Ideate

-Ideas to implement in our Green City concept-

ELECTRIC VEHICLES :

Inventing an electric vehicle has been an ultimate goal for every engineer. This goal of theirs could actually help saving the environment and make people life easier.

i. Reduce car emissions to help the environment

Humans have historically had a negative impact on our environment, and by switching to an electric vehicle is one way to reduce further damage to the earth. Carbon dioxide emissions from traditional vehicles contribute greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and accelerate climate change. That being said, electric vehicles doesn’t release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when you drive them. For hybrid electric cars, it uses their battery to greatly improve the distance you can travel with the gasoline-powered engine.

Electric vehicles can be fuel by electricity from renewable sources, such as wind, hydropower, and solar. While gasoline can only be produced through intensive extraction and transportation processes. Electric vehicles are also built to be more environmentally friendly than conventional vehicles because the battery inside your electric car can be recycle.

ii. Lower Fuel costs

Weekly trips to the gas station to fuel up your car are expensive, especially when the ever-fluctuating price of gasoline is high. By choosing an electric vehicle, you can forget about paying for gasoline and being at the mercy of gas prices. Not only electricity is less expansive than gasoline, it is also has a much more stable price point, meaning that rapid price swings are all eliminated by going electric.

All-electric cars don’t have much of the equipment specific to the internal combustion engines like spark plugs, transmissions, radiators, oil and fuel filters, exhausts, and other gasoline-specific components. As a result, the cost of maintaining an electric vehicle is lower than gasoline-powered vehicles. Most electric cars also have regenerative braking, which uses the electric motor to do much of the braking. Hence, this also helps save the brake pads and rotors in electric vehicles, further reducing maintenance costs.

Tesla, Inc

Mercedes-Benz

Speaking off electrical vehicles, did you know that there are a few companies already invented a few electrical cars? Well we did some research about these companies and we were very shocked and impressed because their skills are out of this world. Here are the companies that we had researched on.

Tesla, Inc. (formerly Tesla Motors, Inc.) is an American electric vehicle and clean energy company based in Palo Alto, California. Tesla's current products include electric cars (the Model S, Model 3, Model X, and Model Y), battery energy storage from home to grid scale (the Powerwall, Powerpack, and Megapack), solar panels and solar roof tiles, and related products and services.

After 11 years in the market, Tesla ranked as the world's best-selling plug-in and battery electric passenger car manufacturer in 2019, with a market share of 17% of the plug-in segment and 23% of the battery electric segment. Tesla global vehicle sales increased 50% from 245,240 units in 2018 to 367,849 units in 2019. In 2020, the company surpassed the 1 million mark of electric cars produced. The Model 3 ranks as the world's all-time best-selling plug-in electric car, with more than 500,000 delivered. Tesla cars accounted for 81% of the battery electric vehicles sold in the United States in the first half of 2020.

Mercedes-Benz is a German automotive marque and, from late 2019 onwards. Mercedes-Benz is known for producing luxury vehicles and commercial vehicles. The headquarters is in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg. The name first appeared in 1926 as Daimler-Benz. In 2018, Mercedes-Benz was the largest seller of premium vehicles in the world, having sold 2.31 million passenger cars.

The company's origins come from Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft's 1901 Mercedes and Karl Benz's 1886 Benz Patent-Motorwagen, which is widely regarded as the first internal combustion engine in a self-propelled automobile. The fuel was not gasoline, but rather a much more volatile petroleum spirit called ligroin. The slogan for the brand is "the best or nothing".

SOLAR ENERGY AS A MAIN SOURCE OF ENERGY :

I know you must be asking a question like "Why using solar energy to boost up our city?" or "What can we gain using solar energy in our daily life?". Well according to our research, there are a lot of advantages of using solar energy and here are the answers to that kind of questions.

i. Clean and renewable energy

Solar power is a 100% clean, renewable energy source. It reduces the act of relying on oil, coal and natural gas for electricity production. These fossil fuels produce harmful emissions that affect the quality of air, water and soil, and are responsible for global warming. It’s estimated that between 2000 and 2065, the Earth will lose more species of plants and animals to extinction than in the previous 65 million years combined. That’s a staggering statistic and one driven significantly by the effects of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels. In contrast, solar energy produces no pollution. The sun's abundant power offers an unlimited source of energy that does not strip the landscape or harm the ozone layer. Residential solar energy systems represent an investment in the future of the planet, conserving non-renewable energy sources and protecting the environment.

ii. Save Money

As I said before, Solar energy have many advantages, and saving your money is definitely one of them. Using solar energy in place of grid electricity can save money on the monthly electricity bills. Though solar panel installation is quite an investment, the overall benefit offsets the one-time high investment. If you plan to stay in the same house for long enough, you can quickly recoup the investment on solar power panels in a few years. Moreover, with battery storage, you can save the extra electricity generated by your solar panels and use it in instead of regular grid power. In this modernization world, most utilities allow consumers to sell solar power to them. Either way, you can save money through the power generated by the solar panels installed on your property. Solar power also saves your money when the electricity goes off for an extended period, such as during a storm or forest fire. The solar energy not only supplies power to your house and allows it to function without any significant disruption. It also cost you no extra cost. If you use a generator, it will consume fuel which will cost you and cause noise and pollution while using solar power will provide you the power you need without any extra cost.

WIND ENERGY TO POWER UP THE CITY :

According to our researched, we found out that wind energy offers many advantages, which explains why it's one of the fastest-growing energy sources in the world.

i. Clean and renewable

Unlike coal, natural gas, or oil, generating electricity from wind doesn’t result in greenhouse gas emissions. While there are some environmental considerations that come with building large wind farms, once operational, wind turbines themselves don’t require burning any fossil fuels to operate. Additionally, wind energy is completely renewable and will never run out. In opposition to traditional fossil fuels resources that replenish very slowly, wind naturally occurs in our atmosphere, and we don’t have to worry about supply issues in the future. Wind power lights homes and businesses with an infinitely available energy.

ii. Free and unlimited

Since wind turbines themselves run strictly on the power of wind generated, there is no need for fuel. Once the turbine is complete and installed, it doesn’t need to be fuel or connected to any power to continue working. This also reduces the overall cost to continue a run large-scale wind farms in comparison to other forms renewable energies, which require may require some energy investment. Wind energy is completely free. There’s no market for the demand and supply of wind energy. It can be used by anyone and considered one of the lowest price renewable technologies available today, depending upon the wind resource and the particular project’s financing. For as long as the Sun shines the wind will blows, the energy produced can be harnessed and It will never run out, unlike the Earth’s fossil fuel reserves.

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION:

People rarely use public transportation to go to shopping mall, going to work or wherever place because some people think it's outmoded way to travel and some people think that it's tiring to wake up in the morning and wait at the bus stop and wait for the bus. But they don't realize that using public transportation actually could help save the environment and also benefits us in some ways.

i. Less greenhouse gas emissions

In big cities, greenhouse gas emissions often is a serious problem which causes quite unpleasant and lowers the overall quality of life of many people, it can also lead to serious health issues like asthma or other pulmonary diseases. Since global warming will become a serious problem in the near future, we should try to save greenhouse gases as often as possible. Thus, by using public transport is much eco-friendlier compared to cars when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions and this kind of problem can be mitigated quite effectively.

ii. Save money

The cost of public transportation is often lower than the costs associated with other forms of transportation. If you consider not only the costs for fuel, but also the costs for repairs, maintenance and so on, public transport will be much cheaper for every individual compared to owning a private car. Thus, especially if you are on a budget and need every dollar, you might want to use public transport instead of owning a car since you can save plenty of money over time by doing so.

BICYCLE LANES :

Cycling is a healthy, low-impact exercise that can be enjoyed by people of all ages, from young children to older adults. It is also fun, cheap and good for the environment. That is why we can see from our car's window that there are a lot of people cycling on the road in the evening or sometimes early in the morning. So, we decided to build a bicycle lane for cyclists. Building a bicycle lane actually brings out many advantages to all cyclists.

i. Reduced Accidents and Injuries

One important advantage of bicycle lane is that they can greatly improve the overall safety of millions of cyclists worldwide. While it is rather dangerous to cycle on the same lanes as cars, dedicated bicycle lane make the overall cyclists experience far less risky. Therefore, also the number of serious accidents would become much lower by introducing those bicycle lane and every city should consider this in order to protect their local population from the high number of accidents that happen every year between cars and cyclist. Another upside of bicycle lanes is that cyclists will interfere less with pedestrians. Currently, in cities where there are no bicycle lanes in place, cyclists will often use the sidewalk instead of the car lane since they fear serious accidents with cars. However, using the sidewalk for biking also implies an increase in the risk of accidents between bikers and pedestrians. Also, one important measure to motivate people to use their bicycle more often is to set up bicycle lanes in order to improve the overall safety level of cyclists and to make the cycling experience more comfortable.

ii. Makes the use cars less attractive

Bicycle lanes will also make it less attractive to use cars in big cities. There are several reasons why bicycle lanes make the use of cars less attractive. First, if people enjoy riding their bicycle more, chances are that more people will switch to using bicycle instead of using their cars. Second, if bicycle lanes are introduced, cars will have less space and the overall stress levels to use a car will increase significantly, which in turn would further increase the motivation of people to use bicycle instead of cars and also lower the need to use our cars, the overall air quality in cities would likely improve significantly. Lastly, worry less about potential accidents with cars by using a bicycle lane, you will be able to ride your bicycle faster on average because you don't have to worry about speeding or traffic jam . Especially if you are in a hurry and you have to get to an important meeting in time, bicycle lanes could actually save you some time in various areas of your daily life.

VERTICAL FARMING :

In vertical farming, crops are grown indoors, under artificial conditions of light and temperature. Crops are grown indoors, under artificial conditions of light and temperature. It aims at higher productivity in smaller spaces. It uses soil-less methods such as hydroponics, aquaponics and aeroponics.

i. Protection from outside conditions

Through vertical farming, the plants are also protected against all sorts of adverse outside conditions. For instance, through outdoor farming, a high fraction of crops is lost every year due to droughts, floods or storms. Through the use of vertical gardening, none of those extreme weather conditions will matter since the inside conditions will not be altered due to those conditions, at least if those vertical farming facilities are not damaged by those extreme weather events. Hence, if the vertical farming system had been constructed in a stable manner, there is not too much to worry about adverse outside weather conditions. This implies that crop yields through vertical farming there will be fewer crops are lost during the growth process.

ii. Protection from animals and invasive plant species

Since vertical farming is usually operated indoor, there are fewer chances for the contamination of plants with several sorts of pests. If the workers take great care of the plants, the chances are almost zero for the pests to have a chance to get inside the vertical farming system. In turn, the absence of pests will lead to an increase in crop yields since plants can grow in an optimal manner without being harmed by pests. Beside that, not only the plants are being protected from any kinds of pests, they are also protected from animals and invasive plant species. For instance, a significant portion of the crops from conventional outdoor farming is lost every year since animals eat plants or crops. Moreover, invasive plant species try to compete with the farmed plants and may therefore lower their nutrient supply, which may lead to lower crop yields. Thus, through vertical indoor farming, all those issues could be prevented and crop yields are likely to increase.

UNDERGROUND PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION:

We did some research about an underground public transportation and found out that it provided more social benefits and savings, including a reduction in land acquisition costs, doing away with the need to demolish and shifting of existing structures and utilities. The pilings for elevated railway lines can constrict traffic.

i. Save money

If you think it’s cheaper to drive your car to work rather than take the subway, you’re probably mistaken. When you take into account car repairs, fuel, loan payments, parking fees, insurance, taxes and licensing, you’ll be surprised at how much you spend and that’s before car loans were considered. On the other hand, subway transportation is economical. When taking a train to work or to visit other cities, You don't have to worry about refueling your car, taking your car to a nearby workshop for a quick checkup or paying the toll roads.

ii. It is pollution free

Underground public transportation is extremely green. Not only is it more environmentally friendly than automobile travel, it is also has the advantage over public bus systems, as subways do not emit harmful exhaust fumes into the air. According to our researched, the greenhouse effect of gas emissions per kilometer on railway transport is 80% less than cars. In some countries, less than 3% of all transport gas emissions come from trains.

WAYS TO SHOW OUR SOLUTION THROUGH PROTOTYPING :

IDEA 1 - MAKE OUR OWN MODEL GREEN CITY

One of our idea in order to show our idea of solution to solve our selected problem that is pollution and lack of sustainable energy in our country is by making our very own model city that uses the 'Green City' concept. We plan on doing this by using a 3D software known as SketchUp which is a software that we were taught to use in our ENBE module. By doing so, we aim to show our friends and family members what they think of living in a country that uses the 'Green City' concept and hope that this concept will be implemented in our country in the coming future.

IDEA 2 - TO MAKE PEOPLE AWARE OF THE GREEN CITY CONCEPT

For this idea, we plan on using social media platforms, brochures or even make a website on the 'Green City' concept that will help make people more aware of this concept that developing countries are trying to use right now in order to help the environment. However we ended up thinking that this idea is not the most suitable idea for this assignment so we decided to scrap this idea.

SELECTED IDEA : IDEA 1

Go To Define

End of Ideate

Go to Prototype

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse