Engineering Explained: Sustainable Engineering

Engineering aspires to solve the problems in our world today. If you’ve been paying any attention to the world lately, you know that there’s a lot of them. Most of which can be solved by engineering. 

One of these big problems is climate change. This term refers to the shifts in temperature, weather and atmosphere. One of these “shifts” is called global warming, or the increase of Earth's average temperature.

This increase might not seem like such a big deal at first - to be fair it's just one or two degrees. But these degrees can have catastrophic repercussions on our environment, our ecosystem and us too. 

One good example of this would be the seasons. If you live in a coastal area you’re probably experiencing this firsthand. Lately, hurricanes are becoming a common occurrence during the summer and in general the weather is a lot more unpredictable. But it's not only the number of hurricanes increasing, the strength of them is increasing as well.

In fact, according to the ACE Index ( Accumulated cyclone energy - measures frequency of hurricanes during hurricane season) the number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes have nearly doubled.

Not only that, but statistically there has been drastic differences in the amount of rainfall, drought, and heat waves. And it's only getting worse, “studies indicate that extreme weather events such as heat waves and large storms are likely to become more frequent or more intense with human-induced climate change” (EPA). 

There’s a key phrase in that sentence, “human-induced.” Climate changes have always existed on Earth, experiencing periods of extreme cold and heat. Most notably, there are the 5 significant ice ages that have occurred throughout Earth’s history. All 5 of these ice ages occurred due to natural occurrences and the rate at which the temperature changed occurred much slowly.

This means that the living organisms - the flora and fauna - had time to adapt and evolve to the changing temperatures. But, because of human interventions, that rate of change is a lot more dramatic and sudden, which means that animals and plants aren’t able to adapt in time.

While us humans can put on a jacket when it's too cold or go inside our AC houses when it's too hot, other species don’t have that luxury.

So, that was a quick go-through of what is happening in our world today. But, that is by no means a thorough analysis of everything, so feel free to do your own research!

Now let's get back to the topic in hand. How do we solve this problem…

What is Sustainable Engineering?

In simple terms, sustainable engineering is the practice of designing and creating systems, structures and buildings that last for a long time, minimize its environmental impact and meet the needs of society. 

Sustainable engineering also encompasses the idea of “energy efficiency.” This entails the forms of renewable energy that we know of today such as solar, water and wind. Developing technologies like these are vital because they depend on renewable resources; resources that will never run out. On the other hand, nonrenewable resources like fossil fuels and gasoline are running out, and if we don’t find a way to effectively replace them… well things won’t be good,

Now let’s go into more detail about some of the emerging sustainable energy types!

Sustainable Energy Types

• Solar Energy

  • Efficiency of the solar panels; in 2010, the average silicon solar panel had an efficiency of around 15%, but now the efficiency is over 22% and some research panels have efficiencies of over 47% (Estad). 

    • This has been caused by recent imrpoved in soalr cell design, new materials and better manfacturing processes.

  • Solar Shingles: These panels were designed to look better then the normal solar panels, but they provide another advantage as well. These shingles use space a lot more effectively which helps make sustainable energy an option for everyone.

  • Pervoskite solar cells: These are thin-film devices that convert sunlight into electricity. Thee types of solar panels have shown a lot of progress with rapid increases in efficency: from 3% in 2009 to over 25% today.

  • Night Time: In 2016, a solar farm was developed in the Mojave Desert that could produce electricity at night.

• Wind Energy

  • Wind Turbines: New wind turbines are being produced that are made with light materials that are resistant to corrosion (Green City Times).

    • Change in turbine contruction. For example longer blades and taller towers help to collect more energy and take advantage of high altitude winds.

  • Some wind turbines have advanced technologies such as lasers to automatically pinpoint the direction of wind and adjust the turbines to optimize their energy production.

• Geothermal Energy

  • Geothermal energy is limited by geographical location which is why it is limited to only 1% of limited energy sources.

  • Has caught attention of companies because of next-generaltion geothermal energy.

  • This technology creates condition where geothermal nergy can be produced in locations that had little to no geothermal energy.

    • The US Department of energy found that could provide up to 120 gigawatts in the US by 2050.

    • MIT says that geothermal energy could meet the energy needs of the world.

      
      

• Hydropower

  • Mini hydro: Hydroprojects can be really expensive and geography canlimit this as well. Mini hydros provide a a great solution and is ideal for supplying energy to rural communities.

  • Fish-Friendly Infrastructure: Hydropower dams are often crticized for the impact onlocal ecosystems. A popular approach to this problem are fish ladders- a passages of stepped slopes that allow migrating fish to cross the dam.

  • Tidal Power: This type of renewabel energy is often treated as a sub section of hydropower. Tidal power can be collected by placign turbines in tidal streams or building dam-like barrages across rivers.

• Biofuels

  • Reduced Cost: Rapid advancements in biofuels have reduced the cost per gallow from $400,000 to $6 (Department of Energy).

  • Algae as a source of biofuel: Algae based bioufels are now being developed as it is availabe in multiple enviornments and is a very versatile resource.

  • Waste to energy: Conevrting trash into usable energy is another emerging process. It is based on coverting agricultural by-products, muncipal waste and solid waste into a range of biofuels.

    • A great example of this technology is pyrolysis, a high temperatuer process that can convert organic waste into many types of biofuels.

  • Synthetic Biology: Many biotechn giants and startups are working on develpoing GMO's (genetically modified organisms) that can otuperform in energy effciency and conversion.

Sustainable Structures

Sustainable buildings - or green builidings as some call it- are structures designed and constructed with a focus on minimizing enviornmental impact and maximing energy efficency all the while ensuring that the building serves its intended purpose. It is no exaggeration that those who design buildings like these have their work cut out for them.

But how do buildings be "green"? Well, a building can be sustainable through the materials that it is made out of. This not only means using materials that are safe for the enviornment, but ensuring that these materials that are sourced responsibly.

You can also make busineses more sustainable through the usage of sustainable energy systems -yes, those same systems that we discussed previously, aren't you glad we talked about them? But, this isn't as easy as it sounds. Often, if buisnesses want to use these enrgy systems, they would have to connect thier system to a outside source that utilizes sustainable energy or have to build the structures themselves- which can take a lot of time and effort - and arguably the most important thing - money.

They are also more subtle ways that a piece of architecture can be sustainable. One example of this passive style of sustainability is efficently using space so that you don't waste too much area, natural lighting and efficenty stormwater management.

Wrapping it Up

Ok, so we went through exactly what sustainable engineering is what and it looks like in real life. But, we have barely begun to scratch the surface of this type of engineering. This is a ever-evolving topic- one where discoverines and improvents are reguarly developed. Through this, we can utlize our advanced technology to tacke what - as most people consider- the biggest problem of our world today: climate change.