Week 9- Energy and world change

Overview of the lesson

 We started off today's lesson talking about the global drivers of energy change. We discussed about 3 main drivers of change which are, 1) Largest countries (India, china) are rising, hence using more energy. 2) Renewable energy sources (Hydro, wind, solar) 3) New technologies and approaches. Next, we moved on to discuss about the potential sources of energy. There are 2 areas that energy comes from, above and beneath ground. As the consumption level of energy increase, fossil fuels consumption are still the highest. Despite having many renewable sources of energy being introduced. We also found out that actually 1 hour of sunlight is sufficient to attend to all our needs, however we have not found methods or ways to capture sufficient sunlight that allows us to use as energy.

What i found interesting


The most interesting part of this lesson, video that we saw about Germany and solar panels. Germany provides price incentives for people who are willing to install solar panels in their houses. Not only does this encourage people to make use to renewable energy, the energy that are collected can also be stored and used in other ways. Price incentive is a good way of raising awareness of solar powered energy and also encourages more people to install solar panels. This is definitely a good move by Germany to play a part in conserving today's energy. Another interesting discussion we had was about installing solar panels in sahara deserts. Since sahara deserts have vast amount of sunlight, it would be the best place for installation of solar panels. However, we were not sure if this was the best thing to do. Its good because there will be more job opportunities there, and people living in the desert will be able to negotiate for lower electricity prices. However, this may not be the best move, as most of the energy collect there will be sent to middle east for usage by the people living there. Hence, building solar panels in sahara deserts may just be exploiting their resources.


Most important take away


Most important take away in today's session will be the need to conserve energy. As we all know, fossil fuels are depleting quickly, hence our energy is running out too. The need to raise awareness of renewable energy is getting more important, as not only are we dealing with the earth resources, we have no control over them. Hence, i feel that we should educate our next generation with proper knowledge on how to conserve energy and make use of renewable energy. However, in smaller countries like singapore, it will be easier for us to conserve energy than to make use of renewable sources in large scale context, due to the lack of land. 


 How would i like to further this discussion


I would like to further the discussion by bringing up the importance of education, when conserving energy. We have mentioned several ways in which things can be done in order to encourage the conservation of energy, and use of renewable energy. However, i felt that we have left out the important part about educating the next generation about this. Hence, i feel that we should discuss about ways or methods to educate or make this known to the next generation.

Rate this session

I would rate this session 7/10. I enjoyed the discussions we had for this lesson, it covers a lot of ground for conserving energy and renewable sources. However, we could have gone more in depth to discuss about the   sustainability of these renewable sources.