A Cubic Mile Of Oil

My photo from somewhere in the UK, 2007. I pulled off the motor route on to a dirt road (kids in back seat) to take this shot. There are lived-in homes within 100 meters of the reactors.

As per one-billion, I am keen to understand how much energy the planet uses, you know, like, collectively. I started my career working energy deals at First Boston and we converted natural gas to oil-barrel equivalents using a standard formula but what about tons of coal, British thermal units and volts, amps and watts ?

American engineer Hewitt Crane, as reported in the New Yorker, wondered the same thing in '74 during the Mideast oil crisis. He came up with a new measure of energy consumption : a three-dimensional unit he called a 'cubic mile of oil.'  One cubic mile of oil would fill a pool that is a mile long, a mile wide, and a mile deep. Today, it takes three cubic miles' worth of fossil fuels to power the world for a year. That's a trillion gallons of gas ( or 1000000000000000000, Brit style). To replace one cubic mile with a source of non-carbon producing energy - like nuclear power - would require the construction of a new atomic plant every week for fifty years.

Climate experts have argued that we should stop emitting greenhouse gases within fifty years, but by then the demand for energy could easily be three times what it is today : nine cubic miles of oil.  Our Grand kids will be in their youth at then.