Renewable: it’s the magic word! Today, we are beginning to worry about the effects of the approaching scarcity of energy from fossil sources that require millions of years for their renewal: coal, oil and natural gas. Development of renewable energy sources is therefore one of the solutions
expected
to solve this enormous problem.
It is also a first step
towards solving the problem posed by carbon dioxide, which is produced when oil, gas or coal is burnt: the increased content of this gas in the atmosphere is going to lead rapidly to global warming and, without any doubt, to major climatic changes.
We are not short of renewable energy sources: moving water (hydropower, tidal energy and wave power, for instance), the sun
(solar energy), the wind (wind energy), the heat of the earth’s substratum (geothermal energy), … and many others! But they are still in their early stages of development and are therefore relatively expensive. Further development requires government grants. Moreover, most of them lead to the production of electricity. So they will never be able to replace the oil and gas that is used to manufacture
chemical
products (plastics, synthetic fibres, etc.).
Development of these new energy sources to preserve oil as far as possible and to reserve it for the manufacture of “noble” products; adaptation of our way of life, of living,
of moving around and of working, with these new forms of energy: these are the major challenges for the coming decades.
And it is everybody’s responsibility because it will also be necessary to achieve energy savings. Renewable energy sources cannot provide quantities of energy as large as those that are currently used worldwide.
So, let’s have a look at what precisely these renewable energy sources consist of. |