Energy is the most important of all resources, while sustainability concept is focuses on the long term survival of communities. The energy and sustainability had to be balance up. Ecological studies include the result of resource consumption and the technology systems have to move toward sustainability. Basically energy can be divided into renewable and non-renewable energy.
Energy and sustainability had become an important aspect and current issue around the global. Energy is an important and essential to continuing the economic growth and generates the wealth of the country.
Natural resources are one of the resources that human consume to generate the energy. But the most important issue is how technology can contribute to generating the solution maintaining sustainability. Energy production, primary and end-use of energy and quality of energy are the important aspect while discussing the energy resources and use. The main energy production mostly comes from fossil fuels, by converting them into a suitable final form of energy supply and used by the people. Other than that other energy sources such as thermal sources and hydroelectric sources and nuclear sources are being consumed by the nation.

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The quality of the energy, a well planning and strategies of use of energy is required in order for the energy in the planet to be sustainable. Furthermore the most important is the renewable energy sources must be develops and improves. On the other hand, the side effect of the consumption of the energy such as resource depletion, waste management, and the destruction of the environment must take into consideration.
New Resource
Sustainability involves practical recognition of the need for global and intergenerational equity, and sustainability is a necessary concept to focuses on the long-term survival of communities. In practice, sustainability involves social, political, economic, and environment aspects.
The important of technology development is to increase the labor productivity and miniaturization. The quality of life, standard of living, and the latter had increasing the tension in the society. Due to the awareness of the limits to economic growth has focused attention on the ways of improving the quality of life, without increasing resource consumption. Engineers need to be participating in the associated debates, partly to ensure that they are well-founded technically.
Energy Resources and Use
Energy is the most important of all resources. The unlimited availability of fossil fuel can no longer be taken as given .Pricing of resources that look into account the cost of synthesizing them when economically viable resources have been depleted would see quite different approaches to energy policy. The resources used for the production of electricity are coal, natural gas, crude oil, nuclear, hydroelectric, and geothermal. The effectively use of limited resources is essential, because it able to minimizes the output of carbon dioxide and waste heat, both are potential threats to the stability of the biosphere.
Coal, natural gas, oil, and nuclear electricity are all associated with significant pollutants or hazardous byproducts. The resources are also nonrenewable, meaning that the world will, sooner or later, completely consume the energy source. Nuclear power supply is able to supply further fissionable material, but the technical and cost problem is still present, which seek to identify and take account of all the cost involved, including the environment impacts.
Primary energy sources can be convenient for handling and stockpiling, and it may necessary to convert into other type of energy forms, in which they are finally used as end-use energy. Thermal energy can be produce in the form of work, or work output by subtracting any heat wasted or rejected from the heat input. In real situation process heat is wasted, so is a need to have a definition of efficiency that quantifies losses in the conversion process. The exergy of a system is the maximum amount of useful work that could be obtained from the system at a given state in the specified environment. The process is undertaken and work extracted until the output is maximized. The exergy destroyed is proportional to the entropy generated and is a measure of the irreversibility of a process.
An important consideration when choosing the energy for any application is the energy quality. There are mainly three criteria to be considered. First is the ease of extracting the energy, second is the ease of transporting and storing the energy, last but not lease is the ease of transforming the energy from one form to another.
In processing plants heat and the electricity is needed, the efficiency of the system can be increased by burning fuel to generate steam at higher temperature and pressure than is required by the process. Beside that some form of high-quality energy can be converted directly into electricity without use of a heat transformation cycle.
Energy Use-Energy Information Administration
The demand for end-use energy varies considerably with time. The pattern and degree of variability reflect geographical location and contain a random element relating to the weather. There is also variation corresponding to the hourly usage pattern. Basically electricity can be divided into relatively constant base load and highly variable peak load.
Electricity cannot be store. One means of storing electrical energy is pumped storage. In thermal power station, when the demand of electricity is high, the water will allow to run down through turbines, and converting the potential energy into electricity. For most part, it is necessary to match electricity supply to demand by appropriate selection and running of generation plant. Gas turbines are particularly flexible in operation. They can run on oil and natural gas, and the fuel can be changed during running. Furthermore, the open cycle gas turbines do not need a supply of cold water for cooling.
The gas turbine can be used with a steam turbine to produce a combined cycle lead to a very efficient unit. The gas turbine can withstand high combustion temperature, and the exhaust heat from the gas turbine is then used to raise steam for a steam turbine cycle.
In marketing and other commercial analyses, environmental damage is often treated as an externality. As a result it tends to overused, because most economic decision are make by the operator of private companies that do not pay for environment benefits. Good energy planning is able to develop a mechanism that ensures that the environment damage is minimized and any damage that occurs is charged against the organization.
Local decentralized energy system able to reduce energy lodes because smaller system have shorter lead times and respond more effectively to unexpected changes in demand pattern. Due to substantially increase in R&D, a new generation of large turbo generators would be significantly more efficient in consumption of fuels, resulting in a reduction in green house effect.
Least-cost planning is one of the methods that could be applied. It suggests that the cheapest way to meet energy needs is to open the market. Apart from that lifestyle changes is another factor that effect on energy consumption. Automobile engine efficiencies can be improved, and the mass of the vehicle must be reduced. Other than that less over lighting, overheating, and overcooling of buildings and the recuperation of waste heat in industry could further reduce electricity and oil consumption.
Converting solid or gaseous fuels into liquid fuels involves high cost and creates large amounts of greenhouse gases. There has long been enthusiasm for solar energy-generated hydrogen as an ideal, sustainable energy source. The use of hydrogen as a fuel for transportation and power generation presumes an extensive supply infrastructure. The power alcohol from sugar or cassava is also possible supplements as an alternative to oil for transportation but the cost of production is double or three times than petroleum.
Future energy policy will be influenced as much by the environmental factors and by security of supply consideration as by technical developments. Energy supply authorities should also make a mandate for conservation rather than promotion of energy use.
Sources of Renewable Energy
The main renewable energy sources used are biomass, hydroelectric, geothermal, solar, and wind. First the renewable energy hydropower is able to provide significant energy. Hydropower uses the energy of flowing water to turn the turbine, which rotates a generator to produce electricity.
Wood leading biomass energy resources for power generation, because it is use as a boiler fuel in the lumber, pulp and paper industries. Furthermore, the municipal waste and agricultural waste plants are also the biomass generators. These plants use such diverse feedstock as sugarcane residue, rice hulls, rice straw, nut shells, crop residues, and pruning from orchards and vine yards.
Passive solar energy for lighting and heating is probably the most effective energy sources. The passive solar energy system uses little mechanical hardware and required little or no electrical energy to respond. For simple application such as low and medium temperature water heating, space heating and commercial building the solar energy is use instead of fuel combustion. This able reduces costs and environment impact, provided the solar collectors are well design made. Furthermore, the electricity is able to generate in the solar thermal system that collect the thermal energy in solar radiation. Other than that direct conversion of solar energy to electricity is able to achieve by using the solid state photovoltaic cell.
Wind energy had been used to pump water, grind grain and electricity generation. The best side to locate the wind turbine to generate electricity is in the mountain area. Wind turbine had been design in order to capture the wind’s energy, and usually the wind turbine mounted with two or three blade, and is mounted on the tower. To improve the turbine design, the blade have to be flex, and able to limit the speed of the blade.
Ecological Studies
Ecological studies include the result of resource consumption and the technology system come along, by looking into the need to move toward sustainability. Ozone layer is form by combination of 3 atoms of oxygen. In the stratosphere is make up 3km layer, and act as a layer to protect the living from ultraviolet radiation. Some chemical substances such as CFC are able to destroy the ozone layer, and causing the green house effect.
The Earth’s atmosphere able to absorbs the infrared radiation that coming from the sun, but not the visible light. Due to the energy radiated out by the earth in these two bands is adsorbed in the atmosphere and this heat is than reradiated and reflected back to the earth keeps it warm.
Stabilizing human population pressure and limiting human consumption of nonrenewable resources are essential steps in moving towards global sustainability. Currently the world is facing the large human popularity problem, such as in India, and China. The government of China had limits each family to have one child only.
Soil degradation is another problem that created by human activities. The main causes of this problem were overgrazing, deforestation, and unsustainable agricultural practice. The destruction of the rainforest by building the hydroelectric power station has become an issue, deforestation had destroy the biological diversity natural habitat. Ecological problem such as soil degradation and rainforest destruction mostly cause by engineer. However as a creator of the problem, engineer should create solution by using technology to solve the problem.
The disposal of radioactive and toxic material and also domestic, commercial, and industrial waste will be under the waste management category. All the domestic and industry waste need to be process separately. For example the plastic is separate from the waste stream, than sorting it, and finally only go to recycling.
Sustainability
The function of ecological sustainable development is to make the process of environment assessment become much wider as part of resource management, rather than each project is done individually. There are 5 sustainable development principle fix by the commonwealth government 1990. First is the integration of environmental and economic goal for all policy and activities. Second, ensuring that environmental assets are appropriately valued. Third, by providing for equity within and between generations. Fourth, dealing cautiously with risk and irreversibility. Fifth, recognizing the global dimensions and irreversibility.
In order to counter the climate change problem, the country should adopt the national greenhouse response strategies. Cooperate between the government and industry is also needed. The Kyoto conference in 1997 target is to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of each country. Thing does not go as plan easily, many problem arise in which the constraints and requirements of available energy resources, ecological considerations, and the growth of the economy can appear to be mutually incompatible. Therefore the ecology, economics, and energy need to be reconciled as a ways to counter the problem.
Conclusion
As conclusion, both national and international levels should work together to develop the new technology to overcome the exciting problem. Engineers have a major responsibility for conservation of the natural and environment. On the other hand, industrial societies need to have a technology revolution that relies on renewable energy flows. Last but not lease, engineers should take the initiative to lead the interdisciplinary team to develop and move toward a sustainable environment.