This slideshow looks at how humanity can address the climate crisis while providing enough energy for our "needs."

1. The Energy Challenge
&
Sustainable Infrastructure

2. Environmental Engineering
Using the principles of engineering, soil science, biology and
chemistry, environmental engineers are concerned with:
1. protecting people from problems caused by
environmental damage (i.e. water pollution)
2. improving environmental quality
Their biggest responsibilities are to:
 prevent the release of harmful chemical and biological
contaminants into the air, water and soil
 detect pollutants and track them to their source
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3. Environmental Engineering
Specifically, they work on:
 recycling
 waste disposal
 public health
 air and water pollution
Environmental engineers work with new businesses and
industries to help them avoid, reduce, or capture the
pollutants they create
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4. The Climate – Energy Challenge
The bad news about climate change:
 It is unavoidable
 Any solution will be incomplete
 Reducing CO2 emissions to below absorption levels
will take prolonged actions over 50 years or more
 The climate will continue to respond to so much CO2:
 if emissions were reduced to zero today, it would
take more than 200 years to restore proper levels
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5. The Climate – Energy Challenge
The good news is that there are three promising categories
of human endeavors to mitigate climate change. Why isn’t
there one “silver bullet” solution?
Because Energy is used for a broad range of needs:
transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, household
Mitigation strategies must address:
 where the energy comes from
 where the energy is being used
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6. The Climate – Energy Challenge
Reduction of Energy Demand
This category involves restructuring society by either:
 investing in low-energy adaptations (such as efficient
public transportation systems)
 adopting energy-efficient technologies (in buildings, in
automobiles, and throughout the economy)
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7. The Climate – Energy Challenge
Reduction of Energy Demand
Much of this can be done with existing technologies, aka
the “low hanging fruit”: compact-fluorescent or LED
lighting; more efficient building designs
Technological improvements in energy efficiency can also
help: developing batteries for electric automobiles that are
economical, reliable, and broadly adopted
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8. The Climate – Energy Challenge
Non-Fossil Energy Systems
This category focuses on wind, solar, biomass, geothermal,
and nuclear energy systems
A critical challenge is creating base load power:
 wind and solar-generated electricity are intermittent and
struggle with energy storage (see hydro-storage 1 and 2)
 nuclear power is a great base load power, but safety,
storage, and waste issues must be addressed
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9. The Climate – Energy Challenge
Non-Fossil Energy Systems
There are high hopes that this category will see major
technological breakthroughs in the following areas:
 nuclear fusion (opposed to fission)
 inexpensive solar
 inexpensive fuel cells
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10. The Climate – Energy Challenge
Carbon Sequestration
Given the ubiquity and momentum of fossil fuels, the third
category of involves capturing CO2 when it’s emitted and
then storing it somehow
Capture can take place either by post-combustion
adsorption (attaching CO2 to other materials) or through
the design of the power plant itself
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11. The Climate – Energy Challenge
Carbon Sequestration
Storing: The U.S. Geological Survey agency is assessing two
major types: geological and biological
 Geological: storing vast quantities of CO2 in
underground repositories
 Biological: CO2 uptake through reforestation or
fertilization of marine phytoplankton
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“Radical” Climate Engineering
One aggressive, external
approach is to reduce Earth’s
incoming solar radiation with
reflectors orbiting in space or the
upper atmosphere.
Two big questions loom for all
such approaches:
1. How do we make it failsafe?
2. Who would control it?

13. Sustainable Infrastructure
The restoration and improvement of urban infrastructure is
one of the biggest challenges facing society in the near
future
The urban environment is a complex human-natural system
Our concern is creating or retrofitting the most resilient
systems
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14. Sustainable Infrastructure
Resilience: the capacity to maintain essential organization
and function in response to disturbances, or “how much
damage can a system withstand before radically changing?”
“Preferred” resiliency: the ability to adapt to disturbances
and radical changes with little negative impact
Resilience combined with sustainability seeks to
understand and design urban infrastructure in a way that
enhances human interactions with the environment
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15. Sustainable Infrastructure
There are several factors which must be considered when
planning and retrofitting sustainable cities:
Energy, Materials & Waste, Social Equity, Technology,
Shrinking Cities, Transportation, Water, Food, Buildings &
Neighborhoods, Work and Commuting, Power, Commerce,
Education
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16. Sustainable Infrastructure
Energy:
 The cost of energy has been subsidized both by
government incentives and unaccounted externalities
Materials & Waste:
 Processes will need to be created to manage harmful and
what’s long been considered “benign” waste
Social Equity:
 More attention needs to be paid to typically underserved
or exploited populations and integrating communities
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17. Sustainable Infrastructure
Technology:
 Will improve our ability to manage outputs & impacts:
“What gets measured gets managed”
Shrinking Cities:
 Rather than using a growth-oriented approach, cities
should be designed with green infrastructure
Transportation:
 Walkability reduces energy use and increases public
health; planning for mass and alternative transit modes
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18. Sustainable Infrastructure
Water: the Best water management practices for
sustainable cities would include:
 Green Roofs
 Downspouts, Rain Barrels and Cisterns
 Permeable Paving
 Natural Landscaping
 Filter Strips
 Bioinfiltration using Rain Gardens
 Drainage Swales
 Naturalized Detention Basins
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19. Sustainable Infrastructure
Food:
 Urban agriculture could be a solution to various issues
such as vacant and contaminated land and food deserts
Buildings & Neighborhoods:
 Houses will likely need to be smaller and zoning/HOA
regulations may need to accommodate higher density
 Promote building certification standards (i.e. LEED)
 Design neighborhoods that are safe, mixed income, and
stably integrated
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20. Building Certification Standards
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21. Sustainable Infrastructure
Work and Commuting:
 There’s a decreasing need to live near factories, so cities
become centers for entertainment and education
Power:
 Centralized power utilities become less necessary with
the rise of CCAs and localized energy production
Commerce:
 Will become more Internet based, small-scale, and “on-
demand” 21

22. Sustainable Infrastructure
Education:
 Classrooms will change radically with Internet, multi-
media, and artificial intelligence resources
Technological and communication advances could radically
shift the way our cities, and we, function:
 AI’s might help us manage our lives and reduce
extraneous purchases and wasteful activities
 We might be monitored to the point of creating a
“panopticon” or police state
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23. Sustainable Infrastructure
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Buildings have an enormous ecological footprint:

24. Sustainable Infrastructure
Green buildings provide economic benefits:
decreased operating costs, increased building value, return
on investment, occupancy ratio, and rent ratio
Green buildings provide social benefits:
protecting occupant comfort and health, better aesthetic
quality, less strain on local infrastructure, overall
improvement in quality of life
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25. Sustainable Infrastructure
Green buildings should be:
Ecologically Responsive, Healthy and Sensible, Socially Just,
Culturally Creative, Visually Attractive, Physically and
Economically Accessible, Evolutionary
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26. Sustainable Infrastructure
The U.S. EPA defines green building as “the practice of
creating structures and using processes that are
environmentally responsible and resource-efficient” (2010)
Sustainable buildings can reduce:*
 energy use by 24-50%
 carbon dioxide emissions by 33-39%
 water use by 40%
 solid waste by 70%
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27. Sustainable Infrastructure
The most sustainable building is one that is never built,
therefore the focus should be on:
 Retrofitting: updating the existing infrastructure to
contemporary needs
 Careful deconstruction: this allows materials to be either
reused or recycled
 A 1996 EPA analysis found that building-related
construction and demolition generated the equivalent
of 2.8 pounds of waste per person per day
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28. Sustainable Infrastructure
Green building should employ energy-saving features:
 Insulation
 High-performance Windows
 Sealing of Holes and Cracks
 Heating Ventilation and Air-conditioning (HVAC)*
 Passive Solar Design
 Lighting
 Water*
 Integrated Design*
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29. Cogeneration or
combined heat and
power (CHP) has
huge potential for
energy efficiency.
Heat and electrical
power are produced
simultaneously in a
single process.
image by
Jonnathan McForlan

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