🔗 Cubic mile of oil

🔗 Energy 🔗 Stanford University/SRI International 🔗 Stanford University

The cubic mile of oil (CMO) is a unit of energy, aiming to give the general public an understanding of large quantities of energy. It is approximately equal to 1.6×10²⁰ joule. It was created by Hew Crane of SRI International to aid in public understanding of global-scale energy consumption and resources.

Large scale sources of energy include wind, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, nuclear, hydroelectric, oil, coal, natural gas, geothermal, and biomass (primarily the burning of wood). Traditionally, many different units are commonly used to measure these sources (e.g., joules, BTUs, kilowatt hours, therms) but only some of them are familiar to a global general public, and some argue that fewer are needed and a standard should be chosen. Still, these common energy units are mainly sized for everyday activities, for example a joule is the energy required to lift a small apple one metre vertically. For regional, national, and global scales, larger energy units, such as exajoule, terawatt-hour, billion barrels of oil equivalent (BBOE) and quad are used. Derived by multiplying the small common units by large powers of ten these larger units pose additional conceptual difficulties for many citizens.

Crane intended the cubic mile of oil to provide a visualizable scale for comparing the contributions of these diverse energy components as a percentage of total worldwide, energy use.

In 2005, the global economy was consuming approximately 30 billion barrels (4.8 billion cubic metres; 1.3 trillion US gallons) of oil each year. Numbers of this magnitude are difficult to conceive by most people. The volume occupied by 1 trillion US gallons (3.8 billion cubic metres) is about 1 cubic mile (4.2 billion cubic metres). Crane felt that a cubic mile would be an easier concept for the general public than a trillion gallons.