How will the energy change our future?

Prior to the 1900s, the global population was fairly low and easily managed. There were far less people producing much lower amounts of pollution. Unfortunately, as the world developed new and better technology to reduce suffering and increase standards of living, a side effect appeared. The quality of the environment started to deteriorate, which contributed to global warming and interesting problems such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. A new approach to technology was developed to combat these problems; green technology. Green technology serves to either mitigate the damage caused by the use of technology, or reduce pollution through its use. The three fields that will be most important in the next thirty years will be power generation, filtration, and the creation of more efficient systems.

Most people can identify the main forms of renewable energy; there’s solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, wind, and biomass. Unfortunately, only 17.1% of energy generated in the U.S. during 2017 was renewable, primarily from hydropower and wind (EIA). In the future, solar panel technology will most likely become more efficient and cheaper, as it is still a relatively young technology. The United States government currently offers a 30% tax credit for the purchase of solar panels, which should incentivise more people to install the devices. The increased availability and affordability of solar panels alongside innovations making them more efficient should increase the total power generated significantly. This could lead to a surge of solar panels in sunny regions of the world, reducing the need for fossil fuel power generation and minimizing power costs for households.

Biomass is an often forgotten form of green energy, but it is still significant, accounting for 1.6% of U.S. energy produced in 2017 (EIA). Biomass does tend to be less efficient than coal, however it is often used to co-fire in coal plants. This is because biomass burns much cleaner than coal, with little to no sulfur or mercury emissions and essentially being carbon neutral (PSU). The benefits are two-fold; a job market is created for farming the biomass, and the coal factories can reduce emissions. This innovation may not get rid of coal by itself, but it certainly helps maintain the environment while coal is still in use. Biomass should increase the total number of jobs and throttle coal emissions over the next thirty years. If carbon emission restrictions are strengthened, then coal would most likely fall out of favor and be replaced with biomass, as both resources generally use the same setup to produce power.

According to the CDC, approximately 780 million people do not have access to improved water sources. This water tends to be dirty, containing particulate that can harm the body, including deadly diseases such as Guinea Worm. Alongside this problem, about 2.5 billion people do not have access to improved sanitation, leading to more diseases and deaths. A green technology known as filtration could easily solve this problem, and it is already implemented for most of the world. Multiple methods exist, including chemical processes, radiation/heat, and very fine filters to remove the particulate and disease. At this point the problem is more deployment than development, and within the next thirty years filtration systems should be implemented to reach more of the global population, and will help prevent a lot of disease and suffering, particularly in Africa and Asia.

A unique facet of green innovation is making existing technology more efficient. This kind of engineering is present in all fields, in almost every device being created. A large proponent in the U.S. for general efficiency is the EPA, with the Energy Star program. This program focuses on cutting costs and saving energy for businesses and individuals through efficiency, which has the added benefit of helping the environment. Not only does this help reduce power consumption and therefore emissions, but also saves money for businesses and individuals over the course of a lifetime, enabling them to spend money on other things to improve their quality of life.

Environmental technology is a necessary development for the world today. With more efficient products using clean sources of power, less pollution will be generated overall. Effective distribution of filtered water and other basic necessities will enable entire regions of deficient persons to contribute to the global stage. The future for environmental technology is not only bright; it’s green.

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Greenshine Scholarship Essay 4.28

If I may be completely honest, I’m not the best at STEM subjects. I try to understand them, I really do, but I can only wrap my head around surface level topics, so when I write this out, I want everyone reading this to realize that I have no idea what I’m actually talking about. Much like the majority student population within the United States, I don’t have a future career in a major science subject; I’m currently in a university studying in both American political history and youth development. What I’m writing is what I am- a representative of younger folks who don’t understand everything that goes in to the future of environmentally sustainable technologies.

What I do know is that we are in the beginnings of a crisis. We are running low on non-renewable resources like fossil-fuels and helium, and climate change is very real because Earth’s climate is breaking pattern from the Milankovitch cycles (Which scientists analyze by the rock record), and the ocean is acidifying at a pretty fast rate due to massive carbon fumes being released by human activities in industry.

I don’t think that green energy will change- Earth needs it to change. We are in the middle of a mass-extinction, and to be realistic, it is our fault. We owe it to every other living organism on this planet to try to fix what we have done, and whatever green technologies are created soon need to be efficient and work well.

I see the human population moving in a renewable energy route, one reliant on first electricity, and then as we progress in understanding of energy, energy sources with lower environmental impact, such as wind, solar, and renewable gas sources. I think it would be great to see energy somehow come out of all the excess carbon humans are creating, but I’m not exactly sure how that would work. I was reading an article about a company called Divergent that makes a car dubbed the “Blade”, which has a 3D printed metal chassis that only has a frame where structure is needed (using as little steel as possible while designing the chassis to be extremely strong) and runs on compressed natural gas. While compressed natural gas is a nonrenewable energy source, more of it exists than oil drilled out of the ground to create gasoline for cars we commonly see on freeways. Keeping in mind that this is coming from a background that lacks a great deal of scientific knowledge, but, it seems that humans should start developing other means of running machines using other energies, whether or not the energies are renewable, before we run out of oil to run machines, cars in this case. Should we be focusing on renewable energy? Yes. Would it be smart to focus strictly on renewable energy until we have a perfect, sustainable answer? No.

That comes down to the root of the problem, energy sources, that is, and all the problems in history in terms of environmental tragedies we’ve caused can primarily be traced back. From the receding glaciers in Glacier National Park to the dropping of atomic bombs over Japan, no matter how intentional, humans involvement in energy has been affecting the Earth’s health for thousands of years. Humans have been obsessed with energy- From what charges our Apple products, to fire that provided humans light and heat in our primitive years- since we discovered what energy sources were. Energy makes our lives efficient, removing mechanical movements of our bodies and our inner energy to making machines to the work for us. Our obsession with energy is not going to change, so green technology needs to start creating more sustainable ways of making and using energy.

I think the first step is to have scientists figure how to make engines work with sustainable energy, because if they do that first, they can continue to do their research from those sustainable programs. The next 30 years will be interesting- We have a lot to battle because we’ve been unknowingly been setting up this huge problem for so long- and everyone will need to contribute in some way, but until we get there and know exactly what people with non-STEM backgrounds can do, giving everyone the opportunity to work sustainably off of products that use renewable energy is the best thing that green technology engineers and scientists could do.

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