Assessment on "Energy Planning"

Assessment 4 pages (1425 words) Sources: 4

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Energy Planning -- Main Goals

"We are addicted to foreign oil and we have to wean ourselves off it."

Over the last twenty years or more, the American public has heard a similar refrain about energy use issues from just about every politician that has run for office and certainly from every politician that gets elected and takes a stand on energy use. That platitudinous catchphrase is so often used it's almost redundant and the problem is for many Americans it is so familiar it has become nothing more than a political slogan. What is being alluded to here is the concept that it is past time when America needs to become energy self-sufficient. How to go about being energy independent is the question. This paper presents energy planning ideas that not only lessens the need to import oil from Arab countries -- or from Venezuela -- but lessens the need for oil period.

Literature on Energy Planning for the Future

The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is among the most influential of all conservation / environmental groups in America. Their editorial thrust is toward a "Clean Energy Economy" and that means using more and more renewable sources -- not drilling in oceans or in Alaska or elsewhere for new sources of crude oil. And so energy planning, according to the NRDC, means creating green jobs through the building of renewable energy sources like windmill farms, solar energy projects, and by setting up manufacturing projects that produce solar panels, batteries for hybrid cars, and more.

"Millions of Americans already have the skills that they require" in order to get into the manufacturing of products that are part of the switch to green technologies. A key energy plan, according to the NRDC, is one that invests in "entirely new industries" and puts thousands, even millions of people to work. By investing $150 billion in clean energy, the NRDC site reports, the United States can create 1.7 million net new jobs "in just two years" (www.nrdc.org). Of those 1.7 million jobs that would be created, about 870,000 of them would be "…accessible to workers with a high school degree or less," so the NRDC is pointing out that you don't have to be an engineer or a highly trained technician to work in the field of clean energy development. Moreover, roughly 614,000 of those jobs available for those with just a high school degree (or less than a high school degree) "will offer decent opportunities for promotion and rising wages over time" (www.nrdc.org). Over time, those kinds of opportunities in the clean / green energy field can help lift low-income workers out of poverty, the NRDC explains.

Meanwhile the community of Masda in the United Arab Emirates is undergoing some of the most high tech energy planning to be found anywhere on earth. The article "A Green City Blooms in the Desert" describes a solar-powered city where the world's "first zero-carbon, zero-waste city" is taking shape. The project is estimated to cost $22 billion and should be complete by 2016, according to Julia Loffe, writing in Fortune International magazine.

The issues that had to be overcome in the nation of Abu Dhabi for Masdar to take shape are very obvious even to the layperson that knows little about renewable and solar energy planning. The first city to develop solar "on a massive scale" in a virtual desert. It is obvious that a city can't be built on sand, so Abu Dhabi is to be constructed on a "cement platform that's 21 feet think and made of 60% recycled waste," Loffe writes on page 1.

The architectural firm handling most of the energy planning is Foster & Partners of London, who wish to make Masdar to become "the Silicon Valley of environmental design," according to Gerald Evenden, Foster & Partners' senior partner. Within this walled city will be a "green-tech research institute" that will be built with resources from MIT, according to Loffe's article. The hope is that the city of Masdar will become a "guidepost for urban planners everywhere," Loffe explains. Another hope is that the project will create 70,000 jobs and become "a global hub for green tech," the writer goes on.

Unlike all other cities in the world, cars will be banned… READ MORE

How to Reference "Energy Planning" Assessment in a Bibliography

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