On: Lecture: Energy I

Jukka Paatero, Teaching Research Scientist at Aalto University gave us a lecture about: Sustainable Energy Technologies and Resources, and a few days later held a workshop session about Energy lobbing.

One of the charts that Mr. Paatero took up was Gapminders statistics on CO2 emissions compared with energy usage per person in the world. I had to take a better look at it and understood that the logarithms had messed me up a bit. Looking at it linearly it really showed how much more Arab Emirates produce CO2 than Norway, even if the usage per person is approximately the same (huge amounts). Still the alignment shows that when energy usage grows, also CO2 emissions grow.

There seems to be quite some coal and a lot of sun, but the question is how to turn from coal to green energy and is that even smart or do people need the plants for food, but how to balance all of that? More and more people want more energy, and others should slow down the usage. I've been ofteh thinking if it is every individuals responsibility to cut energy usage, or if the state should intervene somehow, and what about companies who should check on their energy usage? And can countries with heavy industry be compared to countries without?

I think that instead of going with one big plan(t), many smaller ideas in different fields should be utilized. And then I think Fingrid should buy electricity from small producers, so that it would make sence to have an own wind turbine and produce a bit more than the house needs.

I also want to link here slides from a lecture about Sustainable energy flows, given by Samu Mielonen at the How to Change the World course.