Future of Energy

One thing my professors have been telling me more and more recently is that the problem of our generation is going to be providing energy for the world. This is one of my major interests. This is such a huge problem because of the energy required to satisfy the worlds needs is going to grow incredibly over the next few decades. I was initially a petroleum engineering major, but have recently switched to mechanical engineering because it is my very desire to help solve this problem in the future.

Texas is one of the states that produces the most oil in the U.S., it is in the upper echelon with states like California and Alaska. However, extracting and consuming all of this oil doesn't go without potential for harming the enviornment. Two articles I was reading shows exactly this:
http://www.texastribune.org/texas-energy/energy/josh-fox-gasland-creator-on-hazards-fracking/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/us/04natgas.html?pagewanted=2&src=un&feedurl=http://json8.nytimes.com/pages/national/index.jsonp
It is tough to see that many people are suffering and affected by hazardous drilling techniques. If almost anything else was polluting peoples waters supplies I have no doubt in my mind that the state of Texas would step in and help to stop whatever was causing it. However, since it's gas and oil that is causing the contamination of drinking water backed by major oil companies it's unlikely the state will step in and that's truly unfortunate.

The step that the state ultimately needs to take is to encourage the growth of renewable energy sources. Whether this is subsidizing them or giving them other benefits, the state needs to back these efforts. Texas is a state where technology thrives and has many of the things necessary for these renewable energy sources. The sun is always shining, the wind is often blowing, and many rivers flow through Texas. Without encouraging the growth of these renewable resources the state of Texas and the world will continue to use more and more oil. This is a problem because many of the state and worlds oil reservoirs that are easy to access have already been depleted. With new technologies there are new methods to extract gas that lies even deeper in the Earth. Some of these can be dangerous and damaging to the environment.

A good read about the big picture of energy can be found at this article here: http://www.pe.tamu.edu/Job-Resources/Energy_NAP.pdf.

I think that the state of Texas needs to stand up to some big oil companies to protect our environment and our future. Texas has a wide variety of resources and therefore should lead the country into a new era or energy that is powered by clean, green, and renewable resources. Doing so will be a lot better for the state of Texas as a whole. Researching and actually getting these projects going can be a bit costly so I think a portion of the budget should be dedicated to getting these projects started in Texas.