Facts: * Fossil fuels are non-renewable resources because they take millions of years to form, and reserves are being depleted much faster than new ones are being formed. * Fossil fuels are also overwhelmingly responsible for fueling our transportation system. * Burning fossil fuels is responsible for environmental issues that are high on the political agenda these days. Examples are greenhouse gas accumulation, acidification, air pollution, water pollution, damage to land surface and ground-level ozone. * Most of fossil and fuels are made up of plants and animal matters.
In this situation, it has been a mainstream to use alternative sources of energy. It will be discussed how government, businesses and individuals could deal with the low efficiency of using alternative sources of energy in this essay. Firstly, government intervention is the most important and useful method in solving the problem, it can make policies in using alternative sources of energy, such as tax and financial expenditure. For instance, according to the text ‘Using waste, Swedish city cuts its fossil fuel use’, Kristianstad attempted to use biomass energy instead of fossil fuel, the start-up cost was up to $144 million. (Rosenthal, E, 2010) In such a situation, the government became a driving force to develop this project.
Nuclear fission only produces steam from the power plants, causing no harm to the environment. However nuclear power is less clean before and after production. Uranium atoms are split in a series of nuclear reactions to produce a surge of heat energy which boils water, to produce steam which turns turbines, powering generators to form electricity. The uranium must be mined from other sites however and be transported to the plants, which can mean expensive importing costs, and the environmental cost of carbon dioxide produced in the transport of uranium. After production, the radioactive waste produced in nuclear power is incredibly harmful and can take years to decay and no longer be radioactive.
This causes the atmosphere to reflect heat back to earth and causes global temperatures to rise. Because of the costs associated with climate change, there are costs associated with carbon emissions, costs the firm does not have to pay. (Externalities n.d) (See figure 1.1) Whilst it is not feasible or economic for all carbon emitting activates to cease it is important to have methods of internalising the negative externalities to compensate the affected parties that did not benefit from the initial exchange.” To internalise a negative externality means to alter incentives so that people take into account the external effects of their actions.” (Gans, King,Mankiw 2010 p.204). Governments around the world have varied methods of internalising negative externalities. The three best means by which to internalise the negative externalities associated with emitting carbon into the atmosphere are a Pigovian tax, carbon emission regulations / quota and tradable pollution permits.
When a human use oil in his/her car, van, or truck, they have a great bid of impact on carbon, because when oil is being burned carbon is released into the atmosphere at a very fast rate, than it is removed. The carbon cycle can be affected when carbon dioxide either when carbon is released into the atmosphere or removed from it. Using natural gas is another way human impact on carbon, for the simple reason, we have to use gas to cook food in our homes and for transportation in our vehicles. Human also has an impact on phosphorus by moving it around and it become runoffs. What I mean by that is like in agriculture, phosphates are from a large amount of fertilizer that are being sprayed by farmer workers, in which they have all these different types of chemicals cause problems to the earth.
Cox says that we need to reduce the use of air conditioning because it uses fuel to work and burning fuel results in pollution (Cox 344). Air conditioning is one of those technologies which cause global warming due to adding green house gases in the environment. But Cox neglects the benefits of having air conditioning. For instance, AC not only helps to maintain room temperature, but it also removes extra moisture from the air. (“AC also helps to clean the air by removing dust particles in the air”).
Oxygen is not actually pure oxygen; it’s the ambient air which is roughly 15-21% oxygen, depending on altitude and pollution. Now one could argue that the oxygen is the most important part of the fire triangle because fire is the rapid oxidization of a material. Of course there wouldn’t be any fire with out the fuel, or the oxygen but I made my point. The last part of the fire triangle is fuel. The fuel is what’s being oxidized.
Living Off the Grid with Alternative Energy Sources Mario Panicucci INF103: Computer Literacy Instructor: Pamela Bartlett August 6, 2012 In the age of green technology we are subjected to various ways of creating clean energy. Today because of greed in the name of capitalism, oil and energy companies have, for the most part, forced modern society to remain in a fossil fuel dependent system for creating our energy needs. Our dependence on fossil fuels and foreign oil is costing future generations more than just money. These resources are non-renewable, over time all the coal mines and oil wells currently being depleted will no longer provide fuel for us to harvest. Energy is essential to our survival and as technology increases, so does our desire to fulfill basic needs in life with energy dependent resources.
Examples of nonrenewable energy sources would be oil, natural gas, and coal. Renewable energy source examples would include solar energy, wind, bioenergy, nuclear, hydroelectric energy, hydrogen, biomass energy and geothermal energy (Types of Renewable Energy, 2013). In my little corner of the world I utilize nonrenewable sources of energy on a daily basis. My home relies on both natural gas and electric to generate the energy necessary to run my household. Ohio’s electricity generation is a secondary energy source that is converted from primary sources because they are easier to
In today’s society, in the battle between fossil fuels and green energy I believe that people should start relying on and furthering the developments of biofuel. The increasing cost of fossil-based energy with the problems of global warming has been driving increased bio-based energy production from plant biomass as renewable energy. (Gopalakrishnan, Kasthurirangan page 128) Very few people would ever argue the fact that we should replace our dependency of depleting fossil fuels with a better and alternative fuel source. (Hallenbeck, Patrick C.) Biofuels are renewable resources that have little to no harm on the environment and can cause our nation to stop relying on foreign oil. Relying on biofuels rather than nonrenewable diesel fuels will also result in the ending of many peoples anxiety about our depleting oil reserves.