Renewable Energy

In essence, because our current penchant for energy, transition from our fossil fueled, petrocultural dependence means that we are going to have to adopt renewable sources of energy. Renewable energies are those that are generated from natural sources, and that are easily replenished such as sun, wind, water, tidal, waves or biochemical. Whereas, energy extracted from the earth such as fossil fuels or uranium is not renewable. These resources derived from the earth cannot be replenished. We should be trying to harness renewable energies as electricity to ensure that we satiate our glut for energy forever into the future.

Although renewables are touted as the future of energy, we have to think about the land that they require. In order to transform renewable energies into electricity it requires more land than would be needed if we were to use to fossil fuels to transform the same amount of energy. We have to consider the space that these renewables take up. These spaces in the past have ended up on rural or low income areas, reducing the land worth and the aesthetic value (Jenkins et al., 2016). Fortunately, think tanks who consider the importance of art as an inspiration when developing clean, equitable energies such as as the Land Art Generator initiative (LAGi) are imagining ways of making renewable energy farms more aesthetically, and ecologically more palatable.

To envision what the future of countries or communities will look like through renewables is an important step forward for nations around the globe. Fortunately there are organizations like The Solutions Project who have coupled with Stanford University to come up with a revealing interactive infographic that outlines what renewable energies could look like in 2050 for countries that are capable of making 100% renewable a priority within the time frame. Not only does this interactive infographic give the share of various renewables within the country for this time interval, but it also provides a sense of what kinds of renewable energy jobs will be created, the amount of energy demand change from fossil fuels to renewable, how much health care cost savings from the transition, what kind of land use will be required, the reduction in energy costs, and the overall money saved by the citizens. What is more interesting is that after you have checked out the changes country by country, you should look at the Earth and its variances as a whole. If we are to move away from our current fossil fuel dependent petroculture it is information like this that will help us move in the right direction.

OK, so you might have looked through several of those country inforgraphics above along with the worldwide one, and may be left wanting for the future of geothermal. In the infografics above geothermal is more or less left absent. Based on our readings this week you are not alone (Roberts, 2020). I thought that because geothermal is by its name, geo, a global thing, that it might come up as a prime energy source for most, if not all, countries. According to Stanford (Jacobson, 2019) geothermal barely makes the percentage for most countries. Instead, geothermal should be considered a top energy source not only due to its global reach, but also because there is already a huge, influential industry with the capital already invested in the drilling of the geothermal wells: the fossil fuel industry. The video to the left expands on the untapped potential of geothermal. It is a long video, so please consider increasing the playback speed.