Fossil Fuels + Nuclear
100 Points: This solid fossil fuel is the most abundant in the world and is primarily burned to generate electricity.
What is Coal?
100 Points: This type of active solar technology converts sunlight directly into direct current (DC) electricity using silicon wafers.
What are Photovoltaic (PV) Cells?
100 Points: Turning off the lights when you leave a room is energy conservation; replacing the bulb with an LED is energy ________.
What is Efficiency?
100 Points: This acronym represents the ratio of "Energy Returned" divided by "Energy Invested."
What is EROI?
100 Points: The combustion of coal is the largest human-caused source of this primary greenhouse gas.
What is Carbon Dioxide?
200 Points: In a nuclear reactor, this specific isotope of Uranium is split during the fission process.
What is Uranium-235?
Denmark gets nearly 50% of its energy from this source, which produces energy proportional to the cube of the air's velocity.
What is Wind Power?
200 Points: Also known as CHP, this practice increases efficiency by capturing the excess heat generated by a power plant and using it to heat nearby buildings.
What is Cogeneration (Combined Heat and Power)?
200 Points: This is the standard unit utility companies use to bill you for electricity (equivalent to 1,000 watts used for 1 hour).
What is the Kilowatt-hour (kWh)?
200 Points: This secondary pollutant, created when sulphur and nitrogen oxides react with water vapor, damages forests and aquatic ecosystems.
What is Acid Rain (Acid Deposition)?
This "cleanest burning" fossil fuel is composed primarily of Methane.
What is Natural Gas?
300 Points: With an EROI of >80:1, this renewable source dominates the global market but often requires displacing people to build dams.
What is Hydropower?
300 Points: This modernized electrical network uses digital technology to monitor energy flow, manage demand, and integrate intermittent renewables.
What is the Smart Grid?
300 Points: If a radioactive isotope has a half-life of 50 years, this percentage of the original material remains after 100 years.
What is 25%?
300 Points: This controversial extraction technique involves injecting water, sand, and chemicals at high pressure to crack shale rock.
What is Hydraulic Fracturing (Fracking)?
400 Points: This process separates crude oil into different fuels (like gasoline, diesel, and kerosene) based on their boiling points.
What is Fractional Distillation (or Refining)?
400 Points: This renewable fuel source, often made from corn (ethanol) or wood, is theoretically carbon neutral but has a low EROI.
Question: What is Biomass (or Biofuel)?
400 Points: In the US, these government regulations (acronym CAFE) set the required average fuel economy for a manufacturer's fleet of cars.
What are Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards?
400 Points: If a 100-Watt lightbulb is left on for 24 hours, it consumes this much energy (in kWh).
What is 2.4 kWh?
400 Points: A destructive surface mining technique where the summit of a landscape is blown off to access coal seams below.
What is Mountaintop Removal?
500 Points: While Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were caused by human/mechanical error, this 2011 nuclear disaster was triggered by a tsunami.
What is Fukushima Daiichi?
500 Points: This ultra-efficient heating system uses a network of fluid-filled pipes buried underground to exchange heat with the constant temperature of the soil.
Question: What is a Ground-Source Heat Pump?
500 Points: This term describes the electricity consumed by devices like TVs and chargers even when they are turned "off."
What is Vampire Power (or Phantom Load)?
500 Points: To calculate this metric, you subtract the energy cost of extraction/processing from the total energy provided by the fuel.
What is Net Energy?
500 Points: Common in nuclear and coal plants, this physical pollution involves releasing hot water back into rivers, killing fish by lowering dissolved oxygen.
What is Thermal Pollution?