• Question: Even if we produce energy with minimal pollution, won’t more energy use incur a greater, more devastating environmental impact?

    Asked by Jo Wilson to Andrew, Dona, Liena, Sandra, Stevie on 9 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Andrew Allan

      Andrew Allan answered on 9 Nov 2015:

      This is a really interesting question. More energy being used, means we have to convert more natural resources into a form of energy that we can use, like electricity.

      There are also implications from the resources used and research done to develop and implement a new technology, and also some environmental impact as well from installing the new devices. I believe that in time, new clean energy solutions will enable us to use more energy without a devastating impact.

    • Photo: Steven Wray

      Steven Wray answered on 10 Nov 2015:

      Your statement is correct for a “business as usual” approach where we just keep getting energy from the sources we currently do.

      However if we could generate all of that energy from sustainable or, even better, renewable energy then the environmental impact people have on the world should reduce!

    • Photo: Liena Vilde

      Liena Vilde answered on 11 Nov 2015:

      In GB the electricity demand has actually been reducing. This is partly because of the economic crisis around 2007 when people started being more careful about how much energy they use and how much it costs, but also because most of the new light bulbs, gadgets and appliances are a lot more energy efficient than the older ones.

      Electricity demand may increase if people start buying a lot of electric cars and change their gas boilers to electric heating or heat pumps, but this will in turn reduce the use of other forms of energy/fuel in homes like gas and petrol. Because of this it’s important to generate electricity sustainabily and from renewable sources like Steven said, so we don’t just burn the gas we save at home in the power stations to generate more electricity, but use nuclear, solar wind etc. instead for electricity generation.

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