Wind Energy

Solar Power

Natural Energy Source

What is renewable energy

Renewable energy is energy that comes from resources which are naturally replenished. There are a lot of examples of this, solar power, wind power; hydropower, geothermal power and biofuels are just a few of the examples. An increasing amount of our energy needs are now being met by renewable energy sources but this still represents a fairly small percentage. This is likely to change in the future however when we will likely get the majority of our energy from these sources.

The main reason that you would want to use renewable energy sources is that they are renewable. It has become very obvious that our traditional sources of fuel are starting to run out and that we are going to have to look at other options. This is becoming especially important with the rise of countries like China and India. As there huge populations move into middle class lifestyles the demand for energy will soar. This clearly cannot be met by fossil fuels so other sources will need to be found. This is why renewable energy is something that is being pursued very aggressively right now.

While renewable energy sources are definitely going to become more important in the future there are few issues that have to be addressed. The biggest is that right now the cost of using these fuels sources far exceeds that of fossil fuels. This is in spite of huge increases in the price of oil over the last few years. The main problem is that the capital costs of generating power with these sources is quite high. For example the wind may be a free source of energy but the cost of building a wind farm is very high. As a result it generally does not make economic sense to use alternative energy sources right now.

The other issue that renewable energy presents is that it may be harmful to the environment. This surprises a lot of people who just assume that all of these energy sources are environmentally friendly. This is not always the cases as some options like biofuels may actually release more greenhouse gases than fossil fuels. The other big environmental problem is that none of these fuel sources is particularly efficient. That means that it takes a lot of land to produce energy in this way. This may actually be the most limiting factor when it comes to renewable energy.

Renewable energy clearly has a great deal of potential but we are a long way from having it replace fossil fuels as our major energy source. In reality it will probably not replace them for centuries but will more likely be a supplement to them. This will reduce the amount of fossil fuels that we need to use but unless there is a major breakthrough in the world of renewable energy fossil fuels will likely remain our major energy source.