Lesson 8 - Week 9

Yesterday, Professor Shahi started the lesson with this quote, “ If everyone consumed as much energy as the average Singaporean and U.S Resident, the world’s oil reserves would be depleted in 9 years”. Indeed, Singaporeans are consuming a huge amount of energy everyday. Our energy consumption per capita is 12 percent, more than US (8.4 percent) and Australia (7.0 percent), and US is consuming about 25 percent of the world’s resources. Today, we are living in the age whereby technology is so advanced and all of us are interconnected in one way or another. Whatever we produce or consume carries a water or carbon footprint. For instance, for 0.5 litre of Coca Cola, the water footprint is 1 litre. Just from this example alone, it is simply hard to imagine how much waste mankind had produced over the centuries. Yes, we are moving forward incredibly fast, coming up with new inventions and innovations to improve our standard and quality of life and efforts to close the wide income disparity gap between the rich and poor nations. However, in doing so, we create a large amount of waste everyday, every minute and every second. To get rid of waste, we burn them in incineration plants or dump them in the sea. As a result, both our waters and our air are polluted to a considerably large extent. What we need to do right now, is to move towards sustainable development-to create other forms of clean energy sources to maintain our everyday operations.

The main topic of discussion during this lesson was about the different types of clean and reliable sources of energy we can use now and in the future. (As the topic of my research paper is associated with green technology, I have gained new perspectives after yesterday’s lesson J) We had a special guest sitting in for this lesson and his field of expertise was wind turbine technology. The company he is working in invests into building wind turbines to generate power and provide it to consumers. It was a very informative session, not only did I learn more about the prospects of using the wind as an energy source, I learned more about the future of perhaps having such wind mills constructed on high rise buildings.(for example, HDB flats) The class had an engaging discussion regarding the constructive of such tools in Singapore as well.

Germany Solar Experiment (link)

We watched a video on ‘Germany Solar Experiment’. I found it particularly interesting that Germany is putting so much emphasis on solar energy. The government is providing cash incentives to people and corporations who are building solar panels or using them as a means of energy source. This encourages the people in Germany to switch to solar energy. Even the pig farmer who was featured in this video, installed solar panels in his farm. He is confident that doing business in this industry will provide returns that are promising. Businesses provide what consumers want and I believe more and more people are aware of the dire consequences should our natural resources run out one day.

I would rate the lesson 8.5/10! I feel that the issues discussed were very comprehensive and engaging J

And the main key takeaway from this lesson was... everyone please GO GREEN!