As an engineering student who plans to go into sustainability, I found today to be a riveting day. In the morning, before our language class, we had a person come in and do a presentation about the role of green transportation. The presentation was good, however, I feel like the presenter was overly explaining the topic. He seemed very knowledgeable about the subject, but I think it was hard trying to translate his intelligence into a different language. He talked about Vietnam’s plan of having net zero carbon emission by 2050 and increasing the forestation and renewable energy usage.
After his presentation, I was left with a few questions, but there wasn’t enough time to ask him, so I’ll ask the people reading this blog:
- Some of the ways he wants to implement the use of renewable energy is to use solar and wind farms. However, one of the drawbacks of wind farms is that they need a lot of clear, flat space to house the wind turbines. It also produces lots of noise pollution, which damages the ecosystems around them. This is the opposite of what the presenter is trying to achieve. I wonder how the presenter intends to combat the disadvantages that results from wind farms.
- Biomass energy involves the burning of excess plant material and using the steam to produce energy. This is an innovative way to use waste that is commonly through away, however it produces lots of emissions that contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, which is exactly what he’s trying to reduce. Plus, it takes a lot of energy to produce power to the country, so that would require lots of burning plant material, so why would he decide to go with this option?
The company visit was after we had a delicious lunch with lots of different foods. I don’t know the names of everything, but it was all so good. Some of the food is already eaten in the picture, because we were all so hungry and started before our phones could have their food.
The company visit of the day was at a company called PECC2. They had a goal of reducing the carbon emissions of Vietnam and implementing other ways to produce energy. They planned on using methods similar to what the speaker earlier in the day talked about. They also additionally wanted to use hydropower and hydrogen energy. I really like the idea of using hydrogen to produce power, but it’s an energy intensive process, because it involves the ionization of water, which separates hydrogen from the oxygen. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s a really cool idea.
Today was a very interesting lesson on the different methods of sustainable energy that different people/companies plan to use to produce power. It also has made me start thinking about what some of the drawbacks are of using some of these renewable energy sources. Maybe in the future, someone else can come up with sources of renewable energy that have fewer drawbacks that still harm the environment.