Renewable energy: looking after the environment
02-Dec-2014
Renewable energy refers to those sources that are refillable over time, such as wind, sunlight, tides, geothermal heat or waves, which can be used in domains like motor fuels, heating water or houses, rural energy or electricity generation.
Nowadays, looking after the environment is a global preoccupation, therefore the use of renewable energy is highly encouraged. In the recent years, there has been a considerable increase in the use of these alternative forms of energy – for example, renewable energy has a contribution of approximately 20 percent in the production of energy in at least 30 countries around the world.
Anyhow, in spite of the current tendencies towards these forms of alternative energy, it is interesting to know that until 1900 people have used almost entirely renewable energies. Think about it – around 790,000 years ago the man started to use biomass to fuel fires, 7000 years ago people began using the force of wind to navigate their ships on water and in the middle ages people used mostly animal power, human labor, water and wind in order to obtain the needed power for their every day chores. All in all, maybe we indeed have something to learn from our history, don’t you agree?
Today, the most used forms of renewable energy are:
Today, the most used forms of renewable energy are:
- - Wind power, which is obtained with the help of wind turbines. They are machines especially designed to provide power from 600 kW to 5 MW, usually placed offshore or at high altitudes, where the wind is more intense.
- - Solar energy consists of transforming sunlight into electricity. This is made possible by using solar thermal collectors or photovoltaic panels.
- - Hydropower is produced by hydroelectric dams, that can make even a slow flowing stream of water generate an important amount of energy. At the moment, China is the biggest producer of hydroelectricity.
- - Geothermal energy is obtained from the thermal energy produced in the Earth with the help of geothermal gradients.
- - Biomass, which refers to the biological materials resulted from plants. It can either be used directly under the form of combustion or indirectly, under the form of different kinds of biofuel.