Elon Musk and Renewable Energies

ELON MUSK AND RENEWABLE ENERGIES

DANIEL MONTERO

MELISSA A GROSSMAN

MIAMI DADE COLLEGE

FUNDAMEMENTALS OF SPEECH

MIAMI

2018

ELON MUSK AND RENEWABLE ENERGIES

Currently, environmental problems are a fundamental aspect of the political concerns globally. This is due to the deterioration that occurs day after day on the planet. The issues that most affect our planet is climate change, which has caused changes in the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect, the erosion of soils, as well as the loss of habitats and species and even climatic changes. These issues are due to inconsiderate human actions that do not care or understand what destruction they cause to the earth.

This article seeks to explain the use of renewable energy that contributes to the protection of the environment, and will focus on the proposal of Elon Musk, the businessman and activist. He seek to protects the environment with innovative ideas, related to the use of electric cars containing an internal combustion engine, and the use of solar energy.  

Renewable energies are those whose potential is inexhaustible, since they "come from the energy that reaches our planet continuously, because of solar radiation or the gravitational attraction of the moon. Are fundamentally the hydropower, solar, wind, biomass, geothermal and marine" (Technological Institute of the Canary Islands, 2008, p.16-17). There are many countries that choose to use this kind of renewable energy. Since ancient times, non-renewable energy has been used, which is currently un-sustainable due to the depletion of reserved fuel, deforestation, and the contribution to contamination.

Furthermore, the best option for the supply of energy in the world is the use of clean energy. However, certain energies of this type have been affected, such as hydropower. "Since the climate change is causing the decline of rivers where it is used for this purpose, in addition to the contamination of the water that makes the production of renewable electricity" (Green, 2017) Similarly, if there are no natural areas, biomass cannot be collected to generate electricity, and this affects the production plants by the lack of raw materials.

Considering these variables caused by climate change, the best option is solar energy, which is the method the activist and entrepreneur Elon Musk who was born in South Africa, with A Canadian and American nationality, co-founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors, SpaceX, Hyperloop, SolarCity, The Boring Company and OpenAI, proposed from the creation of electric cars and the use of solar energy to protect the planet. Although within their ambitions are also the trips into space and the implementation of a cosmic internet, which reaches many parts of the world at low cost, it is their ideas that environmentalists should pay attention "the most provocative of his vision consists in the fact of re-imagining the use and acquisition of energy to assume the total transformation of the infrastructure of the planet" (Yehya, 2016, p. 33).

To achieve this vision ,Musk  the creator of SolarCity, a company that designs, finances and installs solar power systems in the United States, also innovating in the presentation of the solar panels, which will be pleasing to the eye to keep at home, for which he has presented a design of roof that is made of solar plates. At the same time, manufactured the Powerwall battery, for domestic and commercial use which allows you to store the solar energy and recharge your car at the same time.

It is worth mentioning that the proposal of Musk, raises the question of how a strategic plan that seeks to unify the generation of electricity, and the solar panels, batteries and their use in electric vehicles, making this an energy cycle about fossil fuels which are harmful to the environment.