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How much does it cost to watch
television for an hour?
How much energy does it take to cook a meal or light a
lamp?
Not much in terms of money but a lot in terms of impact on
environment.
Consumption of electricity has increased very rapidly because it
is versatile, clean and convenient. But how clean is it
really?
Almost 45 % of
energy is produced in India by burning coal which cause a lot of
air pollution. 45 % of energy comes from hydro
electricity which too is not completely environment friendly as
big dams cause submersion of a lot of land, forests and
displacement of humans and animal.
In our society,
electricity consumption has increased by several times in the past
century. At its present
rate of consumption, coal will be exhausted as an energy source
in several hundred years. It is estimated that India’s 450
crore ton coal reserves will last until 2050 A.D.
During
the past 200 years the use of fossil fuels has made mankind a
dominating factor in the green house effect. The large scale and
world wide use of fossil fuels to generate heat, power, and
electricity for growing populations as well
as the burning of large areas of tropical forests for
agriculture have given the enormous emission of carbon dioxide and
other green house gases in
the atmosphere.
This means there is an urgent need to
conservation energy as it not saves money but also our
environment !
Nobody wants to waste energy, and nobody
wants to waste money. Why, then, do we use so much energy and
waste so much of it?
This is a very complex question. It involves
personal ethics, choices, priorities, and most of us would be
willing to reduce our energy use if we knew how to do it and if
it were not too inconvenient. What can we do to save maximum
energy? What choices do you have for saving energy and money ?
What are the pros and cons of those choices? What are our energy
needs and wants?
The amounts of carbon dioxide
emitted are staggering equal to or even in excess of the amounts
of fuel used. This means that the problem cannot be solved by
some energy conservation or some increase of fuel tax : it will
be necessary to increase the energy efficiency of society
fundamentally. Our society is becoming more and more electricity
guzzler.
The share of electricity in the overall energy package is
growing. In our society the efficient use of electricity is
still not on the level that can be attained by using well known
existing techniques. Energy conservation or improvement of
energy intensity covers many very different activities and
processes, that can be divided into two main categories :
improvement of energy efficiency of our activities
and a
structural change towards less energy intensive activities.
What Can You Do To Conserve
Energy?
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