6. Making a summary

Pick out five key sentences and use them to make a summary of the whole passage.

7.Retell the text using the words and expressions from exercise 3 and the phrases given below

It is commonly believed that …. One can deduce from…

It is common knowledge that ….. In other words,

In general terms, …. One would expect ….

This is particularly true that ….

It is appropriate to…

Eventually, ….

UNIT 3

Fossil fuels

1. Skimming

Read quickly and get the gist of a passage. Do not try to understand every word; just try to get a general idea. Choose a new title for the passage, from this list:

(a) Traditional energy sources

(b) Chemical substances accumulated in the atmosphere

(c) Oil, gas and coal are main energy sources today

(d) Large coal deposits in European countries

(e) Renewable energy sources

(f) The contents of fossil fuels

Traditional energy sources are the sun, wood (i.e. biomass or biofuel), running water, and the wind. All of these are renewable energy sources, in the end powered by the sun. Modern technology has made the utilisation of these sources of energy very efficient. But the main energy sources today are the fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels include oil, gas, and coal. Each of these has been formed from compressed plant tissues through many millions or hundreds of millions of years at great depths in the Earth. They consist of carbon with a higher (gas) or lower (coal) content of hydrogen. In addition varying amounts up to some 10% - of sulphur is present together with smaller amounts of many other elements. Fossil fuels are today extracted and combusted at a speed of more than a million times larger than the renewal rate. The waste products - carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide in particular, water is not relevant here - accumulate in the atmosphere.

Proven reserves of coal, oil, and gas will last about 220, 40 and 60 years, respectively, at current rates of production. Proven reserves are generally taken to be what can be recovered with reasonable certainty from known reservoirs under existing economic conditions. The estimated additional undiscovered coal resources are about 10 times greater than the proven reserves. The estimated additional resources of oil are only half of the proven reserves and those of gas are about equal to the proven reserves. The price of fossil fuels will, however, start to rise long before the resource is emptied. The rather well-established relationship between the percentage of already recovered resource and the price curve predicts that "the end of cheap oil" will happen a few years into the new century. Extraction will stop when it costs more to extract the resource than what one gains from it, either price-wise or energy-wise.

Fossil fuels could be part of a transition to an energy system based on renewables, for example, by using coal and natural gas to produce methanol and hydrogen, energy carriers which could later be produced from a variety of renewable sources.

The countries in the Baltic Sea region are well endowed with fossil energy resources. There are large coal deposits in Germany (hard coal and lignite), Poland (hard coal and lignite), and Russia (hard coal). Poland is the most coal-dependent country in the Baltic Sea basin. Oil-shale, a fossil fuel with low heating value, is mined in north-eastern Estonia and across the Estonian border in Russia.

Oil and gas are exploited both on land and off-shore in the Baltic Sea region. Small volumes are extracted in northern Germany, southern Poland, and northern Lithuania. Oil exploration is taking place along the coasts of Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. In the North Sea, very extensive oil and gas resources are extracted, mostly by Norway.

But there are also excellent possibilities to use renewable energy sources, such as hydro and wind power and biomass. The challenge is to go from fossil fuel dependency to renewable resources, or, as it is often phrased, to "de­carbonize" the energy flows.