The World's Major Energy Source of the Future
Solar Energy is set to become one of the world's major energy sources of the future says Robert McMahon, Mr. Solar Energy.
This is because oil is running out, all fossil fuels including wood, coal, gas and oil are polluting and other renewables such as wind, hydro, waves and tidal energy have useable limits.
Nuclear energy has questions, but solar energy, from the sun, is abundantly available and can easily be scaled up or down in size to meet community or individual needs. Universities and research establishments all over the world are putting lots of effort into developing renewable energy technology and many remarkable technical breakthroughs have been made and new models, methods and devices are being tested on experimental scales.
Energy consumption falls into 3 broad categories:-
(a).. Industrial, mining, processing and construction uses now consume around 37% of the world energy production.
(b).. Transport, including motor transport, road, rail, sea and air transport consume around 20% of the world's energy and
(c).. Residential and commercial buildings, lighting, cooling, heating, water, sewage and appliances use consume around 16% of all energy produced.
The remaining 27% of energy produced goes in transmission and production losses. Around half the world's energy is generated as electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. In 2005, around 40% of the world's electricity was produced from coal. 20% came from natural gas. 16% from hydro. 15% from nuclear, 7% from oil and only 2% of the world's electricity supply came from renewable sources.
Coal is expected to remain the world's leading fuel for energy production in the medium term but the use of fossil fuels, as a source of power, is expected to gradually decline as alternative energy sources such as solar, wind and hydrogen become increasingly economically available.
Robert McMahon