Linking Science and Technology to Society's Environmental Goals (1996) / Chapter Skim
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Develop Environmental Options for the Energy System
Develop Environmental Options for the Energy System
Pages 61-72
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From page 61... ...
Energy's value to society is in the services that it provides: heating and cooling buildings, transporting people and goods, driving industrial processes, and powering the electronic information explosion. These services are created by capital and operating investments made both in energy and in the end use.
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From page 62... ...
At local levels, energy production and use in autos, power plants, and industry are among the principal causes of urban air pollution, from particles to CO2 to tropospheric O3. Scientific understanding of the causes and developments of technologies have resulted in much-cleaner urban air.1 Scientific understanding of the behavior of automobile emissions in the presence of sunlight illustrate the key roles of research and development in addressing environmental problems.
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From page 63... ...
With developing countries dramatically increasing their energy use, energy supplies could be increasingly dependent on fossil fuels in the future and that could increase the net contribution to CO2 production. One effect of energy production that has been most difficult to solve stems from the use of nuclear fission as a source of energy.
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From page 64... ...
Our ability to choose and control production processes, to purify wastes and remediate waste sites, to clean and move water, to extract minerals, and to perform all the other activities of human systems depends directly on the availability and cost of energy. At the same time, environmental responsibility increases, comparative energy costs for a new technology become lower, new possibilities for all human activities become available; the menu of alternatives from which we can draw expands.
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From page 65... ...
Fossil-fuel use is at the core of many environmental problems, including urban air pollution, acid rain, ecological impacts of resource extraction, and global warming. The environmental externalities resulting from the use of fossil fuels, some of which were described above, could be greatly reduced if these externalities were properly incorporated into energy-pricing mechanisms.
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From page 66... ...
Fear of nuclear accidents and difficulties with waste disposal have resulted in social pressures that prevent siting of nuclear power plants. Regula 2Reliability is important for a renewable source to become a base load power source.
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From page 67... ...
Were such a power source successfully achieved, at a cost comparable with that of current energy sources, many of the environmental consequences of the present energy system could be dramatically reduced. The difficulties facing the development of commercial power production from fusion systems will require many decades to solve and will require international cooperation.
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From page 68... ...
, the Green Lights initiative to improve the efficiency of lighting, and the Clean Cities initiative. Supporting Research and Development The evolution of the energy system depends on R&D not only in the energy sciences and technologies previously cited, but also in many other fields such as materials for storage, energy carriers for distribution (e.g., hydrogen)
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From page 69... ...
One contingency is scarcity caused by rising energy demand and -- Forum Participant Comment limited supplies. Another contingency would arise from new knowledge indicating severe environmental effects from CO2, radionuclides, or other emissions from conventional energy sources.
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From page 70... ...
There has been enormous progress (including improvements in fuel efficiency) in the reduction of automobile emissions implicated in urban air pollution; but the automobile is still the major source of such pollution in part because growth in automobile ownership and in driving per vehicle has nearly offset this progress.
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From page 71... ...
For more information and guidance, the reader should refer to the following: NRC (National Research Council) , Confronting Climate Change: Strategies for Energy Research and Development (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1990)
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