Energy Cheat Sheet

The basic metric unit of energy is the joule, which is the amount of energy needed to accelerate a 1-kilogram mass at 1 meter/second^2 over a distance of 1 meter. Wikipedia gives some nice examples of how much energy a joule is:

• The typical energy released as heat by a person at rest every 17 milliseconds


• The kinetic energy of a 2-kilogram mass trave

... See more

For a clearer picture of energy transformation, let’s dive a few miles below the Earth’s surface to a natural gas reservoir beneath the Permian Basin.2 Natural gas stores energy in chemical bonds between hydrogen and carbon. The gas travels to the surface through a natural gas well and then moves to a processing facility, where contaminants are rem... See more

When we’re talking about energy or energy infrastructure, we’re usually talking about either a) moving energy around, b) changing the form it takes, or c) storing it while we wait to do A or B.