AMU Emergency Management Health & Fitness Opinion Public Safety Resource

Advances in Renewable Energy, Part II

Energy production

As noted in [link url=”http://edmdigest.com/adaptation/advances-in-renewable-energy-part-i/” title=”part I”], energy production is a topic worthy of our national attention, and which has consequences for our society. It all depends on choices that we make.

Part II here digs into advances in energy development and production. This will not discuss the disadvantages in continued usage of fossil fuels, which is a story for another time, and which has been well documented. Rather, this will provide an update on the three energy production systems that could be utilized to usher us out of our complacency and make us world leaders once again: wind, solar, and nuclear.

Wind

Wind is one of the oldest forms of natural resource utilization that humankind has ever developed. When our disparate societies began to interact with each other and international trade developed, it was wind utilization–in the form of sailing ships–that made that happen. The nation of Holland [link url=”http://www.holland.com/global/tourism/article/wind-energy-in-holland.htm” title=”owes its existence and industrial base”] to wind power.

Wind is one of the truly infinite and renewable resources, because no one has ever been able to influence it. The Earth systems that produce wind are just too vast.

We once depended on wind for so much of our success. We got away from that because other industrial processes became more sexy, but all the while we were burning fossil fuels, the wind was still blowing.

It still blows today. But to date, we haven’t full embraced the potential. Sure, we have wind farms over much of the West and Midwest, but this is a tiny contribution compared to what wind could be. On the plus side, [link url=”http://www.materia-inc.com/media/news/advances-in-wind-power-are-blowing-away-expectations” title=”we are overcoming our complacency”]–on the minus, we still have a long way to go.

Solar

Similar to wind, the sun is still shining. It always has, and it always will. It provides an energy source that we couldn’t avoid if we wanted to. Yet, we don’t use it to its full potential.

Probably the finest thing going for solar energy is that’s free and accessible to everyone. We now have plenty of [link url=”https://thinkprogress.org/solar-delivers-cheapest-electricity-ever-anywhere-by-any-technology-c2ef759ac33f#.5e5ic4g4w” title=”data and evidence that solar energy”] is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

To fully utilize what the Earth and sun offer us, we will once again need to shake off our complacency and decide to go for it. We’re good at that. Because we’re good at that, our innovativeness [link url=”http://energy.gov/energysaver/planning-home-solar-electric-system” title=”has developed home solar systems for our utilization”] that make us independent of our fossil fuel reliance. We have the capacity to embrace this technology in accordance with our love of country and independence–but again, we have a long ways to go.

Nuclear

The utilization of nuclear power, like the burning of fossil fuels, was a great idea that was initially not well thought through and suffered from disastrous unintended consequences–[link url=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster” title=”Chernobyl”], [link url=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident” title=”Three Mile Island”], and [link url=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster” title=”Fukushima”] being the most well known. But it can be argued that initial failures with a technology don’t necessary prove the technology invalid–and that’s where we are with nuclear power.

In the early days, there was a rush to [link url=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power” title=”bring nuclear power to production”]. Rushing is almost always bad–witness the [link url=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Northwest” title=”WHOOPS”] project in Washington State.

But since that time, our technological innovation has completely transformed the nuclear energy process. Nuclear power projects developed today would utilize the [link url=”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor” title=”Generation IV reactor process”], which resolves most if not all of the concerns and potential hazards that we suffered from under early designs.

Pick the sunrise you want

In Beijing, [link url=”https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/dec/16/beijing-airpocalypse-city-almost-uninhabitable-pollution-china” title=”they made the same early mistakes that we did”], with disastrous results–hydroelectric that destroyed ecosystems, burning of coal that rendered the use of masks essential in some cities, and god-knows-what with respect to their use of nuclear. We are fortunate in that we still have a sunrise to enjoy. In some places, they don’t.

Both of our societies, as well as the rest of the world, have a choice to make now: Do we continue to develop (and suffer from) the technologies of the past, or embrace the technologies of the future? To me, there’s only one choice that makes sense. You?

Comments are closed.