6.6A Renewable & Recyclable Energy

• Alternatives to Fossil Fuels:

  • 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

  
• • 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
• Benefits 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
• Challenges of renewable energy:

  • 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
• Issues with 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