Carbon Emission into the Atmosphere - Lab Report Example

The most affected areas include Africa yet they are the least producers of carbon in the atmosphere. It is for this purpose that we formed a group of three students to come up with an energy wedge that is likely to tackle this problem squarely and at all angles. Our energy wedge is mainly concerned with the efficient utilization of energy and the use of renewable sources as the major active ways of reducing carbon emissions by the year 2055.

Results and Discussions
Faced with only two solutions either maintaining the current emission of carbon in the next 50 years or reducing the production of carbon in the atmosphere by a similar amount of time, we opted to build our wedge based on the practical reduction of carbon in the atmosphere by half for the next 50 years. This option was opted for the various reasons of changing environmental conditions and the sudden changes in technology that demand the use of carbon energy (Levy, 2010).

The world is required to reduce atmospheric carbon from the current 8 billion tons per year by half hence ensuring only 200 billion tons by the year 2055. This is only possible by increasing sufficient use of transport. This is mainly by adopting efficient fuel engines in terms of motor vehicles. Another way is by reducing the distance traveled while at the same time ensuring efficiency in construction and building hence reducing electricity use. This is possible by utilizing solar energy and using materials that conserve energy during winter.
The use of renewable sources of energy is our next energy wedge which aims at using sources in the environment that do not produce carbon in the atmosphere. The use of solar energy is just one of the means. Using wind-generated electricity is already in use in many countries in the world. In addition to this forest, conservation, and soil storage are also means through which carbon emissions can be reduced. Lakes, rivers, forests, and soils absorb atmospheric carbon from the atmosphere (UNEP, 2007). The group believes that if the above energy wedge proposal is implemented then the world is likely to achieve its objectives.

Conclusion
According to the worksheet above, taxpayers failed to recognize the importance of our energy wedge and hence they felt they would pay more if the energy wedge were implemented. Read More