Session 8: Energy and World Change

This week, we talked about energy and world change. As the Earth's natural resources are depleting very quickly, it is essential that mankind start looking into and seriously adopting the practice of using renewable energy, as compared to non-renewable ones. As a country develops, it is inevitable to use a significant amount of energy for industrialisation purposes. In today's time, there are several countries like China and India looking to develop their countries. At the same time, the world holds a fear of the depletion of oil reserves. Countries that are looking to develop today can no longer just rely on oil reserves as their source of energy.

"If everyone consumed as much energy as the average Singaporean and U.S. resident, the world's oil reserves would be depleted in 9 years."

Therefore, these countries that will be using large amounts of energy to develop will have to look for alternative energy sources. They do not have the option of going down the same path as Singapore or the U.S. otherwise the Earth will have no more oil reserves within the next decade and we will then be facing with a critical situation.

Energy is a must-have in life because the world cannot operate without energy. However, the current world situation of energy consumption and construction is inequitable and it is a pressing issue that needs to be solve. To overcome this problem and postpone the fear of an oil reserves depletion, many countries and companies have looked into alternative sources of energy. They include solar energy, wind energy, hydropower and biomass and many other alternatives. Not only will switching to renewable sources of energy make it more sustainable for everyone, it provides us with options should a time of emergency come. As the saying goes, don't put all your eggs into one basket. Likewise, we should not be overly dependent on oil reserves, especially since this is a non-renewable source of energy. We should not compromise future generations just because it is easy to tap into oil reserves now.

The video 300 Year History of Renewable Energy shows us how much potential there is to capture energy from the Sun. The concept seems easy enough, but there are currently insufficient efforts from researchers to discover methods of obtaining this abundant energy that is available to us. Taking a look at Germany, solar power is highly adopted as an alternative source of energy mainly due to cash incentives from the government. The fact that the price of electricity is fixed for 20 years actually gives solar farmers the confidence to invest in this technology. As a result, solar farmers can recoup their investments within a short period of time. Many a times, people know that it is beneficial to adopt the alternative, but is unwilling to do so because they are skeptical and is afraid to take the risk. For example, India's electric car is not as successful because the citizens are not open-minded enough to embrace this new idea.

In essence, it is crucial that mankind start seriously looking into alternative energy sources and start adopting them in our everyday activities. The ideal is to phase out non-renewable sources of energy because then only will we be sustainable.

Lesson Rating: 9/10
In depth discussion about the issue at hand. Some new and interesting renewable sources of energy introduced that was really insightful.