Poster

Poster ideas.... Renewable energy is an important factor in our future, economically, politically, and environmentally. It impacts our forgien policy (petropolitics). More people need to be educated about it because it affects everybody that lives on this planet. There are multiple forms of renewable energy like solar, wind, hydrogen, geothermal, and biomass. I chose to focus on geothermal and biomass because they are the least acknowledged forms of renewable energy. If we invest in renewable energy, we could reverse and prevent global warming and pollution. Fossil fuels are a finite resource, yet we need immense amounts of energy to have a functioning society. Alternatives to fossil fuels are a key factor to our worlds well-being. Humans have the responsibility of take care of this earth and the creatures that live on it. Renewable energy can help us do just that.

Biomass is a form of renewable energy that converts plant matter such as trees, grasses, agricultural residue, or algae into fuel. Biomass is so important because there is a finite amount of oil and we will eventually run out of it. So many things we using every single day depend on fuel to work so if we run out of oil then society would not be able to function. Also, it could decrease our countries dependency on other countries for oil. America is in a competion with every other country to create renewable energy. If we invent this new technology then it would give us a huge advantages economically, politically, and environmentally.

Plants that need fewer nutrients to grow are better suited for making biofuels. Plants with high fertilizer requirements because then we don’t have to put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to make fertilizer. Bamboo is a perfect example because it grows quickly without many nutrients. Corn is not a good choice because it needs more nutrients and it conflicts with our food demands. To make fertelizers there is a terammendous amount of petroleum that is used to make it. You need petroleum is used to make the fertelizer, spread it on crops, and to process the petroleum. Different plants are used to make bio fuels. For example in Brazil they make biofuels out of sugar because it is a primary crop there.

What makes using fossil fuels so bad is that in prehistoric times the environment was a high carbon dioxide environment. Fossil fuels are the carbon dioxide that was in the living things during that time. Now when we burn these fuels old carbon dioxide is released back into the environment. This creates an unbalance in the levels of gases in our atmosphere. It also does not help that we are quickly deforesting our planet. Plants need carbon dioxide like we need oxygen. When we take away the rain forest the plants then they don’t take away When you put all that carbon dioxide found in oil back into the environment it destroys our atmosphere with green house gases. Green house gases are the gases that make this planet warm. They absorb and edmit radiation into heat energy. Carbon dioxide is a green house gas that is becoming too common. The abundance of carbon dioxide is heating up the earth to a hotter temperature than usual.

Geothermal energy taps deep under ground to extreme heat. We release the steam in geothermal reservoirs to turn a turbine which creates energy. In the future buildings could get energy from the ground beneath them. Many power plant use steam to create energy. They boil water by using finite fossil fuels. The heat that is produced from the core of our earth is natural. You can pump water down into the ground to produce steam multipul times while you can only use fossil fuels to make steam once.