How Views of Alt Energy Has Changed During this Course

Everyone on this trip is interested in alternative energy to some degree. I believe most people are, and agree that fossil fuels are harming the environment. It's great to think of a futuristic, blue-skies world powered using sunlight, wind, and water. We've seen progress over our own lifetimes in these developments, from solar power becoming more attractive to homeowners, hypothetical mega-wind farms, to hybrid/hydro/electric vehicles rising to a significant market. When I first began this course, I assumed this would be the way of the future, and it was only a matter of time when we flipped the switch from fossil fuels to renewable, and the impending crisis would be averted. If I've learned one thing from this course, it's that this isn't the case at all. Or at least it won't be that easy.

The biggest eye opener is that renewable energy simply doesn't add up enough to cover our current lifestyles. Even if we covered the deserts in solar panels, covered the countrysides in wind turbines, put off-shore wind farms in the most opportune places, grew biofuel crops in every fertile area, began using wave power and dammed our largest waterfalls, it might be able to barely replace our current consumption methods (The book notes several reputable institutes estimation of realistic renewable energy use for Britain, which was around 15 kWh per day - A fraction of the current 180 kWh used today by the average person). This all includes vast idealistic assumptions, and I don't see any of these assumptions coming true, as large scale energy methods will be viewed as noisy, ugly, and wasteful in the eyes of the voters. This isn't even considering rising economies such as Brazil, China, and various other countries with high populations that will begin using energy at a much higher rate in the future.

In addition to the realization that the total sum of renewable sources still may not be enough globally, I also had some incorrect views on the individual sources themselves. I had no idea that hydropower was so prevalent or powerful. I had always viewed it as one of the smaller sources of energy, but in reality it is one of the most reliable and resourceful possibilities available to us. In contrast, I had made the opposite assumption about solar. Intuitively, I thought that since there's always sunlight, solar power must be the way to go. After learning about the efficiency of panels (around 10% right now) and how volatile these plants are in regards to location, time of day, and orientation, solar seems like a piece to the puzzle, but surely not the answer. Wind seems so vastly available and strong in many areas, but even this method is so inefficient it would only make a small dent in total energy generation. 

The switch to alternative energy will be a combination of many methods, but even then it may not be enough. It raises a serious question of what the next step is in our quest to move away from non-renewable sources of energy. Is the answer developing more efficient technology in converting natural sources to electricity? Do we need to ration fossil fuels, and accept that we may never be able to completely move away from them with our current lifestyle and consumption? Or is the answer somewhere else, such as nuclear, or something futuristic such as fusion technology (or something really sci-phy like Dyson-spheres, where we basically encase a sun in solar panels to collect 100% of its energy)? The next few years may force our hand to develop these new technologies, or begin changing the public persona in regards to alternative methods and energy consumption.