Louie King
Suggest the Possible Environmental Consequences of the Changes in Electricity consumption Shown. (10)
Due to many different factors, our consumption of electricity as a planet is going to fluctuate in the future. Using figure 1 I will explain some of the reasons as to why this is.
For starters the graph shows tripled growth in the worlds electricity use by 2050 which will obviously have some effects on the environment, we will need this energy to cater for the populations exponential growth and this in itself will have monumental effects on the environment as more resources and space is used by the human population meaning animals and ecosystems will suffer.
The graph shows an increase in renewable energies such as wind and solar which will be used more and more as fossil fuel reserves (gas, oil and coal) deplete further. Wind farms are not minor projects and require a lot of machinery for minimal power, an example of this is the north Kent wind farm which only generates enough power for 200000 homes despite it costing £9 billion to build. The sheer number of wind farms would affect ecosystems particularly out to sea and the same can be said for solar panels as areas of forest may have to be cleared to make room for them. We would see the vast majority of these solar plants in Africa which would obviously drastically alter the landscape.
The fact that fossil fuels like oil and gas are levelling off could be considered a good thing for the environment because this would mean there would be no more oil spills or disasters like the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010. Unfortunately this lack of easily accessible oil and gas will lead to us having to extract more tar sands which entails clearing vast amounts of forests and other ecosystems which are carbon sinks. With coal being the least sparse fossil fuel (210 years of use left) this will lead to us