I. ALTERNATIVE ENERGY
It is now a decade into the 21st century. An appropriate time to review what the world has achieved in the field of energy. Also to look forward to what might be in store for us in the future. More relevant, what the global policies should be, to avoid many of the catastrophes that many existing phenomena already predict might happen.
Already ten years ago, climatologists and environmentalist have warned us that the earth is warming. If we do not steer away from fossil fuel and develop alternative energy, then there will be dire temperature rises – 2 Deg C by 2030 [1].
Let us look at alternative energy – wind, solar, hydro, biofuel and nuclear, and just assess how well we have done so far.

A. WIND POWER [2][3]
Table 1.
World Installed wind power capacity. June 2010
Country Wind Capacity ‘%Total in country’
GW(1000 MW)
US 36.3 2.4%
China 33.8 3.0%
Germany 26.4 8.0%
Spain 19.5 11.0%
India 12.1 6.0%
Italy 5.3 1.7%
France 5.0 1.8%
UK 4.6 9.5%
Portugal 3.8 14.0%
Denmark 3.7 20.0%
Rest of world 24.5
——————————————————————–
Total 175 GW
‘%Total in country’ is the percentage wind power over total energy production in the country.
Even though the total wind capacity is 175 GW, wind does not blow all the time and there is a lull factor of around 0.25. Therefore the annual energy generated is 374 TWh (Terawatt TW=1000GW). Taking the global electricity production of 20100 TWh (see Table 4), this means the percentage of wind power contribution to the global energy production is around 1.9%.
Wind power is the foremost renewable energy which is much touted by environmentalists and despite much government subsidies the figures above showing percentage of total electricity consumption to be hovering around 2%. Why is this figure so low?
Different parts of the world have different problems. The main problem in the densely populated Western Europe comes down to the dense population and the lack of large open spaces. Take for example UK. The UK government white paper – The UK Low Carbon Transition Plan, sets out the UK’s first ever comprehensive low carbon transition plan to 2020. This plan would deliver emission cuts of 18% on 2008 levels by 2020 [4]. The wind farm industry had hoped to create 10,000 wind farms by now, but they have only managed 2,500 despite heavy subsidies to entice farmers to accept windmills on their farms. So far, only 5 GW (5000 MW) of wind power is available [5]. What is going wrong? Very simply, the ‘not in my backyard’ is a very potent deterrent. In UK, where open natural space is precious, people do not want their landscape ruined by ungainly huge 125 meter tall windmills, do not want to live near the noisy vibrating 50 meter long blades, and finally they do not want their local bird population to be decimated. In the end there is an element of ‘having your cake and eat it’ phenomenon. But it is difficult to persuade local population to accept the logical and allow planning permissions to pass [6].
It is highly unlikely that UK will reach the target of generating 20% of energy from renewable sources by 2020. The general popular consensus is that there should be no windmills on land and that all new wind farms should be built offshore. But environmentalists and industry experts say this is unrealistic as building them would take up to 7 years and that they are expensive and the technology is still immature.
As for countries like US and China where space is plentiful. distance to transmit the electricity generated in wind farms to population centers in far away cities becomes a problem. As we know, the national grid in the US took centuries to build and there has just not enough funding for the long talked about electric grid for wind and solar energy. Wind power in the US has to compete with the market of low fluctuating natural gas prices, sagging power demand and so on. Wind power in China, though fledgling, is growing faster than the government had planned and is faster than any other large country.

B. Solar Energy
In 2007 grid-connected photovoltaic electricity was the fastest growing energy source, with installations of all photovoltaic increasing by 83% in 2009 to bring the total installed capacity to 15 GW [7]. Solar cell production is at 3.8 GW.

C. Hydro Power
Table 2 shows installed hydro power by country, 2009 [8] .
Hydro Prod Installed capa cap factor % total
TWh GW
China 652 197 .37 22%
Canada 369 89 .59 61%
Brazil 363 68 .56 86%
US 251 80 .42 6%
Russia 167 45 .42 18%
Norway 140 28 .49 98%
India 116 34 .43 16%
Venezuela 86 15 .67 69%
Japan 67 27 .37 7 %
Sweden 65 16 .46 44%
——————————————————————————
Total world wide annual hydroelectric production is over 3000 TWh in 2009. This amounts to around 15-20% of world electricity production and about 90% of eletricity from renewable sources.
The capacity factor ‘cap factor’ is the fraction of time the hydro plant is operating at full power over a year. The installed capacity is hydroelectricity production in TWh/( capacity factor x 24 x 365) in GW. % total cap’ is the percentage of hydro power of total energy consumption in the country. It is interesting to note that countries like Canada [9], Brazil, Norway and Venezuela depend mostly on hydropower for electricity generation which is good for the environment.
China [10] is the largest hydro power producer in the world thanks to its giant Yangtze project. It plans to have 430 GW by 2020. Reducing greenhouse pollutants is one of the prime aims of its hydro plan.
European Union (EU) has a mandate [11] to reach 20% of all energy consumption to come from renewable sources by 2020.

D. BIOFUEL
Biofuel is fuel derived from oil in plants. It is a precious commodity because it is a liquid fuel which can be directly used for transport. However, because of its complex technology and high capital cost, despite high subsidies from governments and huge private investments, it accounts for only 1.8 % of world transport fuel in 2008 [12].
In addition, there are various social, economic, environmental and technical issues in biofuel production and use that make biofuel a thorny issue making rapid progress difficult. These include: the effect of moderating oil prices, the “food vs fuel” debate, poverty reduction potential, carbon emissions levels, sustainable biofuel production, deforestation and soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, impact on water resources, as well as energy balance and efficiency.
The first generation biofuel [13] consists mostly of converting corn into ethanol, mainly in the US, and sugarcane into ethanol in Brazil. Thus the food market became linked to the world’s energy market. As a consequence, grain prices on the world market jumped up 3 times in 2006-2007, causing hardship and hunger for the poor in countries which import corn from US like China, Mexico and parts of Africa. it may be laudable that Brazil has become independent of foreign oil by ethanol, but this has come about by clearing Amazon forest which is environmentally undesirable. The corn for an amount of ethanol which goes to fill the tank of a large truck is sufficient to feed a person in a developing country for one year. Here again is an arguable social issue. Which comes first, transport or food?
Second generation cellulosic biofuel [14] uses inedible parts of plants from many sources, basically agricultural leftovers like wood chips, sawdust and wheat stalk. The advantages of these materials are they are cheap and most importantly it does not interfere with the food chain. However, while fermenting corn kernels is relatively easy, breaking down the tough stalks of cellulose, which is the backbone of plants, is hard. Cellulose is made of thousands of glucose molecules which has to be broken down by strong chemicals at high temperatures [15]. Hence the high capital cost of producing biofuel and the technology will take 5-15 years to be on market [15].
Apart from biomass from plant wastes, there are fast growing ‘energy crops’ like switchgrass which can be grown for liquid fuel production. Here we come into conflict with environmental considerations. Clearing land for transport or for food? And what about deforestation and CO2 emission? According to UN data [16], just the burning or degrading of forest accounts for 2 gigatons of carbon annually in the atmosphere. Just for example, EU [17] has a plan to guarantee to source 10% of its transport fuel from renewable sources within the next 10 years. To do this, it has been calculated that it needs to cultivate, in particular, deforest an area the size of Belgium and Ireland combined. In doing so there will be 56 million tons of CO2 per year. This is obviously counter productive.
There is intensive research in NASA on halophyte, an algae which grows in salt water [18]. This does not compete with cropland for food. Furthermore, it does not take away fresh water for drinking and other uses. Halophyte can also be a direct replacement for jet fuel kerosene (See section II. Ad on air travel )
.
E. Nuclear power
Of all the alternative energies, nuclear energy has the most future. Compared to fossil fuel nuclear plants are expensive to build, but cheap to run[19]. It is also the only alternative energy which can be baseload that is available 24 hours a day. There are 440 reactors in 30 countries in 2010 with a global electricity production of 2500 TWh [20] giving a total installed capacity of 0.376 GWe of total electricity. This amounts to nuclear power meeting 14% of the world’s electricity demand (see table 3) [19][20].
Following are the status in some of the major countries [19].

* USA has 104 reactors providing 19% of the country’s electricity.

* China recently is venturing into a novel design of a generation IV reactor – Pebble Bed Reactor, PBR [21]. Experts tout its inherently safe features, which means that no human error or equipment failure can cause an accident that would harm human being.
PBR is basically a gas cooled graphite moderated high temperature reactor. It is characterized mainly by its novel package of fuel that dramatically reduces complexity while improving safety. Instead of bulky fuel rods, It uses particles of enriched uranium dioxide coated with pyrolytic graphite which act as moderator, surrounded by fireproof silicon carbide for structural integrity. They are the size of a billiard ball and there are around 360,000 of them inside a vertical steel vessel surrounded by concrete walls. This building is designed to resist aircraft crashes and earhquakes.
Much of the cost of a conventional water cooled nuclear power plant is due to its cooling system complexity which forms the safety of the overall design needing extensive safety features and backup systems. In addition the core irradiates the water in a conventional water reactor causing the water and its impurities to become radioactive, also causing the high pressure piping in the primary side to become embrittled and requiring continual inspection and replacement.
In contrast, in PBR, helium, an inert gas, is blown through the pebbles as coolent. Note there is no ‘piping’, Helium is not subject to steam explosions, resists neutron absorption leading to radioactivity and does not dissolve contaminants that can become radioactive. A secondary loop – a heat exchanger consisting of water takes the heat away from helium into a steam generator. The secondary side of the steam generator is used to drive a turbine for electricity, or it be directly cooled to a process plant to provide the energy as process heat.
A great advantage of PBR is it operates at high temperatures. The reactor can directly heat fluids for low pressure gas turbines. The high temperature allows a turbine to extract more mechanical energy from the same amount of thermal energy. In addition, operating at high temperature means there is a strong negative feed back effect due to Doppler broadening and as the temperature increases, reactor power decreases. So it is inherently self controlling and cannot have criticality excursions. Because of this passive cooling, the reactor can passively reduce to a safe power level in an accident scenario. It can have all its supporting machinery fail and the reactor will not crack, melt, explode or spew hazardous wastes. It simply goes up to a designed “idle” temperature and cools down.
The flexibility of PBR is another good feature which comes from having a gas coolent. Unlike conventional reactors whose power is adjusted by mechanical control rods, it can change power quickly by changing the coolent flow rate, and can also change power more efficiently, for utility power for instance, by changing the coolent density or heat capacity.
Online fueling is a key feature of PBR. Spent pebbles are removed from the bottom while new fuel is fed from the top. The waste is far less radioactive per ton than the spent uranium fuel rods of conventional reactors. Shut down is done by inserting control rods which absorb neutrons. Start up is effected by making the reactor critical by simply piling enough pebbles on top of each other.
In sum, it is clear that the inherent safety features of the PBR design are indisputable. China is currently building 2 and if successful no doubt more will be online. True, there are accidents in the implementation of all forms of energy production However, do we ever consider the cost of our continual large scale burning of coal which represents 37% of global electricity production? Last year alone, coal mining killed 2400 miners in China. Add to this the countless thousands of people whose health has been effected by air pollution. This is not to mention the emission of green house gases which is the main cause of global warming. It is no wonder that China is planning to build 50 reactors over the next 5 years.

* India gets less than 3% of its electricity from nuclear at the moment, but will increase to 10% by 2022.

* Russia has 31 operating reactors with 7 under construction. It plans to provide integrated full fuel-cycle services including possibly leasing fuel, reprocessing spent fuel for other countries.

* France derives 78% of its electricity from nuclear.

There are interesting initiatives like Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) which includes the development of advanced recycling technologies. France is developing 3-axis strategy partitioning and transmutation to reduce the long-lived burden, geological repositories, conditioning and long term storage.

II. CONCLUSIONS ON ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES
Table 3 shows, according to the International Energy Outlook of Energy Information Administration EIA [22 ], the world net electricity generation by fuel.
Fuel Year
2010 %total world 2030 forecast
TWh electricity 2010
Nuclear 2500 13.0% 4700
Wind 370 1.9%
Biofuel 350 1.8%
Hydro 3000 15.0%
Gas 5200 26.0% 7200
Coal 7500 37.0% 12300
liquids 1000 5.0% 1000
others
__________________________________________
Total 20100
We see here what the world has achieved in the implementation of alternative energy and it is clear that, despite government encouragement, subsidies, as well as private green investments, alternative energies – nuclear and renewable, have not been able to replace fossil fuel as our main energy source. The forecast is that by 2030, 64% of our fuel use will still be fossil.
Every forecast we look, IEA or EIA, the trend for the future is for an increase in energy production. To satisfy the population pressure as the world goes from 6.9 billion today to 8.3 billion in 2030, we have to find means of increasing our electricity production. Without doubt, we shall be burning more fossil fuel and producing more CO2.
There exists a plethora of methods for increasing our energy production, starting with the alternative energies we have discussed to many environmentally horrendous harmful processes like the oil extraction of tar sands. In all, one way or another, our efforts to increase energy production do not come free of environmental deleterious consequences.
At this juncture in time, to avoid further damage to our already fragile ecosystems and to reduce CO2 emission, the only sensible solution we have at our disposal is to look ‘outside the box’ – rather than spending our efforts in satisfying the increasing demand in electricity production, we should look instead in means to decrease demand. To do this we need to look seriously into energy conservation and efficiency. This may not be universally recognized as imperative today, but as energy costs are rising fast, time will come, certainly by 2030, conservation and efficiency will be of paramount importance. The time to implement conservation is NOW.

III. CONSERVATION AND EFFICIENCY CALL FOR A CHANGE IN LIFESTYLE
Over the next 20 years, we shall see our lifestyle change gradually towards conservation. Whether it will come deliberately by design, or by force of circumstances, adapt we will. The number one change will be adapting to the ever rising price of oil. In the following chapters, we point here a path with conservation which will in part mitigate the dire effects of continuing global warming. Whether by 2030 the world will be as we describe will depend on our society – do we have the will power, the foresight and furthermore the capital needed to make the changes? And do we have the time before global warming engulfs us into further catastrophes? Hopefully at least part of the conservation may come to pass by 2030.
Let us first analyze what the world consumes today distributed by end user [23]:
Industrial 51%
Transport 28%
Residential 14%
Commercial 7%
Whereas launching into large complexes for increasing electricity production may be a huge undertaking, conservation and efficiency of existing energy use may not be expensive, especially when applied at the individual level. Leaving aside the industrial and commercial sectors, we shall here only detail conservation and efficiency in the transport and residential sectors.
In addition we shall analyze the often not clearly understood emission of CO2 from deforestation.

A. TRANSPORT SECTOR
The percentage of global energy used in transport is still rising, even though we know that the source of oil is peaking. At the current rate of use of oil, it has been estimated that we shall run out of oil by 2045 [7]. As oil becomes a rare property the price will rise steeply and there will no doubt have to be great changes in our transport system.

a. URBAN TRANSPORT SYSTEM
Society develops according to resources available to it. About 50 years ago, cheap oil brought about an unprecedented flourishing of motor vehicles. This has led to a motor oriented transport system. Many roads were built, mostly on government funding. As roads became good and almost for free, transport of cargo with trucks also took to the roads, neglecting trains. Today, all major cities are experiencing congestion, accident and pollution caused by motor cars. In EU [23], for example, urban traffic is responsible for 40% of CO2 road transport emissions. 9 citizens out of 10 are exposed to harmful particle emissions that are higher than the tolerated norm. Time wasted in traffic jams will soon cost 1% of the EU’s GDP. As the price of gasoline continues to climb, time has come to plan a comprehensive public transport system. This is especially opportune in the developing countries like China and India, where new cities are springing up like mushrooms, to design an efficient low fuel cost urban transport system from the beginning.
We have much to learn from Europe, in particular Germany. Munich [24], like some large European cities, has an excellent public transportation system which is cheap and easy to use. The Munich metro train system is divided into the U-Bahn and the S-Bahn. U-Bahn is the downtown subway system, while the S-Bahn consists of trains that run from the city center to the suburbs. U-Bahn and S-Bahn trains share some of the same train stations, and travel both underground and above ground along their lines. This leaves the roads to buses, cyclists, ride shares, parks and the qualify of life and mobility of the citizens is much improved.

b. MOTOR CAR
Of course we cannot forget our beloved motor car. However, one must realize that most electric and hybrid cars use directly or indirectly fossil fuel and therefore do not have zero CO2 emission. By 2030 we shall definitely see improved versions of electric and hybrid cars.
i. Electric Car
The electric car [13] is suitable for city travel where distances are short. This is powered by a heavy battery run on Lithium and an electric motor. The advantage of an electric car is that it does not emit CO2 at the tailpipe, hence does not pollute. To this extent it is environmentally friendly. Another advantage is it is more silent than car run on gasoline. An electric car has a range of about 100 miles and then the battery has to be charged by plugging into a power point.
However, the power of the electric car, instead of coming from oil is now transferred to electricity. This it gets from the grid and that grid has to have a baseload even if renewable sources of energy may feed into the grid, It is therefore still necessary that there be electricity 24 hours a day. Unless one phases out fossil fuel as baseload and replace by a collection of alternative source of electricity, the electric car is not totally environmentally friendly as some would let you believe.
Electric vehicle ‘tank-to-wheels’ efficiency is about a factor of 3 higher than internal combustion engine vehicles[25]. It does not consume energy when it is not moving. An improvement is regenerative braking which converts braking energy back into stored energy.
Because of the short range, unless there will be many ‘fueling stations’ for fast recharging by 2030, the electric car will not be universally used. However future improvement will include lighter more efficient batteries. Also faster acceleration and higher speed.
ii. Hybrid Car
The hybrid car [13] combines parts of the electric car and gasoline car in an attempt to get the best of both cars.
A gasoline engine has 100-200 Hp in order to handle acceleration. In the hybrid we use the electric motor for acceleration. So the gasoline engine can be very small, perhaps 10 – 20 HP, useful for cruising, and it is designed for just high speed for maximum efficiency.
When the car is in the city and needs acceleration, it uses the electric motor, and when it is outside the traffic and cruising at constant speed it uses the gasoline motor. When the car is decelerating or standing still the batteries recharge because the motor is running. This sort of hybrid car is essentially an electric car with built in recharger using fossil fuel for longer range.
Instead of a 100 HP engine we now have an efficient 10 HP engine, therefore we get great mileage. Exactly how much saving in gasoline depends on how much the car is run in the city or in the open country.
However, though we now have a more efficient system, we still depend on gasoline and the electricity is still generated mostly by fossil fuel at the grid.
For future developments, there is the possibility of second generation biofuel, using cellulosic plant materials to produce liquid fuel. (see section I. D ) . However, this technology is still at the research and development stage, and it will be 5-15 years before it will be on the market.
By 2030, we can expect future improvements including the diesel hybrid for more fuel economy, flex-fuel hybrid which enables the use of mixed fuels like ethanol, plug in hybrids for charging the battery and Increased efficiency reaching 100 mpg.
Finally, hydrogen fuel cell hybrids are being developed [26] which will use a fuel cell to convert hydrogen directly into electricity without emitting anything other than water vapor. Toyota plans to market this vehicle by 2015 [27]. Of course a large hydrogen infrastructure for refueling will have to exist in Japan at the start. There is also the question of how much energy is needed for hydrogen production by dissociation.

c. MAGLEV TRAIN
Undoubtedly the train of the future is MAGLEV – MAGnetic LEVitation [28]. Here there are no tracks, instead the train is levitated and propelled by magnetic forces produced by a large number of coils. These coils operate either at normal temperatures or are superconducting at very low temperatures with very low electrical resistance.
There are many advantages to maglev apart from its speed [29]. It is cheaper, and has a much longer service life as there is no wear and tear with the tracks. The operating costs of maglev is only 3 cents per passenger mile and 7 cents per ton mile, compared to 15 cents per passenger mile for airplanes and 30 cents per ton mile for intercity trucks. It is also capable of carrying large volumes. It is extremely energy efficient. In the proposed Switzerland’s Metro system, energy consumption per passenger mile can shrink to the equivalent of 10,000 miles per gallon. Maglev consumes electricity and therefore need not directly use fossil fuel.
The show case of MAGLEV is the Shanghai to Pudong [29] line which transports people 30 km (19 mi) to the airport in just 7 minutes 20 seconds, achieving a top speed of 431 km/h (268 mph), averaging 250 km/h (160 mph).
Japan has concentrated on superconducting maglev coils and has a commercial line in Yamanashi.
There are many maglev trains in the planning stage in many parts of the world. Perhaps the most ambitious project for long distance passenger and freight transport is in Japan which aims to begin commercial superconducting maglev service between Tokyo and Osaka in the year 2027 [30].

d. AIR TRAVEL
Just as road travel has exploded exponentially over the last 50 years, air travel, whether it be for pleasure or business has reached similar heights of excessive growth. In fact the world’s economy has become to a large extent dependent on cheap kerosene, a jet fuel which is derived from fossil oil. As fossil oil is on the wane, we can expect air travel to be much curtailed in the future years.
Flying from Beijing to San francisco with distance 10,351 km produces about one ton of carbon. It is useful to know that aviation globally is responsible for 2% of CO2 emission, which is about the percentage that wind energy contributes to total world energy production. Therefore one of the imperatives for the future of aviation is to reduce the use of fossil fuel – mainly kerosene, because of its impending scarcity and its CO2 emission.
Kerosene is a precious fossil fuel which has special properties: It must not freeze at high altitudes, must not be too viscous to flow properly, must have high flash point and should be of low bulk energy density so as not shorten the range.
So what fuel will aircraft fly on in the coming years? The aircraft industry is busy finding replacements for kerosene. Here are some alternatives:
i. Biofuel.
The number one advantage of using plant oil as jet fuel is it has low carbon emission. In fact, British Airways is to build Europe’s first biojet fuel plant which will produce camelina based jetfuel that will reduce CO2 emissions by 75% compared to petroleum based fuel [31]. Camelina based jet fuel has also been extensively tested by the US Air Force and the US Navy.
In 2008, Virgin Atlantic became the first airline to operate a commercial aircraft on a blend of 20% coconut oil and barbassu nut oil mixed with 80% kerosene [31]. At the moment, the first choice is to look for blending of biofuel with kerosene without having to modify existing engines.
At NASA [17], tests have been done to prove that algae, a biofuel technology which involves halophyte – an algae that grows in salt water, can be a jet fuel. International Air Transport Association (IATA) supports research, development and deployment of algae fuels. IATA’s goal is for its members to be using 10% alternative fuels by 2017 [32].
ii. Liquid hydrogen
This is perhaps the most often discussed long-term alternative to kerosene as a jet fuel. Hydrogen takes up four times more space than kerosene but provides two to five times more energy per weight unit. It is non corrosive and, as an alternative to kerosene, significantly reduces harmful emissions. Hydrogen is very expensive to produce and store, and, depending on how it was produced, may have caused significant carbon dioxide in the process. Aircraft would require redesigning as would airport infrastructure.
iii. Fuel Cells
As a jet fuel substitute, fuel cells have been used in spacecraft and experimental aircraft. Fuel cells convert hydrogen directly into electricity and heat without combustion. They are emission-free and quiet but without further technological development are too large, heavy and inefficient for commercial air flight. The technology is still not mature at this stage.
It is possible that we shall be able to phase out in part kerosene gradually in the next 10 years by using mixes with biofuel. But there are various hurdles. First the manufacturing of biofuel is a complex process which is not not cheap (see section I. D on Biofuel). Second, growing fast growing energy crops like switchgrass and other oil plants necessarily takes away the land which otherwise could be used for growing food. Not to mention the fact that clearing the land with deforestation is environmentally detrimental producing much CO2 emission ( see section II. C on conservation of forests).

The price of air travel will adjust itself such that tourism will be only for the rich few. So will there be air travel in 2030? Yes, but probably most for business and tourism will not be universally accessible as it is today.
Go by maglev or train. Enjoy the scenery on the way rather than be eager to just to reach destination.
To sum up, although we have found solutions for transport in the next decades, like biofuel for air travel, maglev for trains, efficient urban mass electric transport systems, they all entail large capital costs. Do we have the money? And the time?

B. THE RESIDENTIAL SECTOR

a. Food And Water Conservation
The futurist James Kunstler has painted a dire global future as long ago as 2002 in his book ‘The Long Emergency’: “It’s a mistake to imagine that the years ahead are all about leisure and recreation and we can just substitute one form for another. We are going to be living in a far less affluent society. By then, one imagines, what’s left of the legions of business warriors striding through airports today will instead be cooped up watching video screens in teleconferencing centers. But for must of us, the business at hand will be working the land. The way we produce and transport food now is extremely fossil fuel intensive. As peak oil makes air travel a remote luxury, our eyes must revert downward, toward the soil.”
Kunstler is quite right, the number one problem we face today is how we are going to feed ourselves, even without the extreme exacerbation of an additional 2 billion people by 2030.
Industrial agriculture uses 70% of world’s water resources so conservation of water comes before agriculture. An UN Water report finds that by 2025, developing countries will need to increase their water consumption by 50 percent and 75 percent of countries will face water scarcity by 2050. In order to close the gap between future supply and demand, Mediaglobal [34] recommends improved agricultural productivity and crop yields, efficiency in municipal and industrial water systems, better infrastructure and better practices in the private sector.
Following are some the changes in way we shall live.
* Grow food locally and eat local produce as transport of food becomes expensive. A typical bad practice is the fact that we spend $100 billion a year on bottled water – mostly in packaging and transport.
* Outdoor farming wastes a lot of water and soil. Food is more efficiently grown in large green houses near urban centers which saves 90% of water. It will use advanced fertilizing techniques – hydroponics, aeroponics and drip irrigation to produce vegetables under controlled temperature and soil conditions [14]. Furthermore greenhouse farming controls weeds, diseases, insects and other pests. One can even stack greenhouses in several levels to save space in ‘vertical farming’ [14]..
* Adopt a more vegetarian diet. It takes 16 kg of cereal to produce one kg of beef.
* Plant high yield GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) [34] crops where possible.
* Decrease pollution in rivers.
* Stop the conversion of food stuff into ethanol. Approximately 119 million tons of grain in 2009 in US out of a harvest of 416 million tons went into ethanol distilleries.
* Combat huge amounts of food waste – up to 40 per cent of food bought in developed countries ends up being thrown away.
* Recycle and recycle everything. The recycling of residential water will become the norm.
* Install use of catchment of rooftop rainwater for all buildings.
* Water supply is affected by the loss of watershed due to deforestation and soil erosion. There is also severe depletion of ground water resources for agriculture and industry like mining. Avoid the
depletion of underground aquifers by over pumping. According to a World Bank report, 130 million people in China are being fed with grain produced by overpumping. This is obviously not a stable
solution.
* Eventually we shall be short of drinking water. Desalination of sea water will be necessary. This is capital intensive as well as using fossil fuel unless we use nuclear desalination.
* The world adds 80 million more people each year. Reduce this additional load on the world’s food supply.

b. Lighting
i. Change your light bulb from the standard incandescent bulb to compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. Replacing just one 60-watt incandescent light bulb with a CFL will save $30 over the life of the bulb. CFLs also last 10 times as long, uses 2/3 less energy and give off 70% less heat. Each 60 Watt CFL saves around 0.5 ton of CO2 over its lifetime.
ii. Better still is the new technology of light-emitting diodes (LED) which used 85% less electricity than an incandescent bulb. While CFLs last 10 times as long as incandescent bulbs, LEDs last 50 times as long. LEDs are rapidly taking over the market for traffic lights.
iii. In addition to switch lights off when they are not in use, there are new technologies for doing this with motion sensors that turn lights off in unoccupied offices, living rooms, washrooms, hallways and stairwells. Sensors and dimmers can also be used to take advantage of daylight saving to reduce the street light intensity when sunlight is bright. In cities, dimmers can be used to cut the electricity use of LEDs to less than 10% that of incandescent bulbs.

c. Passive House
Much electricity can be saved by efficient design of buildings. This can be applied to new houses and even more important the refurbishment’s of existing houses – both residential and public housing like schools, supermarkets, factories and others.
Learn from the European concept of ‘passiv haus’ which sets a stringent design methodology for energy efficiency in buildings. It involves not only solar design and orientation, but superinsulation, advanced window technology, airtightness, ventilation, space heating and cooling and more [36].
This results in ultra-low energy buildings that require little energy for space heating or cooling. In US, UK and Ireland, for example, an average new house built to the Passive House standard would use 77% – 85% less energy for space heating compared to the standard local building regulations.
In Passive House buildings, the cost savings from dispensing with the conventional heating system can be used to fund the upgrade of the building envelope and the heat recovery ventilation system. With careful design and increasing competition in the supply of the specifically designed Passivhaus building products in Germany it is now possible to construct buildings for the same cost as those built to normal German building standards. On average, however, passive houses are still up to 14% more expensive upfront than conventional buildings[36].
The EU is on the verge of adopting the computerized Passive house planning package as standard building code in two years time across EU.

C. CONSERVATION OF FORESTS
There are 2 ways deforestation contributes to the emission of CO2 and other toxic greenhouse gases [37].
i. The burning and degrading of forests converts the carbon stored in the biomass into large amounts of CO2, carbon monoxide, methane and other gases.
ii. The tropical forest is an important sink for carbon dioxide. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is incorporated into the living biomass via the process of photosynthesis, which in turn produces the oxygen we breathe. Under normal circumsatances the amount of carbon dioxide taken out of the atmosphere every year by plants is almost balanced by the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by respiration and decay. However, with deforestation, the amount is difficult to estimate as forests can be either sinks or sources depending on the environment. All in all, around 2 gigatons of carbon is released into the atmosphere by deforestation.
Taking carbon emission all together, the burning of fossil fuel contributes 7 gigatons of carbon, which is 77% of global total of 9 gigatons.
Here again, basic population pressure for agriculture and economic development is the prime reason for the destruction of the rainforest that form a precious cooling band around the earth’s equator. This is now being recognized as one of the main causes of climate change.

IV. FINAL CONCLUSIONS
It is only when one examines in detail the numbers, compare them from different angle, then one begins to realize what is worth doing for the world and what is trivial. In doing so we have come to 3 stark conclusions.
A. Of all the options for reducing global warming, one cannot forget the impending population rise – from 6.9 billion in 2010 to 8.3 billion in 2030. Even if by miracle we solve our energy problems, 1.4 billion more people will inevitably negate all our gains in water, food, employment, housing, education and others which are necessary for a person. China is to be commended as the only country in the world to mandate a population policy as well as having a large research institute on finding novel methods of contraception such as male contraceptives [38].

B. As Lovins [39] has emphasized, saving fuel costs is much cheaper than buying fuel. Following the logic we have developed in this article, we can forget about wind energy which has so far only supplied 2% of world’s energy consumption. Rather reduce energy demand by using the vast sums we spend on wind mills on energy conservation and efficiency.

C. We have concentrated our efforts in the reduction of the use of fossil fuel because we believe its carbon emission, around 7 gigatons, is the main cause of global warming. This emission is to be compared with deforestation which accounts for 2 gigatons, around 22% of total CO2 emission and should not be ignored. We should concentrate on the preservation of our tropical rainforest, apply all possible means like carbon credits, rehabilitation of forests, sustainable forestry, recycling and international economic and political pressure to preserve our vital tropical rainforest ‘lungs of the world’.

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