Comparing Various Energy Resources with Infographics

I’m one of these people who loves infographics, like those we created a few years back to explain some of the basics of renewable energy.  Here’s one that I just came across that (accidentally) illustrates one of the most important issues associated with the energy industry: there are so many different parameters to be considered, that it’s hard, if not impossible, to compare apples to apples.

The creator of this piece starts with coal, and points out that 714 pounds of coal are required to produce the same electrical energy as 0.035 pounds of uranium.  True, but how relevant is that?  The most important fact about coal isn’t how much it weighs; we have virtually unlimited amounts of coal, and we lug it around fairly easily.  Also, it’s cheap.  But oops, it’s deadly.  Nuclear reactors don’t need much uranium, true enough.  But nukes, at least the solid fuel light water plants in use today, are fabulously expensive and have had terrifying safety issues.  Next, solar and wind are compared to coal and nuclear, but using yet different parameters, since they use no fuel.  They do, however, take up space, and require costs to be captured at the beginning of their implementation, rather than distributed across their useful life.

Clearly, there’s no useful way to compare all this, at least the way we see the issues explicated here.

Maybe I’m not as deeply in love with infographics as I thought I was.