Renewable energy and energy recycling of waste: the new challenges of the 21st century
December 14, 2009
"The third Industrial Revolution needs the competition of different energy sources, and most of them are everywhere: the Sun, wind, water, soil and waste are renewable energy sources." "They are sources distributed throughout the planet, not concentrated in specific places and that do not require large investments to ensure its distribution and supply," said Jeremy Rifkin, during the keynote speech that inaugurated the Conference.
Rifkin, President of FoET (Foundation of economic trends, its acronym in English) and Advisor to the President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Angela Merkel and Al Gore, among other statesmen, explained in his lecture the foundations of the third Industrial Revolution: "We have changed the way we communicate." Thanks to the technologies of the information anyone can communicate with anyone anywhere in the world. The communication model is flat. It may also be what the energy model. "We have changed the way we communicate and sources of energy: both junctions cause a change".
For Rikfin, now is the time for action, for two reasons: "we need a new model to boost economic development and to give us the opportunity to address the challenge of mitigating the impact of climate change, which threatens the survival of humanity and 77% of life on the planet at the turn of only two generations". And because "the economic engine of the current globalization is based on fuel in decline".
The role of renewable energies and the 'energy recycling'
The Conference ' energy recycling in European recycling society. Trends and challenges ", organized by the ISR (Institute for the sustainability of resources) under the patronage of Cicloplast, was intended to raise awareness and consider the relationship between the energy of the future, the role assigned to renewables and energy recycling of waste in particular through interventions and various expert analysis national and international role of renewable energies and 'energy recycling'.
In this sense, Julio Hernando, President of Cicloplast, noted: "the energy recycling is for us a complement to the mechanical recycling, never a substitute for." We want to recycle all plastics that are viable technically and, with the rest mechanically, take advantage of its energy in the form of heat, electricity or fuel green value. "We do not want continue burying energy".
'Energy recycling' in other leading European countries in the environmental field, it is succeeding in diverting from landfill plastic waste, continued Hernando, "in levels reaching 50%, without compromising its high rates of recycled mechanic, while Spain only reaches 13 %".
The President of the ISR, Carlos Martínez Orgado, stated that "the technological discussion is over." "The new approach is that the residue may not be an end in itself, but it must be given the perspective, in the current context, of waste".
Martínez Orgado, "the process in which is the European policy and the challenges facing them were based in turn on other challenges, such as energy efficiency, energy independence, the reduction of emissions, etc." Renewable energy is one of the elements to address the energy issue. To achieve the greatest results should go for all possible sources, including biomass and waste. Indeed, he continued, "there are studies which claim that the use of waste energy can generate 8% of the energy in Spain".