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. Argue for or against the following economic notion:
   Continued growth of GDP fosters improved energy efficiency and conservation

3. 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.

4. Explain why "Peak Power" is difficult for your local utility to deal with.

5. Explain why transmission lines necessarily carry a high voltage.

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

7. Discuss the details of how solar troughs work and can be integrated into a solar farm.

8. Explain what might limit the scalability of Solar Stirling dishes as the source of large scale renewable electrcity production.

9. Explain the importance of levelized cost in our analyses of renewable energy technologies.

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

11. Explain why ocean wave energy technology may have some substantial drawbacks

12. 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.

13. Explain the main physical differences between the bird killing wind farms of the 1980's and early 1990's and today's wind farm

14. 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?

15. The Chevrolet Volt has a battery pack of 16KWH energy storage. If you plug the volt into your 120 V outlet at home on a 15 Amp circuit, how long would it take the volt to charge (and yes, you can actually solve this problem from what you know in this course)

16. 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

17. How has the US import of oil portfolio (i.e. from which countries do we get our oil) changed over the last 5-10 years?

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 simple formulism to estimate when peak production/consumption of oil would occur for the US and which factor in this formulism is his prediction most sensitive to.

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

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

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

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

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

25. In your view, what is the most frightening and near term real world impact of the Chinese Sledgehammer?

26. Last June when gasoline hit $4.50 per gallon, energy awareness and TV commercials suddenly started to appear. Explain why it takes the price of gasoline to reach some threshold before Americans wake up?

27. Currently (Dec 5, 2008) the price of crude oil is at $45 per barrel. If the price of crude oil were to be $42 per barrel and there was a 50% markup on that due to taxes and profits, would would the price of a gallon of gas be at the pump?

28. 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.

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

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

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

32. Conceptually explain how one can determine the depletion timescale of a physical resource and what determines the uncertainty in that determination.

33. What is the best evidence that we are currently in a situation of "Peak Oil"

34. Argue for or against the following proposition:
    "Global Cooperation" is fundamentally against human nature.

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

36. Explain how this course has increased your overall awareness and understanding of the current state of the world and its trajectory.
    
    
    
    
    
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