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Annotated Bibliography

What is Being Done to Shift to a World Fully Run by Renewable Energy Sources?

Abdullah Hajahmad

Professor Malcolm Campbell

English 1104

March 13, 2017

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Annotated Bibliography

Ritchie, Earl J. The Shift to Renewables: How Far, How Fast? Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 17

Sept. 2016. Web. 13 Mar. 2017.

The Author, Earl J. Ritchie, is a retired energy executive and is a lecturer on the oil and

gas industry at the University of Houston. He has 35 years of experience in the energy

industry. In the article the author talks about the statistics and the numbers related to the

work being done and the goals set for the development of renewable energy sources. Our

goal is to one day power the US or the world from 100% renewable energy. When he

says shift to renewable energy the author is talking about the electrical shift to renewable

energy not the full motor fuel shift. In the post the author also talks about how fast and

how efficiently the effort done to shift to renewables is made. Another subject was the

different ideas set forward by different people about when and how quickly it can be

done? For example, in a 2008 speech, former vice president Al Gore said it was

achievable, affordable and transformative to generate all electricity in in the United

States using wind, solar and other renewable sources within 10 years (Ritchie). Even

though this did not fully become true but this does give us a perspective of peoples

thoughts about this industry. The article also talks about the investment made in this field

firstly due to all the awareness and hype towards the cause. Secondly, governments all

around the world are setting up subsidies and benefits for investors looking into investing

in the renewable energy field. This all leads to this rapid growth in an industry that

should hopefully in the next couple years or decades boom and become the primary

source of electricity in the US and the world. I have found this article very helpful and I

say the authors year of experience in it and will definitely use it to write my paper.
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Pimentel, David, Megan Herz, Michele Glickstein, Mathew Zimmerman, Richard Allen, Katrina

Becker, Jeff Evans, Benita Hussain, Ryan Sarsfeld, Anat Grosfeld, and Thomas Seidel.

"Renewable Energy: Current and Potential Issues." BioScience. Oxford University Press,

01 Dec. 2002. Web. 14 Mar. 2017.

David Pimentel is a professor, in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Cornell

University. Megan Herz, Michele Glickstein, Mathew Zimmerman, Richard Allen,

Katrina Becker, Jeff Evans, Benita Hussain, Ryan Sarsfeld, Anat Grosfeld, and Thomas

Seidel are graduate students in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at Cornell

University. The article talks about the potential and the limitations of using renewable

energy. The US has already used up between 82% to 88% of its known oil reserves.

Thus, currently the US imports more than 60% of its oil at a cost of around 75 billion

dollars annually. The shift to using renewable energy makes energy resources more

available due to the abundance of renewable energy resources such as solar, wind,

geothermal or even tidal. Even though this does come with a large cost to develop and

further implement but this step will make future life for the US and the world as a whole

much easier. Another side of the story is the fact that fossil fuel consumption is the major

contributor to the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the

atmosphere. Which as most of us know leads to global warming which is a major issue

we are facing the consequences of, and are going to face even greater consequences in the

future if this increasing consumption does not stop or slow down. The US alone even

though it has 4% of the worlds population emits 22% of the carbon dioxide from burning

fossil fuels, more than any other nation.

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Hydroelectric systems are one of the many solutions to help reduce fossil fuel use.

Hydroelectric systems are basically dam systems that generate electricity. At a cost of

0.02$ per kwh this solution is extremely feasible and logical for the future. Some of the

down sides to these systems are the land area they use. Hydroelectric systems use around

75000 hectares of reservoir land area per system and 14 trillion liters of water. Which at

the same time causes major environmental problems where it alters the animals, plants

and microbes in the ecosystem.

For many years and centuries wind power has been used to power many aspects of

human life such as pump water and run mills in the past and is still being used for power

production to this day. Now at the estimated cost of 0.07$ per kwh it is still almost half

the price of the current cost per kwh which 0.12$. Almost the same environmental issues

are faced with using hydroelectric sources are faced with wind. The amount of land used

to produce the maximum capacity is extremely large amounting to approximately 13,700

hectares of land per 1 billion kwh per year. Another factor is the fact that there are not

many areas that support the high wind power needed by the wind turbines which is at

least 20 km/hr.

This source has many peer reviewed parts and sub categories to it that I felt could help

me greatly in writing my paper and making it easier for the reader to understand the goal

of my writing.

TheDailyConversation. Top 10 Energy Sources of the Future. YouTube. YouTube, 10 Sept.

2014. Web. 14 Mar 2017.

The Daily conversation is a very large YouTube channel that has a very large database of

videos about many different topics. I chose this video because it gave a basic idea about
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some of the biggest sources of renewable energy. It summarized the basic ideas about

wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels, and nuclear fusion. The video highlights the positives

and negatives of each source and the reason behind why each source is or is not widely

used. I think that this video will be helpful in writing my paper where I can use the

information to more easily explain the sources to the readers.

Harada, Christine. "Federal Government Exceeds Goal for Renewable Energy and Energy

Efficiency Investments." The White House. The White House President Barack Obama,

28 Dec. 2016. Web. 14 Mar. 2017.

The website which is The White Houses website under former president Barack Obama

is a very reliable government website. While Donald Trump is the current president but

the information in the website is very recent and present. The author Christine Harada

who was the CEQ, short for Federal Chief Sustainability Officer, graduated from The

University of Pennsylvania with her MA in international studies. While working at the

White House Christine was responsible for promoting environmental and energy

sustainability across Federal Government operations including 360,000 buildings,

650,000 vehicles, and $445 billion annually in purchased goods and services. The article

brings on the issue of where the US is standing on renewable energy and where it is

heading. The government has reduced spending on energy by 4.2 million dollars. This

decrease in cost shows the amount of money saved when going with cheaper and greener

sources of energy rather than going with the more expensive fossil fuels and alternate

sources of energy. This has reduced the greenhouse gas emissions by a factor of 17% and

more than doubled the amount of renewable energy produced on-site. The goal set in

2011 was decrease these costs by 2 billion dollars and by 2014 this goal was doubled. By
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December 2016 the challenge has been exceeded with over 4.2 billion dollars in value.

The new goal set forward is to decrease these costs to a further 8 billion dollars in the

next 18 years. Furthermore, not only will we see the benefits of this achievement over the

many years to come but this achievement has been reducing the governments carbon

footprint by 1.4 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.

I chose this source because I believe that the information I can use from this source will

help me give my readers a bigger picture on what is happening right now and what has

already been done. As opposed to showing them what will happen in the future and what

future ideas scientists have.

Comments:

Abdullah,

I really enjoyed reading this! Its amazing to see how much energy is being used and how much

it costs to keep up. In the first annotation you may want to go a little more into depth about the

difference between what an electrical shift and full motor fuel shift to renewable energy is. Also,

aside from the fact that the author is a retired energy executive, how else is this source reliable?

Where and when was published? While reading your second annotation, I found it unbelievable

that the US has used that much of the oil reserves and even more surprised to find out how much

we spend on importing oil annually! I would mention in your opening sentence that this is your

peer-reviewed source, so it is clear right off the bat. For your third annotation, how do you know

this channel is reliable? Who are in the videos? Are there links on the video that can back up

what is being said?

-Lily