Introduction and Rationale
“Solving climate change is more important for our future than tackling many other worthwhile causes, because so many issues – poverty, disease, immigration politics – cannot improve if climate change worsens.” (Goldstein-Rose and Kitchen 2020)
The topic of renewable and clean energy is of increasing importance to everyone on this planet. We have until about the year 2050 to fix our relationship with fossil fuels, reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions, create a new infrastructure, and find new ways to meet our energy needs. The teenagers in my classroom today will be the adults in the future making decisions about energy usage, working in the STEM careers that will be creating solutions for our energy crisis, and will also be most affected by the changes necessary for a sustainable future. They will also be affected by the consequences of failing to act before it is too late. We are already experiencing stronger storms, increased flooding, and rising global temperatures. It is important that they gain a basic knowledge of what our current energy options are and what the future of human energy consumption will look like. In many industrialized and developing countries, this will mean creating new infrastructure at an extremely fast pace. Our new infrastructure will include many types of renewable and clean energy sources working together to meet our energy needs. Currently, there isn’t one type of renewable or clean energy that can meet all of our needs. There are different factors related to each energy source that affect how it works and how it can be used.
Students will investigate the environmental and commercial benefits and drawbacks of different energy sources. Additionally, students will investigate human consumption of energy and the effects of human activities on the environment including, but not limited to, climate change. Students will engage in research about fossil fuels, biomass, wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, and nuclear power. Students will be placed into collaborative groups. Each group will be assigned one type of energy source to research. While researching they will complete a graphic organizer to capture the information they discover. They will use the research and graphic organizer to create a presentation about how the energy source works, how it is used in Virginia (our home state), how energy sources are currently affecting us (the pros and cons), and how it will be used in the future. Students will then engage in hands-on demonstrations of renewable energy types to demonstrate how renewable energy can be used to meet our needs.
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