Assignment 5

Thoughts on Renewable Energy

When I first came here, I knew that the world was pushing to get off of renewable energy, and I didn't know a whole lot more beyond that. I knew some basic types of renewable energy sources, but still my knowledge had remained rather limited. 

I have learned an immense amount in terms of how alternative energy sources actually work and how they all play a large role in terms of moving towards sustainable energy. I had never truly had a good understanding of some of the numbers that went into solar for example, and I had never really pondered the ideal that the terms and adjectives that we use to describe renewable energy are so ubiquitously obfuscated, and that we lack clarity on where we really stand as a society in terms of what amount of effort, what amount of land, and what amount of money it would take to work to make the transition off of traditional fossil fuels.

I have also gained a much larger insight in terms of what some of the negative externalities are for creating or adapting existing infrastructure in our pursuit of sustainable energy. When I thought about hydroelectricity, I would never think to consider all the other possible environmental effects that it could have beyond just creating energy.

There is one thing that I have come to realize about sustainable energy in terms of what we need to do. I think there is an enormous uphill battle ahead of us. The amount of energy that we use vs the amount of renewable we can produce are not close, and both of these numbers are only likely to grow with time. After everything that we have learned, I think that as a society we won't make a really significant push towards renewable energy until the average citizen feels the effects of running on traditional fossil fuels, or rather, what it might be like to live without them. I have learned in what cases our technology has continued to grow to help us further make the transition, but our challenges that we will have to face as well continue to grow, namely population and land use.

I think that we will make it there though, but not for a long time, maybe even a few generations. The problem is, that it is likely we will see the effects of running out of fossil fuels to burn in our lifetime, and I believe when that happens, that is when we will see the biggest change. At that point, we will have no other choice if we want to continue living our current lifestyle. However, we still won't have an answer, because at least where we are now, we still need large amounts of land for things like biofuels and solar, and large amounts of water for things like hydroelectric. This doesn't even go to mention our environmental effects.

I have learned throughout this course that we are in a battle for balance. A battle between trying to control how much energy the average consumer uses via distribution of information; between capitalizing on what limited resources we do have to move towards sustainable energy like land and water; between creating capital for all of these projects; and between doing this all in a way that minimizes our environmental impact. This is an absolutely tall order, but I suppose in terms of our start I think it is fair to say, better late than never.