Question

Energy can never be unlimited source. Types are energies sources are renewable and non-renewable. The best sustainable solution is to use a more responsible, socio-economic and environment friendly mix of renewable and non-renewable sources of energies.

Renewable sources of energy: Solar, Water, Wind, Wood and Geothermal

Non-renewable sources of energy: Coal, Oil, Natural Gas and Nuclear

Question: Describe how the energy could be sustained economically, socially and environmentally in a project or region. You can choose any one of energy source /case study which can fulfil requirement of sustainability to write your answer. (minimum of 200 words).

Answer 1

• The 2 energy sources that can provide the most energy in the above given list of energy sources has to be Solar energy and Nuclear energy.
• 1 kg of uranium on undergoing nulcear fission produces nearly 82 x 10¹² J per kg of uranium which a billion times higher than the energy produced by combustion of 1 kg of coal!
• The issue with the development of Nuclear power is the potential to incur massive accidents.
• Example: The Chernobyl incident of 1984 is a case which displays the potential for massive damages to society and the environment when the reactor went out of control causing to uncontrolled runaway reactions
• The fallout of incident is that Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced due to the radioactivity with an estimate of 6 million people affected through Europe due to the radioactive fallout
• Chernobyl is majorly contaminated due to radioactivity even today and is said to be contaminated for another 20,000 years.
• On this point, Nuclear energy is a risk society and environment despite being economical for the rest of the years of human existence.
• Another huge negative aspects of harnessing nuclear energy is the possibility of countries to misuse this nuclear power in the aim to produce nuclear warheads.
• There have been several petitiions to stop the use of nuclear energy whether as an energy source or as a weapon.
• The other option we have is Solar energy.
• Note: Geothermal energy as well as wind energy have theoretically very high potentital, but the conversion rate is very when considering the present technology as well as most of the energy being spread out across the oceans making it nearly impossible to set up machinery and transport the energy to land
• The earth recieves more energy from the sun than it can use in an entire year.
• Most of this energy is absorbed by the ocean and less than 0.1% of the total solar energy is actually extractable with current machinery.

Social/Economic consequences :

• Despite low conversion rates, Solar energy was able to supply 2% of the total energy utilized world-wide in the year 2001.
• There will be a very high costs to not only set-up more panels across the world but also to improve the conversion efficiency by improving the technology
• But, considering the benefits of solar being an inexhaustable source of energy as well as the costs that are incurred in refining and processing of conventional sources as well as the costs that are increasing day by day to reduce it's carbon footprint makes the costs seem bearable and not a burden
• Due to the abundance of this energy, the costs that will be incurred by civilians who's house is run by solar energy will have lesser expenditures than those whose house is run by conventional fossil fuel based electricity
• The major costs that will be handled is the R&D and the establishment costs.
• New materials and techniques for absorption and transfer of solar energy into usable forms of electric or another energy form have to be developed to increase the efficiency of the whole process
• Another major socio-economic consequence of utilizing solar energy is the fact that a lot of land is required for setting up the solar panels.
• Fields ,spanning miles, with solar panels spread across have to be established in order supply energy to large cities.
• Along with this idea crops up scenarios such as rainful,flooding, earthquake etc where the panels can get destroyed.
• These are legitimate concerns and have to be dealt with using engineering techniques and appropriate usage of human labour

Socio-Environmental Consequences:

• Harnessing and ultilizing solar energy has a significanlty lower carbon footprint than the conventional non-renewable sources mentioned in the question.
• This also aids in the effort to halt global warming by reducing the greenhouse gas emission
• The studies on climate change show that if the same conditions are continued, the polar caps would melt and in another 50 years, most coastal areas such San Francisco / Sydney etc will be submerged in 3 metres of water
• This highlights the importance of reducing the use of fossil fuels and in the reduction of our carbon footprint.
• The carbon footprint of solar energy is not fully 0 as there is some carbon emission during the manufacture of the panels
• But, the biggest environmental hazard comes from the fact the reagents they use and the silicon wafers that are used in producing the solar panels contain a lot of toxic materials that pose risk to society around the plant
• Solvents such HCl, H₂SO₄, Acetone as well as semi-conducting materials such as Gallium and arsenic have to be carefully removed from the effluent stream to prevent soil and underground water pollution.
• But as most of these polluting chemicals are all very expensive, manufacturers focus on recycling these so that the concentration of these chemicals is generally not high

Overall: The usage of solar energy is highly ecofriendly and the only challenges that we might encounter are the costs in developing the technology as well as the procedure/setup that will make harnessing solar energy efficient, Based on energy as well as based on investment