Earlier this month, President Obama introduced his national budget for next year which involved a chunk of it aiming towards addressing climate issues. Obama’s $3.9 trillion document assigns an estimated $1 trillion for unrestricted spending across both defense and non-defense, with the remaining going to required programs like Medicare and Social Security. Included in that $1 trillion, Obama has carved out diverse programs to advance towards his climate action plan he declared last year. Granted by briefing documents released by the White House, the President stated that he would spend $1 billion to gain a sharpened understanding of the calculated effects of climate change, to stimulate local action to diminish future hazards, and to reserve technology and infrastructure that will be more flexible with climate change.

The focal point of Obama’s plan is continued funding for regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to cut carbon dioxide emissions from the nation’s power plants. The agency has already revealed the rules for new plants, and should release its rules for existing plants in June of this year. Gina McCarthy, the administrator of the EPA, stated last year that the EPA will present suggestions for current coal plants, accountable for around 40% of greenhouse gas emissions by June of this year. She also announced that the federal government was acting to cut down methane from natural gas drilling and additional manufacturers, which are a rapid growing cause of emissions. “It is by far the largest industry sector in terms of its generation of greenhouse gases,” she said. McCarthy admitted that the EPA could not carry out all of the cutbacks in greenhouse gas emissions essential to refrain from the most catastrophic consequences of climate change on its own.
In the budget, there is a great deal on climate and green energy issues. One major component is clean energy tax credits. These involve a enduring continuation of the production tax credit for wind (a cost of $19.2 billion over ten years) which concluded at the end of 2013. Along with that, there is $401 million over that time period for different fuel trucks tax credits, and $1.7 billion for cellulosic biofuel. Obama also wants to cut fossil fuel tax breaks with the budget cutting about $4 billion in tax breaks that are now accessible to the oil and natural gas industries, and another $3.9 billion in tax preferences for coal. Last month, the President announced a climate resiliency endowment and said he would ask Congress for $1 billion to fund new technology and infrastructure to get ready for climate change, help for communities, and new research– which the budget makes good promise on. Another point is that Obama wants $2 billion to completely fund a new fleet of weather satellites for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Furthermore, he even pushes for clean energy technology and claims that The National Science Foundation would receive $362 million below the budget to examine leading forms of green energy.

In 2015, overall the budget will have increased funding for the Energy Department to $27.9 billion. This would result in an increase of 2.6 percent over this year. That contains $355 million to strengthen the robustness of the electrical grid and fuel transportation infrastructure. It’s deemed pretty unlikely that Congress will pass Obama’s budget. The Union of Concerned Scientists see eye to eye with Obama’s preferences. Angela Anderson, the directors of the group’s Climate Energy Program stated “the president is confronting members of Congress with a reality they need to face: climate change is already hurting us economically. “Resilience funding is essential to confront the consequences of climate change already being felt. Beyond that, Congress needs to get serious about reducing the risks of the changing climate. Unless and until we start cutting emissions that cause global warming, the problems communities are facing, and their price tags, will continue to grow”. In his budget, President Obama highlighted some of these favorable steps, particularly renewing the production tax credit for wind energy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-to-propose-1-billion-to-prepare-for-climate-change/2014/02/14/d18d3712-95a5-11e3-afce-3e7c922ef31e_story.html

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/05/3366331/obama-2015-budget-climate

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/18/epa-obama-climate-change-plan-congress

The documentary Pandora’s Promise explores the idea that in the next couple decades, we will need to double or triple the amount of energy production. Director Robert Stone highlights how this is substantial in order for billions of people to carry themselves out of poverty and pursue living modern lives. One of the producers says “assuming that the world continues to develop and that China, India and Brazil become rich countries over the next half century or century, how much energy is the world going to use? When you start running those numbers, it is a sobering exercise.” He states that if we continue using energy the way we use it now, that we will double the amount of energy we use by 2050 and that by the end of the century, we will triple or quadruplet it.

The abundant expenditures of building nuclear power plants is a essential restricting determinant for the energy source. In spite of gathering excessively better subsidies than renewable energy from the introduction of its advancement, nuclear energy remains to not be competitive with fossil fuels in the United States and new wind energy is predicted to be cheaper than the new nuclear generation. The film claims that “to be anti-nuclear is basically to be in favor of burning fossil fuels”.

Only if the source of new energy is clean and non-CO2 emitting, the chance taken of bringing about a destructive global climate calamity is all but positive. The importance of this crisis, and the drawbacks of frequently projected solutions, have left the prevailing environmental development dangling between apocalyptic contemplation and sheer disorder. The documentary shows how crucial electricity is to have and how without it, the lifespan is much shorter. Clinics, schools, refrigerators, etc all rely on electricity and how the tiniest amount of watts can make just the difference. If we want to stabilize emissions at some reasonable level, almost all of that energy has to be clean energy. We have to not only develop a clean energy infrastructure to replace the fossil fuel infrastructure we have, but we have to create yet another one or two between now and 2050 and 2100 in order to reduce our emissions to stabilize the climate.

For the generator experiment we did in class, the equipment we used was one generator (magnet that moves back and forth inside a coil of wire), one voltage probe, and one NXT adaptor. We used the NXT and Labview VI programs and used excel to calculate the results into scatter charts. We used these supplies to measure the voltage output of the generator. In the lab, we had to equate the number of shakes of the generator in a thirty second time interval with the voltages (or more specifically the sum of the square of the voltages) that the generator produces. We were able to prove that the more shakes, the greater the voltage output.

The first day we did the experiment, we did a less amount of shakes (0 shakes, 18 shakes, 24 shakes, and 28 shakes) to detect the voltages. The next class we decided to switch up the amount of shakes to 0 shakes, 20 shakes, 40 shakes, and 60 shakes. Below is a linear scatter chart made on excel that displays the results we made when squaring the sum of the voltages from these shakes (0, 20, 40, & 60).

In this lab we used a shaking a tube that has a magnet which travels back and forth through a coil of wires. The lab also tested Faraday’s Law which states that changing magnetic fluxes through coiled wires generate electricity (currents and voltage). This is because the greater the change in magnetic flux, the greater are the currents and voltages. We were able to demonstrate that the faster you shake the tube, the greater the generated voltage. Furthermore, we were able to show that no matter how the change is produced, the voltage will be generated.

Energy sustainability is about discovering the balance between a thriving economy, the urgency for environmental preservation and social responsibilities so we can supply an enhanced quality of life for current and future generations. Renewable resources such as wind, sunlight and biomass maintain a source of sustainable energy. This lab relates to sustainability because of how researchers are implementing new technologies to existing plant platforms and cultivating solutions to lower the cost of electricity and increase adaptability and reliability. Energy sustainability can stimulate technical innovation with an environmentally alert mindset. In conclusion, energy sustainability is coming to terms with the needs of the present without compromising the demands for the future.