News about Solar, Wind and alternative green power technologies

The emphasis from the Obama’s administration has been to create employment through energy sources. In one of the President speech he said that “I am convinced that whoever builds a clean energy economy, whoever is at the forefront of that, is going to own the 21st-century global economy,” and to a certain the degree this will turn true.

However, when viewing several dimension of the clean energy plans laid out by the President seems to be dependent on typical technology. In January 27th an urge for new climate and energy legislation was appealed and it appears to be tended towards offshore oil drilling as well as providing a budget of $36 billion for nuclear power by 2011.

Production of bio-fuel is also one of the major concerns for the White House. They are likely going to spur for new technology, even technology that would reduce carbon emissions while burning coal. There might always be ways to improve the actual technology used. Major energy programs are aimed to nurture employment and synchronically diminish greenhouse emissions.

There are already plans do develop around five to ten so called carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), and the projects will be demonstrated by 2016. This is a new way to re-make the old system cleaner. Burning coal, could become a green solution. This is indeed an ancient project, the former President George W. Bush did in, 2003, go for a similar project but the ostensible cost surpassed the budget allocated. The current plan is investing $4 billion federal funds into CCS projects with hope to shortly render $7 billion in return.

The concept of ‘clean coal’ is something that most environmentalists are against coal energy. They utter that energy firms try to extend and support the old technique of using coal energy which is today one of the major source of greenhouse pollution. There are however many who consider that fossil fuel will play a predominant role in generating electricity, like Secretary of Energy Steven Chu.

Chu stated that coal represents around 50 percent of the whole demand for electricity supply in the U.S, which is slightly above what it does in China. According to the International Energy Agency, the demand for energy will further increase from 2007 to 2030, from 53% to more. The backlash from climate scientists are echoing and this is what is pressuring the substance for CCS to work well. The use of coal to generate electricity will probably rise so the only solution is ‘clean coal’.

The rising importance of bio-fuel is likely to have been slightly backfired. Scientists are arguing that the production of ethanol from corn is far from being renewable. The large-scale deforestation initiated to raise ethanol production is futile. The total effect is that carbon emission rises even more when we switch from gasoline to ethanol due to devastating effects of deforestation.

However, the solution in bio-fuel might not be in corn-generated ethanol. The use of more advanced sources such as from waste parts of plants is the ideal solution. According to the EPA, if 36 billion gallons of bio-fuels where produced by 2022 per year in America, then it would practically be tantamount to removing 27 million cars from the road per year. It is still a long way to go before 36 billion gallons of bio-fuel is produced per year.

There have been various scientific measures envisaged to increase bio-fuel production. They intend to use of less land and modify the corns grown. Nonetheless, industrial agriculture comes with its unique environmental ramifications.

In simple terms, Bio-fuel is far from being the idealized solution. However, growing green through traditional sources of energy such as clean coal, bio-fuel and nuclear energy is in our reach. Developing a green economy does not necessarily mean leaving sources of energy such as fossil fuel, which has been trusted for centuries behind.

Source: The Times