Renewable Energy Sources For Fossil Fuels
1240 WordsMay 9, 20165 Pages
We live in a world where we have to rely on resources such as fossil fuels in order to provide us energy. Almost everything we use nowadays consumes power in some form, and in tandem we rely on energy. Fossil fuels have become the go to resource for providing power. Fossil fuels include natural resources such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas. These fossil fuels fall under the non-renewable category because they take thousands of years in order to form naturally and cannot be replaced as fast as they are being consumed. Another non-renewable energy source is nuclear fuel, which is primarily obtained through the mining and refining of uranium ore. But how could we have used energy in the past without the use of fossil fuels? The answer is…show more content… While fossil fuels are widely used there is still the fear that we will eventually run out of fossil fuels to power our civilizations. Without these fuels we could not be able to power everything that needs power. In addition, the use of fossil fuels raises serious environmental concerns. The burning of fossil fuels produces around 21.3 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide per year and natural processes can only absorb about half that amount. Because nature can’t absorb every bit of carbon dioxide being released there is a net increase in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide. This is dangerous because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gases increase the temperature of the Earth by trapping heat inside our atmosphere. This keeps the temperature higher than if we were only being heated directly by the sun. Because the Earth is hotter this speeds up global warming, which will cause problems.
On the other hand there is renewable energy. Renewable energy is defined as any naturally occurring, theoretically inexhaustible source of energy such as biomass, solar, wind, tidal, wave, and hydroelectric power, that is not derived from fossil or nuclear fuel. Renewable energy contributes around 14% of global generation of energy. Renewable energy is important and useful because some sources are clean and both reusable, but there are many different sources for