca-pacity under development Finally, Wyoming, had a 0.2-megawatt project under way
Total worldwide geothermal power generation (based on installed capacity) rose from 5,832 mega-watts in 1990 to 8,933 megamega-watts in 2005, according to the Geothermal Resources Council As of early 2005, the United States was the world’s top generator, at 2,564 megawatts, followed by the Philippines (1,930 megawatts), Mexico (953 megawatts), Indonesia (797 megawatts), Italy (791 megawatts), Japan (535 mega-watts), New Zealand (435 megamega-watts), and Iceland (202 megawatts), and fifteen more nations (produc-ing fewer than 200 megawatts each)
Direct Use: Current and Future Prospects More geothermal energy is directly used as thermal energy than is used to generate electricity, both in the United States and worldwide Direct use of
Top Consumers of Geothermal
Energy, 2005
Megawatt Capacity
Gigawatt-Hours per Year
Note: Worldwide installed capacity for direct use increased
from 8,604 megawatts in 1995 to 28,268 megawatts in
2005 Yearly direct use increased from 31,236
gigawatt-hours per year in 1995 to 75,943 gigawatt-gigawatt-hours per
year in 2005.
Trang 2mal energy includes space heating (both district
heat-ing and individual space heatheat-ing), coolheat-ing,
green-house heating, fish farming, agricultural drying,
industrial process heat, snow melting, and swimming
pool and spa heating
In the United States, installed capacity for direct
use of geothermal energy increased from 1,874
mega-watts in 1995 to 7,817 megamega-watts in 2005 The U.S
yearly direct use increased from 3,859 gigawatt-hours
per year in 1995 to 8,678 in 2005 The greatest direct
use for geothermal energy in the United States, by a
wide margin, is geothermal heat pumps Of the 2005
direct-use figures, 7200 megawatts are for geothermal
heat pumps The 2005 U.S capacities and yearly use
rates for the other direct-use categories were as
fol-lows: individual space heating (146 megawatts, 371
gigawatt-hours per year); district heating (84
mega-watts, 213 gigawatt hours per year); cooling (less than
1 megawatts, 4 gigawatt-hours per year); greenhouse
heating (97 megawatts, 213 gigawatt-hours per year);
fish farming (138 megawatts, 837 gigawatt-hours per
year); agricultural drying (36 megawatts, 139
gigawatt-hours per year); industrial process heat (2 megawatts,
13 gigawatt-hours per year); snow melting (2
mega-watts, 5 gigawatt-hours per year); and swimming pool
and spa heating (112 megawatts, 706 gigawatt-hours
per year)
Worldwide installed capacity for direct use
in-creased from 8,604 megawatts in 1995 to 28,268
mega-watts in 2005 Yearly direct use increased from 31,236
hours per year in 1995 to 75,943
gigawatt-hours per year in 2005 Countries with large direct use
of geothermal energy, as of 2005, included the United
States, Sweden, China, Iceland, Turkey, Japan,
Hun-gary, Italy, and New Zealand Eighty-nine percent of
Iceland’s space-heating needs were provided by
geo-thermal energy in 2005, and projections indicated
that 30 percent of Turkey’s space heating would be
geothermal by 2010
Geothermal heat pumps are economical, energy
efficient, and available in most places They provide
space heating and cooling and water heating They
have been shown to reduce energy consumption by 20
to 40 percent Their use worldwide increased greatly
between 2000 and 2005 In energy production from
geothermal heat pumps the five-year increase was 272
percent for an average annual growth of 30 percent
As of 2005, there were approximately 1.7 million units
installed in thirty-three countries, with the majority
concentrated in the United States and Europe In the
United States, fifty to sixty thousand geothermal heat pump units are installed per year
Enhanced geothermal systems constitute an emerg-ing technology Most current geothermal systems use steam or hot water that is extracted from a well drilled into a geothermal reservoir Geothermal resources available for use can be expanded greatly, however, by using geothermal resources that do not produce hot water or steam directly but can be used to heat water
to a sufficient temperature by injecting water into the hot underground region using injection wells and ex-tracting it through production wells The term “engi-neered geothermal system” is also used for this type of system For this system, increasing the natural perme-ability of the rock may be necessary, so that adequate water flow in and out of the hot rock can be obtained Estimates indicate that use of geothermal resources requiring enhanced geothermal systems would make more that 100,000 megawatts of economically usable generating capacity available in the United States This is more than thirty times the 2009 U.S geother-mal generating capacity
William O Rasmussen, updated by Harlan H Bengtson
Further Reading
Armstead, H Christopher H Geothermal Energy: Its
Past, Present, and Future Contributions to the Energy Needs of Man 2d ed New York: E & F N Spon,
1983
Batchelor, Tony, and Robin Curtis “Geothermal
En-ergy.” In Energy: Beyond Oil, edited by Fraser
Arm-strong and Katherine Blundell New York: Oxford University Press, 2007
Dickson, Mary H., and Mario Fanelli, eds Geothermal
Energy: Utilization and Technology 1995 Reprint.
Sterling, Va.: Earthscan, 2005
DiPippo, Ronald Geothermal Power Plants: Principles,
Application, Case Studies and Environmental Impact.
2d ed Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2008
Gupta, Harsh K., and Sukanta Roy Geothermal Energy:
An Alternative Resource for the Twenty-first Century.
Boston: Elsevier, 2007
Lee, Sunggyu, and H Bryan Lanterman
“Geother-mal Energy.” In Handbook of Alternative Fuel
Technol-ogies, edited by Sunggyu Lee, James G Speight, and
Sudarshan K Loyalka Boca Raton, Fla.: Taylor & Francis, 2007
Lienau, Paul J., et al Reference Book on Geothermal Direct
Use Klamath Falls, Oreg.: Geo-Heat Center,
Ore-gon Institute of Technology, 1994
Trang 3Lund, John W “Characteristics, Development and
Utilization of Geothermal Resources.” Geo-Heat
Center Quarterly Bulletin 28, no 2 (2007).
Lund, John W., Derek H Freeston, and Tonya Boyd
“World-Wide Direct Uses of Geothermal Energy
2005.” Proceedings of the World Geothermal Congress
2005 (April, 2005).
McCaffrey, Paul, ed U.S National Debate Topic,
2008-2009: Alternative Energy New York: H W Wilson,
2008
Rinehart, John S Geysers and Geothermal Energy New
York: Springer, 1980
Simon, Christopher A “Geothermal Energy ” In
Alter-native Energy: Political, Economic, and Social
Feasibil-ity Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.
Slack, Kara U.S Geothermal Power Production and
Devel-opment Update Washington, D.C.: Geothermal
En-ergy Association, 2008
Web Sites
Oregon Institute of Technology
Geo-Heat Center
http://geoheat.oit.edu
U.S Department of Energy
Geothermal
http://www.energy.gov/energysources/
geothermal.htm
U.S Geological Survey
Geothermal Energy: Clean Power from the Earth’s
Heat
http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2004/c1249
See also: Department of Energy, U.S.; Earth’s crust;
Energy economics; Energy politics; Geysers and hot
springs; Ocean thermal energy conversion; Plate
tec-tonics; Renewable and nonrenewable resources;
Thermal pollution and thermal pollution control;
Tidal energy; Water
Germanium
Category: Mineral and other nonliving resources
Where Found
Germanium is the thirty-sixth most abundant
ele-ment in the Earth’s crust, with an average abundance
of about 7 grams per metric ton It occurs in small
quantities in ores of silver, such as argyrodite, as well as
in ores of copper and zinc, and is found most abun-dantly in Germany
Primary Uses Germanium is of central importance in the manufac-ture of semiconductor materials and devices, espe-cially transistors It is also used in a variety of optical devices
Technical Definition Germanium, symbol Ge, is located in Group IVA of the periodic table, having atomic number 32 and an atomic weight of 72.59 It is a hard, brittle, grayish-white metal Its melting point is 937.4° Celsius, its boil-ing point is 2,830° Celsius, and its specific gravity is 5.32
Description, Distribution, and Forms Germanium forms a diamond-like tetrahedral crystal lattice similar to that of silicon On the Mohs hardness scale, its hardness is six (diamond is ten) Germanium exhibits valences of +2 and +4 The +2 state is both eas-ily reduced to the element and also oxidized to +4 ger-manium Finely divided germanium ignites in chlorine gas to form germanium tetrachloride, and germa-nium forms a tetrahydride with hydrogen, which is a gas under ordinary conditions
At low temperatures, pure germanium is almost an insulator because its four valence electrons are local-ized in the bonds between neighboring atoms At room temperature, sufficient electrons enter higher-energy levels, become mobile, and conduct a weak current The conductivity of germanium can be im-proved by the addition (doping) of 1 part per million
of a Group V element, such as arsenic, because it has one more electron than germanium, or by the addi-tion of a Group III element, such as indium, which has one less valence electron than germanium
History Germanium was discovered in 1886 by the German chemist Clemens Winkler and was named in honor of Germany Ultrapure germanium is an intrinsic semi-conductor, which accounts for its major use in solid-state electronics Furthermore, it can be produced in near-crystalline perfection more easily than any other semiconductor Thus the electronic properties of ger-manium have been widely studied The earliest re-search on semiconductors was done with germanium,
Trang 4and William Shockley used it to make the first
transis-tor in 1948
Obtaining Germanium
Germanium is recovered by treating enriched wastes
and residues from zinc sulfide ores, pyrometallic ores,
and coal with hydrochloric acid to form a volatile
liq-uid which is extracted with carbon tetrachloride and
purified by distillation The resulting germanium
tet-rachloride is treated with demineralized water to
pre-cipitate germanium dioxide, which is then reduced to
germanium with hydrogen The highly pure element,
which contains impurities less than 1 part per million,
is obtained by zone refining, a selective
fusion-recrystallization process that concentrates impurities
which can be removed from the melt
Uses of Germanium
The major use of germanium is in semiconductor
de-vices, such as transistors, diodes, solar cells, and solar
batteries It is also used in infrared optical devices,
such as lenses, prisms, and windows, and germanium
dioxide is used to produce optical glasses of high
re-fractive index Magnesium germanate is used in phos-phors, and an alloy of germanium and gold is used in dental materials
Alvin K Benson
Web Site U.S Geological Survey Minerals Information: Germanium Statistics and Information
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/
commodity/germanium/
See also: Alloys; Arsenic; Copper; Indium; Silicon; Silver; Solar energy; Zinc
Germany
Categories: Countries; government and resources
Germany lacks large amounts of natural resources with the exception of coal The country has large depos-its of anthracite and bituminous coal, also known as black or hard coal, located in the Ruhr and Saarland, and large deposits of lignite, or brown coal, located in Leipziger Bucht and Niederlausitz.
The Country Germany is located in central Europe It is bordered
in the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Bal-tic Sea; in the west by the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Luxembourg; in the south by Switzerland and Austria; and in the east by Poland, the Czech Re-public, and Austria Germany is primarily a country of basins, hills, and high and low plains except for the Harz Mountains in the central highlands and the Ba-varian alps in the south Germany has an abundance
of rivers, including the Elbe, the Oder, and the Dan-ube, which is the second largest river in Europe Germany has the largest economy in Europe and the third largest in the world It ranked sixth in the world in purchasing power parity in 2008 Germany is one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world Its economy is basically one of free enter-prise, though government control exists in some sec-tors Germany ranks among the world’s largest pro-ducers of iron, steel, coal, and cement Germany exports approximately one-third of its production In
2008, Germany was ranked second in exports and
Fiber optics 30%
Infrared optics 25%
Polymerization
catalysts
25%
Electronics
& solar panels
15%
Other 5%
Source:
Note:
Percentages are based on data from the U.S.
Geological Survey and are rounded to the nearest
hundredth percent.
“Other” includes phosphors, metallurgy, and
chemotherapy.
Global End Uses of Germanium
Trang 5512 • Germany Global Resources
Germany: Resources at a Glance
Official name: Federal Republic of Germany Government: Federal republic
Capital city: Berlin Area: 137, 857 mi2; 357,022 km2
Population (2009 est.): 82,329,758 Language: German
Monetary unit: euro (EUR)
Economic summary:
GDP composition by sector (2008 est.): agriculture, 0.9%; industry, 30.1%; services, 69.1%
Natural resources: coal, lignite, natural gas, iron ore, copper, nickel, uranium, potash, salt, construction materials,
timber, arable land, hydropower potential
Land use (2005): arable land, 33.13%; permanent crops, 0.6%; other, 66.27%
Industries: iron, steel, coal, cement, chemicals, machinery, vehicles, machine tools, electronics, food and beverages,
shipbuilding, textiles
Agricultural products: potatoes, wheat, barley, sugar beets, fruit, cabbages, cattle, pigs, poultry
Exports (2008 est.): $1.498 trillion
Commodities exported: machinery, vehicles, chemicals, metals and manufactures, foodstuffs, textiles
Imports (2008 est.): $1.232 trillion
Commodities imported: machinery, vehicles, chemicals, foodstuffs, textiles, metals
Labor force (2008 est.): 43.6 million
Labor force by occupation (2005): agriculture, 2.4%; industry, 29.7%; services, 67.8%
Energy resources:
Electricity production (2007 est.): 594.7 billion kWh
Electricity consumption (2006 est.): 549.1 billion kWh
Electricity exports (2007 est.): 62.31 billion kWh
Electricity imports (2007 est.): 42.87 billion kWh
Natural gas production (2007 est.): 17.96 billion m3
Natural gas consumption (2007 est.): 97.44 billion m3
Natural gas exports (2007 est.): 12.22 billion m3
Natural gas imports (2007 est.): 88.35 billion m3
Natural gas proved reserves ( Jan 2008 est.): 254.8 billion m3
Oil production (2007 est.): 148,100 bbl/day Oil imports (2005): 3.026 million bbl/day Oil proved reserves ( Jan 2008 est.): 367 million bbl Source: Data from The World Factbook 2009 Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 2009.
Notes: Data are the most recent tracked by the CIA Values are given in U.S dollars Abbreviations: bbl/day = barrels per day;
GDP = gross domestic product; km 2 = square kilometers; kWh = kilowatt-hours; m 3 = cubic meters; mi 2 = square miles.
Berlin
Austria
Germany
France
Denmark
Poland
Czech Republic
Netherlands
Belgium
Luxembourg
Switzerland
B a l t i c
S e a
N o r t h
S e a
Trang 6third in imports in the world Germany’s main trading
partners are European Union members, the United
States, and China
Hard Coal
Coal is a fossil fuel containing carbon Hard coal, also
called black coal, is either bituminous or anthracite,
depending on the percentage of carbon it contains
Bituminous coal contains 45 to 86 percent carbon;
an-thracite has a higher percentage of carbon, ranging
from 86 to 97 percent
In Germany, anthracite and bituminous are found
in the Ruhr and in Saarland In 2005, Germany had
152 million metric tons of anthracite and bituminous
reserves Both anthracite and bituminous require
un-derground mining In the 1950’s, hard-coal mining in
Germany was at its peak The mines produced 136
million metric tons Since that time, the amount of
coal mined has decreased considerably In 2005, 23.2
million metric tons were mined The reduction in
hard-coal mining has been because hard coal can be
imported more cheaply than it can be mined
domesti-cally The industry has had to be subsidized by the
gov-ernment in order to be profitable However, in 2005,
20 percent of electricity in Germany was still
gener-ated by burning domestically mined black coal In
ad-dition, the steel industry used 5.4 million metric tons
of the 2005 production total Also in 2005, Germany
imported 40,898 metric tons of coal; in 2007, the
amount of hard coal imported rose to 50,996 metric
tons
Environmental concerns and European Union
poli-cies and directives have caused problems for
Ger-many’s hard-coal mining industry Land destruction
and water pollution are the primary environmental
concerns The problem of greenhouse gases is also of
great importance When burned, coal emits
consider-able amounts of carbon dioxide, the major
green-house gas, and significant amounts of sulfur, nitrous
oxide, and mercury Because of the pollutants created
by both mining and burning the coal, Germany has
attempted to replace coal as a major energy resource
with cleaner fuels, such as natural gas or biogas or
solar, wind, or hydropower The government of
Ger-many has set several goals for using renewable energy
sources In 2000, the German government established
a goal to produce 4.5 percent of its primary energy
consumption from renewable sources by 2010 The
proposed goal for 2050 is that one-half of the energy
will be provided by renewable sources In 2007, the
German government made the decision to phase out the mining of hard coal starting in 2009 The plan is to
be completed by 2018 but must be reviewed by the German parliament in 2012
In January, 2007, when the government and the mining companies agreed to ceasing the production
of coal, eight underground mines still produced hard coal Seven of them were located in the Ruhr indus-trial region, and one was in Saarland Coal mining has long been a significant industry in Germany, and op-position exists to the elimination of underground mining In 2007, the underground mines provided employment for about 33,000 people This creates un-employment and retirement-benefits problems The underground mines and the companies involved in this type of mining also play an important role in the country’s economy as a base for the mining equip-ment industry Germany is a world leader in the man-ufacture and export of such equipment The final complication is that phasing out the mines will make Germany totally dependent on imports for coal
Lignite Lignite, also called brown coal, is a fossil fuel that re-quires considerable processing before it is suitable for burning It has a high moisture content and crumbles easily It has a much lower heating value than hard coal Almost 5 metric tons of lignite are needed to pro-duce as much energy as 1 metric ton of hard coal However, lignite has played an important role in the German economy, especially in that of East Germany before the reunification of the country, and still pro-vides a considerable number of jobs There are 6.6 million metric tons of lignite reserves located in the Leipziger Bucht and Niederlausitz regions Lignite is extracted by strip-mining, which causes extensive en-vironmental damage The processing of lignite pro-duces large amounts of greenhouse gases The inten-sive mining of lignite by East Germany caused severe damage to the forests, lakes, and rivers in the areas where mining occurred and damage, to a lesser de-gree, throughout Germany and neighboring coun-tries Beginning in 1990 there was a reduction in the use of lignite Because of its detrimental effect upon the environment, lignite mining could be banned by Germany and the European Union However, there are significant economic reasons for continuing to mine lignite The cost of lignite is well below the world market price for other coals It is less expensive to pro-duce because it can be strip-mined, and the lignite
Trang 7dustry provides a large number of jobs Lignite
pro-vides an inexpensive domestic source of energy for
Germany and provides 31 percent of Germany’s
elec-tric power Anthracite, bituminous, and lignite coal
furnish 30 percent of Germany’s energy needs
Potash
Potash is used primarily in making fertilizers It is
pro-duced from various potassium compounds in which
the potassium is water soluble, including potassium
carbonate and potassium oxide Potash is produced
from either underground mines, which are the most
common, or solution mining It is then milled and
re-fined in processing plants, which separate the
potas-sium chloride from the halite (salt) and process it into
potash Potash is found in the central part of western
Germany and southern Germany In the west, it is
lo-cated in the Werra-Fulda district In the Zechstein
ba-sin, there are six potash mines All of the mines are
un-der the ownership of K+S GmbH In 2006, Germany
ranked fourth among European Union countries in
potash production In 2007, Germany produced 7.4
million metric tons of potash Traditionally, the world
potash market has been one with a surplus of product;
however, most believe that the demand will increase
and raise the profitability of potash mining This
be-lief is based on the increasing world population; the
increasing consumption of meat, requiring more
ani-mal feedstuffs; and the diminishing amount of land
available for farming, which, in turn, must be
fertil-ized more intensely for greater production
Natural Gas and Biogas
Natural gas is a fossil fuel It is a combustible mixture
of hydrocarbon gases, primarily methane When it is
almost pure methane, it is referred to as dry gas
Natu-ral gas is commonly found in the same areas as
depos-its of oil It is clean burning and emdepos-its lower levels of
pollutants into the air than other fossil fuels
Ger-many has 255 billion cubic meters of natural gas
re-serves, which is less than 1 percent of the total natural
gas reserves in the world In 2007, Germany produced
nearly 18 billion cubic meters of natural gas but
con-sumed more than 97 billion cubic meters Thus, the
country’s production fell drastically short of
provid-ing for its natural gas needs The 2008 numbers for
production and consumption of natural gas were
rela-tively the same Germany imported 89.9 percent of
the natural gas it used Thus, Germany ranked second
in the world in imports of natural gas Of the natural
gas imported by Germany, 40 percent comes from Russia Germany serves as the major hub of the pipe-line system that brings natural gas from Russia into Europe
Germany and other members of the European Union are concerned about their large dependency
on imported natural gas to meet such a large portion
of domestic energy needs Consequently, the Euro-pean Union is investigating the use of renewable re-sources Germany is one of the leaders in the plan to replace imported natural gas with biogas generated
by European Union countries Biogas is a bio-based methane that is produced from three different sources: landfill gas, sewage sludge gas, and agricul-tural waste and similar matter In Germany, biogas is the renewable energy resource that is receiving the greatest attention and development Of the energy derived by Germany from renewable resources, 22 percent is from biogas; only wind outranks biogas as a renewable energy resource in Germany’s energy pro-duction In 2006, Germany accounted for 49 percent
of the biogas produced in the European Union The total amount of biogas produced by Germany was 1,932.2 kilotons of oil equivalent The sources from which biogas was produced were landfill gas (approxi-mately 37 percent), sewage sludge gas (approxi(approxi-mately
13 percent), and agricultural waste and similar waste types (approximately 50 percent) Germany has pro-posed a goal to provide 10 percent of its total gas con-sumption from biogas by 2030
Crude Oil Crude oil is a fossil fuel; the term “crude oil” refers to the oil before it is processed In 2005, Germany ranked forty-seventh in production and seventh in consump-tion of oil among countries Germany ranked fifth in imports and twenty-seventh in exports In 2006, Ger-many imported the majority of its oil from Russia, Norway, and Libya As of January, 2008, Germany had
an estimated 367 million barrels of oil in proven re-serves and ranked fifty-second in the world in proven reserves The north and northeastern regions of Ger-many are the primary locations of these reserves Oil accounts for 40 percent of the energy consumption in Germany Domestic production provides only about 3 percent of the oil used in Germany The amount of crude oil produced annually in Germany is approxi-mately 2.7 million metric tons Germany’s largest crude oil deposit is at Mittelplate, off the German North Sea coast This deposit furnishes approximately
Trang 8two-thirds of the crude oil produced in Germany
each year Germany also has oil fields located at
Emlichheim in Lower Saxony and at Aitingen, south
of Augsburg The fields at Emlichheim produce
ap-proximately 127,000 metric tons per year; those at
Aitingen produce about 32,700 metric tons Although
Germany does not have large crude oil deposits, it
af-fords certain advantages in oil exploration The price
of crude oil is generally higher than elsewhere
Fur-thermore, the geological conditions present in the oil
fields make them excellent places to develop new
technologies and to solve problems of extracting oil
The German oil fields have been one of the major
places where steam-flooding techniques and
horizon-tal drilling have been used and perfected
Hydropower
Hydropower uses the force of water to generate
elec-tricity There are three types of hydropower stations:
run-of-the-river, impoundment, and pump-storage
plants Run-of-the-river is the most common type
Pump-storage plants are the most efficient for
con-trolling energy output and producing more
electric-ity at peak periods of need, but impoundment and
run-of-the river provide some storage electricity
out-put Germany has used hydropower as a source of
energy for more than one hundred years With
Ger-many’s lack of fossil fuels, concerns about
green-house-gas emissions and the ever-increasing cost of
fossil fuels, hydropower is and will remain an
impor-tant source of electricity in Germany However, much
of the new hydropower capacity will probably be
pro-vided by mini-hydropower stations (below 1
mega-watt) because of environmental concerns about both
the damage done to wildlife and flora by the creation
of dams and the impact of changing the flow of rivers
At the end of 2006, with 7,500 hydropower plants in
operation, Germany had a total installed capacity of
4,700 megawatts The 21.6 billion kilowatts of
electric-ity generated by hydropower provided 3.5 percent of
Germany’s electricity demand Germany’s long
his-tory of using hydropower and of developing designs
and technology for hydropower plants has made the
country a major contributor to hydropower projects
throughout the world
Wind Power
Wind power harnesses the force of the wind through
the use of windmills and turbines Germany ranks first
in the world in the use of energy derived from wind In
the past, the noise created by the turbines used in the wind stations limited the places where they could
be located With the development of quieter genera-tors, the acceptability of wind stations has increased greatly Thus, wind stations can be located in the most favorable areas for efficient production of wind en-ergy In 2007, Germany produced 1,677 megawatts from wind power The tallest wind energy system in the world is located in Cottbus, Germany It reaches
a height of 205 meters and generated in excess of 5.6 million kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2005 The German wind systems, producing 6 megawatts, are the most powerful wind energy systems in the world German scientists and engineers have built wind-operated generators with and without gears, and they have developed technologies which have enabled the use of wind power throughout the world Although Germany’s wind-power stations are land stations, Ger-man engineers and Ger-manufacturers are involved in de-veloping systems placed offshore There are projects
in the seas near the coasts of Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands as well as Great Britain and Ireland
Iron Ore Iron ore consists of iron, other minerals, and rock It varies in color by its composition and may be light yel-low, reddish brown, purple, or even gray The ore is graded as high or low according to the amount of iron
it contains Any ore that contains less than 54 percent iron is assessed as low-grade ore Germany’s iron ore is almost entirely low-grade The largest deposit of iron ore in Germany is southwest of Brunswick in the Harz Mountains The ore is no longer mined During the 1980’s, Germany did considerable mining of iron ore The output of iron ore reached its peak at 95,200 met-ric tons in 1989 Germany now imports the iron ore used in its thriving steel industry Germany ranks third among the countries importing iron ore from South Africa The iron ore exported to Germany ac-counts for almost 19 percent of the iron ore exported
by South Africa
Other Resources Salt (NaCl) is an important resource in Germany Salt for fertilizer and industrial uses is found in several ar-eas in Germany, including Hesse, Thuringia, and Sax-ony, where the mining is often done at considerable depths (1,000 meters) Rock salt mined in limestone areas is used to produce table-grade salt The Stetten Salt Mine near Haigerloch produces approximately
Trang 9500,000 metric tons of salt annually In 2006,
Ger-many was the second largest producer of salt in the
European Union
Germany also ranked third among in the
Euro-pean Union in the production of kaolin, a fine clay
used to manufacture porcelain and coated paper
Germany is also a leading producer of feldspar, which
is used in both the glass and ceramic industries, and of
crude gypsum, barite, and bentonite
Shawncey Webb
Further Reading
Deublein, Dieter, and Angelika Steinhauser Biogas
from Waste and Renewable Resources: An Introduction.
Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH, 2008
Førsund, Finn R Hydropower Economics New York:
Springer, 2008
Garrett, Donald E Potash: Deposits, Processing,
Prop-erties, and Uses New York: Chapman & Hall, 1996.
Gillis, Christopher Windpower Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer,
2008
Master, Gilbert M Renewable and Efficient Electric Power
Systems New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2004.
Williams, Alan, et al Combustion and Gasification of
Coal New York: Taylor & Francis, 2000.
See also: Coal; Hydroenergy; Oil and natural gas
dis-tribution; Oil industry; Potash; Wind energy
Getty, J Paul
Category: People
Born: December 15, 1892; Minneapolis, Minnesota
Died: June 6, 1976; Sutton Place, Surrey, England
Getty, an oil entrepreneur, was an exception in the
mid-twentieth century world of anonymous corporations.
He built his fortune through oil investments.
Biographical Background
J Paul Getty’s father, George F Getty, an insurance
lawyer, became wealthy during the Oklahoma oil
boom Young Getty began his oil career in 1914, also
in Oklahoma, and within three years, he was a
million-aire In the 1920’s, father and son bought oil leases
and drilled wells around Southern California Getty’s
father died in 1930, and during the Great Depression,
rather than drill wells, Getty bought oil stock in other
companies at depressed prices, particularly that of Tide Water Oil, the nation’s ninth largest oil com-pany As stocks rose, Getty became a multimillionaire
Impact on Resource Use After World War II, Getty expanded into the Middle East, challenging the powerful existing oil interests, the so-called Seven Sisters He discovered oil in the neutral zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in
1953 By 1957, he was the richest person in the United States, his wealth exceeding one billion dollars Getty’s fortune was invested in many businesses, but he per-sonally held the controlling interests He was a rugged individualist in an age of faceless corporations, a throwback to the likes of John D Rockefeller and An-drew Carnegie A trust fund had long been estab-lished for the Getty relatives Getty’s major bequest,
$600 million, was to his art museum in Malibu, Cali-fornia (which later expanded and moved to the hills south of the Sepulveda Pass in Los Angeles), making it the best endowed in the world After Getty Oil was sold to Texaco in 1984, the museum became Getty’s lasting legacy
Eugene Larson
See also: Oil and natural gas exploration; Oil indus-try; Petroleum refining and processing; Rockefeller, John D
Geysers and hot springs
Category: Geological processes and formations
Hot springs are natural pools or springs of hot water occurring where water heated within the Earth reaches its surface Geysers are essentially hot springs that erupt intermittently, throwing a stream of water, some-times mixed with other materials, into the air.
Background The heat that produces superheated water and the re-sulting geysers and hot springs originates in magma, molten rock beneath the Earth’s crust Such heat trav-els to the surface most easily through underground faults and fissures Many areas with geysers and other geothermal features are tectonically active, subject to earthquakes and volcanoes The geyser fields of Ice-land and of North IsIce-land, New ZeaIce-land, show this
Trang 10nection Magma may also rise through the Earth’s
crust and remain trapped and molten relatively near
the Earth’s surface The Yellowstone geyser basin in
the western United States is believed to lie atop such a
heat source Heat can be carried upward through
po-rous rock layers to reservoirs of underground water;
this process may account for some hot springs in areas
that show no other geothermal features Geysers and
hot springs often exist in proximity to related
geo-thermal phenomena such as fumaroles (steam vents)
and bubbling mud pots
Geysers are relatively rare, because they require the
right combination of water channels, water pool, and
heat cycle as well as an opening through which the hot
water is ejected Major geyser fields are found in the
Yellowstone basin, Iceland, New Zealand, and Japan
and on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Asiatic Russia
Smaller groups or isolated geysers occur in a few other
regions, including Oregon, Nevada, and California in
the United States In contrast, there are more than
five thousand known hot springs They exist in almost
every country and have been used by humanity since
the beginning of history, and probably before
Geysers and Hot Springs as an Energy Resource
Hot springs water was diverted for warm baths by the Etruscans and then the Romans, and subsequently by most societies which prized cleanliness In New Zea-land, the Maoris used hot springs directly for cooking and laundry purposes as well as bathing In present-day Iceland, hot springs supply hot-water heating to most of Reykjavík’s houses Such heating is also used for Iceland’s greenhouses, enabling fruits and vegeta-bles to be grown in a generally cold, inhospitable cli-mate Russia has several towns whose buildings are heated by geothermal wells Similar heating systems have been developed in such diverse locations as Hungary, Japan, and Klamath Falls, Oregon Hot springs water is also used in agriculture for soil warm-ing, in fish hatcheries, and for egg incubators The promise of cheap and relatively nonpolluting energy from geothermal sources was pursued begin-ning in the early 1900’s An electrical plant using
Tourists walk among some of the more than eighty active geysers at El Tatio in the Atacama Desert in Chile (Ivan Alvarado/Reuters/
Landov)