Our reliance on electricity in our livelihoods is far too drastic to the point where a copious amount of people cannot live without it. But what if it was all taken away suddenly? What if there was an “electric shortage” in the world? What will happen to our daily lives? What will happen to the economy? How can we replace electricity? In our world we should be prepared for these lingering questions by knowing the impacts of Electrical shortages and how we can combat them.
First let’s look at the economy. I’d say that the entire world economy is really dependent on electricity because it helped us in many ways such as the many industries that can come out of it and especially now where there is digital banking and digital money, we are permanently going to rely on electricity for the rest of human history. If it were going to be taken away, humanity will suffer greatly and it will probably collapse a lot of the key pillars humanity has built. One example of this is the Jakarta power outage. It’s not as bad as the entire world's power supply being taken away but it gives us a look at what it could do to the economy. On August 4th 2019, Jakarta suffered a 12 hour outage that cost them about 15 million dollars. This is because a lot of industries relied on electric power and would shut down if they didn’t have it. Examples of this are Hospitals, banking, transportation, malls, any industry you can think of basically uses electrical energy, it's all around!
Next let’s look at what will change in our livelihoods. Depending on the area you're in, it might change drastically to no change at all. Countries such as North America and Europe will have drastic changes because they rely heavily on electricity, while Countries in Africa such as Burundi will probably have little changes since only 9 percent of the population there actually has access to electricity. Next, the effects it has on our daily lives. First of all, Lots and lots of businesses will shut down leading to millions or billions of people losing their jobs. Next, nations all around the world might break down because their citizens' lives just changed drastically and they might not be able to control the population and fall into anarchy. Next, we can’t travel anywhere efficiently as transportation that relies on electricity will shut down. We will go back to a time where we rely on muscles and hard work is the thing that keeps you alive.
If we have an electrical shortage, we can use many ways to create electrical energy again. One way to efficiently create a lot of energy is by the use of nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is a hidden gem that most of the world doesn't know about or thinks it’s dangerous. It makes sense because of the Chernobyl disaster and how much it devastated Ukraine but it was really because of human error that it happened. If humans make a perfect nuclear power plant and maintain it perfectly, we can make electrical energy at a rate that has never been seen before. The reason why we haven’t used it is because so many people are scared of the risks of nuclear power plants. There's also a lot of problems such as the cost and the waste it produces but while it does produce waste that is bad for the environment, it is so much more efficient than coal and oil. The second way is by using renewable energy. Renewable energy is using resources that have infinite uses such as wind energy, hydro energy, and solar energy. These ways of creating energy are very healthy to the environment and have an infinite resource so it can be used for practically forever. So why are we not using this type of energy you’re probably asking. Well there are a myriad of reasons why we are not using renewable energy. The main reason why is cost. It costs a lot to build renewable energy and using coal and oil is much cheaper. A lot of land and money is needed to build renewable energy so building ways to get electricity through renewable energy is hard and moving away from coal and oil is even harder because it’s the cheaper option and it will require a lot for us to move away from it.
All things considered, we should watch out for electric shortages and we should make new ways of creating energy because if it is taken away from us, it will bring us back a couple centuries technologically and maybe socially. We have to be considerate and ready for these problems to come because if we are not prepared, it will cost us a great deal of problems.
Bibliography
China energy shortage
What will happen to the economy?
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/7/687
The electricity industry is a basic industry of the national economy. It has experienced several large-scale power shortages, hard power shortage and soft power shortage, which have brought a great threat to China’s sustainable economic development
Jakarta power outage (used in example for economy part)
Places with no electrical energy
Nuclear energy
Why it's not commonly used
Renewable energy and why its not commonly used
wow ready nice explaining, good job