Why Does Engineering Need to Change to Accommodate Sustainability Goals?
Engineers Australia offers a good guideline for engineers to figure out their role in reaching sustainability goals.
Engineers Australia believes that engineers play a fundamental role in maintaining and improving life by providing infrastructure and systems that meet the needs of humanity.
In fact, sustainability is entrenched in EA in that the EA Code of Ethics requires members to use their knowledge, skills and expertise to benefit their community by creating engineering solutions for a sustainable future.
EA points out many aspects of the engineering process that can assist engineers in reaching global sustainability goals – one solution is employing a sustainable procurement process.
These kinds of procurements would aim to reduce the adverse effects on the environment and positively influence social and economic chain values. Procurement can include sourcing of materials, effective waste disposal and the use of renewables.
According to the EA guide, sustainable procurement will involve working with a supply chain that is slanted toward environmental benefit. To do this, engineers need to:
- Ensure equipment and material is from sustainable sources and if possible local
- Make sure no part of equipment and material is from exploitive practices that strengthen social disadvantage free from participation in slave labor or human rights abuses
- That equipment and material has a low eco-footprint and didn’t have to travel far to reach the site
- That equipment and material is made from recycled items or goods or can be recycled in the future
- That engineering materials is toxin-free
- That it is locally sourced to lessen the carbon footprint
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW4fPXzX1S0
What are the challenges and some of the solutions?
1) Waste
The EA also subscribes to a waste hierarchy that engineers should proactively use. The waste hierarchy is put in place to reduce waste for the next generation. Here is the hierarchy:
- Avoid: Any design processes that generate waste
- Reduce: Minimize hazardous materials produced.
- Reuse: Materials should be reused on-site or materials should have extended life due to reutilization and alternative uses.
- Recycle: This creates new products or allows separate materials to be used again.
- Recovery of energy: Using alternative energy like water or wind.
- Treatment: Waste should be treated to be stable and not expel hazardous toxins. It should also have no environmental risk.
2) Energy from different sources
Green energy comes with pitfalls, but one of the latest solutions is floating wind farms.
MunmuBaram, a joint venture between Shell and CoensHexicon is developing and operating, a 1.3 GW floating offshore wind project in South-East Korea near the city of Ulsan.
In late 2021 MunmuBaram secured its first electricity business license which is a step closer to delivering a commercial-scale floating offshore wind farm.
The MunmuBaram project will be developed in phases and is expected to generate up to 4.2 terawatt-hours (TWh) of clean electricity every year once it’s completed.
A new paper Green Energy Technology states that building energy consumption has risen, and only continue to do so as populations increase. One-way engineers are saving energy is the utilization of natural light which can reduce thermal accumulation in buildings.
Using glass effectively provide enough and efficient daylight illuminance into the interior of buildings and decrease heat transmission through building frames. The conservation of
energy consumptions with just thorough design is massive. Add to that solar power and off-grid technologies and entire buildings will remain sustainable ecosystems for years.
Waste can also be turned into electricity. One new example from 2021 is a paper titled Energy from Discarded Wool and Fish Scales. These raw materials are readily available and usually disposed of as waste. Both these waste stocks are made up of proteins that show ionic and electrochemical potential according to the paper.
The researchers built an electrochemical cell and powered it with scales and wool. The research showed the voltage generated from a single cell could be multiplied. The electrolytes from the waste also showed an increase in voltage and high energy retention of up to 120 minutes. This kind of waste management can see self-sufficient electricity in small buildings or farms and fisheries where the waste will be bountiful.
3) Incorporating Hydrogen
Fuel cell technologies and hydrogen energy are being increasingly viewed as essential decarbonization options across the United States and around the world for a wide range of sectors, including transportation, goods and people movement, power generation, energy storage, natural gas blending, marine propulsion, aviation, heating, steelmaking, and other industrial applications.
From trucks to forklifts to be used on-site, hydrogen technologies are already experiencing a rollout.
The 2021 paper Analysis of hydrogen use as an energy carrier in transport shows that in Europe 32% of emissions of CO₂ is due to vehicles.
The transition from hydrocarbon fuel to renewable energy requires the introduction of new energy units in vehicles. The deployment of fuel-cell vehicles soon for the commercial taxi- and truck fleets used within government by EU nations and the commercialization of forklifts already underway in many first-world nations show how viable hydrogen vehicles will be in a fleet or used as company vehicles.
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Source: YouTube UN Climate Change
