Англ. яз. для специалистов по защите окружающей среды и бж

•solar energy;

•geothermal energy;

•petroleum;

•wind energy;

•biomass.

B.Suggest your answers to these questions?

1)Which kind of energy was the first to be used by people?

2)Which kind of energy is the most widely used now?

3)Which kind of energy is the most environmentally friendly?

17. Read the texts and check your answers in the previous activities.

RENEWABLE ENERGIES

Biomass -- Energy From Plant And Animal Matter

Biomass is organic material made from plants and animals. Biomass contains stored energy from the sun, absorbed by plants in a process called photosynthesis. Some examples of biomass fuels are wood, crops, manure, and some garbage.

Biomass can pollute the air when it is burned, though not as much as fossil fuels. Burning biomass fuels does not produce pollutants like sulfur, that can cause acid rain. When burned, biomass does release carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. But when biomass crops are grown, a nearly equivalent amount of carbon dioxide is captured through photosynthesis.

Energy From The Sun

The sun has produced energy for billions of years. Solar energy is the sun’s rays (solar radiation) that reach the earth. Solar energy can be converted into other forms of energy, such as heat and electricity.

The major disadvantages of solar energy are:

•The amount of sunlight that arrives at the earth's surface is not constant. It depends on location, time of day, time of year, and weather conditions.

•Because the sun doesn't deliver that much energy to any one place at any one time, a large surface area is required to collect the energy at a useful rate.

Using solar energy produces no air or water pollution but does have some indirect impacts on the environment. For example, manufacturing the

photovoltaic cells used to convert sunlight into electricity, consumes silicon and produces some waste products. In addition, large solar thermal farms can also harm desert ecosystems if not properly managed.

Hydropower Generates Electricity

Of the renewable energy sources that generate electricity, hydropower is the most often used. It is one of the oldest sources of energy and was used thousands of years ago to turn a paddle wheel for purposes such as grinding grain. Because the source of hydropower is water, hydroelectric power plants must be located on a water source. Therefore, it wasn’t until the technology to transmit electricity over long distances was developed that hydropower became widely used.

Some people regard hydropower as the ideal fuel for electricity generation because, unlike the nonrenewable fuels used to generate electricity, it is almost free, there are no waste products, and hydropower does not pollute the water or the air. However, it is criticized because it does change the environment by affecting natural habitats.

Energy From Wind

Wind is simple air in motion. It is caused by the uneven heating of the earth’s surface by the sun. Today, wind energy is mainly used to generate electricity.

Like old fashioned windmills, today’s wind machines use blades to collect the wind’s kinetic energy. With the new wind machines, there is still the problem of what to do when the wind isn’t blowing. At those times, other types of power plants must be used to make electricity.

Wind is a clean fuel; wind farms produce no air or water pollution because no fuel is burned.

The most serious environmental drawbacks to wind machines may be their negative effect on wild bird populations and the visual impact on the landscape.

Geothermal Energy

Geothermal energy is heat from within the earth. We can use the steam and hot water produced inside the earth to heat buildings or generate electricity. Geothermal power plants do not burn fuel to generate electricity, so their emission levels are very low. They release less than 1 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions of a fossil fuel plant. Geothermal plants use scrubber systems to clean the air of hydrogen sulfide that is naturally found in the steam and hot water. Geothermal plants emit 97 percent less acid rain - causing sulfur compounds than are emitted by fossil fuel plants. After the steam and wa-

ter from a geothermal reservoir have been used, they are injected back into the earth.

18. Fill in the table with the information from the texts.

19.Here are the explanations why HYDROELECTRIC ENERGY, SOLAR ENERGY, GEOTHERMAL ENERGY, WIND ENERGY, and BIOMASS are called renewable energies. Read them and guess what kind of energy is meant in each case. Which kind of energy is not mentioned?

•It is free, and its supplies are unlimited.

•It will blow as long as the sun shines.

•Water is replenished by rainfall and the heat is continuously produced inside the earth.

•We can always grow more trees and crops, and waste will always exist.

20.Choose one of the texts about renewable energies and translate it into Russian.

Learn to analyze the graphs.

a)Study the left part of the graph and answer the questions.

1.What source does the most of the consumed energy come from?

2.What energy ranks the second in the consumption graph?

3.How much does coal make up in the consumption?

4.What does nuclear power amount to?

5.What is the share of renewable energies?

b)Analyze the right part of the graph.

Figure 4 Renewable Energy Consumption

21.You will read the text HOW TO CLEN COAL. Before you read find English equivalents for these terms in the text.

Твердое топливо, захват и хранение углерода, дымовая труба, выброс углекислого газа, истощенные нефтяные и газовые месторождения, мировое потребление угля, сжиженный углекислый газ, течь, проблема утечки,

22.Read the text and match titles (a-g) with paragraphs (1-7).

a)A safe storage

b)Solving or postponing the CO2 problem?

c)A pilot project

d)A giant plant

e)Prospects for future development

f)Small project, high hopes

g)Too expensive?

HOW TO CLEAN COAL

Renewable energies won’t be able to fully substitute fossil fuels for years to come. Filtering CO2 from coal power plants, known as carbon capture and storage, will be crucial. The first pilot project is online in Germany. Can “clean coal” be a reliable solution to climate change?

1.The smokestacks of the Schwarze Pumpe coal power plant in eastern Germany are an impressive sight. This giant plant towers over the surrounding fields and villages, supplying 1,600 Megawatts of energy for the region.

2.If you're concerned about global warming, however, you might be less impressed. The towers belch out around 36,000 tons of carbon dioxide every day – one of thousands of coal-fired plants worldwide that together produce around 20 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions and over 40 percent of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

3.But hope is near, just hundreds of meters away, engineers are experimenting with what could be the future of the coal industry – carbon capture and storage (CCS). This technology traps carbon dioxide that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere when burning coal. Instead of releasing in the atmosphere for centuries, the captured CO2 can be liquefied and stored in places like depleted oil and gas fields.

4.Although the pilot project is very small in scale (50 times smaller than the neighboring coal power plant), hopes are high about the technology’s potential to curb carbon dioxide emissions globally, particularly because global dependence on coal continues to grow rapidly. Worldwide coal consumption is expected to increase by 65 percent by 2030, with most of growing demand coming from India and China.

5.Some U.S. lawmakers have even proposed putting a moratorium on all new coal-fired power plants that do not have CCS facilities, despite the fact that the technology is probably at least a decade away from maturity.

6.Aside from further technical development, the other major obstacle to widespread use of CCS is its high cost. Utility Vatenfall wants to have a commercial CCS plant running by 2020, and aims to cut costs to 20 euros per ton of captured and stored CO2. But McKinsey & Company estimates current cost at between 60 and 90 euros – well above the current price of a ton of CO2 on the global carbon market. CCS technology also consumes energy and thus raises the cost of energy production.

7.Several environmental advocacy organizations have also voiced concerns about the environmental impacts of injecting liquefied CO2 underground and deep into the oceans. There is also little knowledge about how long the CO2 will stay underground. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) says that before investing billions of dollars, governments should be

certain that stored CO2 will not leak for at least 100,000 years. After all, the aim is to solve – not merely delay – the CO2 problem.

8.But the industry seems confident about the leakage question. Oil companies have long been pumping CO2 into depleted oil and gas fields to maximize recovery, while Norwegian gas company StatoilHydro has been stripping CO2 of natural gas and pumping it deep below the North Sea for over a decade now.

9."If natural gas stays down below the earth with high pressure for several hundred million years, why shouldn't CO2 stay down there?," says Daniel Kosel, an engineer who works at the Schwarze Pumpe facility.

10.The prospect of safe, cheap, and industrial-scale CCS offers an interesting perspective, particularly for countries that are most reliant on coal. Coal-rich countries like Canada, Australia, and the United States have already planned or launched pilot CCS projects. The U.S. alone has between

250and 500 years of coal reserves and enough underground capacity to store its entire CO2 emissions for another three centuries. The coal industry may find its key to survival in the low-carbon economy of the future. It’s up to governments to decide whether to support this technology, or if in fact “no coal” is better than “clean coal.”

23.Choose one of the passages from the text and translate it into Rus-

sian.

24.You will read the text CLIMATE CHANGE AND SOIL HEALTH.

Before you read:

A.Remember the words

B. Separate the words into categories. Translate them using a dictionary.

Simulate, anticipate, capacity, abundance, cumulative, reveal, moisture, expose, vulnerability, disseminate.

most critical variable was found to be plant type, so the overall effect will depend on the number of species and their abundance in the shrubland ecosystem. Evidence of the cumulative effects of warmer, drier conditions was observed in the form of a 15 % decrease in organic matter content over a sixyear period.

With respect to soil nutrients, the data reveal that nitrogen production increased when the test plots were exposed to higher temperatures, but only when soil moisture was within certain bounds. Unfortunately, the extended periods of drought are likely to push northern shrublands into the moisture danger zone. Phosphorus levels were relatively unaffected by the simulated changes in weather patterns.

The results of the Vulcan research demonstrate the vulnerability of shrubland ecosystems to climate change, particularly in northern Europe. NERC and its partners disseminated this knowledge through papers, meetings, newsletters and so forth in the hope of inspiring further action to limit climate change. In addition, the data can be used to improve soil parameterisation schemes in global climate models.

PROJECT WORK

27. Do some research about ecological problems in your region. Think about ways to improve the ecological conditions. Work out and present your project.

2.You will read the text “FROM THE HISTORY OF INDUSTRIAL HYGIEN”. Before you read do the tasks.

A.Match names of chemicals (1-5) to their Russian equivalents (a-e).

B.Find English equivalents for these terms in the text and write them down into your dictionary.