According to The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Certification (LEED), “In the US, buildings account for 38 percent of all CO2 emissions.” LEED works to reduce environmental and societal impact of current buildings by reducing energy use, water use, and improving air quality through proper planning. Certification is aimed at new and innovative…
Author: Alli Crandell
Ecosystem services are processes by which the environment or nature provides us with resources that are often taken for granted. For example, how much it would cost to purify the air we breathed day in and day out? We cannot accurately estimate how much these services cost. Another ecosystem service is farming and using the…
Utilities offer centralized energy, meaning they have centralized locations where they produce energy and distribute it through an energy grid. Decentralizing energy puts energy production in the hands of the people. People can produce their own energy from sources like solar and do not have as great a need for a large, centralized utility. This…
The Clean Power Plan (CPP) is designed to limit future carbon pollution from power plants. It emphasizes the relationship between the federal government and state governments in sharing the responsibilities and authority of implementing and enforcing changes. It showcases the various perspectives and lessons states have used to lessening carbon emissions and presents facts to…
The carbon cycle is the rotating of carbon between the earth’s oceans, atmosphere, ecosystem, geosphere, and everything in between. Carbon makes up everything from the sugars we eat to the skin on our bodies to the sun itself. The cycle happens when a herbivore eats a plant and transforms the plant material into amino acids…
Of a population numbering 4,625,364 there are 2,163,109 persons gainfully employed in South Carolina. These persons are divided into industries, 7 of which make up portions larger than 5%: education, sales, administration, production, transportation, healthcare, and the food services each compose a minimum of 100,000 jobs in South Carolina. All of these job demographics rely…
Climate change is the term used to describe a trend in the overall warming of the Earth. Although the Earth goes through warming and cooling cycles on scales of hundreds of thousands of years, the current situation is concerning to scientists because the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been rising at an…
The most recent beach renourishment in Myrtle Beach occurred in 2009. Before that, it last happened in 1987 and 1997. The 1987 cost was approximately $5 million, but in 1997 and 2009, the price was around $17-18 million each time. For comparison, according to the DHEC website, North Myrtle Beach was last renourished in 2008…
In 1905, the first Hydroelectric plant was established in 1904. In the 1960’s, electricity became available to almost everyone, even sharecroppers. The early slew of hydroelectric plants brought stable and reliable energy to the state up until World War II. In the 1950’s, natural gas and coal plants were added. In addition, Nuclear power was…
The reality is that chasing sunlight to get work finished, and not having electricity consistently available, is not out of the norm for the rest of the world. Seventeen percent of the world’s population currently lives without electricity. South Carolina ranks 19 out of the 50 states in greatest energy consumption and is the number one…