The Need for Conservation
| Article Index |
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| The Need for Conservation |
| Nuclear Energy and Coal |
| Natural Gas, Oil, Hydroelectric |
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"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little."
-Edmund Burke
Our planet is changing and we can do something about it. We can make a difference by improving our energy conservations efforts and saving money in the process. Energy conservation and renewable energy systems are important both economically and environmentally.
- The average home in the United States uses the equivalent of 42 barrels of oil per year
- According to the Department of Energy, our homes represent 21% of nationwide energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions
- A 1995 study by the American Cancer Society and the Harvard Medical School found that air pollution from coal-fired power plants accounts for about 30,000 premature deaths each year in the United States
- It’s estimated that in the most polluted cities, lives are shortened by an average of 1 to 2 years
- Air pollution from coal burning in electric utilities is a dominant cause of smog, deadly soot, global warming, pollution in our National Parks, toxic contamination of fish and polluted estuaries.
Nuclear Energy
- In 2006, 19.5% of the energy used in the United States was nuclear energy. The energy source for nuclear energy is Uranium, which is a scarce resource. Our planet’s Uranium supply is estimated to last only for the next 30 to 60 years, depending on the actual demand.
- A typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor creates large amounts of radioactive waste, including 179,000 tons of uranium mill tailings, 159 tons of reactor fuels and weapons-grade plutonium and 0.2 tons of plutonium waster every year.
- The problem of radioactive waste is still unsolved. The waste from nuclear energy is extremely dangerous and it has to be carefully looked after for several thousand years - 10,000 years according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency standards.
- Currently more than 50,000 tons of spent fuel and other radioactive wastes are being stored at nuclear facilities across America, and this amount grows each year. The proposed solution to dispose of radioactive waste in the United States is to move all of the waste to Nevada and burry it in the Yucca Mountain. The projected cost of the repository is more than 60 billion dollars.
- Nuclear power generation is the most expensive way of making electricity when you look at construction costs, waste costs and operating costs. It is paid for by taxpayers through federal government subsidies.
Coal
- As of 2006, coal provided 49.2% of the energy used by the United States
- The U.S. consumes about 1.053 billion tons of coal each year, using 90% of it for the generation of electricity
- More than 12,000 pounds of coal is burned per home per year
- Building in the United States consume nearly 2/3 of all the energy used in the USA
- The typical American home emits twice the annual global warming emissions when compared to the typical car
Effects:
In the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee alone, five million pounds of explosives a day are used by the coal-mining companies. More than 1,500 miles of streams have been buried in the Appalachians. In the past 30 years, coal mining has claimed more than 450 mountains in the central and southern Appalachians. There are dozens of permits for new mines in the works to satisfy our growing demand for energy. American mines and burns 1.1 billion tons of coal every year, enough coal to fill a train extending from the west coast to the east coast and back - and then around the world three times. America's largest single source of global warming emissions is coal-fired power plants. Visibility in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park has declined 60% over the last 60 years. On average, 83% of the visibility-reducing haze in the Smokey Mountains National Park is from sulphate particles produced by coal-burning power plants. The largest source of mercury pollution today is coal-fired power plants. More than 45 states now post state-wide mercury advisories warning that fish are unsafe to eat.
Natural Gas
- In 2006, natural gas provided 20.1% of the energy used in the United States.
- Though it is often described as the cleanest fossil fuel, in 2004 natural gas produced about 5,300 metric tons of CO2 emissions.
- By 2030, according to an updated version of the SRES B2 emissions scenario, natural gas will be the source of 11,000 metric tons of CO2 per year.
Petroleum (Oil) Electricity Generation
- In 2006, 1.6% of the energy used in the United States was provided by petroleum
- Electricity generation consumes 500,000 barrels of oil per day and then consumes 182,5000,000 barrels per year
- Some sinkholes are caused from too much oil and natural resources being extracted from the ground
- We remove approximately 273 million gallons from the United States every day
Hydroelectric
The initial cost of the construction of the hydroelectric power plants is very high. It also takes a long time to construct the plant. Lots of designing, planning and testing goes into the construction of the dams. The hydroelectric power plants cannot be constructed at many locations. They can be constructed only in places where abundant quantities of water is available at sufficient height and throughout the year. Hydroelectric energy provided 7.2% of the energy consumed by the U.S. in 2006.
