When I was working (volunteering) with the Sierra Club in Minneapolis, I belonged to the Clean Air and Renewable Energy committee. But what kind of sources of energy were we whole-heartedly supporting? I wish these were things that would be easy to solve, but the truth seems to be that with any energy source there are problems. Here are some:
Oil: oil spills, difficulty in getting it out (like in Canada, the oil industry is definitely not clean), will run out eventually, need energy and roads and similar to move it from place to place and accidents happen all the time, causing more spills.
Wood: carbon dioxide into atmosphere, climate change hazard. Also in many places of the world there isn't enough trees as it is. Forests lose their recreation value when trees are cut down (also in Finland!)
Coal: I'm not even starting. There is no clean coal at the moment - all of those carbon capture methods are still being researched and too expensive to use - nobody uses them yet. Not to mention that coal mining has problems at all angles.
Wind: Do we really want to destroy the view in every windy place? Also, in many places of the world there just isn't enough of wind energy (see Finland, for example). Also, the energy needs to be transmitted to the cities somehow and the transmission lines cause problems.
Water: Can't we leave any rivers in their pristine state?
Wave: Don't know much about this, but as far as I know it's not yet economically feasible.
Nuclear: Finns think this is clean for some reason. The problem is, the part that isn't clean (waste) can be buried in rock - but will it stay there? Also, if there's human errors in taking care of a plant we might face another Tsernobyl - but those who are for this power seem to think that this could never happen in Finland.
My favourite source of energy is the one Finns have started to develop from methane in dumps, but apparently it still needs research... The transmission is one problem, the economical factors (like is it worth it) are others. In the end though, I think one of the chairmen of that Sierra Club committee said it best: we need to make energy efficiency sexy again. If we don't learn to save energy no solution we can make will be enough.
May 7, 2010
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I am slowly doing my part to produce as much methane gas as possible. I like to think of it as a public service.
ReplyDeleteAnd the North Star Chapter of the Sierra Club thanks you for that, Reuben!
ReplyDeleteWhat is wrong with solar energy as it was not covered at all?
ReplyDeleteUups, forgot about that. Solar energy is great... except that in Finland for instance (or the UK) there just isn't enough. On roof-tops it's great, but if huge patches of desert are covered with plants we get similar problems as with wind, namely, how much do we want to turn wilderness into power plants?
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