Sustanable Energy and the Future

Future of Energy: Guiding Decisions With Evidence In order to reduce the negative environmental impacts of an ever growing human population and increasing demands for energy as technological advances continue, individual countries, states, cities and even households have the opportunity to shift their energy sources to those that are renewable. However, not all locations are equally amenable to any particular form of energy.

This analysis will look at personal consumption of energy of the course of a normal routine and attempt to determine the major sources of energy use that are present in my life. It was found that heating and cooling and transportation were among the leading items that contributed to my total energy consumption. There are various ways in which these energy consumption sources could be minimized to create a better conservation of energy strategy in my normal routine.

Energy Consumption The world is facing environmental crises from a variety of different sources. Many of these ecological issues are driven by the world's growing human population, which is expected to reach over nine billion people before it finally peaks, due to the fact that has been exponentially growing for millennia (Kunzig, 2014). The growing human population was previously expected to peak and level off at much lower rates, however demographers now believe there could be more growth that previously expected.

The previous estimates of population growth were alarming already, however higher total population estimate underscore the importance that all of us reduce our environmental footprints as soon as possible. Heating and cooling costs can be one of the greatest expenses relative to maintaining a residence and in the future, these costs could grow even higher.

This trend will be driven by the fact that energy demand will continue to grow which will cause energy prices rise due to the fact that the cheapest sources of energy are non-renewable and are directly linked to climate change. However, although energy costs are likely the largest source of my personal energy consumption, this energy source may no longer be the largest energy consumption factor for the population on the whole.

The use of energy of appliances, electronics, and lighting has grown rapidly in recent generations and is estimated to have overtaken the use of energy to heat and cool different residences. Figure 1 - EIA Estimate of Total Energy Use (EIA, 2013) Energy also represents 30% of operating expenses in a typical office building; this is the single largest and most manageable operating expense in the provision of office space (Eichholtz, Kok, & Quigley, 2009). However, through design, many of the energy requirements can also be reduced.

For example, by properly designing the floor plan to include non-critical rooms (conference rooms, storage, etc.) and heating/cooling these areas with local controls, energy consumption can be reduced to 50% peak-heating-load reduction, and to Optimize Energy Performance is rated as the most important credit in LEED certifications (NC-2009 EAc1, 2009). Renewable Energy Sources There have been many efforts to offset the increased demand for energy with the production of energy within renewable sources.

Within the last five years the market for solar powered electricity has virtually exploded due to the fact that there have been government subsidies provided by many nations coupled with the fact that energy prices have gradually increased with the depletion of the fossil fuels that are effectively "easy to get to" (Gordon, Kinsey, Nayaak, & Garboushian, 2010).

There are currently four overall methods of reducing the overall costs associated with solar powered electrical generation; system innovations, system optimization, system reliability, and system efficiency and there have been many advances in each of these categories of cost improvements are currently unknown due to the fact solar companies must work within a system based on competition rather than a more collaborative atmosphere. Another source of renewable energy comes from a more controversial source.

Nuclear power production was first introduced in the United States and was believed to be the future of energy is it has a wide range of benefits that it can offer. Although there are formidable risks in regard to nuclear power that have been illustrated recently by disasters, such as the nuclear meltdown in Japan, more modern technology can increase the safe management of many of the issues that plagued previous generations of nuclear power plants.

Even though the plant in Japan suffered a catastrophic fate after the recent tsunami, the probability of the likelihood of such a disaster has diminished significantly. In fact, the plant in Japan that experienced problems was built in the 1960s and more current designs have substantially improved their safety equipment and procedures and are more fail safe in general. However, a common perception among industry specialists is that constructing nuclear plants based on the.