Environmental Issue Project - Final Draft

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

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Wind energy

Energy is very vital and as the technology and industrial activities are advancing, there is high demand in energy. Energy has quite number of uses and for industries to run efficiently, there has to be enough supply of energy. Due to this reasons, people have resulted in getting new ways on how to produce energy. The already existing sources of energy are being exhausted and f care is not taken, there might be some problems with energy in future (Delucchi, 2011). Therefore, due to fact that there is need for people to get more energy and also due to increase in energy demands, researchers have devoted themselves to see on how they can use other environmental issues to create or produce energy.

Currently, there are some ventures in the harvest of wind in order to produce energy. For a long time, people never bothered to harvest wind and turn it into something that can be productive but as of today, wind is being harvested to produce energy. The concerns with this kind of energy are the negative impacts it can cause to the environment itself. When it comes to win energy, I actually requires less knowledge when compared to other sources of energy. In fact, with wind energy, it is caused by the uneven heating of the atmosphere by the sun, variations in the earth’s surface and rotation of the earth (Jacobson, 2011).

The wind that is usually harvest from the environment is meant to run the wind turbines. The wind turbines in turn are used to convert the wind harvested into wind energy. The rotors in the wind turbines turns the drive shaft, which turns the drive shaft, which turns an electric generator. Three key factors that do affect the amount of energy a turbine can harness from the wing includes: the wind speed, the air density and the swept area by the wind harvested.

Wind speed

From the research, it is known that the amount of energy in the wind varies with the cube of the wind speed. In fact, if the wind speed doubles, then there is eight times more energy in the wind. Actually small changes in wind speed have a large impact on the amount of the power that will be harvested or converted from the wind conversion (Delucchi, 2011).

The density of the air

The more the dense of the air, the more the energy that will be received by the turbine. Actually, the air density does vary according to elevation and temperature changes. Air is less dense at higher elevations than at the sea level, and warm air is known to be less dense that the cold air. All else being equal, turbines will produce more power at lower elevations and in locations with cooler average temperatures.

The swept area of the turbine

Actually, the area to be swept is expected to more or big for energy to be more too. The relations between the areas swept is directly proportional to the power the turbine can capture from the wind. A small increase in the blade length results into a larger increase in the power available to the turbine (Delucchi, 2011).

Since the start of using the wind energy, there has been a huge growth in the wind energy usage. People have shifted from other types of energy to the wind energy since it has many advantages compared to the other sources of energy. Actually, the negative impacts it poses to the environment are very insignificant hence very much advocated for usage. Wind is actually the most competitively priced technology in many if not most markets, and since introduction of wind, there has been more sophisticated grid management and increasingly affordable storage begin to paint a picture of what a fully commercial fossil-free power sector will look like.

The benefits of wind energy

There is need to reduce pollution to our environment and wind energy is playing that role. In fact, wind energy is a source of renewable energy and it does not contaminate, it is inexhaustible and reduces or minimizes the use of fossil fuels that are actually the main cause of greenhouse gasses that lead to global warming. Actually is can be said that this energy is native since it can be available in practically and everywhere on the plant, and it does contribute to reducing energy imports and in creating wealth and local employment (Jacobson, 2011). For these reasons, the production of electricity through wind energy and its efficient use contributes to sustainable development.

The other sources of energy do emit some substances that are toxic, actually, the end product of other energy sources are toxic to the human beings and generally living organisms. With the wind energy, it does not emit toxic substances or contaminants into the air that can be very damaging to the environment and also to human beings too. These toxic substances do acidify and cause acidic rain that leads to corrosion of products and buildings. Air contaminants do trigger some diseases like heart diseases, cancer and some respiratory diseases like asthma (Jacobson, 2011).

The other benefit of the wind energy is that, it does not generate waste or contaminate water. A source of energy like fuels, once they spill on water, they actually contaminate it and also affects the aquatic life of living organisms in water. With the wind energy, it is quite different, instead, wind has oxygen in it which is very useful when it comes to support of life therefore it very much needed in water. An extremely important factor given the scarcity of water. Unlike the fossil fuels and the nuclear power plants, wind energy has one of the lowest water consumption footprints, and this makes it a key for conserving hydrological resources.

The other benefit with the wind energy is the cost issues where its cost have just dropped drastically in the past few years like ten. Though this technology of wind energy requires high initial cost for investing, it does not mean that, the other sources are cheaper that wind energy (Delucchi, 2011). Wind costs are much more competitive with the other generating technologies because there is no fuel to purchase and minimal operating expenses.

Conclusion

There is need for people to shift into wind energy and try to do some advancements. From the recent studies, it is very clear that, wind energy has very minimal impacts to the environment and the whole world is in the campaign of fighting environmental issues. Wind energy should be a global issue addressed globally and be encouraged to be initiated.

Reference

Delucchi, M.A., & Mark, Z.J. (2011). “Providing All Global Energy with Wind, Water, and Solar Power, Part II: Reliability, System and Transmission Costs, and Policies.” Energy Policy 39.3: 1170–1190.

Jacobson, M.Z., & Mark, A.D. (2011). “Providing All Global Energy with Wind, Water, and Solar Power, Part I: Technologies, Energy Resources, Quantities and Areas of Infrastructure, and Materials.” Energy Policy 39.3: 1154–1169.