Is it easier to get fossil fuels than other energy sources?

Answer 1

Yes. The only other real power source is nuclear today.

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Another view

No, fossil fuels are not easier to get than other energy sources. The wind blows and the sun shines whether we take advantage of it or not. Hauling firewood is easier than digging coal, and drilling for geothermal heat is not more difficult than drilling for oil.

It is conceptually easier to get fossil fuels than to use biomass, and it is conceptually easier to use fossil fuels in large central generating stations than it is to combine hydro, geothermal, biomass, wind, solar, pumped energy storage, and whatever other sources might be available into a distributed generating system. But the question of what is easier might be most clearly addressed in terms of monetary costs and environmental effects because in general, the costs are related to difficulty.

The job of fueling a tractor when all you have is firewood may be difficult for most people to envision, but is easier than you might think. Wood can be gasified very cleanly, and the product catalyzed into just about any alkane you might want. Most people have no idea what an alkane is, but they recognize the names of some of them, for example, propane, butane, and octane. You can get a liter of oil from five kilos of wood, about 120 gallons of diesel oil from a cord of firewood, and the product is superior in several ways to the fossil fuel. Alternatively, wood gas can be used directly in the engine as fuel, though this usually means gasification is done on the vehicle, which is rather inconvenient.

In a model community, where distributed electrical generation is done, it can be combined with heating, and the combination can be very efficient. While more people have to be employed locally to provide electricity and heat, more contractors and electricians need to be employed to build and maintain the system, and more farmers and foresters need to be employed to provide fuel, this is quite good for the local economy and actually keeps costs down. The efficiency of some internal combustion engines is rated at above 48% for electrical generation, and the combined efficiency with heat capture is rated at 90%. When this is done with biomass, the need to deal with pollutants is largely eliminated, and the carbon footprint is quite small - similar to that of wind and solar.

This is not a dream vision, but a reality that has been achieved on a community wide basis. The town of Güssing, Austria, has converted entirely to renewable energy, starting in the early 1990s. In the process of doing so, it the town went from a situation of severe unemployment to having an overabundance of open jobs. Its cash flow on energy went from paying out six million euros each year to producing fourteen million euros worth of power, much of which was sold elsewhere. Their forests are now viewed as an important resource, are being very carefully maintained. I should think the current situation, using no fossil fuels or nuclear, is quite a lot easier than the alternative of using them. There is a link to the renewable energy section of an article on Güssing below.

In early 2011, the US Department of Energy released its projections for consumer energy costs for 2016. The least expensive source with a small carbon footprint was projected to be combined cycle natural gas with carbon capture and sequestration, a fossil fuel. Wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass, all of which have similarly small carbon footprints, were all projected to cost less than nuclear, which possibly has the largest carbon footprint of all of these. These costs did not account for the costs of managing nuclear waste, nor did it account for the potential cost of nuclear disaster. They also do not take into account the fact that renewable energy is a local resource that keeps the cash flow within the local community, improving the local economy and increasing financial security.

Right now, in Vermont, the least expensive source of electricity is methane coming from a landfill. If it were not burned, it would escape to the atmosphere, where its greenhouse gas effect would be 21 times as great as the carbon dioxide it is burned into.