Carbon-Neutral Cities: A Vision For the Future
Sustainable cities, such as Masdar, is a term that basically describes a self sustainable city which relies on green power sources. Using the sun’s energy in order to get power is gaining popularity day by day.
Powering Green Cities
One of the main advantages of solar energy is that it will help you save money while helping the environment. Using solar cities to supply power to entire regions at a fraction of the cost of fossil-fuel based electricity is the way to produce solar cities. By building large arrays of solar panels for energy sources the demand for power stations is greatly reduced or almost avoided.
At the level of the homeowner, solar panels generally used for solar water heaters have a lifespan of up to 25 years and at a rate of $4.30 or even less for 1 Watt of output, for a fifty Watt panel the cost is only $219. Of course, as technologies improve, this price will reduce further.
Thus it’s possible examine the amount of energy needed to power a home for 25 years and compare the costs.
Reducing Reliance on Grid Supplied Power
The main source of electricity in the world today is based on oil and gas and this implies that countries need to spend much of their GDP on purchasing these non-renewable resources. Running huge power stations is costly, and these costs are passed on to the general population.
As sustainable cities use solar power as their main source of electricity there will be no need for no need for fossil fuel and definitely no need for transporting oil, coal and gas. The savings to the consumer therefore may be appropriated for health care, environmental research or education. Solar cities are now in development and when the success of the test projects has been completed, other nations will be inclined to replicate them.
Poorer Nations Will Benefit
In poorer countries for instance Africa there are regular mishaps from the spilling of oil containers used for lighting and cooking. Solar energy on the other hand is safe.
Breathe Easier
Solar panels which rely on solar energy rather than coal and oil have a cleaner air and their population not subjected to toxic allergens.
At the same time it does not further affect the environment.
Cities in USA and around the world are introducing solar panels to generate energy for their buildings. Green cities reduce air pollution created by the use of gas, coal and oil fired power stations and they present a cost-effective and health-effective means of providing electricity to their people.