Ferreira Coelho, Barbara

ECE580 Homework Week 1

Sustainability is the ability to use things in a sustainable way, which means, do not use
them unduly causing waste, and use them consciously. For example, when a person reuses a
plastic bottle, or recycles it instead of throwing it in the trash, this person is acting in a
sustainable way. It is known that the material of the bottle is not renewable, i.e. there is a limited
supply of this material on the planet. Then, just throwing it in the trash is a form of waste. The
most correct thing to do is to reuse it, or to recycle it, as stated previously. Thus, it becomes
possible to use less of the material of the bottle, making its natural reserve active for longer.
Sustainability, as stated before, can be seen as the conscious use of natural resources. The
Earth has the ability to regenerate, i.e.to return to a previous state, when undergoes a
"disturbance". For instance, when somebody throws a residue in the soil, days or even years later
this waste is fully decomposed. However, when throwing a lot of waste in the soil, the effort
required for nature to regenerate itself, becomes much more difficult and consumes much more
time to be done. The sustainable use of natural resources therefore, would be using them
respecting the ability of nature to recover. As said before, instead of throwing a bottle in the
trash, which may take years to decompose, the correct thing to do, would be to reuse or to
recycle it, as this would avoid the accumulation of residues in the soil.
Based on the concept of sustainability one can then understand what Sustainable Energy
is. Sustainable Energy would then be a kind of energy that does not end, or / and that is also
clean and does not contribute to the destruction of the environment. For instance, the energy
obtained from the wind, or wind energy, comes from an inexhaustible source, the wind, and do
not pollute the environment. All sources of energy that somehow fit into this category are
sustainable sources of energy.
All energy sources have pros and cons, whether sustainable or not. But to be sustainable,
a certain source of energy should be a source that does not impair the regenerative capacity of
the environment. Coal, for example, is not considered a sustainable source, firstly because it is
not renewable, i.e. there is only a limited supply, that one day will end. Second, it is an unclean
source, which means that it collaborates to air pollution. Solar energy, on the other hand, is
considered a renewable resource because it is inexhaustible, and its use does not cause major
impacts on the environment, the impacts are easily reversed by nature itself.
Ferreira Coelho, Barbara

ECE580 Homework Week 1
I am Barbara Ferreira Coelho, I am a Brazilian exchange student here at IIT and my
major is Electrical Engineering. In my university in Brazil I am a senior student. I have taken the
great part of subjects offered by my course. Among a range of areas covered by Electrical
Engineering, the one that most interest me is the field that deals with generation, transmission
and distribution of electricity and how to do it in a sustainable way. What I expect with this
course is to learn more about sustainability and renewable energy resources. I also would like to
study more about development of devices used in sustainable power plants, as solar panels and
other devices as well.