In today’s lesson, we spent the bulk of our time talking about the shift between renewable and non-renewable energy. The rising cost of energy and the pollution it has created has caused us to re think our current strategy of spamming non renewable resources such as coal, oil and natural gases.
Prof talked about the timeline of renewable, and very interestingly, with so much talk about non-renewable energy, I had for some strange reason always assumes that we have been using them forever. I have forgotten the days of using pure non renewable energy. It is also a good reminder that sustainable renewable energy such as from trees can one day become unsustainable when the usage outdoes the growth of trees.
One of the interesting points that I really like was in slide 14: Biomass, wind and photovoltaics. What is most efficient? There are so many sources of renewable energy but some are much less efficient. This brings the question of why people are using somewhat useless (comparison) ways of generating energy. If using sunlight produces 170GWh of energy and biomass produces 2GWh of energy, that’s 70times more energy in a given space. Before condemning people for their efforts I’m sure I haven’t taken into account the other factors like infrastructural cost, labour cost etc.
Quick takeaways from today’s lesson:
-Renewable energy is important for the sustainability of the earth. Judging from how the earth is currently being destroyed, I can guess that humans are selfish being not caring much for future generations.
-Renewable energy is important for the sustainability of the earth. Judging from how the earth is currently being destroyed, I can guess that humans are selfish being not caring much for future generations.
-The point of transition from renewable to non renewable energy occurred during the 1800s.
-The start of using non renewable energy might have resulted in the stopping of slave trade.
-Almost all energy was deriving from the sun.
-photovoltaic produces 70 times more energy than form biomass in a given plot of land.
-China, Brazil and Italy have dramatically increased their expenditure in renewable energy.
-It is possible to reach the usage of 100 sustainable energy by 2050 but highly unlikely.
-Turning our everyday waste into energy is possible at 95% efficiency.
-With Energy Grid System, maximizing the efficiency by allocating energy sources will lead to a lot of cost savings.
What I hope to see being discussed in the future for renewable energy will be what goes deep into our earth-magma. I’m sure some of the energy we can use can be from deep beneath the earth surface, whereby it probably takes less than a second to vaporize the droplets of water into steam energy.
I will rate this class a 7/10. It is the same topic which everyone talks about, from primary school to now, but since it gives me insights, I’ve upped my rating.
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