Fossil Fuels Do Not Work Essay

     The real question around the beginning of the 19th century concerning solar energy was "could the sun produce electricity directly?" The main motivation behind this desire was that electricity could be stored in a battery, and used later. It would not be necessary to use the device in the sunlight. All inventions failed, until Frank Shuman, an engineer from Pennsylvania finally made a breakthrough. He built an experimental plant that used black troughs covered in glass with a few inches of water. When exposed to the sun, the water got very hot, causing it to circulate and power an electric generator. His data was so convincing that he got financial backers and built the world's first solar electric power plant in Egypt. However, the Eastern Sun Power Company went out of business even though it was using free fuel. It didn't produce enough electricity for the area that it used, 14,000 sq. ft of sun-collecting land (Zweibel 48).

In this paper, we focus on using fossil fuels causing climate change. Fossil fuels are fuels formed natural resources such as coal, petroleum and natural gas, which are the most widely used fuel and industrial chemicals in the world. Since industrial revolution, fossil fuels bring a very great quantity convenience and technological products. So we can use cars, planes and all modern products. But fossil fuels cause climate change at the same time. Greenhouse gas, nitrous oxides and a great deal of harmful gas which are from fossil fuels are causing serious environmental problems. Therefore we need to be concerned about the problems caused by fossil fuels and the solutions.

The greatest energy that can be produced by the sun is electricity. Photovoltaics, or solar cells, capture the sun and convert it into electricity. Solar cells were discovered by the Europeans back in the 1870’s when they used selenium to develop the telegraph. They found that when light hits selenium it would produce and electrical current. Soon enough there were many scientists and engineers working on photovoltaic systems. Silicon and Selenium proved to be the two best elements to conduct electricity when light hits them. Photovoltaic systems (PV cell) work by converting the suns light into electricity. A semi conducting material absorbs the sunlight, that energy knocks electrons loose from their atoms, this allows the electrons to flow through the material to produce electricity. The further development of solar cells can be attributed to the satellite industry. Solar cells were expensive and there was no use for them until satellites came. Because it is impractical to tether satellites it became important to develop solar energy at any cost that would power these satellites. This created a sustainable market for solar power, the first of its kind.

During the past couple of centuries, humans were able to accomplish more things than the entirety of human existence. Mankind was able to prolong life, cure deadly diseases, and more. One of the greatest achievements was converting fossil fuels into energy. People are able to take the fossilized remains and turn them into the everyday fuel everyone in the world uses. However, the energy humans have been using is not clean. The more people use fossil fuels, the more the planet dies. Fortunately, scientists and engineers were able to come up with ways to renew energy. They created new technologies that are capable of harvesting the sun’s rays, water currents, and wind power. Even though renewable energy sources like this have been discovered, people still neglect to convert to them and continue to use fossil fuels.

There are many different types of renewable sources such as solar panels, wind turbines and hydroelectric power. Solar panels work by using sunlight and enhancing it into electricity which is then distributed. They work when the sunlight hits the anti-reflective coating of a solar panel which creates a charge with the delocalised electrons in specially treated semiconductor material. These were first created in 1954 by Bell Laboratories . Although it was very expensive at the time of discovery, over the years the price of manufacturing and installing the solar panels have decreased while the efficiency of the panels has also decreased meaning more energy can be produced at a faster rate. Another type of renewable energy which is very popular is wind energy produced by turbines. This produce energy by using the

Fossil fuels run the world. 78% of the world uses fossil fuels to generate their country's electricity. Only 22% of the world electricity use solar and wind, which are renewable energy sources. Many people today use fossil fuels which include natural gas, oil ,and petroleum.Fossil fuels are very bad for the environment because they cause air pollution and greenhouse gasses to be released. Air pollution and greenhouse gasses can be reduced if cities and suburbs transition to renewable energy.

Solar panel absorbs sunrays as a source of energy to produce electricity. They usually comprise of smaller units known as photovoltaic cells (PV). They are the means of conversion. Electrical energy is converted into mechanical energy by means of a machine called electric motor.

Fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and natural gas provide the U.S. with over 80 percent of its energy supply (McNerney & Cheek, 2012). Fossil fuels, formed from organic materials over the course of many centuries, have fueled the global and U.S. economic development for the past two centuries. Nonetheless, fossil fuels are finite resources that cause irreversible harm to the environment. Scientists consider them nonrenewable forms of energy since they take hundreds of years to form. According to Rand (2010), fossil fuels were responsible for 79 percent of the greenhouse emissions in 2010. Poor efficiency practices and higher energy demands have increased the usage of fossil fuels, and it is now important to find substitute means of generating

Everyday in U.S., immense amount of fossil fuel is burned. Fossil fuels are fuel formed by natural processes, such as decomposition of buried dead organisms. Fossil fuel release carbon dioxide when they are burned which adds to the greenhouse effect and increases global warming. The way we can help the environment and reduce the amount of carbon dioxide is by replaying fossil fuels with solar and wind sources for electric power generations in the U.S.

Coal, petroleum, natural gas. Together, they are the producers of approximately eighty percent of the world’s energy, and, according to the US Energy Information Administration, are predicted to remain as such throughout the early to-mid twenty-first century (EIA 6). Yet there are far more efficient fuels options than these, as the profound xkcd cartoon to the right suggests, and these options do not involve polluting the atmosphere, exacerbating climate change, or contaminating marine life with black goo. Additionally, fossil fuels are nonrenewable resources, and by definition cannot be expected to last forever. They are simply not a feasible long-term option. Therefore, rather than merely limit the use of fossil fuels, world policymakers should put as much effort as possible into developing cleaner, more efficient energy options like nuclear fusion. When fully commercialized, these more potent fuel sources should make fossil fuels obsolete by their very presence in the economy.

The Industrial Revolution sparked a need for large sources of energy. Human and animal labor could not provide the power necessary to power industrial machinery, railroads, and ships. The steam engine and later the internal combustion engine provided the bulk of the energy required by the industrial age. Today most nations are still heavily reliant on energy that comes from combustion. Usually coal, petrolium, and natural gas are used. Some hydroelectric, wind power, and nuclear fission sources are used, but in the US they accounted for less than 20% of the total energy consumption in 1997 (1). Many experts are worried that natural resources such as coal and petrolium are being depleted faster than they are being replenished, which could

Fossil fuels are essential to life on earth as we know it today. Our world would certainly be much different if it weren’t for such seemingly simple things such as coal, oil, and natural gas. These basic elements of life on earth may not seem like a major concern to some people until we put into perspective how they have shaped our world today. Civilizations have been built, economies have risen and crumbled, and even wars have been fought over these precious fossil fuels. However, these fossil fuels serve us in ways we may never truly appreciate, as long as we use them as recklessly as we do now. The major entity about fossil fuels is concerning their longevity and permanence in our world, and we all know, they will be around forever.

Solar energy is transferred to the earth through radiation and the energy reaching the top of the earth’s atmosphere is estimated at 1400watts/m2. It is used directly for a wide range of human life activities including simple domestic use - drying cloths, crop and providing hot water for home use; commercial generation of electricity using photovoltaic equipment; and heating water to drive turbines in thermal electric generators. In recent times photovoltaic cells are used to convert sunlight into electricity with 40 percent efficiency Another method of using solar energy to generate electricity also used in recent times is to convert the sun’s energy into heat which is then stored in thermal tanks. The thermal tanks contain molten salts or paraffin wax which can absorb tremendous amount of heat energy without changing state. The heat can then be used as a heat source in steam engines to drive electric generators. Such thermal tanks usually have capacities of up to 1.44 Tera joules per 68m3. Grid tie allows excess energy to be sent to the transmission grid; the rest of the electricity can then be stored or used directly with solar inverters for AC

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, from the time we are born until the time we die we are consuming energy. Currently the majority of this energy comes from fossil fuels (i.e. coal, natural gas, and oil). Fossil fuels made up eighty-seven percent of the energy consumed worldwide in 2012 (Gonzalez & Lucky). There are many people who do not believe there is an energy crisis, or that there is anything wrong with depending on fossil fuels, however fossil fuels are non-renewable, which means once they are gone we are unable to create more. In addition, the carbon that is located in fossil fuels and released from when used for energy, contributes to the rising global temperature (Maehlum, 2013). This is not the only detrimental effect of fossil fuels, but is perhaps the most serious.

Abstract: The current energy situation with fossil fuels as the main source of the world’s energy has two main flaws: fossil fuels contribute to global warming via the greenhouse effect and they are limited in the quantity that remains. Solar power solves both of these problems and can be captured by utilizing photovoltaic cells. However, photovoltaic cells have their own drawbacks due to their high costs of installation and maintenance.