Renewable energy (also called green energy) is energy from renewable natural resources that are replenished on a human timescale. The most widely used renewable energy types are solar energy, wind power, and hydropower. Bioenergy and geothermal power are also significant in some countries. Some also consider nuclear power a renewable power source, although this is controversial. Renewable energy installations can be large or small and are suited for both urban and rural areas. Renewable energy is often deployed together with further electrification. This has several benefits: electricity can move heat and vehicles efficiently and is clean at the point of consumption. Variable renewable energy sources are those that have a fluctuating nature, such as wind power and solar power. In contrast, controllable renewable energy sources include dammed hydroelectricity, bioenergy, or geothermal power.
Renewable energy systems have rapidly become more efficient and cheaper over the past 30 years. A large majority of worldwide newly installed electricity capacity is now renewable. Renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, have seen significant cost reductions over the past decade, making them more competitive with traditional fossil fuels. In most countries, photovoltaic solar or onshore wind are the cheapest new-build electricity. From 2011 to 2021, renewable energy grew from 20% to 28% of global electricity supply. Power from the sun and wind accounted for most of this increase, growing from a combined 2% to 10%. Use of fossil energy shrank from 68% to 62%. In 2022, renewables accounted for 30% of global electricity generation and are projected to reach over 42% by 2028. Many countries already have renewables contributing more than 20% of their total energy supply, with some generating over half or even all their electricity from renewable sources.
The main motivation to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources is to slow and eventually stop climate change, which is widely agreed to be caused mostly by greenhouse gas emissions. In general, renewable energy sources cause much lower emissions than fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency estimates that to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, 90% of global electricity generation will need to be produced from renewable sources. Renewables also cause much less air pollution than fossil fuels, improving public health, and are less noisy.
The deployment of renewable energy still faces obstacles, especially fossil fuel subsidies, lobbying by incumbent power providers, and local opposition to the use of land for renewable installations. Like all mining, the extraction of minerals required for many renewable energy technologies also results in environmental damage. In addition, although most renewable energy sources are sustainable, some are not. (Full article...)
As of 2019, worldwide geothermal power capacity amounts to 15.4 gigawatts (GW), of which 23.9% (3.68 GW) are installed in the United States. International markets grew at an average annual rate of 5 percent over the three years to 2015, and global geothermal power capacity is expected to reach 14.5–17.6 GW by 2020. Based on current geologic knowledge and technology the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA) publicly discloses, the GEA estimates that only 6.9% of total global potential has been tapped so far, while the IPCC reported geothermal power potential to be in the range of 35 GW to 2 TW. Countries generating more than 15 percent of their electricity from geothermal sources include El Salvador, Kenya, the Philippines, Iceland, New Zealand, and Costa Rica. Indonesia has an estimated potential of 29 GW of geothermal energy resources, the largest in the world; in 2017, its installed capacity was 1.8 GW.
"Ethanol creates U.S. jobs, cleans the air, strengthens national security – and best of all, it is here right now. Every day, ethanol producers are developing technological improvements to increase efficiency, reduce water use, and boost the amount of energy derived from corn kernels or from cellulosic biomass. Ethanol is not a 'someday' fuel. It is the renewable, clean-burning alternative we have to gasoline today."
Jeremy Leggett (born 16 March 1954) is a British social entrepreneur and writer. He founded and was a board director of Solarcentury from 1997 to 2020, an international solar solutions company, and founded and was chair of SolarAid, a charity funded with 5% of Solarcentury's annual profits that helps solar-lighting entrepreneurs get started in Africa (2006–2020). SolarAid owns a retail brand SunnyMoney that was for a time Africa's top-seller of solar lighting, having sold well over a million solar lights, all profits recycled to the cause of eradicating the kerosene lantern from Africa.
Leggett is winner of the first Hillary Laureate for International Leadership in Climate Change (2009), a Gothenburg Prize (2015), the first non-Dutch winner of a Royal Dutch Honorary Sustainability Award (2016), and has been described in the Observer as "Britain’s most respected green energy boss." He is the author of five books: "The Winning of The Carbon War", an account of what he sees as the "turnaround years" in the dawn of the global energy transition, 2013–2015, with an update edition spanning 2016–2017, "The Energy of Nations" (2013), "The Solar Century" (2009), "Half Gone" (2005) and "The Carbon War" (2000). He continues to write on his blog, and in occasional articles for national media. He lectured on short courses in business and society at the Universities of Cambridge (UK) and St Gallen (Switzerland). His vision is of a renaissance in civilisation aided or even triggered by renewable energy and its intrinsic social benefits. (Full article...)
... that because solar cookers use no fuel and they cost nothing to run, humanitarian organizations are promoting their use worldwide to help slow deforestation and desertification, caused by using wood as fuel for cooking ? Solar Cookers are a form of outdoor cooking and are often used in situations where minimal fuel consumption is important, or the danger of accidental fires is high.
Image 7Distribution of wind speed (red) and energy (blue) for all of 2002 at the Lee Ranch facility in Colorado. The histogram shows measured data, while the curve is the Rayleigh model distribution for the same average wind speed. (from Wind power)
Image 13Enhanced geothermal system 1:Reservoir 2:Pump house 3:Heat exchanger 4:Turbine hall 5:Production well 6:Injection well 7:Hot water to district heating 8:Porous sediments 9:Observation well 10:Crystalline bedrock (from Geothermal energy)
Image 19Wind turbines such as these, in Cumbria, England, have been opposed for a number of reasons, including aesthetics, by some sectors of the population. (from Wind power)
Image 20Global map of wind speed at 100 meters on land and around coasts. (from Wind power)
Image 21Hydro generation by country, 2021 (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 27Yearly hydro generation by continent (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 28Acceptance of wind and solar facilities in one's community is stronger among U.S. Democrats (blue), while acceptance of nuclear power plants is stronger among U.S. Republicans (red). (from Wind power)
Image 29Electricity generation at Wairakei, New Zealand (from Geothermal energy)
Image 31Energy from wind, sunlight or other renewable energy is converted to potential energy for storage in devices such as electric batteries or higher-elevation water reservoirs. The stored potential energy is later converted to electricity that is added to the power grid, even when the original energy source is not available. (from Wind power)
Image 37Global geothermal electric capacity. Upper red line is installed capacity; lower green line is realized production. (from Geothermal energy)
Image 38Parabolic dish produces steam for cooking, in Auroville, India. (from Solar energy)
Image 39Share of electricity production from wind, 2023 (from Wind power)
Image 40A turbine blade convoy passing through Edenfield in the U.K. (2008). Even longer 2-piece blades are now manufactured, and then assembled on-site to reduce difficulties in transportation. (from Wind power)
Image 41A panoramic view of the United Kingdom's Whitelee Wind Farm with Lochgoin Reservoir in the foreground. (from Wind power)
Image 42The Hoover Dam in the United States is a large conventional dammed-hydro facility, with an installed capacity of 2,080 MW. (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 43Electricity production by source (from Wind power)
Image 47Typical components of a wind turbine (gearbox, rotor shaft and brake assembly) being lifted into position (from Wind power)
Image 48Concentrated solar panels are getting a power boost. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) will be testing a new concentrated solar power system – one that can help natural gas power plants reduce their fuel usage by up to 20 percent.[needs update] (from Solar energy)
Image 49Seasonal cycle of capacity factors for wind and photovoltaics in Europe under idealized assumptions. The figure illustrates the balancing effects of wind and solar energy at the seasonal scale (Kaspar et al., 2019). (from Wind power)
Image 52Electricity generation at Poihipi, New Zealand (from Geothermal energy)
Image 53Share of electricity production from hydropower, 2023 (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 54The Warwick Castle water-powered generator house, used for the generation of electricity for the castle from 1894 until 1940 (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 55Electricity generation at Ohaaki, New Zealand (from Geothermal energy)
Image 56Merowe Dam in Sudan. Hydroelectric power stations that use dams submerge large areas of land due to the requirement of a reservoir. These changes to land color or albedo, alongside certain projects that concurrently submerge rainforests, can in these specific cases result in the global warming impact, or equivalent life-cycle greenhouse gases of hydroelectricity projects, to potentially exceed that of coal power stations. (from Hydroelectricity)
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![Image 48Concentrated solar panels are getting a power boost. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) will be testing a new concentrated solar power system – one that can help natural gas power plants reduce their fuel usage by up to 20 percent.[needs update] (from Solar energy)](/wiki/File:Photo_of_the_Week-_Boosting_Solar_Technology_(8722948189).jpg)
