Global Energy Consumption On Fossil Fuels

With the increasing Australia’s population the demand for reliable energy to support our power needs now and into the future is escalating, with majority of the Australia’s energy depending solely on coal power with concerns arising on whether this is the best option for Australia’s future or focus more on harnessing green renewable energy. This essay will argue that green energy is the best option over coal power, for the world and Australia’s future, such as solar and wind. The biggest challenge though will be finding a way in being able to harness the resources nature provides to support the growing demand.

Our rivers are running dry faster than we expected. As we look for a solution to the scarcity of water, we are relying on the most abundant resource that is available on Earth — the ocean. To make the salty sea waters usable, scientists have developed desalination plants; a method that uses reverse osmosis and is already being implemented in places like California. However, as with any possible solution, the desalination process has its downfalls. Critics of the desalination project argue that it is more expensive than other potential methods and that the amount of energy required will only aid climate change. Those who support this method would argue that although it is currently expensive, new, cheaper filters will be developed in the

Heck, Paytan, Potts, and Haddad (2016b) talked about how this will affect the customers due to the processes being expensive, they must make up for the cost somewhere leading them to increase water rates and overall hurts the coastal region. He states that it hurts our costal region by limiting people's access to the ocean and causes a change in the scenery. Another disadvantage with continuing to build Reverse Osmosis (RO) plants using fossil fuels to operate them will lead to greater climate change and could make their droughts even worse in the future (Slocum, Haji, Trimble, & Ghaemsaidi,

According to the World Future Society, people in Europe are trying to turn osmosis into a source of renewable energy. “Osmotic power, as it is called, creates electricity when quantities of salt water are

Due to the industrial revolution and the increasing in the world population, which leads to water scarcity of potable water and water for industrial applications. To cover the increasing demand of water we have to treat the polluted or saline water using the separation techniques to produce the potable and industrial water. This process it’s called, Water Desalination. Water Desalination is the process that treats the raw water by removing the suspended solids from the water. Sustain or the feed water sources may incorporate briny water or brackish water, seawater, ground water from wells, surface water (rivers and streams), wastewater, industrial feed and process waters. Desalination of seawater has the ability to produce enough amount of

Base on the assessment of all the five factors, the seawater desalination plant is necessarily built in Point Lowly to sever the Olympic Dam Mine. Even if there are still some risks of the seawater desalination plant construction as below:

Desalination of sea and brackish water is a common technique to alleviate the increasing shortage of fresh water in many areas of the world today. Nonetheless, desalination processes require large quantities of energy. In addition, the cost of the different desalination techniques is very closely linked to the costs of energy. Therefore, in a context of continuously rising energy costs and with the impending exhaustion of the conventional energy resources, the development of energy- efficient desalination technologies is a very attractive and promising prospect to solve these problems.

Seawater desalination plays a vital role in supplying sustainable source of potable water in different distinct and populated areas

The modern techniques in water desalination include nuclear cleaning, change of state distillation, and reverse osmosis. This paper focuses on the most energy efficient technology available for each method, as this diminishes cost.

Despite blaming the fossil fuel due to its significant role in climate change and its consequences, fossil fuel in any form, coal, oil and natural gas has undeniably been the major energy source for technology developments since industrial revolution era. Therefore, to reduce fossil fuel consumption, it is necessary to find out potential alternatives. There are some realistic options compatible with Australian

With the increasing demand for water placing pressure on existing supplies, seawater presents an enormous source to satisfy demand. However, seawater cannot be directly consumed and therefore, desalination of seawater is necessary to make it safe for consumption [1]. The current methods involving desalination utilize mostly non-renewable energy sources such as coal and gas to provide the necessary energy for the process to take place.

Currently, the most common source of energy is made from the combustion of coal. However, Australians are the most polluting people in the world. Greenhouse gas emissions from coal generation in Australia are growing rapidly. ABARE predicts our energy emissions will be more than 60 percent higher over the next 25 years if we continue with “business as usual”. (The age) A carbon tax has been introduced for greenhouse gas reduction and for investment and development in zero and low-emission technologies.

Currently, the energy industry is controlled and dominated by the consumption of fossil fuels. As energy companies are constantly burning these fossil fuels, this leaves the public questioning how much supply we have left after this period of usage. Despite this, the search for alternative energy sources to lower the cost of living for families around Australia has been going for years, where some have found what works for them and their price range while others have not.

Desalination plant – The desalination plant convert seawater into drinkable fresh water using osmosis. By the water industry using this technology they are trying to diversify its dependence on rain-fed water sources. These plants are capital and energy intensive to operate when being used. During times of droughts the industry’s water supply will be extra secure.

It creates no emissions, thus not pollution; it doesn’t matter what the weather is, it will work; it doesn’t need any initializing energy like a fossil fuel does; it runs consistently without ever stopping, unlike solar power which requires sunlight, and sunlight is not always present; it doesn’t require costly fossil fuels to start up; and it is quite simply renewable. Aside from all of these benefits it has to the environment, it has some downsides. When water has gone through the energy making process, it is released back into the water as brackish water, which is water with high spikes in salinity. Brackish water makes wherever it goes a difficult place for marine life to live in, which leads to ecosystem decay around the osmotic power plant. Osmotic power plants are also very costly, and costly means that they cost 36 times what a regular coal-powered power plant costs. Lastly osmotic power plants are inefficient, they produce less than 1 watt per square meter, but scientists in Lyon, France have been working on more efficient Boron-Nitride membrane tubes that are nearly 100 times as efficient as the ones used today, and are a possibility in the future. Aside from these new, expensive, far off Boron Nitride tubes, Statkraft, the Norwegian company that started the first osmotic power plant, plans to have their plan running at 5 watts per square meter in the near future.