Renewable Energies
Globally, sufficient renewable
energy resources exist to satisfy local energy requirements for a diverse set
of activities.
It is clear that if we intend to break a nut with a large machine instead of a
nutcracker, then the energy we can get from renewable sources may never be
enough. It's necessary to distinguish between massive energy use and efficient energy
use.
Generally, renewable energy resources are not exploited because of the massive
amount of fossil fuel production that is going on around the world.
In such a way, high levels of fossil fuel production tend to reduce prices
through economies of scale (to a certain threshold) and fuel increased energy
consumption. As a result, a large part of the economic benefit is concentrated
in a few corporate entities.
However, as fossil fuel supply declines, prices for these resources increase
rapidly. In this sense, renewable energies become more viable, not just to
replace dwindling fossil fuel resources, but also to benefit the global
environment.
It is also important to distinguish between energy users, considering that the
industrial sector is the largest fossil fuel energy user, together with the
transportation sector, which can use renewable energy sources through the
application of hydrogen storage technology.
Rural development projects related to renewable energies have to be planned and
implemented taking into account the specific circumstances in each locale, the
energy requirements of the population, and the available resources to obtain
renewable energy locally, whether it be biomass, solar, wind or small hydro.
Jorge Alejandro DelaVega Lozano
Energy for Global Use
Space Solar Power gathers energy from sunlight in space and transmits it wirelessly to Earth. Space solar power can solve our energy and greenhouse gas emissions problems. The solar energy available in space is literally billions of times greater than we use today. Another need is to move away from fossil fuels for our transportation system. As batteries, super-capacitors, and fuel cells improve, the gasoline engine will gradually play a smaller and smaller role in transportation.Space solar power can provide the needed clean power for any future electric transportation system.
The disadvantage of Space Solar Power is the high development costs but these high costs are much smaller than American military presence in the Persian Gulf or the costs of global warming, climate change, or carbon sequestration. The cost of space solar power development always needs to be compared to the cost of not developingspace solar power.
Source: National Space Society:
http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/index.htm
Space Solar Power
Proposed space solar power systems utilize well-known physical principles -- namely, the conversion of sunlight to electricity by means of photovoltaic cells. (You can see such cells on many neighborhood rooftops and on small sidewalk lighting fixtures.) Giant structures consisting of row after row of photovoltaic (PV) arrays could be placed either in a geostationary Earth orbit or on the Moon. A complete system would collect solar energy in space, convert it to microwaves, and transmit the microwave radiation to Earth where it would be captured by a ground antenna and transformed to usable electricity.
See: NASA-SpaceSolarPower
Sustentabilidad La sustentabilidad ha sido un
objetivo ampliamente aceptado por todos los países desde que fue introducido
por la Comisión
Brundtland. La característica de la sustentabilidad, ya sea
económica, social, ecológica, productiva, etc., hace necesario el desarrollo
de metodologías para medir y valorar de forma objetiva y clara el
cumplimiento de los requisitos sobre sustentabilidad. Se utilizan indicadores
de la sustentabilidad para percibir las tendencias o fenómenos que no es
posible detectar de inmediato ni fácilmente, y permiten comprender, sin
ambigüedades, el estado de la sustentabilidad de un sistema, o los
puntos críticos que ponen en peligro la sustentabilidad. La Comisión Brundtland de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Agricultura y la Alimentación, ante la irrefutable evidencia de la existencia de límites para el desarrollo de la humanidad, precisó, en la década de 1990, que las políticas para crear modelos de desarrollo en los países, deben ser adecuadas para que las generaciones futuras tengan oportunidad de una calidad de vida, al menos igual a la de las generaciones presentes. Fue a este enfoque al que se denominó Desarrollo Sustentable. | Sustainability
Sustainable agriculture integrates three main goals:
environmental stewardship, farm profitability, and prosperous farming
communities. These goals have been defined by a variety of disciplines and
may be looked at from the vantage point of the farmer or the consumer.
"It's easy to understand why key individuals and organizations in
agriculture have flocked to this term. After all, who would advocate a
'non-sustainable agriculture?'" - Charles A. Francis. Sustainable agriculture refers to the ability of a farm
to produce food and bioenergy indefinitely, without causing irreversible
damage to ecosystem health. Two key issues are biophysical (the long-term
effects of various practices on soil properties and processes essential for
crop productivity) and socio-economic (the long-term ability of farmers to
obtain inputs and manage resources such as labor). Given the finite supply of natural resources,
agriculture that is inefficient may eventually exhaust the available
resources or the ability to afford and acquire them. It may also generate
negative externality, such as pollution as well as financial and production
costs. Agriculture that relies mainly on inputs that are extracted from the
earth's crust or produced by society, contributes to the depletion and
degradation of the environment. Despite this continuing practice,
unsustainable agriculture continues because it is financially more cost-effective
than sustainable agriculture in the short term. |
AVINA Desarrollo en América Latina
