The Steps to Be Taken Towards a Green Future
My Grandfather says, “Looking out the window is not what it used to be”. I was not a 100% sure what he meant, so I asked him. He was talking about the whole concept of “Going Green”, the fact that there is a limited amount of the earths’ oil left and that landfills are emitting tons of greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere. No one knew about clean alternatives to petroleum such as palm oil and Biodiesel, which is produced from waste cooking oils instead of using gas or diesel or that just having a compost garden in your backyard could reduce the world’s garbage even just a fraction which is helping.
This paper will go over ways to lower the consumption and usage of fossil fuels. Also, discuss ways of; lowering pollution rates, eliminating nuclear power and introducing clean energy alternatives to gas and electricity. Solar Energy and Windmills are a big part in the clean energy movement that people are starting to fight for and my Grandfather’s generation has no knowledge about. In the words of Xavier Rudd “Thank you for your message but I don’t understand, no I won’t understand. ” People like my Grandfather never knew about what pollution could actually do to the environment.
Wind energy is a step that is being taken throughout Europe (Krueger pg1). Many countries have started to switch their electrical consumption to clean energy and not the modern way of producing electricity, with magnets or nuclear, which use gasoline to power the engines. All the world needs is the wind and sun to provide enough electricity to power the people who inhabit it. Today’s power plants run on fossil fuels and that pollutes the environment, which waste valuable resources. Either in a steam or gas turbine power plant they all rely on coal, petroleum or biomass to power at least one thing in the plant.
But, in a wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric powered power plant the turbine is turned by the wind, water or steam produced from the earth to produce the electricity. Even though nuclear power plants don’t burn fossil fuels to create the electricity they are still polluting the earth and are a danger to mankind. Just recently, Japan was hit by a tsunami and a nuclear powered plant was hit. Nuclear reactor after nuclear reactor broke and started to become a problem for the environment and threaten the lives of not only the Japanese citizens, but of the world.
With clean energy the electricity can be created by home owners, farmers and the government. Everyone can get into the electrical game and even get paid for the electricity that they do not use and it can go to power someone else’s home (Krueger 2). Pollution has gone on for a long time and started basically at the beginning of the industrial revolution and it’s time for it to be put to rest. With the industrial revolution came automobiles, which are the biggest part of the pollution problem. Another part of the problem is the amount of paper that is used.
The paper industry is why marijuana is illegal, it is because the hemp from marijuana could be used for paper, rope, clothing, ect… that they made the government make it illegal. People don’t realize how much paper is wasted in toilet paper, paper towels, tissue paper, books, magazines, newspapers, and office paper. All of those things are made from trees and no one even thinks about the trees. They have been here on this earth longer than use and we are cutting them down, just to make paper it seems.
If the amount of paper used stays at this rate then we are going to be all out of trees and plants to but down to make paper without effecting our oxygen levels. The companies weren’t even planting the trees back until recently when some started to plant new trees to start to try to create a sustainable paper supply for the future. Garbage is another main pollutant that is ruining our earth. In the garbage there is too much recyclable and compost able goods that should be in recycling factories or compost piles.
Also, there is plastic, which was another invention from the industrial revolution (Calandri 235). Plastic is a non-biodegradable compound which means that it cannot decompose with natural processes. Plastic is overflowing the landfills of the world and something has to be done. People have to start recycling their plastic in-order to protect the planet. We also must lower the amount of waste that we put into our landfills, both homes and restaurants must do this (McCaffree 205). People have to start conmposting and conserving water to save the world.
Another way that companies are going green is that they are using algae to filter the on the CO2 from the power plants’ exhaust gases to make the power plants’ coal burning less polluted for the environment (Going Green Literally pg17). The power plants are a big part of the pollution problem with them burning coal, and also fossil fuels to run their generators and machines. If power plants start to use the algae to cycle their exhaust the CO2 emissions can be lowered by 20% per power plant, which is a whole lot less greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere.
Clean energy alternatives to petroleum products are a way to stop drilling for oil to make into gasoline, diesel, fertilizers, aspirin, plastics and even artificial hearts and pacemakers. Thousands of household and everyday items are made with oil that you wouldn’t even think were. Family Recreational activities such as skiing and snowboarding use oil in the manufacturing of the boards or skis, even contact lenses that have oil in them and without oil how would they work. I’m sure there would be something else that manufacturers could use when making the lenses.
Oil is a big industry that has its hold on most of American products and even the world. Biogas is another form of clean energy. It is also a sustainable resource that is made from grass and tree clippings, and restaurant food waste (Corum 36). Today power plants are all over the world and if they get converted to run of this sustainable resource than oil can be eliminated from the power plants. With the power plants not using oil and petroleum products that amount of oil that is needed to live can be cut down.
FCC Expander Technology is the best way for the petroleum companies to go green. The FCC process is very complicated and uses all the waste products over again by recycling them into re-useable energy (Carbonetto 79). The recycled energy from the flue gas has a couple of things that it can be used for and I think that is a very good uses of the un-useable gas. The Electric power generation train in the petroleum plant has a lot of key benefits and engineers have been designing the most energy efficient ways to do the process of making fossil fuels (Carbonetto 83).
The petroleum refining industry is starting to come up with ways to save energy, reduce costs and save the environments. Palm oil and Biodiesel are by-products of seeds. Biodiesel is made from oil that has been used at restaurants or other places and is a clean burning fuel deprived from biological sources (Biodiesel pg2). Biodiesel produces much less CO2 than regular diesel, biodegradable and is also non-toxic. Palm oil on the other hand, is made from palm tree seeds (Yusoff 3). The palm trees grow in warm tropical climates and two different types of palm fruit oil come from it.
The first is crude palm oil from the seed and the second is crude palm kernel oil made from the kernel. What is good about palm oil is that palm trees are perennial crops and they are a sustainable resource. In conclusion, what has to happen is that governments around the world have to enforce new laws to protect the environment. The laws have to force the use of clean energy alternatives to petroleum products. The alternatives are Biodiesel and Palm Oil to fuel our cars, trucks, planes, trains and boats.
The pollution has to be addressed next to save the planet. There are many form of pollution and law enforcement has to implement more strict laws and higher fines to stop people from littering. Last thing that has to be done is to push towards a future where electricity is made from wind or water. Windmills and watermills are the future of electricity and do not need to use any fossil fuels to power the generators. In order to go green people and business must start moving towards a greener living and the consumption of goods needs to be lowered by everyone.
