The worst power failure in modern history occurred in August 2003 in the eastern part of North America. The failure occurred at around 4pm and affected about 50 million people in cities from New York in the United States to Toronto in Canada. People were trapped in elevators and in the underground trains and computer networks shut down. In just three minutes, 21 power plants had shut down, leaving 50 million people without power.
The cause? A combination of events was what did the damage. It had been a hot day, and everywhere, air conditioning systems were switched on and the demand for electricity rose. On its own, this would not have been a problem, except engineers made mistakes in using the computer software that controlled the energy supply. Power lines started shutting down and it did not take long for the system to go out of control.
This was not the only time something like this happened. In that same year, countries in Europe, including Sweden, Denmark, Italy and England, all experienced major power failures. In China, 23 of its 31 provinces had to ration power, and factories had to change their production to night-time and weekends so as to avoid using electricity during peak times.
Something was happening to the power supplies in the world.
In September the next year(2004), Hurricane Jeanne hit the coast of Florida. Although hurricanes in that part of the world are common, this was the first time the state was hit by four hurricanes in a single year. A hurricane had just crossed the state 20 days prior to Hurricane Jeanne. To make things worse, Hurricane Jeanne was stronger than the previous hurricane and blew away tarpaulins stretched across the already-damaged roofs and ripped away any remaining roofs. Before settling on Florida, Hurricane Jeanne had already killed over 1000 people.
Something was happening to the weather as well.
But are these two issues connected? Most of us are familiar with terms such as global warming and climate change. We also know that there is a connection between our use of energy and the state of the environment. We know that burning fossil fuels produces damaging waste products, yet we continue to do so at a rapid rate. Soon, there may not be enough energy in the world to meet our needs. Hence, many people believe that we are at the start of a period of dramatic change in global weather – an environmental energy crisis.
reference: McLeish, Ewan., 2005. World Issues, Energy Crisis. Malaysia: Aladdin Books Ltd.