Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

The world where we depend on fossil fuels as our main energy source is coming to an end. Some people deny this and the Oil companies do not want to transition into another way to provide energy because of the sunk cost they would have to absorb. Those who see that oil is not a sustainable source of energy are thinking of alternate forms of energy that can be used instead of fossil fuels. These alternatives to fossil fuels serve a duel purpose of replacing fossil fuels as our source of energy and a solution to global warming. Mark Z. Jacobsons paper goes over and categorizes possible energy-related solutions to global warming, deaths caused by air pollution, and replacements for fossil fuels. While laying out in detail how each of these proposed solutions would possibly impact the world positively and negatively. Air pollution and global warming are two of the biggest threats to our way of life and the world. The rising cost of fossil fuels and conventional energy sources are a major threat to economic and political stability. Many alternatives usual energy sources have been proposed, but the studies of these potential energy sources have been little. The purpose of this paper is to review these proposed solutions to global warming and air pollution while looking at the several consequences of using these energy sources. With this information, policy makers can make more educated decisions about each possible energy source. Without this method economical forces alone will influence the decisions that may result in little benefit to climate, air pollution, or energy security problems. Indoor and outdoor air pollution is the sixth-leading cause of death, responsible for over 2.4 million premature deaths worldwide. Air pollution causes increases in asthma,

respiratory illness, cardio-vascular disease, cancer, hospitalizations, emergency room visits, work-days lost, and school-days lost, 2,3 all of which affect the economy negatively and weakens the security of nations. Air pollution and global warming stem from exhaust from solid, liquid, and gas combustion during energy production and use, such problems can be addressed only with large- scale changes to the energy we use. Here are some of the alternative forms of energy. Solar photovoltics are arrays of cells containing a material that converts solar radiation into electricity. P and N type semiconductors are combined to form a p-n junction that allows the generation of electricity when illuminated. PV performance decreases when the cell temperature exceeds 45 degrees Celsius. PVs can be put on roofs or combined into farms. Concentrated Solar Power is a technology by which sunlight is focused by mirrors or reflective lenses to heat a fluid in a collector at high temperature. The heated fluid flows from the collector to a heat engine where some of the heat is converted to electricity by a steam generator, the expansion of hydrogen against a piston produces mechanical energy used to generated electrify, the system is air cooled, so there is no need for water. Wind turbines convert kinetic energy provided by the wind into electricity. Generally, a gearbox turns the slow-turning turbine rotor into faster-rotating gears, which convert the mechanical energy to electricity via a generator. The efficiency of wind power yields better results the higher the turbine structure. Large turbines are found on flat open areas of land, mountain passes, or offshore. Geothermal energy is energy taken from hot water and steam below the earths surface. There are three major types of geothermal plants, dry steam, flash steam, and binary. Dry and flash steam plants work where geothermal

reservoir temperatures are 180-370 Celsius or higher. All the geopowerplants are powered by the conversation of steam to electricity. Hydroelectric power is currently the worlds largest installed renewable source of electricity, supplying about 17.4 % of total electricity in 2005. Water generators convert the energy from falling water into electricity. Wave power devices capture energy from ocean surface waves to produce electricity. Tidal power works similar to wind power by using turbines that are put into the water and convert tide energy into electriticity. Nuclear power plants produce electricity by splitting heavy elements during fission that collide with water causing the water to change into steam whose pressure turns a turbine to create electricity. Carbon capture and storage is the transfer of CO2 from point emission sources to underground geological formations. Corn and cellulosic ethanol are used for fuel producing E85, a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline

The capture of 1 % of Solar-PV energy would provide all of the worlds power needs. The total available energy worldwide for CSP is about one-third less than
that for solar-PV since the land area required for each installed MW of CSP without storage is about one-third greater than that of installed PV. The available energy from wind power is 5 times the worlds total power production presently. The Earth has a very large reservoir of geothermal energy below the surface; however, most of it is too deep to extract with present day technology, so it is not very efficient at providing energy. Estimated 5% or more of potential hydroelectric power worldwide has been tapped. Wave power can produce 480 GW of power.

Wind, solar PV, CSP, tidal, wave, hydroelectric, climate-relevant lifecycle emissions occur only during the construction, installation, maintenance, and decommissioning of the technology. Wind has the lowest lifecycle CO2 among the technologies considered. By far the biggest part of the lifecycle emissions for a hydroelectric power plant is the emission during construction of the dam. For solar PV, the energy payback time is generally longer than that of other renewable energy systems. Nuclear. Nuclear power

plant emissions include those due to uranium mining, enrichment, and transport and waste disposal as well as those due to construction, operation, and deactivation of the reactors. Coal-CCS power plant lifecycle emissions include
emissions due to the construction, operation, and decommissioning of the coal power plant and CCS equipment, the mining and transport of the coal, and carbon dioxide release during CCS The investment in an energy technology with a long time between planning and operation increases carbon dioxide and air pollutant emissions relative to a technology with a short time between planning and operation. This happens because the delay allows the longer operation of higher-carbon emitting existing power generators. The detonation of a nuclear device by terrorists has increased due to the dissemination of nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Running 100% of vehicles on electricity provided by wind, on the other hand, could reduce US carbon by 32.532.7% since wind turbines are 99.299.8. Running Vehicles on biofuels would increase Co2 output or it would remain the same. The deaths due to all BEV and HFCV options are attributed only to the electricity generation plant itself (as no net air pollution emanates from these vehicles. Vehicles

powered by nuclear energy and corn ethanol would increase deaths related to vehicle energy combustion.

The effects of energy technologies on wildlife and natural ecosystems are proportional to the footprint on land or water required by the technology. The building of the plants and dams needed to generate these alternative sources of energy would displace the local wildlife population. Building dams leads to drops in fish population. Air-pollutionrelevant emissions harm animals as much as they damage humans.91 such emissions also damage plants and trees by discoloring their leaves, stunting their growth, or killing them. Another key factor to observer for each energy technology is how much the supply of energy is disrupted by terrorism, war, or natural disasters. The energy technologies that are spread about solar PV, wind, wave, and tidal are least prone to disruption, whereas those that are centralized nuclear, coal-CCS, hydroelectric, geothermal, CSP, ethanol factories are at greater risk to disruption. Another key factor to look at when selecting alternative sources of energy is how often will they be generating power, some forms of alternative energy are not always active in generating power. The possible solutions to these times of no production are to combining geographically dispersed wind, solar, tidal, or wave farms to a common transmission grid smoothes out power supply significantly. Another solution is to combine multiple alternative sources of energy production in one area. Another way to deal with this down time is to implement smart meters in cars to increase power given to car during peak wind production times and decrease power given to cars during low wind production. Another option is to store energy produced by these

sources of energy in batteries. The last way to deal with this problem is to use the prediction of the weather to prepare for the generation of power. This paper evaluated the alternative sources of power Solar-Pv, CSP, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with CCS. Corn E85, and cellulosic E85. The paper taught how these sources of energy would impact the environment, economics, and our day-to-day lives and showed through looking at the tradeoffs which alternative sources of energy would be most beneficial to use, wind power, and solar power were some of the most beneficial alternatives sources of energy because they produce have yields of energy and low yields of pollution.