Green Jobs and the Ethics of Energy - Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability - page 142

ensure that grid systems balance out variable energy supply and meet demand.
Moreover, even though they may require new approaches to energy use, using these
sources should reduce safety risks and environmental impacts.
That is not to say it eliminates them. People fall off roofs putting up solar cells or
fall while installing wind turbine blades up towers. But the numbers are relatively
small (e.g. one survey reported 146 wind turbine-related fatalities in total, globally,
up to 2013) and are mostly limited to the construction phase. Catastrophic disasters
are unlikely in relation to solar and wind, although are possible with large hydro
projects. Indeed, as already noted, dam failure is one area where major disasters do
occur. The point is that no technology is entirely benign, but some are worse than
others. We need to select the ones we want, and for many environmentalists, while
small hydro and run of the river systems may be viable, large hydro is not on the list.
In addition to social dislocation resulting from inundating large areas when the res-
ervoirs for large hydro projects are fi lled, in some climates the biomass can collect
up behind hydro dams, rot and produce methane, a powerful greenhouse gas
(International Rivers 2014 ).
Given their potential impact on the local and regional ecosystem, large tidal bar-
rage projects are also seen as likely to be unviable environmentally, as well as hard
to integrate into grid systems, given that they produce large bursts of energy on a
lunar cycle, ill-matched to daily consumer demand cycles (Elliott 2010a ).
This is not the place for a detailed breakdown of the pros and cons of each renew-
able source (Elliott 2013 ). Biomass aside, they are, in operation, carbon-free, apart
from the energy used in construction of the energy conversion plant, and as Table 5.1
illustrates, they mostly have signifi cant advantages over the only other nonfossil
fuel option, nuclear power. The fossil options of course would score very poorly in
nearly all categories.
The overall message is that although some projects and some scales of technol-
ogy may not be viable, there is a wide range and type of very different technologies
using very different energy sources at a range of scales. We have to choose amongst
them.

3 Technological Choice

Environmental impact and health and safety issues will be amongst those infl uenc-
ing the choice of option, along of course with costs. We cannot escape economic
reality! Fortunately most of the new renewables are getting cheaper rapidly. Indeed
wind power is now competitive with conventional sources in some locations and PV
solar is expected to be soon. See Table 5.2 for some cost comparisons. Some even
argue that renewables will replace conventional sources simply as a result of market
forces. But that may take time, and if we are to meet the climate change challenge,
we may need to move faster. Otherwise climate impacts could impose massive costs
on society, much more than the cost of limiting it through mitigation measures
(Stern 2006 ).