8.5 Sources of energy  (Page 2/9)

Energy is an important element at all levels of society. We live in a very interdependent world, and access to adequate and reliable energy resources is crucial for economic growth and for maintaining the quality of our lives. The principal energy resources used in the world are shown in [link] . The figure distinguishes between two major types of energy sources: renewable    and non-renewable    , and further divides each type into a few more specific kinds. Renewable sources are energy sources that are replenished through naturally occurring, ongoing processes, on a time scale that is much shorter than the anticipated lifetime of the civilization using the source. Non-renewable sources are depleted once some of the energy they contain is extracted and converted into other kinds of energy. The natural processes by which non-renewable sources are formed typically take place over geological time scales.

Our most important non-renewable energy sources are fossil fuels , such as coal, petroleum, and natural gas. These account for about 81% of the world’s energy consumption, as shown in the figure. Burning fossil fuels creates chemical reactions that transform potential energy, in the molecular structures of the reactants, into thermal energy and products. This thermal energy can be used to heat buildings or to operate steam-driven machinery. Internal combustion and jet engines convert some of the energy of rapidly expanding gases, released from burning gasoline, into mechanical work. Electrical power generation is mostly derived from transferring energy in expanding steam, via turbines, into mechanical work, which rotates coils of wire in magnetic fields to generate electricity. Nuclear energy is the other non-renewable source shown in [link] and supplies about 3% of the world’s consumption. Nuclear reactions release energy by transforming potential energy, in the structure of nuclei, into thermal energy, analogous to energy release in chemical reactions. The thermal energy obtained from nuclear reactions can be transferred and converted into other forms in the same ways that energy from fossil fuels are used.

An unfortunate byproduct of relying on energy produced from the combustion of fossil fuels is the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and its contribution to global warming. Nuclear energy poses environmental problems as well, including the safety and disposal of nuclear waste. Besides these important consequences, reserves of non-renewable sources of energy are limited and, given the rapidly growing rate of world energy consumption, may not last for more than a few hundred years. Considerable effort is going on to develop and expand the use of renewable sources of energy, involving a significant percentage of the world’s physicists and engineers.

Four of the renewable energy sources listed in [link] —those using material from plants as fuel (biomass heat, ethanol, biodiesel, and biomass electricity)—involve the same types of energy transformations and conversions as just discussed for fossil and nuclear fuels. The other major types of renewable energy sources are hydropower, wind power, geothermal power, and solar power.