Energy & Water
This section aims to get your community to think about our natural resources (such as coal, oil, gas and water), and the need to use them carefully.
Energy and water are crucial to our modern lives but there is only a limited amount available in the world so we need to be more careful about the way we use them.
Traditionally we rely on ‘fossil fuels’ to make the energy that we use in our homes and industries. Fossil fuels are formed naturally by the earth over thousands and thousands of years and include all the main sources of energy that we currently rely on – oil, coal and gas. Fossil fuels are ‘non-renewable’, that is, they are limited in amount and will run out, unlike ‘renewable’ forms of energy which can be generated from the wind, water-flows and the sun.
The amount of energy used throughout the world every day has trebled over the past century. To keep up with our demand to heat and light our homes and to power our industries, power stations are burning more and more fossil fuels. Our increasing use of these limited resources not only means that we are in danger of running out, but their use also contributes to climate change. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere and CO2 is the gas most responsible for climate change.
We know that energy use will continue to increase for the time being. It has been calculated that if present energy use continues, by 2010 global energy consumption and CO2 emissions will be almost 50% above 1993 levels. This runaway demand for energy is worrying since we are facing an era of ‘Peak Oil’. Peak oil is a phrase often used to describe the situation when global oil supplies reach the point where demand outstrips supply. Put simply, it means the moment when we reach the point where we need more than is available. Leading scientists predict that peak in oil supply and demand is either happening now, or will happen by as soon as 2015. Given this short timescale, it is clear that we must act now to reduce our demand for oil in order for it to last longer.
Water is not just for drinking and washing, but it is also used by industry and farming as part of the process of making almost any kind of product. Similarly to the Park Oil situation, demand for water has grown to the point where the natural water cycle can’t keep up.
Pollution, mainly caused by sewage leaks and chemical discharges has made clean water rare and valuable. Water companies have an important role to play in managing, treating and distributing water to make sure that our demand for clean, fresh water is satisfied. But this process is expensive – and will become more so as our demand for water grows. Water itself doesn’t cost money, but we do pay water companies for recycling water to supplement the environment’s natural recycling process of evaporation and rainfall. Water is big business in England and Wales, where water and sewerage services are mainly under private control. The more we waste water and the more polluted natural supplies get, the harder water companies have to work to make sure we have enough of the clean water we need – which means bigger water bills.
By being more aware of our own demands on water and energy we can start to reduce the amount that we use - and the more we save, the more there is to go around. Measures to save and reduce our demand for energy and water are known as ‘conservation’ and ‘efficiency’ measures.
We can’t change where we get our water from, but we can change the sort of energy that we buy at home. By buying energy from renewable sources the energy you use does not add to CO2 levels in the atmosphere and will dramatically reduce your own carbon footprint (the amount of CO2 you are personally responsible for creating).