Week 9

Today is already the 8th seminar for TWC. Time flies really fast, just like how the recess week flew past pretty quickly too! Anyway, today the topic was mainly on moving from a fossil fuel-based energy intensive economy to using sustainable clean and green approaches.

Some key points that came out to me during the course of the whole seminar:

1. The sun provides more energy to the Earth in one hour than humankind currently uses in an entire year.
As mentioned by Dr. Shahi, this means that there is a lot of potential that the sun has but which we have not made full use of. To me, this was a pretty surprising statistic because I never thought the Sun would be capable of being able to provide such a large amount of energy. True, the sun is our primary source of light, but it never struck me that it would be able to provide so much energy! However, one drawback to this would be that a large number of solar panels would be required. While this may be feasible in other countries such as Germany, since they have land available to house these solar panels, this is not feasible in Singapore, which is already currently facing space constraints.

2. From the video Dr. Shahi showed us, titled “300 Year History of Renewable Energy”, it states that renewable energy cannot supply the intensive amount energy we require. Fossil fuels are able to supply our energy needs much more efficiently.
This is one of the reasons why humans gradually stopped using renewable sources of energy, which were being used extensively in the past. Instead, we turned to fossil fuels to meet out energy supply needs. One other problem mentioned during the seminar as a reason for us not turning to renewable sources is the high cost of renewable sources of energy. Infrastructure needed to provide us with energy from renewable sources such as solar panels are very expensive. This acts as a disincentive for governments and organizations to turn to renewable sources of energy.

3. Educate students, so as to lead the next generation to continue increasing the use of renewable sources of energy.
This is pretty straightforward, and this idea really struck me because it is important to reach out to the next generation, and ensure that they are proficient in using renewable sources of energy. After all, our future depends on them, and it is essential that they know where to turn to when we eventually run out of fossil fuels. Besides that, they may be able to come up with new ways of providing energy such that they are not that costly, and are more efficient.

Two presentations which stood out to me and left a rather deep impression on me were the last two presentations, one on anti-matter, and one on the use of tornados to generate electricity. It was fascinating to learn how the weather and similar phenomena are being used to generate electricity. Also, the topic on anti-matter was entirely new to me, and hence I found Luke’s presentation pretty informative!

All in all, I would rate this lesson a 7/10, because it was very informative, and the topic on renewable sources of energy is very relevant to us currently, especially now that our use if energy is increasing, while our fossil fuels are depleting at an exponential rate.