...a. Fossil fuel is a broad term for buried combustible geological deposits of organic material such as plants and animals which has decayed converting it into crude oil, coal, natural gas or heavy oils cause by exposure to heat and enormous amounts of pressure over millions of years. b. Fossil fuels are formed by the enormous amount of pressure the organic material is under of millions of years and as it decays it converts into different fossil fuels such as the ones listed above. a. Three examples of fossil fuels are crude oil, coal and natural gas b. In Australia, crude oil is refined to make up petrol and diesel which fuels most of our vehicles and without it we wouldn’t be able to run cars and buses to transport people around. A small percentage,...
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... Weighting: 25% The concept of renewable energy within Australia, particularly Solar Energy has a huge scope of serious development and benefit to our future energy needs. Our country to this date has the highest average solar radiation per square meter of any country in the world (Geoscience Australia, 2012). Even our solar radiation in the southern regions has a higher overall radiation than countries like Germany, who are one of the most developed nations in terms of Solar Energy. Since late 2012, 10% of Australian energy relies on renewable sources of which 0.03% is Solar (T. Flannery, V.Sahajwalla, 2012). Although this percentage is small, due to the continual evolution of the concept and the current state of the economy and particularly the feed-in tariffs schemes; Solar Energy in Australia is becoming progressively affordable. The current state of Solar Energy in Australia is advancing, though obstacles such as ecological impacts & risks, the heritage & cultural boundaries placed within Australia and the production disadvantages of solar systems itself act as large limitations in the development of the concept. Developments in Solar Energy facilities for large areas such as towns require a large amount of land. This is largely the case for the use of solar photovoltaic systems (AAS, 2010). Although within Australia, around 18% of mainland is considered desert and...
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...Climate change has meant a renewed interest in nuclear power as a means of providing for the world’s energy needs. Discuss the implications for Australia’s mining industry? Australia is the world’s largest coal exporter and has the second largest deposit of coal in the world. Although the world is currently in the throes of a global financial crisis, Australia’s economy one of the few in the developed world to stay afloat has been buoyed considerably by its exports industry, particularly that of coal. Despite Australia’s promise to reduce carbon emissions by 5% in accordance with its commitment to the Kyoto protocol, the coal industry has been lucky enough to avoid almost all penalties that other industries are set to receive under the proposed carbon emission trading scheme . This combined with Australia continuing to stall further international discussions on combating climate change has earned Australia the reputation of “A nation of climate sinners” . It is obvious that despite a lot of rhetoric on the importance of addressing climate change, the Australian government is not willing to commit to solving the global challenge of climate change to an appreciable degree while such a large part of the Australian economy is at stake. For the Australian government to fully commit to its promises on combating climate change, a way to free the Australian economy of its coal dependence needs to be found. The world is in a new era of energy production where it is no longer a question...
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...have diverse point of views regarding the safety and use of nuclear energy power plants. Australia is country which has developed something of an allergic reaction to any mention of uranium or nuclear energy. Though Australia has abundant sources of Uranium fuel and its known uranium resources are the world’s largest, still all of this nuclear fuel is exported to the countries around the world. Australia is few of the developed countries not using nuclear power. With the increasing energy costs for the general public and the modern industries being completely dependent on electricity, it’s time Australia needs to stop the using the fossil fuels as the main source of production of energy and think...
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...of the heat from escaping the atmosphere, which in turn causes change in climate. Some greenhouse gases are neutral but many of them are manmade. With the outstanding industrial development, more fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas are used and burnt, which release carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. Deforestation also produces a lot of carbon dioxide. In fact, many scientists believe that man's activities are making the natural greenhouse effect stronger. Indeed, due to the climate change, there are islands which have been evacuated. As the sea level rises and plants are poisoned, islanders are not able to live on the islands so that they need to leave their homeland and build homes in a new place. And it is believed that if the climate change continues as the scientists expect, many more will soon suffer the same fate. Moreover, there are three extreme cases that scientists are aware of for Earth's climate change. They are collapse of the Gulf Stream, the demise of the Amazon rain forests and the release of gas hydrates from the sea level. Some of them may eventually take place in the foreseeable future if the situation continues to be serious. For the purpose of fighting climate change, many countries start to use renewable energy instead of fossil fuels. For example, wind power has already taken off and is an established industry in Europe. France and Japan have reduced their dependence on coal by the development of nuclear power, while others such...
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...Continental Drift A German geologist and meteorologist named Alfred Wegener introduced a theory in 1915 that the Earth’s crust is slowly drifting using fossil records as his supporting evidence. Wegeners idea was Earth was one big continent 200 million years ago, he called it Pangaea, which means “All earth”. Albert Wegener published a book about this theory in 1915 called, On the Origin of Continents and Oceans. An Austrian geologist named Eduard Seuss was the first to find that there had once been a land bridge that connecting South America, Africa, India, Australia, and Antarctica, he named the large piece of land Gondwanaland, the southern part of the huge continent Pangaea after it broke up during the Jurassic period. Seuss’s theory is supported by the fossil plants that are found throughout India, South America, southern Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. Fossils of the first marine reptiles known as Mesosaurus that are even older than dinosaurs were found in South America and South Africa. With the discovery of the fossil in two different locations across water and the study of sedimentation and fossil plant in these southern continents led a South African scientist named Alexander duToit to supporting the idea that at one point all of the continents were once together and have drifted apart like Albert Wegener theorized. In 1960, a theory was made explaining the movement of the Earth’s plates and explains the causes of volcanoes, oceanic trenches, mountain...
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...Fossil fuel subsidies 'killing UK's low-carbon future' £2.6bn yearly incentive favours investment in carbon at the expense of green energy, says thinktank theguardian.com, Thursday 7 November 2013 07.00 GMT Oil tanker being moved into position at Fawley Refinery in Southampton. Photograph: Peter Titmuss/Alamy Britain is "shooting itself in the foot" by subsidising its coal, oil and gas industries by $4.2bn (£2.6bn) a year even as government reviews the "green levies" on energy bills which support energy efficiency and renewable power, according to a report published on Thursday. The figures from the Overseas Development Institute suggest that Britain is now the world's fifth largest subsidiser of fossil fuels after the US, Russia, Australia and Germany despite commitments to cut carbon emissions and reduce "perverse" fossil fuel subsidies. In 2011, the latest year for which data is available, Britain gave tax breaks of £280m to oil and gas producers and reduced VAT on fossil fuels by several billion pounds, says the thinktank's report. Rich countries have committed to phase out "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies but the ODI figures, drawn from the International energy agency, OECD and other sources, suggest global subsidies to fossil fuel producers totalled $523bn a year in 2011 – dwarfing subsidies to renewable energies. For every $1 spent to support renewable energy, another $6 were spent on fossil fuel subsidies, says the report. "They are subsidising the very...
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...Introduction Australia has uncertain rainfall and most parts of it have droughts, and has increasing population in large cities in recent years (Legislative Council Secretariat 2015). These conditions pose a threat to water supply. In addition, it is more and more limited and improper to build water pipes to draw water from dams and reservoirs. Due to these facts, seawater desalination plants have been constructed to ensure the water supply in Australia’s large population urban centers. Seawater desalination mainly uses membrane process to desalinate seawater rather than thermal process, because reverse-osmosis (RO) in membrane process consumes less energy, and in the RO desalination, seawater is divided into two streams: one with very high dissolved salts and the other one with less salts (Gary Crisp, E.A. (Bob) Swinton and Neil Palmer* 2010). However, seawater desalination has its drawbacks: energy intensive, generation of greenhouse gases, impacts of desalination discharge on marine environment and its high operating costs. These issues are associated with Australia’s environment and economy (Reza Dashtpour and Sarim N. Al-Zubaidy 2012), therefore it is necessary to cope with these problems with the development and improvement of the membrane process technology. This essay will introduce RO seawater desalination, discuss both advantages and disadvantages, some environmental issues and give policies about how government should regulate seawater desalination plant in Australia. Seawater...
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...Regional foods, that are produced are made up of crops (wheat, barley oats) meat, (beef, pork, lamb, venison) livestock products (milk) agriculture (vegetables, orchard trees, fruit trees, grapes) poultry, and aquaculture. Almonds grown in Willunga are the finest in Australia, Olive oil being produced is now compared to Italy’s finest, and talented bakers produce real bread from long lost but recovered recipes, our cheese makers create authentic French-style goat’s curd and feta cheeses, or thick rich Jersey milk cream and traditional cheddars. This is why so many hospitality businesses are buying and using food obtained from the Fleurieu Peninsula. It also has to do with what is called the Carbon Footprint “The amount of carbon dioxide emitted due to the consumption of fossil fuels by a particular person, or transport.” When Food is transported from interstate by semi-trailer or overseas by shipping the engine burns fossil fuel this creates CO2 (carbon dioxide) which is emitted into the atmosphere these greenhouse gas are then thought to contribute global warming There is strong evidence that the warming of the Earth over the last half-century has been caused largely by human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels. In 2002, a workshop was held by Food South which included members from the Fleurieu region, these members were motivated to explore developing a regional food group. A feasibility study was performed and it was agreed...
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...policy to reduce such emission. Firstly, development of renewable energy can help to reduce greenhouse emission. Furthermore, there are various technology and method to reduce carbon emission on the atmosphere. Finally, government policy such as carbon tax has been implemented to combat this issue. Firstly, energy generated by alternative means other than fossil fuel has been developed to reduce carbon emission. The term renewable energy can be describes as a power generated from resources that can be replenished indefinitely (Australian Renewable Energy Agency, 2011a, internet). Energy became major part in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions due to the fact that five sixth of global carbon dioxide deposit originated from energy generation (Victor, 2011, 116). Clean energy such as wind turbines, hydroelectric plants, and solar energy has been implemented in many countries. For instance, China has invested 45.5 billion dollars on clean energy in 2011 and currently at first global position of implementing those energies (Flannery, Beale, & Hueston, 2012, internet). Renewable energy may be able to completely replaced fossil based energy as the development of...
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...needs to be seriously addressed. The problem is that global warming is increasing at a significant rate. According to NASA’s article entitled “Global Warming”, global warming is the unusual “...rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature,” (2014, para. 1). Our planet, Earth, has had its temperature changed a significant amount of times throughout history. These changes were due to receiving more or less sunlight from the shifts in the Earth’s orbit. However, scientists have found that over the past century another source has influenced the change of Earth’s temperature: mankind. Scientists from NASA’s Earth Observatory suggests that these significant changes are primarily due to the release of greenhouse gases as people burn fossil fuels, given the fact that the rate of temperature increase nearly doubled in the last 50 years (GlobalWarming, 2014, para. 3). Greenhouse gases allow sunlight to shine into the atmosphere freely. When the sunlight strikes the Earth’s surface, some of it reflects back to space as heat. The greenhouse gases absorbs this heat and traps it in the atmosphere keeping the Earth at a suitable temperature for humans to live in. There are various amounts of greenhouse gases but carbon dioxide, oxygen, methane and nitrous oxide seem to be more dominant (Hunt, 2011, online). However, when too much of the gas is released then too much of the heat gets trapped within the atmosphere. This leads to a warmer planet. Scientists have studied and proven how having...
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...Issues Week 11: Project Part 4 Tamara Taylor November 30, 2013 Energy: Renewable Energy In the Midwest the average annual temperatures increased over the past several decades. The Midwest includes around 66 million Americans in the following cities of Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit, Milwaukee, Kansas city (which is the area I live in), Cleveland, Minneapolis, and St. Paul to name a few. Snow and ice are arriving later in the fall and melting earlier in the spring. It is said that heavier downpours now occur twice as much as they did a century ago. While conducting my research for this paper I found an organization that was very interesting. The Asia-Pacific Partnership or know as APP, “is a non-treaty partnership established by Australia, India, Japan, China, South Korea and the United States in July 2005” (World Nuclear Association, 2011). By 2007, Canada joined the APP. The partnership objectives would include working together with the aid of other private companies to expand markets for the use of more cleaner efficient energy technologies. These technologies would include renewable energy and to provide a lower cost clean power to areas without access to modern energy services. The short term and long term focus of UNFCCC negotiations is the ultimate objective of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. It focuses on the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrated in the atmosphere that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interferences with the climate system...
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...misinformation by both sides of the argument;, the energy producers and the environmentalists. Any honest appraisal of the future of global energy must begin with a full and balanced understanding of resources and their uses. The earth provides us with two basic natural energy resources, fossil fuels and renewable flows of energies stemming from the heat of the sun, as solar energy and the winds which circle the planet, as well as the movement of water and the internal energies of the planet (geo-thermals). Fossil fuels are the products of the conversion of biomass, which, through fossilization, yields coal, oil and natural gas. Coal became the world’s most important solid fuel during the 1890s, when their energy content surpassed that of the traditional fuels of the day (wood and crop residues). Today, coal provides less than 25 percent of the world’s total primary energy supply. A ton of coal has an energy equivalent to about ½ ton of crude oil. The energy content of all crude oils and liquids produced by their refining is very similar: about twice as large as that of coal and almost three times as large as that of cord wood. Crude oil became the world’s most important primary fuel during the 1970s and now it provides about 40 percent of the world’s total primary energy supply. Natural gases are usually mixtures of methane, ethane and propane. Their energy content (under normal atmospheric pressure) is only 1/1000 that of crude oil. Compared to oils, they are also much...
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...Australia and New Zealand are two regions with a bundle of nonrenewable recourses and now days we need renewable recourses more than ever. Many countries are in the process of developing renewable energy sources. What is a renewable resource? Believe it or not renewable resource is any natural resource that can replenish itself naturally over time. My plan for Australia and New Zealand is to develop as much renewable recourses as possible to make these two regions become prominent and an example to other countries, islands, and regions. Australia has the highest solar radiation per square meter of any continent and consequently some of the best solar energy in the world. Due to Australia’s high solar radiation; solar panels would be the complete...
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...atmosphere. The use and burning of carbon related fossil fuels to produce energy by industries across the world has been documented as the main source of the large amounts of carbon dioxide. Schafer (2002) describes that carbon dioxide us product released by all the living systems and in most cases,...
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