Here are some questions from past finals and/or possible future finals. The upcoming final will contain a mixture of 15-18 questions each worth 10, 15 or 20 points.

The total point value for the final exam is 240.

1. Give an overview of the basic societal and infrastructure reasons which cause Americans to drive more road miles each successive year. What steps could be taken (other than just making gas expensive) to effectively curb this behavior?

2. Explain why the European Union countries serve as good examples of government driven initiatives in the area of renewable energy. Cite some specific projects or policies and discuss why you think Europe is able to better attack this issue than the US.

3. Discuss and analyze specific obstacles (physical, environmental, economic, social, political) to the widespread integration of renewable energy into the American economy? How would you propose to eliminate or reduce these obstacles?

4. Critically discuss the comparative relative advantages and disadvantages of Wind vs Solar Energy as a production line renewable energy source.

5. Critically discuss the possibilities for having a hydrogen economy. Identify what you think are the main obstacles and propose solutions to overcome them.

6. Discuss how solar concentrating power systems work

7. Suggest a set of reasons why the NIMBY phenomena as a means of setting environmental policy is becoming increasingly powerful. What is the logical outcome of basing environmental policy on NIMBY kinds of considerations?

8. Explain the parallel between the "energy dilemma" in the 1930s and our current situation.

9. Explain how levelized costs are determined

10. Explain why wind produced electricity is projected to have the lowest levelized cost of any renewable energy technology.

11. Suppose some sunny location has 1 KW per square meter of incident sunlight on it and you want to solve the 100,000 MW near term energy problem with PV arrays. How many square kilometers of PV array would you need? Make sure you properly account for efficiency.

12. Explain why Flow batteries represent a scalable solution for energy storage.

13. Ten gallons of gas has an energy equivalent of about 400 KWhs. For a 1500 Kg vehicle, this translates in to an average fuel economy of 25 mpg or a total range of 250 miles. NiMH batteries currently store energy at the rate of 100 watt hours per kg. How many KG of NiMH batteries would it therefore take to duplicate this 250 mile range?

14. Describe how a Solar Thermal Electric facility works and is able to deliver electricity 24 hours a day. What are the physical limits to this kind of facility?

15. Explain how OTEC works in basic terms and why it holds such promise as a future source of energy generation

16. What are the main engineering challenges with constructing, say, a single 1000 MW OTEC power plant?

17. Give an explanation of why it seems to be that Americans have the attitude that its their manifest destiny to organize and maintain a highly consumptive society

18. Critically discuss the pros and cons of having a near term (5-15 years) LNG economy? What would you propose that should be done as a substitute given the required scale of 100,000 more MegaWatts needed by the year 2020 and what kind of facility(s) need to be built to reach the 100,000 MW goal.

19. Explain how Hubbert was able to use this formalism to estimate when peak production/consumption of oil would occur for the US and which factor his prediction is most sensitive to.

20. What is the 84 million barrels per day problem and how is that likely to effect the world in the near term future?

21. Qualitatively discuss how the physical geography of a planet may shape the way that its resources are used by its "intelligent" civilization.

22. Describe some of the current problems associated with the storage of Hydrogen and some of the solutions which have been proposed.

23. Explain why energy storage is a critical component of renewable energy technologies.

24. Your made transportation czar for the US. Discuss some steps that you would take to motivate a reduction in personal vehicle miles driven.

25. List or describe some of the factors that you believe render the US incapable of long term infrastructure planning.

26. Explain why americans are emotionally wedded to the Business As Usual concept.

27. What do you think it would take to catalyze Joe Six pack into using a different set of values for decision making?

28. Defend or rebuke the following statement: “Conservation is our best and cheapest energy source�

29. Explain how a hierarchical world view naturally leads to treating nature as a consumable.

30. Defend or refute the following statement: "The scientific method has never had any real impact on the way society or the individuals within a society function"

31. Demonstrate that 10s of thousands of megawatts of electricity generation, on the scale of US electrical consumption could be saved through the wide spread use of CFLs.

32. Provide an explanation, based on the historical price of gas since 1970, for why the US has alternatively made large gains in average fuel efficiency and has not made large gains.

33. What is cellulosic ethanol and why does it hold more promise than grain based ethanol as a source for biofuels?

34. Is Marx full of crap on his characterization of the state of mind of capitalist laborer or might he actually have real insight here?

35. What is the main "physics" problem that limits the ultimate real world efficiency of a PV cell?

36. Explain the planning process that would be used to select a site for a large scale PV farm

37. Construct what you believe is the most sensible energy generation plan for the Pacific Northwest region over the next 20 years. Be specific on the kinds of projects that you would envision, what their overall yield would be (in MegaWatts) and where they would be located.

38. Explain what Sam would need to do in order to avoid Ralph discovering the Iron Axe>
    
    
    
    
    
    Announcements