The Benefits Of Green Technology
We live in the 21st century where we encounter a lot of issues due to multiplication in global population growth. One of the main stumbling blocks is environment depletion and exhaustion of natural resources due to human activities. However, our Nation’s leaders and individual citizen are approaching to an understanding that we should work towards the problems such as pollution, climate changes, and the dwindling amount of natural resources can be put off for a future generation. And now communities are entering a world that is labeled “The Third Industrial Revolution”, as society moved from fossil fuels in the Second Industrial Revolution to renewable energy generation, technologies in sustainable, smart communities.
For example, communities in China and Spain are totally sustainable through public policies that shoulders renewable energy power generation. Also, Japan due to its past economic and political history realized the significance of conserving the natural resources and conserving our environment began seeking environmentally friendly technologies for its own energy power uses for buildings and vehicles which led to the invention of hybrid car in 1990s in Japan. In the Third Industrial Revolution to attain a healthier, cleaner and hopefully longer future “Green Technology” has been implemented. Green Technology is defined as the utilization of the environment science for the sustainable development of products, systems and equipment that includes all aspects of living in order to preserve our communities for future generation besides reducing the unfavorable impacts on the environment due to some human activities.
Furthermore, “Green Technology” is recognized as a part of “Green Revolution”. Sustainable development became known as the “Green Revolution” which began over two decades ago with the UN Brundtland Report and Green Revolution is popularly known to the general public through an American documentary film, “An inconvenient Truth” winning both an Academy Award and a Noble Peace Prize in 2007. Green Technology plays a significant role in making our present and future better through many practices. However, there are a lot of barriers in achieving all the goals of Green Technology on which government are fostering towards. The environment is racing towards the tripping point at which we would permanently damage the planet earth if human activities are not carried out in sustainable manner. Answer to these problem is Green Technology. Keeping the goals of attaining a sustainable environment hence sustainable life there are numbers of practice done by Green Technology.
The practices are in the energy sector, building sector, compromises on water and waste management sector, Transport sector. Renewable energy is a key component of sustainability not only for buildings, but also in terms of infrastructures. It is well known how interconnected the world is and the energy require to keep it moving. As said, “Theshift to a cleaner energy economy won’t happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way. But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact. And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did. ”— U. S. President Barack Obama, State of the Union, January 28, 2014. It is a responsibility of every individual to work towards achieving sustainability by using sustainable energy. It can be done, and must be done, at the community level. Contribution of a single individual counts and the lifestyles can be changed.
Green Technology introduces green power which is electricity generated from resources such as solar, wind, geothermal, ocean, biomass and low-impact hydro facilities which is not based on fossil fuels and enables electricity customers to accelerate installation of renewable energy technologies. California is a good example of where small communities are now producing their own energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar. While in the mountainous area like Bhutan, electricity is produced from the river water flow. Secondly, in the building sector there are a lot of green technology practices that brings about sustainable community and life. As stated that almost no country in the world will be able to accomplish carbon dioxide-reduction targets without including the building sector into their plan of action by Dr Arab Hoballah at the International Green Buildings Conference in Singapore, a United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) expert on December 15, 2009. Green technology procures the sustainable building by installing energy efficiency, indoor environment quality in which the use of low volatile organic compound materials, proper control of air temperature, exercising of quality air filtration, sustainable site planning and management for reasons like protecting environmentally sensitive areas, material resources in order to enhance the use of environmentally friendly materials and also to construct proper waste management storage and water efficiency which emphasize on water harvesting and water recycling, etc. Thirdly, Transport sectoris one of the major factors to be considered in protecting our environment. Putting green technology into practice people have come up with many ways to enhance transports in sustainable manner.
For example, Porsche All Electric Car that was invented in 1903 reducing the air pollution. There are four pillars of Green Technology policy. These are Energy, Environment, Economy and Social. Human activities contributes to the depletion of envirnonment and natural resources, some of the major global environmental challenges are climate change, shrinking natural habitats, biodiversity, exhaustion of natural biodiversity, etc. Green Technology came up with a lot of ideas to conserve our environment while also fulfilling human needs thus, reducing the harmful production of carbon dioxide into the air. Furthermore, another advantage of Green Technology is that it is renewable which fulfill the goal of conserving it for the future generation and they get to enjoy every thing that we had access to. Since Green technology is more on renewable sources like so9olar, wind, geothermal, etc there won’t be carbon dioxide emission in the air hence, reducing the global warming. As the global warming is reduced, problems such as flood and increase in sea level due to melting of glaciers on the mountain won’t be caused. For example, country like Bhutan the only carbon neutral country in the world still faces the obstacles of glaciers melting on the mountains due to the neighboring countries who produces a lot of carbon dioxide each day leading to global warming.
We are in this together and every Nation should adapt Green Technology to live a sustainable life and also to conserve for our future. Despite a lot of benefits of Green Technology, it requires less maintenance so it’s economically reasonable. Eventhough, there are a lot of reasons why Green Technology should be seen as one of the most required in this era, there are a lot of barriers stopping Green Technology. Some of the barriers faced by Green Technology are Commercializationbarriers, unequal government subsides and taxes, Market Failure to value public benefits of renewables, lack of information, Institutional barriers, High transaction cost, Transmission costs, Green market Limits, etc. commercialization is a huge barrier to Green Technology due to the cost it impose to build infrastructure thus increasing the cost of renewable electricity.
Moreover, another barrier is the taxes, since the taxes imposed on the usage of fossil fuel is less costly than the renewable sources it’s without a doubt that most people will go for non renewable resources. According to a research done by the Energy Information Administration in 1992 found that, during fiscal year 1992, direct federal subsides totaled $8 billion, with renewables receiving about one third as much as coal and less than one quarter as much as natural gas. Market failure to value public benefits of renewables. Not every one will be willing to pay more for something that is sustainable because they have to breath in the same air as ones who don’t make the effort to pay. An individual paying for societal benefits will be much less due to the market price of the renewable sources is more. Further more, another barrier is lack of information. One should be made aware of green technology since it has recently evolved and not many have enough information on it which might cause some misconception and might think that renewable sources are less reliable. All this factors are the barriers to promoting Green Technology.
