Renewable & Recyclable Energy
Alternatives to Fossil Fuels
- In order to reduce carbon emissions and to decouple fossil fuels from economic growth, the world must look to increase its use of alternative sources of ‘clean’ energy
- Alternative sources of ‘clean’ energy can be categorised into:
- Renewable sources such as hydro, wind, solar, geothermal and tidal energy
- Recyclable sources such as nuclear power and biofuels
Renewable Energy
- Currently, the main sources of renewable energy are hydro, wind, solar (mainly via photovoltaic cells), geothermal and tidal
- The contributions of renewable energy sources to the energy mix vary from country to country
Energy Consumption per capita, 2021
- The physical geography of a country will determine whether they have renewable energies to exploit
- Not all countries will have coasts or ‘hot rocks’ heated by magma for use in geothermal energy
- Not all countries have warm climate with long sunshine hours
- Not all countries have permanently flowing rivers or strong winds
- Whilst, it is often claimed that renewable sources are the answer to our global energy challenge however, there are some factors to consider
Evaluation of Renewable Energy
Benefits of Renewable Energy |
Challenges of Renewable Energy |
Renewable energy will not run out and provides many environmental benefits e.g., reduction in greenhouse gases Will save money in the long term as operation and maintenance costs are lower Reduces a country’s reliance on importing energy sources from abroad Creates employment e.g., in the USA, the renewable energy sector employs three times the amount of people that the fossil fuel sector |
Few countries where renewables will be able to replace fossil fuels completely due to the intermittency of renewable energy and limitations associated with the physical geography of the country As a result of oil prices falling during 2015, renewable energy became less attractive due to its higher costs Can have negative impacts on the environment e.g., flooding more valleys for HEP dams Many people will protest when there is a proposal made for a wind or solar farm close to their home |
Recyclable Energy
- Countries with high levels of energy consumption will often have no choice but to consider nuclear energy to generate electricity (with low carbon emissions)
- An additional benefit to this is that nuclear waste can be reprocessed and reused making it recyclable
- However, there are issues associated with using nuclear energy:
- Safety - nuclear incidents such as Chernobyl (Ukraine) and Fukushima (Japan)
- Disposal of highly toxic radioactive waste (which has a long decay life)
- Technology used means that nuclear energy is only really open to the most developed countries
- Costs - despite operational costs being relatively low, the cost of building and decommissioning are high
- Security of nuclear powered stations at a time when international terrorism is a concern
Exam Tip
Make sure you do not make the mistake of saying that renewable sources of energy will completely replace fossil fuels. This is not the reality, the hope is that renewable energy sources will reduce our use of fossil fuels producing lower carbon emissions