Final Post for Knowledge Check

     Importing goods can have a significant impact on the amount of energy a country consumes; for example an apple that is grown in the US will use much less energy to get it to the store than an apple that is from say New Zeeland.  We can represent the amount of energy an apple contains by how much it takes to import it from a different country and compare it to getting it in season in the US.

    A normal Gala Apple contains about 80 kcals; this is always the energy out of the apple.  An apple in season embodies the cost of growing, picking, and moving the apples; the best case scenario would be moving the apples a few miles and the worst case would be moving them across a state.  For the sake of simplicity, I will estimate the miles a load of apples to be driven in season to be 100.  Let’s compare this with importing apples all the way from New Zeeland.  The distance from New Zeeland to America is roughly 7800 miles.  The apples have to travel 7.8 times the distance than they would have in the United States.  We could come to the conclusion that apples imported out of season embody roughly 7.8 times the energy of an apple in season.  But, would the United States be better off without apples in the off season just for this purpose?  Aren’t there places that we could grow them year-round?  Yes, while we may be able to actually grow them year-round here, it would cost much more to keep them stored at the right temperature and prevent them from going bad; it would just be bad economics to not import these goods if we have to have them year-round.  As for not having them in off season, this will probably never happen as the demand for them is so high in the US; the market speaks for itself and this will not change no matter how much energy is consumed getting them here.  

    This concept goes along with the question of whether or not a country can grow economically without increasing energy use.  This is a hard thing to say, but, with new renewable technologies, I believe it is the direction we have to head in.  For this to happen, large investments must be made for renewable and sustainable energy; big corporations and consumers need to both get on board.  This is not something that will happen if one person does it while everyone else sits back and doesn’t improve the technology.  Two big consumptions in the US can be targeted: transportation and heating and cooling of buildings.  For example, when new buildings are put up, the energy to heat the building could be geothermal instead of electricity; this may be a bit optimistic, but it would definitely cut down the costs in the long run.  For transportation, high speed rail systems can be built to reduce our dependency on gasoline and more hybrid model cars can be put into circulation.  The auto industry is definitely heading in this direction with the MPG standards for cars being set very high by the government which takes effect in a few years.

    The sustainability of the United States is definitely a priority and can be obtained through technological advances; in particular if the efficiencies of cars and heating and cooling can be improved by half, the country will almost have reached a sustainable energy plan using such energy sources as nuclear, tidal, hydro, waste, wood, solar and other renewable energy sources.  Again, it would be naive to think this can happen very quickly, but, over the course of 50 years, it is very attainable as long as the big corporations are on board; for now, it seems as if they are mostly due to government regulations taking effect in the coming years.