What exactly are fossil fuels?

Fossil energy sources, including oil, coal and natural gas, are non-renewable
resources that formed when prehistoric plants and animals died and were gradually
buried by layers of rock. ... Over the past 20 years, nearly three-fourths of human-
caused emissions came from the burning of fossil fuels.

What are renewable resources?

There are many types of renewable resources. For example, solar panels are
renewable because they are powered by the sun, whose energy will never be
exhausted in our lifetimes.

On the other hand, oil is nonrenewable because it takes millions of years for oil to
form from decaying animal and plant matter. Once we dig it all up, we will not have
more oil for millions of years.

Renewable energy comes in many forms, and its use is expanding year after year as
the world continues to realize its benefits in combating global warming. Not only
that, the cost of renewable resources continues to decrease - making it more
feasible now than ever before.

For example, since 2010, the cost of solar has reduced by 80% while wind has
decreased by 40% - making both options cheaper to run than coal.

Top five examples of renewable resources

Solar and large-scale wind farms are probably the most well-known renewable
resources, but there are a few other forms that are a big part of the US energy mix.

Examples of renewable energy resources include:

Solar energy
Wind energy
Geothermal energy
Hydropower
Bioenergy
What makes renewable energy a great option is it costs less to build and maintain
than fossil fuel infrastructure and it is less polluting to the environment.

Renewable energy will be important in shifting to a zero-carbon world and will be

imperative for future job development. In fact, a recent study by the University of
California-Berkeley suggests that we can reach a 90% renewable energy grid for the
entire United States by 2035, generating half a million jobs a year and will meet the
entire grid’s energy needs.

Even though most options are impractical for homes, most renewable energy
sources can be utilized by utility and other large-scale companies.

Breaking down each renewable resource

While there are several renewable resources that can generate electricity, not all of
them will work in every situation. For instance, it is more practical for you to power
your home with solar panels than a wind turbine - but a wind farm is a great way to
power an entire neighborhood.

It’s important to note that each renewable energy source comes with their own
unique challenges. For example, mining for certain metals or minerals to build
renewable energy sources can be harmful to the environment.

But with each energy source, there are ways to improve their production, which we
discuss below.

Solar energy
Going solar is the most practical renewable energy option for homeowners. You can
connect photovoltaic solar panels to your roof and adjust the size of your system
depending on the amount of energy your home needs.

Solar power falls into the ”renewable” category because panels can generate energy
for many years by simply absorbing sunlight. Once solar panels are manufactured
and installed, all they do is sit there and create energy.

After the manufacturing of renewable resources like solar panels, they produce
pollution-free energy for their lifetimes.

One challenge with solar panels is that at the end of their lifecycle, which is typically
25-30 years, they need to be recycled. However, there is currently no effective way
to recycle solar panels.

Wind energy
Wind energy is a bit tricky - you need a large enough plot of land, substantial wind in
your area, and the ability to pay for the high cost of installation. It can be practical if
you live on a farm and generate enough wind power that can then be sold to utility
companies.

The good news is that within the US, both offshore and onshore windmills are
becoming more widespread, with plans to build offshore wind farms on the east
coast.

Wind farms offer a great way to utilize clean energy but they need to be very well-
thought-out. The main environmental disadvantage is the fact that they can harm
animal migration patterns, especially in the water.

Wind farms will emit a low electrical current that can confuse fish and other animals
that swim by the turbines. But, once introduced to the environment, animals should
be able to adapt.

Geothermal energy
Geothermal energy is perhaps the most untapped renewable resource. Geothermal
power works by using geothermal heat pumps to use the heat from the earth’s core
to generate electricity. Geothermal energy can most easily be used in areas with very
active tectonic plates and volcano activity, such as Iceland or the west coast of the
US.

That is because in these areas, there is a lot of movement underground and the
earth’s heat is making its way to the surface. You can see examples of this from
geysers shooting steam into the air at the earth’s surface - which is the heat building
up from the earth's core. That heat is utilized to generate geothermal energy.

One downside of geothermal is the cost - it is not yet able to compete with cheaper
sources of energy such as solar or wind. It is very expensive to create geothermal
plants and to dig deep enough to get to the hottest part of the earth.

The main environmental concern from geothermal plants, aside from potential
negatives from mining the materials to build the plant, is the potential release of
toxic gasses into the atmosphere from deep below the earth’s crust. These gases can
potentially cause acid rain, however they are emitted at much lower quantities than
gas and coal plants.

Hydropower
You can think of hydropower in a simple way by imagining old water wheels that
were used to power flour mills. Now, they are much larger and more sophisticated
hydroelectric power generators.

Think of the Hoover Dam in Nevada: hydropower works by harnessing the water’s
energy as it rushes through the plant, powering turbines to create energy.

Building hydropower plants has been known to displace local human populations,
hinder fish population migration patterns, and exacerbate drought by keeping more
water upstream so downstream populations get less.

But when done in an environmentally-friendly, properly managed way, hydropower

is a great source of energy. Unless there is a drought, water will always flow and is
completely renewable.

Bioenergy
Bioenergy is a blanket term for energy sources that are derived from plant material.
For example, corn can be used to create ethanol, a type of biofuel, which is then
used for car or airplane fuel.

Another application of bioenergy is wood pellets, also referred to as biomass energy

or energy made from organic material. Wood pellets are derived from trees which
are then burned in power plants. Because the fuel is made from plants, it is
technically renewable - since the plants can be replanted and grown year after year.
Bioenergy has the potential to be unsustainable if trees are cut down too quickly
before they can regenerate. Biomass is based on the assumption that the plants that
are grown to be turned into energy will also remove the carbon that they emit into
the atmosphere when being burned.

In order to make sure this process is sustainable, more trees need to be planted than
are cut down to make sure that CO2 is removed at a faster rate that it is being
emitted.

What are non-renewable resources?

What makes these resources non-renewable is the fact that once they are used up,
new reserves will not be created for millions of years.

They are usually referred to as ‘fossil fuels’ because they are in fact made from
animal and plant fossils which have been decaying for millions of years.

The most common non-renewable resources are:

Natural gas
Oil/petroleum
Coal
Nuclear power
Natural gas
Often claimed as a cleaner-burning fuel, natural gas still emits carbon dioxide.
Carbon dioxide is an extremely harmful byproduct because it traps earth warming
heat in the atmosphere. It is also getting more challenging to dig up, pushing it
further away from being a cheap, “clean” resource.

Oil
Oil powers many things ranging from airplanes to heating homes. While oil and coal
helped propel the industrial revolution, it might also send us to a whole new world
of stress if climate change remains unchecked.

Coal
The world's favorite, heavily-polluting energy source, coal, is used globally because it
was historically reliably cheap and easy to dig up. Fortunately, renewable energy is
starting to become cheaper than coal.

Nuclear power
Many times, nuclear power is claimed to be a renewable resource. But technically, it
is just a zero-carbon source of energy. While it is true that the nuclear reaction that
occurs to create energy can exist for years before a plant becomes too old, it
produces massive amounts of radioactive waste along the way.

Additionally, nuclear power needs a water source that is constantly cooling down the
reactors, which then creates radioactive waste water. Radioactive wastewater
contaminates water sources which can lead to unsafe drinking water or fish that
cannot be eaten because they have too much radiation in them.