Green Technology: Impact and Uses

As human lives are advancing constantly, the basic needs of human being are increasing tremendously as well. The human intrusion needs have altered the natural environment and arouses problems such as pollution, climate change and global warming. In order to get rid of these problems, Green Technology is introduces to recover the Earth back to a healthy state. Green Technology is a new technology that introduced to protect the Earth against environmental pollution. (Renewable Solar Energy, n.d.) It plays an important role in conserving the natural resources and environment. (Whitney, n.d.) Green technology is known environmental technology or clean technology as well. It produced energy to non-toxic cleaning products by using different methods and materials. (Green Technology, n.d.) Green Technology is introduced to reach five goals which are sustainability by satisfying the society’s needs without damaging or depleting the availability of the resources for the future generations, “cradle to cradle” design by designing products that are reusable, source reduction by changing the amount of raw materials consumption and ways of production to reduce the waste products, innovation by developing new and alternative technologies and viability by creating economic activity such as new career that associated with technologies and products. (Green Technology, n.d.) Currently, green technology is developing in 5 majors areas which are energy, green building, environmentally preferred purchasing, green chemistry and green nanotechnology. (Green Technology, n.d.)

Green Technology has a great impact on the international market. According to the BBC research, the international market of green technologies will grow about 9.2 per cent which is from $200 billion in 2010 up to $311.7 billion by the year of 2015. (Companies Sand Market, 2011) Besides that, the global market for installation and retrofitting of combined heat and power was $55 billion in the year 2009. In 2010, it has grown about 9.1 per cent which is equivalent to $60 billion. Therefore, the BBC estimated that the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) will be maintained around 8.4 per cent until 2015 with a total amount of $90 billion. (Companies Sand Market, 2011) Moreover, the BBC research also predicts that the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of the global market for waste-to-energy installation and retrofitting will be around 6 per cent from the year 2010 to 2015. This means, it will grow from $22.3 billion in 2010 to $30 billion in 2015. (Companies Sand Market, 2011)

On the other hand, the Senior Adviser of Environmental Technology and Service (ITC), Nikolai Semine stated that, from the year 1988 to 2008, green technologies have provided a global market the roughly worth about $650 billion. (Semine, 2010) It was the same amount as the aerospace and pharmaceutical revenues of the leader countries such as United States, the European Union and Japan. Moreover, the European Forum on Eco-Innovation predicts that the global market will increase another $1,650 billion by 2020. (Semine, 2010) According to Nikolai Semine, the developments of South-South trade in green technology has brought up the opportunities on the exportation of green technology and increase its revenues, sustainable development and creates “green jobs”. (Semine, 2010) There are several countries that are successful in the exportation of green technology, such Malaysia, China, India, Pakistan, Philippines and Thailand. Let’s take Thailand as an example. In 2007, Thailand has exported pollution control, water treatment and renewable technologies that generated revenues about US$ 2.3 billion. (Semine, 2010) Green technology also contributes in the expanding of environmental businesses. For examples, the United Kingdom’s Joint Environmental Markets Units predicts that the environmental business will expand about 10 per cent which is equivalent to US$ 178 billion. (Semine, 2010)

On the other hand, green technology also brings benefits to the environment. It helps to protect the sustainability of natural resources and the environment by removing the threat to the environment. Let’s look at one example of the green technology. There are at least 600 million of cars around the world. In addition, the huge amount of cars burn about 120 billion gallons of gas annually and 19 pounds of carbon dioxide is released to the atmosphere by each gallon of gas. (Taheshea, n.d.) According to the United States Transportation Specialists, vehicles that are not energy sufficient have contributed about 45 per cent of the carbon emissions of the world. (Taheshea, n.d.) To overcome these problems, several automobile manufacturers such as Toyota, Honda and Peugeot started to execute green technology by manufacturing hybrid vehicles. Compare to traditional gasoline vehicles, hybrid vehicles emit 97 per cent lesser of carbon, save 169 gallons of gasoline each year and its car batteries can last about ten years. (Taheshea, n.d.)

The lesser amount of carbon dioxide emission can help to prevent acid rain, global warming. Carbon dioxide reacts with rain water to form carbonic acid which causes acid rain to occur. Highly acidity rain can affect the sea life by lowering the pH value of sea water, forest on the world due to the highly acidic soil that is not suitable for the plant to grow and human health by drinking contaminated water. (Oracle, n.d.) By reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere, less carbon dioxide can react with rain water and reduce the acidity of rain water. Thus, it can protect the welfare of the environment as well as human being. Since carbon dioxide is the major type of greenhouse gasses that trapped heat energy within the Earth and cause global warming to occur, according to Global Commons Institutes, if the total carbon dioxide emission decrease about 2.5 per cent per year, it can definitely slow down the process of global warming by 10 years. (Cooper, n.d.) Thus, the issues such as biodiversity of plants and animals and extinctions of endanger species that cause by global warming can be prevented. (Britannica, n.d.)

Hybrid car can save about 169 gallons of gasoline per year. Non-renewable sources of energy such as gasoline and petroleum can be prevented from over exploitation by using hybrid car as an alternative vehicle. (Cars Direct, n.d.) Besides that, hybrid vehicles use lesser amount of gasoline. It emits less gas fumes and carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. (Car Direct, n.d.) Therefore, the air in the atmosphere can be cleaner and contain more breathable oxygen. With a cleaner and breathable air, it can prevent human being from respiratory diseases such as asthma and reducing the death rate due to respiratory diseases. Lastly, hybrid car helps in reducing the noise pollutions in the environment as well. This is because the engine of hybrid cars only churning the amount of horsepower required and without any extra roaring. When it is changed to electric power mode, the cars operate silently compare to traditional gasoline consumption car. (Buzzle, n.d.)Therefore, green technology brings several benefits to the environment such as preventing acid rain and global warming, protecting the plants, animals as well as human being, providing cleaner and breathable air and reducing noise pollution.