Environmental Issues
Cause by High Energy Use
Energy generally is the capability of doing work. In the electric power industry, energy is defined as electricity supplied over time (Independent Power Producers of New York 2006). High energy consumption has been an issue since 20th century to support rapid development through out the world. From just 8263148 thousand tonnes of oil equivalent (ktoe) of energy used in 1990 to 1051717 ktoe in 2003 clearly shows that the world is in the situation of high energy consumption (International Energy Agency Statistics Division 2006). All these raise the environmental issues around the world. Among it, global warming is the main concern follow by deforestation and acidic ocean.
Global Warming
The direct impact from high energy use is anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) being release to the atmosphere and it has increased 35% faster than expected since 2000 (Science Daily 2007). Burning of fossil fuels such as oil (36%), natural coal (28%) and gas (24%) make up 88% of world energy (BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2007) are fully accountable to the major emission of CO2 which contribute 91% to the warming effect in the last five years (Engeler 2007). Carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are emitted to the atmosphere resulted from fossil fuels burning, trapping the sun's heat and causing global warming. Elevated CO2 levels are expected to increase global temperature by 2.0 to 4.5 °C during the 21st century and will not disappear even after a millennium (Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the IPCC (2007) on climate change 2007). Eleven of the past twelve years (1995–2006) are rank among the 12 warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature (Solomon et al. 2007).
Global warming is causing damage in many parts of the world especially in United States of America (USA). Consisting of only 5% of the world's population, Americans consume 25% of the world's energy (CIA...