1.0 Introduction
As the threat of Global warming is on its peak nowadays, every company has to alter its strategy to cater to the needs of the environment. External pressure increases as the customers demand environmental friendly services and products. Companies also face a push to be environmental friendly as the governments become increasingly vigilant regarding the environment, and new laws and regulatory policies take shape .We chose the topic ‘Organization and the Natural Environment’, as there is a need to analyze the responsible actions of companies. Why and more importantly, how are they protecting the environment? For this reason we focus mainly on the oil sector. This is because petroleum is one of the leading causes of pollution as it emits greenhouse gases when combusted. These include CO (carbon monoxide), Sulfur, Carbon Dioxide, Benzene and volatile organic compounds which can cause harmful diseases like cancer. As the media highlights organizational CSR relating to the environment, these companies come under the scrutiny of public eye . Eco friendly companies have a good public image and are prioritized by 15 to 46 percent of the customers. With increasing transparency of the corporate world, companies have to measure their actions and have to make environment friendly strategies. It is not just the concern for the public image that drives oil companies to look for environmental friendly fuels, but also because fossil fuel reserves are thinning out, and petro-diesel is steadily becoming a scarce commodity. Crude oil reserves are estimated to finish off completely between 2050 and 2075. As more and more people buy cars, the demand keeps on rising and the price of the increasingly depleting supply will climb to ...
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With annual revenue of US $19.02 billion, Chevron Corporation is the 16th largest integrated oil and gas energy company in the world. Globally they account for a workforce of approximately 62,000 (Forbes 2011). In 2010, the company produced 2.763 million barrels of oil per day (Chevron 2012). Corporations as large as Chevron owe a great amount of responsibility towards the society and environment above and beyond the economic and legal obligations. The industry is strongly linked to environmental scandals and companies make various efforts to address these issues (Farache and Perks 2010, 235). The following thesis will review the Environmental performance of Chevron in terms of fulfilling social needs within society and stakeholders.
With the fuel crisis that is happening in the world today it is now more important than ever to begin the look towards alternative fuel sources. One smart step for the US would be to wean the country slowly off of the gasoline fix and to look into alternative fuels to replace the “never coming back” fossil fuels. It turns out that Ethanol as a hybrid fuel proves to be a notable candidate for this gasoline intervention, per say. Now the United States is currently looking to subsidize fossil fuel alternatives. However, before considering ethanol production as a governmental subsidy, using large amounts of hard earned tax payer money, there has to be many alternative factors that come into play such as making sure the pros out weight the cons as far as environmental benefits and performance output and not to mention looking at the entire matter from an economic or investment perspective. First we need to consider what the ethanol we are talking about actually is and how can we obtain it.
Over the past years, planet Earth has been warming up. According to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, average temperatures have risen around1.4 degrees Fahrenheit/0.8 degrees Celsius since 1880. In fact, the rate of warming is increasing. It was reported by a number of climate studies that the last two decades were the hottest in 400 years. Global warming is a major threat to the planet. It is agreed that humans have caused most of the past century's warming by releasing greenhouse gasses, as we power our electronic lives. The “greenhouse effect” is performed when the gasses let out into Earth’s atmosphere trap heat from the sun. Through the burning of fossil fuels, humans are enhancing the greenhouse effect and increasing the temperatures of the planet. Although the greenhouse effect is what keeps the planet warm, thereby supporting life, too much would also result in severe issues. Now, with the increasing rate of greenhouse gases emissions, frozen glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, and wildlife is scrambling to keep up with the fast pace. Above that, weather can also become more and more extreme. Something has to be done.
In the United States we have been looking into alternative energies to reduce our dependence on oil and help reduce our carbon footprint. One method the EPA has come out in support of is ethanol production. Ethanol is considered a green fuel because it recycles the burned carbon each time new crops are grown. In theory ethanol is a good stepping stone between using gasoline and zero emission power sources. However biofuels are still young technology that has many problems before it can be useful. The EPA is in full support of biofuels and has mandated that by 2020, 36 billion gallons of biofuels are to be produced in America. Currently almost all of America biofuels comes in the form of corn based ethanol which is extremely inefficient and can cause sustainability problems. Due to this reason only 15 billion gallons of the mandated biofuels can be form corn based ethanol. The rest of the biofuel must come from non-corn based alternatives such as cellulosic ethanol which the EPA projects to create all most all of the 21 billion remaining gallons of ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol uses the cellulose that is in all plants matter to create ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol is far more efficient than corn ethanol because you can use the whole plant and it sets no limitation on what type of plant matter can be used. Even though the EPA projects that these number will be achievable, due to current setbacks and efficiencies cellulosic ethanol will not be able to meet this output within the time constraints and a goal of 2034 years would be more realistic in the long run.
Ethanol production was developed in hopes of severing our ties with fossil fuels in favor of alternative energy, such as biofuels. Although, VOCs emissions are released during production of ethanol in a factory, the quality of air is greatly improved when burning ethanol versus fossil fuels. Burning ethanol instead of fossil fuels reduces the amount of cancer-causing greenhouse gases that go into the atmosphere. Ethanol production ranks at the bottom of industrial water usage, but is still not out of the woods with the abundance of water usage needed in corn feedstock and ethanol manufacturing and processing facilities. Many acres of land are needed to grow corn crops, however, many corn farmers are successful in growing more corn on less acreage.
The tradeoffs of using gasoline for cars are large emission of carbon dioxide and required large amount of chemical t...
Tyner, Wallace. “The U.S. Ethanol and Biofuels Boom: Its Origins, Current Status, and Future Prospects.” BioScience. August 2008. Vol 58 (7):646
Introduction:The idea of biofuels is a old concept, reaching as far as the ending of the 19th century. Solid in its idea but flawed in its presentation. Biofuels are a alternative energy to fossil fuels that are made from natural methods such as plants and crops and are key in solving the apparent flaws of fossil fuels. While fossil fuels have been in use for over a century, Biofuels have now risen to the popularity and been exposed to the press. At one point of time biofuel were being considered by some of the most brilliant minds ever in human history such as Henry Ford and Rudolph Diesel who believed that biofuels had the potential to be the new evolution s on only to reappear a century later. Now the world faces the struggles of global warming and the depletion of fossil fuels slowly dimming by day. Throughout the last century biofuels have proven to have a place in our society as a new alternative fuel source. Specializing in Being Natural and healthier than fossil fuels, biofuels have had a rough beginning against its competitor due to key situations such as pricing, Side effects, to fuel power. However the idea was passed on a to the later generations, and continued to pasand prolong usage. However through the last decade they have been highly advertised by politicians and Government officials claiming it to be the future of a powerful working society, and to help in making a new energy free world. Through belief Some even claiming that “By 2050, a new generation of sustainable biofuels could provide over a quarter of the world’s total transport fuel, according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency” (last name). With such improvement biofuels should be the obvious answer to providing a better future to th...
The ecologists are of the opinion that the racing industry is an unnecessary burden for the society, that it does not serve any purpose. But the fact is that the racing industry is just like any other industry that is driven by diesel fuels like car manufacturing and airplane development. If these two consumer goods are considered an important part of human technological innovation, there is no need to sideline the racing industry. On the basis of this, we can also say that using biofuels for racing is preposterous because the biofuels cannot give the thrust that the racing cars need in order to compete. Biofuels are not of high-octane in nature; diesel fuels are. Biofuel cannot be characterized as an energy rich fuel. Using biofuel instead of diesel fuel will negatively impact the performance of racing cars, leading to heavy losses for the racing industry (The Royal Society 08).
This case focuses on corporate obstacles to pollution prevention. Pollution prevention can complex especially for large corporations. There are many different forms of pollution prevention including emissions control devices and incremental changes in existing technology. The author reviews the impact of emissions controlled devices, however the focus of the case study is on incremental changes in existing technology. Incremental changes include substituting one or two steps in a production process or relationship changes between production steps. One example of incremental changes that was provided by the author was eliminating chlorofluorocarbons and saving energy by replacing a refrigeration process with a heath exchanger that can exploit waste cooling from another part of the process. There are three critical decision-making stages for incremental changes; identifying a pollution prevention opportunity, finding a solution appropriate to that opportunity, and implementing that solution. The author discusses the three aspects of an organization (culture, ability to process information, and its politics) and how they impact the decision-making stages.
Will, George F. "The Biofuel Follies. " Newsweek. 151.06 (Feb 11, 2008): 64. General Reference Center Gold. Gale. GILA RIDGE HIGH SCHOOL. 20 Feb. 2015
...ch is used to replace natural gas. He also stated that, among the equipment used to burn the biofuel, the suspension burner have the ability to exceed 99% efficiency and whole-tree burner can reduce the cost of harvesting and handling woody fuels by about 35% (Brown, 2003). Moreover, the usage of bio-energy in long term is to provide a degree of ecological balance and climate change, avoid acid rain, reduce soil erosion and minimize water pollution (Gevorkian, 2007). Therefore, biomass is environmental friendly like solar energy. Based on the research that has been carried out regarding the synthesis of gas from biomass, the gas gasifies in the internal combustion engine. The relative energy density of synthesis gas is higher than the fossil fuel under certain conditions. In addition, the relative flame speed of synthesis gas can reduce the time for spark ignition.
Some of the ways we try to combat Climate Change differes from region to region and culure to culture. One of the remedies that seems to be adapting all around the world is the use of biofuels instead of using fossil fuels. People believe that instead of digging up and using oil and petroleum, our best solution to combat greenhouse gases emitted by fossil fuels is to plant soybeans, sugar cane, palm oil and use that as a replacement. More cars are flex fuled, and use ethenol mixed with petroleum to lessen the use of oil since oil prices are only going to increase with the decreasing amount that is
The concept of this essay is to stress that biofuels are a viable and sustainable energy source than fossil fuels, showing its advantages but not ignoring its disadvantages which also enlightens us about the cleaner and renewable natural resources. Biofuels is an alternative source of energy which can end the global dependence on fossil fuels.