Session 8 week 9

Climate change is one of the most worrying trends in today's context and the fear that the earth is reaching its maximum capacity is overwhelming. People are finding ways and means to reduce greenhouse gases emission and the usage of natural resources. Tracing back to the root of these 2 problems, excessive non-renewable energy consumption is the main culprit of why we are in this situation. But even though people have found the root of the problem, we cannot eliminate it because energy consumption is inevitable. Thus, the only way to solve the problem is to create renewable energy which are environmental friendly. This idea coincides with professor's statement, which states that: "the days of fossil fuels are numbered. Renewable energy will drive the green revolution." However, some problems might appear for certain countries if people solely rely on renewable energy. One of the reason is because selling natural resources (to provide non-renewable energy) is a major source of national income for them, for example, 95 % of Nigeria's national income comes from selling of oil. Thus, if the world is completely relying on the renewable resource, these countries will lose their main source of livelihood. Nonetheless, seeing that the world is reaching its limits, man have to look at alternative means for energy consumption, or we will be facing dire consequences.

One of the articles that caught my attention was about transport. Transportation plays a very crucial role in our lives. Looking at the amount of greenhouse gas produced by transportation, we can see that if people want to be environmentally sustainable and "save the world", new transportation or transportation system has to be created. Before reading this article, I have thought about the future transportation technology and felt that researchers should focus on create alternative fuels or new car system which requires other form of energy (electricity, pressure etc.) to operate. However, I realised that it is not an easy task for these researchers to come out with a completely new technology, it takes years to achieve. Thus, at the mean time, people should also focus on other ways of reducing greenhouse gas emission such as improving current technologies to make vehicles more technically efficient than they are now and lessen their fuel consumption per kilometre of driving or creating new transport systems and infrastructure to reduce the need for vehicle travel and enable more efficient routing, as mentioned in the article. The article also states that the ultimate goal is to create a sustainable transport system, hence exploring alternative fuels for transport is still one of the major research areas that people are focusing on. The current results of the research (on alternative fuels) are:
-Electric propulsion and powertrain systems
-Hydrogen fuel-cell propulsion systems
-Technologies that allow use of biofuels which have near-zero emissions on a well-to-wheels basis
With the introduction of these new technologies, people are no longer solely reliant on non-renewable resources for transportation and at the very least controlling the amount of carbon emission coming from transportation.

Some countries in Africa are so poor was mainly because of the vast space occupied by the desert in their country. In the past, people are not able to utilized the deserts efficiently due to the bad environmental conditions of the deserts. But this does not mean that the desert is completely useless. With the introduction of solar energy, people can actually set up solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies, which convert the sun's energy into electrical energy, in the dessert, acting an electricity generator for the whole country. This is possible given the vast abundant space of land that they have. Also, given the strong sun in Africa, building solar panels on residents' own house can also help contribute to the amount of energy (mainly electricity) generated. The only problem they will be facing is the monetary factor for creating and maintaining the technology. Given the serious corruption problem in Africa, it is predictable that investors will be quite reluctant to invest their money in Africa.

I will rate this session 7/10, because there are some repetitions in the content with the previous sessions about alternative fuels being used as renewable source of energy. However, they are still some interesting ideas that caught my attention, which is the idea about individual families selling the energy generated to the company at a higher rate and buy the same amount of energy at a cheaper rate. This is a good incentive for the public to install solar panel on their house as this can actually act as a source of income for the families. This will be a win-win situation where families earn money and companies receive energy generated without investing in the equipment required. From this, I can derive that it is very important to have an effective policy if the country wants to drive green revolution. People will only adopt the "renewable technology" only when it benefits them. By just saying "to save the world" is not a sufficient reason for them to adopt the technology in this increasingly profit-driven world.