Increasing Clean Renewable Energy: Methods and Discussion

Categories: Environment Reducing Carbon Footprint Technology

Essay, Pages 4 (997 words)

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It's estimated that in the next few decades, the global population is expected to surpass over nine-billion people on earth. The demand for clean renewable energy could not have been greater, for the threat of Climate Change and lack of energy resources could force numerous environmental problems with massive consequences to arise. With such little time, it is important for the global community to realize the impact of such a threat and take action for themselves in their own community.

The impossible challenge that awaits us, is one that requires us to rapidly reduce CO2 emissions while finding new ways to economically produce and create clean and abundant energy sources in our community.

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It is essential that we start now in transforming our communities into those of which optimize, collaborate, and efficiently work together to increase energy production while reducing the carbon footprint. Below are a few of the steps I would implement to create an extremely self-sufficient and eco-friendly community.

First, we need to ask ourselves the question of "How do we make sure we conserve and create the most energy cost-effectively?" The answer is through optimization. Optimization of infrastructure, carbon footprint reduction, and clean energy costs. More or less meaning, improving our technology and finding ways to unleash its full potential at all times. In our society of new and ground-breaking technology, we have to learn that our world uses and synthesizes massive amounts of data.

If power generation facilities, homes, and etc. all accumulate and securely send out data of their activity, it could allow computer servers to automatically optimize themselves based on the patterns found in the data.

Imagine having an energy management system in your home that automatically optimizes your energy conservation based on what you're doing. Through the power of sensors, an energy management system can turn lights and other appliances off when they're not being used It could also identify if any windows are open when air conditioning is on. Simple energy management technology can make a huge impact on the average person's conservation of energy.

Just like any financial advisory would tell you, diversification of investments brings the best outcome. Diversifying renewable energy is crucial in order to build a sustainable and resilient community. Heavily depending on one source of energy could result in the breakdown of a community, especially if that energy source is ruined by a natural disaster. This is why, for a sustainable community, having multiple sources of clean energy is essential. The constraint with most clean energy generation today is that the cost of maintenance is not very economical. However, as the cost of materials fall, the amount of new clean energy sources will rise.

For example, waste-management facilities offer a great opportunity for the creation of energy using microbial fuel cells. Microbial fuel cells are fuel cells that utilizes bacteria and enzymes as catalysts in order to the chemical energy from their reactions into energy. Having microbial fuel cells create this energy, while effectively degrading the organic waste could potentially revolutionize the way waste is processed today.

There are also many ways to optimize current power generation solar and wind farms. For example, having solar farms utilize cheap and effective solar-tracking technology based on location and time of day, could potentially triple the efficiency of stationary solar panels. Also, windmills could be revolutionized by having the ability to rotate in the direction where the most wind is predicted to come based on sensors placed near the top of the windmill. Allowing the windmills to rotate in the direction of maximum wind will greatly optimize the wind-generation efficiency.

In almost all cities, one of the biggest causes of pollution and energy wastage is transportation. The need of clean, safe, and economical public transportation is essential for populated urban areas. Optimizing public transportation could include the integration of smart technology into the Metro system.

Using this technology, public transportation could arrive to an area based on user demand by analyzing the amount of tickets bought in that certain area. For example, a smart computer could detect a pattern that a large amount of people travel out of the financial and business district around the evening. By u detecting this, trains with more seating could be directed to arrive at those specific areas before others, therefore saving a lot of time. By making public transportation extremely appealing to the mass public, the amount of energy saved and CO2 reduced from them not using cars could dramatically cut the amount of carbon emitted in their city.

A major problem in urban cities, especially during the summer, is the epic heat wave that tends to roll around in summer. There also is data showing that cities tend to be as much as ten degrees higher in temperature than their surrounding rural areas. This is because of an effect known as the “urban heat island”. Due to many buildings having dark colored roofs and roads having dark pavement, heat is often absorbed by these materials extensively increasing the temperature. One solution I would propose for this is to have buildings with green roofs, which use vegetation and plants to defer heat. This works due to the evaporative cooling of the vegetation. The vegetation roofs could also aid in reducing CO2 levels by naturally converting to oxygen via photosynthesis.

Another step I would implement to increase the amount of clean energy available in a community is by offering a deal to the local restaurants. If they throw-out leftover corn, soybeans, and other ethanol infused foods into a separate biofuel container instead of a trash dumpster, the would-be wasted food could potentially now be used as biodiesel for cars or any another engine-run vehicle. The way the restaurants would benefit, is that a small share of the biodiesel profit would go into their earnings, thus giving the restaurants an incentive to help create greener energy. Implementing these ideas will extensively aid in conserving and creating clean energy, while also reducing carbon emissions.