{Earth}Living consumes energy

The earth's climate has changed a lot in recent years, and the greenhouse effect is the main culprit. Since the industrial revolution, the rapid progress of human civilization, the consequences of the extensive use of various fossil fuels, the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In addition to basic human needs for food, clothing, shelter and transportation, there are also recreational activities, which, driven by technology and economic development, have made our demand for energy far greater than in other times. According to some scientists' estimates, the earth will soon run out of fossil fuels because of mankind's insatiable need for all kinds of energy. Is this the end of mankind? What should we do about it?

Living consumes energy

Living things need all kinds of energy to keep them alive. Even when they're stationary, they consume energy, including energy to breathe, digest, and move around. Standing still burns 100 watts and even sleeping burns 65 watts, according to a us study. These calories are only used to sustain life, and do not include other energy sources that are consumed in our lives, such as electricity, gas, gasoline... .

Although the human life depends on the energy very much, but often does not care about the energy consumption, can say almost forgets its existence. The faucet is open with water, the light switch is pressed with light, and perhaps only the person paying the bill will feel that convenient energy is a costly enjoyment. Most people only feel the pain when they lose energy, such as a typhoon or earthquake, which leads to water shortages and power cuts. But as the situation recovers, these painful experiences quickly disappear.

The economy is built on energy

At present, the world's energy consumption continues to increase at a rate of 2 to 3 percent every year, and it is generally in a state of resource shortage. The United States, for example, has 4 percent of the world's population, but consumes 26 percent of the world's energy. The United States alone consumes only 2 percent of the world's energy, and imports 57 percent of the country's crude oil. Thus, it can be seen that the United States, a civilized country, consumes and wastes energy, and how much it needs energy.

Some developing countries, such as mainland China, are struggling to grow their economies and import more than 50 percent of their crude oil. In 1985, the mainland still had the capacity to export 750,000 barrels of crude oil per day. By 1996, it had gone from exporting to importing 200,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Imports are expected to reach 3 million barrels a day by 2010. The political, economic and military changes behind these massive energy demands are taking place behind the scenes.

In addition to crude oil, coal is also an important energy source. The Chinese mainland leads the world in coal production with 28%, but coal also accounts for 70-80% of its total energy consumption, consuming an average of 20 million tons annually, mainly for electricity generation. However, such a huge amount of combustion also produces a relatively large amount of air pollution and acid rain, bringing another wave of greater impact on the overall environment.

But will China's appetite for energy stop there? Otherwise! The amount of hot water used in bathing suggests that economic growth and energy consumption will continue to rise. Currently, the average person in Taiwan consumes about 50 liters of hot water per day for bathing, while the average person on the mainland consumes less than 15 liters per day. Moreover, the percentage of people on the continent who own a car today is only as high as it was in the United States in 1912. In addition, many countries have shifted their manufacturing sectors to the mainland because of low labor and costs, so it is safe to say that within five years, the continent's demand for all kinds of energy will increase substantially and peak. So $80 a barrel is expected five years from now.

Taiwan's energy problem

In other countries with no energy production capacity at all, such as Taiwan and Japan, the share of energy imports is as high as 98%. Taiwan currently imports about 800,000 barrels of crude oil per day. In terms of energy consumption per unit of land area, Taiwan has the highest crude oil consumption density in the world, burning 7.2 metric tons of crude oil per square kilometer per day, 10 times higher than the United States and twice as much as Japan.

Because Taiwan itself does not contain enough energy to be exploited, there is no solution to this congenital defect. In addition, the more serious problem is the imperfect industrial structure, the energy consumption ratio is still high, and the peak load power in winter and summer is extremely uneven. In fact, these two problems can be through economic or policy development and adjustment, a more appropriate and effective solution.

To solve the imperfection of the industrial structure, in addition to encouraging energy-consuming industries to move to other regions, we can also slowly adjust the domestic industrial structure so that the overall industry can develop in the direction of low energy consumption. However, due to the imbalance of power supply caused by improper energy use, that is, the unbalanced peak load in winter and summer, although taipower company adopts the method of pricing to control the load every summer, the effect seems not very ideal. In 2002, for example, despite the economic downturn and negative growth, the peak load still increased by about 3%. To keep the country's electricity supply from running out, the government has worked hard to build power plants and has appealed every year to conserve energy to weather the summer energy crisis.

Energy crisis and sustainable development

After the 20th century, many products could be produced in large quantities at lower costs, thus making them less expensive. In order for these products to be sold and to maintain profits, manufacturers are naturally trying to promote them, which is one of the main reasons why the economy is growing so fast. In order to obtain the maximum economic benefits, many products are therefore overproduced, but energy and resources are limited, and with such rapid consumption, the available energy and resources are rapidly reduced.

If the problem of energy and resource shortage caused by economic development continues, mankind is likely to solve the problem in the following three ways.

The first is the primitive way in which the strong prey on the weak, using force to seize the limited energy, resources and living environment. This is a pessimistic view that both science and technology and the natural environment have their limits. Although many new technologies have been developed, they are unable to break away from the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and many new technologies such as high-temperature superconductivity and nuclear fusion that have been studied for many years have been unable to break through. The fact that we continue to do whatever we want on earth, despite energy shortages, seems to imply that our future will end in tragedy. However, given the current progress of human civilization and technology, it seems that there is still a chance to recover such results.

The other is to take an optimistic view, believing that the power of human morality and conscience can be harnessed to persuade people to return to a simpler and simpler lifestyle and to use less energy-intensive technology such as air conditioning. This approach seems impractical and contrary to the spirit of human civilization.

The third is the use of human intelligence, through the help of technology to find a better solution, this is the concept of sustainable development.

In 1992, the United Nations earth summit meeting held in Rio DE janeiro, Brazil, also puts forward the concept of sustainable development and its importance to human, more hope that countries can promote sustainable development method and plan, using new methods and new technology, let the human economic development does not destroy the existing ecological system and social system.

Human technological development is admirable in many ways. Many new technologies have indeed improved our material civilization. However, although we have the wisdom to create high-tech, but in the use of energy efficiency, but the state of low intelligence. With our current power system as an example, its energy efficiency is low to only about 35%, which means the power plant for every 100 watts of energy input (including coal, petrochemical, nuclear power, etc.), only about 40 watts power, again after other loss and transmission lines, only 35 watts can supply, we use the rest of the 65 watts so wasted, this is very inefficient.

In order to improve this problem, and in line with the concept of "sustainable development", the future power supply trend of mankind will be "decentralized and efficient power supply system", including heat energy recovery application, so that energy efficiency can be increased to more than 80%. The so-called "distributed efficient power supply system", which consists of building or community independent power supply equipment, part of the household electricity, plus a variety of energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, ethanol and other renewable energy, can make energy use more efficient.

Renewable energy has enormous potential

In addition to the above "throttling" measures to improve the efficiency of existing power systems and reduce waste, the more important, of course, is the "open source" approach to finding new sources of energy. Scholars point out that the most important revolution of the 21st century is the "new energy revolution", because if this revolution does not succeed, mankind will face a catastrophe.

Since traditional fossil fuels will be exhausted within a few decades, it is imperative to actively develop new energy sources to solve this crisis. At present, scientists are actively studying the projects, including renewable energy such as solar energy, wind energy, geothermal energy, hydraulic energy, high-efficiency traditional energy such as gas-electric symbiosis, electric vehicles, fuel cells, and even waste energy such as urban waste, industrial waste, agricultural waste, waste energy recovery, and have made progress.

Since the sources of renewable energy are not scarce, cause minimal damage to the environment, and are even closely related to national security, that is, only renewable energy can be used in emergencies, countries around the world are actively engaged in the development and application of renewable energy. Austria's renewable energy supply already accounts for about 30 percent of the country's total energy supply and will continue to increase in the future. Taiwan's current use of renewable energy is coordinated by the ministry of economic affairs, the national science and technology commission, the environmental protection agency and other relevant agencies. A series of incentives and policies have been formulated to make renewable energy account for more than 20 percent of total energy demand by 2020.

However, the promotion of renewable energy is not as easy as expected, on the one hand, because the price of existing traditional energy is relatively low, and the use efficiency and economic benefit of renewable energy are not high enough to make manufacturers willing to invest a lot of costs to develop, so government policies are needed to assist and subsidize. At present, the most promising renewable energy sources are solar and wind power.

The main products of solar energy equipment are solar power generation and solar water heater, but these equipment need to be installed on the roof before, because Taiwan is narrow people thick, we all live in the metropolitan area, so the roof area is limited, there is not enough space to install. Through the efforts of scientists, the new solar water heater developed has made a breakthrough, it not only USES solar energy, but also can absorb the heat in the air to obtain heat source, and can be installed in any place and the environment. This shows that technology can be used to solve human problems.

In addition, the current solar power equipment, each kilowatt of electricity, the need for nt $250,000, due to the high price, not many people are willing to use. Therefore, in addition to the need to teach people to participate in such environmentally beneficial work regardless of immediate benefits, governments should also promote various subsidy measures to reduce costs. Newly developed solar panels in Japan have increased the efficiency of electricity generation to about 38 per cent. In the future, if we can continue to develop electricity with higher efficiency and lower cost in the way of mass production, we can popularize it extensively and spread it everywhere.

In addition to solar energy, wind power generation can be said to be the most economical and low-cost renewable energy at present. The generation cost per degree is close to that of thermal power generation, and without the impact and harm of thermal power generation on the environment, it is the most vigorous renewable energy. In Europe, for example, wind could account for 22% of electricity generation by 2010. Because Taiwan is located in the monsoon zone, it has a steady source of wind all year round. Therefore, the government is also actively promoting the construction of wind turbines in coastal areas and outlying islands, so as to make our energy sources more diversified and more sustainable.

As for other renewable energy sources such as biomass (kitchen waste, biogas...) , geothermal, etc., could also become cheap energy sources if there are more breakthroughs in science and technology.

Give play to human reason and conscience

In addition to existing power generation way, it's now scientists are actively studying update or ways to use energy more efficiently, such as save electricity of light-emitting diodes (LED) lighting, high efficiency of fuel cell and hydrogen, and distributed power supply heating system, air conditioning, or the beginning of superconducting technology, nanotechnology, etc., are all hope to be able to let us have higher energy efficiency, less environmental pollution. Other so-called green buildings, such as new designs and materials used in buildings to make houses more insulated, ventilated and environmentally friendly, have also emerged as a good way to use technology to alleviate energy shortages.

But even if more or more efficient energy is available, it is our habits that matter. Personally, turning off lights and taps, switching to high-efficiency, low-energy lighting and equipment, and even planting more plants to improve the environment are the simplest ways to take an active part in energy conservation. As for the industry, we can also improve the use of energy by upgrading production machines and tools, utilizing steam and electricity, doing a good job in education and management, and changing the industrial structure.

At present, many new energy equipment are more expensive and do not meet the so-called "economic benefit", so many richer people would rather use the money to buy a fancy car or do personal enjoyment. If everyone thinks like this, there will be no future in this world. If those who can afford it, due to the call of reason and conscience, regard it as a good thing to support the promotion and use of new energy, then the more people support it, the cheaper the product will be, and eventually the energy crisis will be solved.

We don't particularly feel energy, but we can't live without it. The energy crisis is by no means the fault of governments or corporations, or even scientists. Only when all people on earth face up to the importance of this issue and use our moral conscience and wisdom can human civilization be sustained.