Climate crisis and clean energy
In this super-fast era, climate crisis is the major environmental challenge that world is facing nowadays. Global warming, heat waves, droughts, hurricanes and typhoons, melt of the icebergs, increase in sea level due to the artic warming, floods, wildfire, ecological collapse are some of the impacts of this climate change. Moreover, one of the critical things is average global temperature has increased (twice) in last 50 years. Further, the hottest 16 years have recorded in NASA’s 134-year record since 2000.
Greenhouse gas emission is the main reason for this climate crisis especially carbon dioxide (CO2) is the largest driver (90%) to the climate changes / global warming then methane takes the lead role. Burning fossil fuels such as coal, crude oil and natural gas for power generation is normal over a century. Even today also which serves 80% of our energy needs. However, energy sector releases nearly 40% CO2 to the atmosphere. Developed countries like China, USA and European Union are major contributors to this emission.
Environmental crisis can be control by controlling the collection of gases such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, methane, NOx and other carbon particles in atmosphere. Since energy sector is the major contributor in producing CO2, it’s necessary to concern about power generation and electricity usage. First thing, in order to mitigate the carbon emission, it is important to save energy. Every single person’s habit can lead this world to a carbon less era. There are some key things that everyone has to follow in order to reduce GHG emission.
Incandescent bulbs should be replaced by compact fluorescent bulbs that are more efficient.
Turn off fans, ACs, Laptops, etc. when we are not in need.
Take any single action to save energy.
Decrease own carbon footprint by serving energy in our daily day to day activities: use public transportation, energy efficient appliances consumption, etc.
Plant more trees
Second thing is using clean energy for power generation. Fossil fuels are scarce sources and they have bad impact on our environment. So, we should shift to the renewable energy sources in order to avert further environmental crisis. Renewable energy has the ability to minimize the utilization of fossil fuels which are main reason for this climate problems. Solar, wind, hydro, bio-mass and geothermal energies are considered as renewable energies. Which are more environmentally friendly as they produce less amount of CO2 than non-renewable fossil fuel.
Hydro power facilitates to reduce carbon concentration in atmosphere. They not emit greenhouse gases during the generation phase but commissioning and decommissioning process of plants will produce some amount of greenhouse gases. Although the carbon footprint is much less than coal/ crude oil-fired power plant. Likewise, solar, wind power plants also more environmentally friendly and they substantially cut down the usage of fossil fuels.
Bio-mass is quite different from other renewable energy sources. They consume CO2 in the atmosphere through photosynthesis process and release back to the environment when burn it. Therefor, bio-mass fueled power plants have a net-negative carbon emission.
Even though, tidal and wave energy is free of charge and emission free it is not much feasible as its very expensive, harm wildlife/ fisheries and advanced infrastructures required.
Since, energy sector influenced on climate crisis prominently, it is essential to consider about power generation and electricity usage. Diminish in greenhouse emission from the power sector helps to achieve a positive impact on climate changes. This should be carried out globally not in state level or country wise. Even though, UN, UNEP, IPCC and NCAR emphasis to reduce GHG emissions and encourage clean energy some countries still in leading position in energy wastage and high emission rate. This situation needs to be changed. Every nation should be responsible and think about clean energy for the future generation.
Reference:
[1]"Fossil Fuels: The Dirty Facts", NRDC, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.nrdc.org/stories/fossil-fuels-dirty-facts
[2]"Global Climate Change: What You Need to Know", NRDC, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.nrdc.org/.../global-climate-change-what-you...
[3]"Climate & Clean Energy", NRDC, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.nrdc.org/about/climate-clean-energy.
[4]"Climate change", En.wikipedia.org, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change.
[5]"Global Warming 101", NRDC, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.nrdc.org/stories/global-warming-101.
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