COVID-19 has put the issue of climate change on the backburner, but it remains an existential issue for the future of humanity and human society. The Green Revolution is inevitable. Countries around the world will be forced to change the ways they produce and store energy. As technology evolves, there will be a lot of opportunities to innovate how we do things. With a variety of new technologies available, we are able to push the Green Revolution forward and make a cleaner world in the future.
Electric Car Chargers
Electric cars are a great way to mitigate human impact on the environment, but they require charging stations. There has been a slow rollout of the necessary chargers for electric vehicles, but they are catching up. EVgo has more than 800 Tesla chargers in major cities across the United States, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Dallas, Austin, Washington D.C., and more. While not everyone can afford a Tesla, these chargers can also charge up other electric vehicles.
Accessible Solar Panels
Solar panels have become much more accessible to the average consumer. Now you can use solar panels as the roof of your home or use them for specific uses. You won’t just be able to power specific items in your house, if you have enough panels you may even be able to store energy and send some back to the power grid to make money. Solar panels have become cheaper and more accessible, making it an integral part of our transition to renewable energy.
Hydrogen Energy
Hydrogen energy is expensive and difficult to produce, but it will continue to become easier as people invest in it. Scaling up the low-carbon hydrogen industries is necessary to make green energy more viable. Hydrogen is getting unprecedented momentum as a legitimate method for producing clean energy. Many of our public buses already run on hydrogen. Why aren’t we demanding more hydrogen investments from the government?
Carbon Capture
Carbon capture technology is quite crucial when it comes to mitigating the impact of carbon on our atmosphere. Carbon warms the climate, making carbon capture integral to the Green Revolution. Transitioning into a cleaner, renewable-using world is likely not possible without removing the carbon already in the atmosphere. The value of shared transport and storage infrastructure for CO2 will make a full transition to renewables possible, but it is yet another industry that requires more investment from governments and private citizens.
Wind Farms
The propagation of wind farms is another crucial method for green energy. Offshore wind farms are a great way to produce clean energy. The United Kingdom is the world’s leader in wind energy, producing 10 percent of the country’s electricity in 2020. Six of the ten largest wind farms in the world are in the UK’s waters. Wind is essential to the Green Revolution. To enable a full transition to a world that uses clean power, we will have to utilize solar, hydrogen, and wind.
Biomass Technology
Finally, biomass technology is the production of fuel from wood and plants. To decrease the amount of carbon dioxide, wood from sustainable sources can produce electricity in power stations, which also capture waste heat in the combustion process to warm nearby homes or factories. Biomass energy isn’t widely known, but it should be used and experimented with to create the cleanest and most sustainable version of it.
There are so many technologies at our disposal to push the Green Revolution forward. With a lot of options, our societies need to use these technologies in tandem. It is necessary to utilize all the different sources of renewable energy to transition from coal, oil, and other fossil fuels to sources that don’t pump carbon into our atmosphere and warm our planet.
While it has become less relevant in the time of pandemic, we must keep the future in mind. Climate change will drastically affect our world and the humans who live here. The challenge is great, but there are many options to mitigate the impact on our environment by transitioning to various forms of green energy. Technology will facilitate the transition by offering a variety of new ways to produce and store energy while taking carbon out of our atmosphere. We need to demand change and put our money where our mouth is.
Ryan Beitler is a writer, journalist, and blogger who has written about climate and renewable energy for Paste Magazine, Nature World News, LA Progressive, and many more.