World power usage nearly doubled between 1975 and 2005, while China's power consumption doubles every ten years. Global oil production has peaked and is currently declining. The U.S. burns a billion tons of coal every year; natural gas supplies are at critically low levels.
Additionally, 250 years of being reliant upon these fossil fuels for worldwide power must have has caused potentially catastrophic climate change -- whose consequences normally takes centuries to reverse. These hydrocarbons currently supply eighty three % of world energy demand.
Thirteen % of the world's main energy supply comes from traditional biomass, primarily from burning fire wood. While biomass is a renewable and potentially sustainable energy source, burning wood for fuel in open hearths creates greenhouse gases and contributes to climate change.
Hydropower from dammed rivers as well as streams contributes some 3 % of the electricity used worldwide. You'll notice no additional viable rivers to dam, and existing dams have caused major losses in habitat by blocking access to upstream spawning areas used by fish along with other marine animals. Many subspecies of salmon, for instance, are now extinct because of damming of the waters to which they've returned for millennia to spawn.
Contemporary renewable energy technologies like wind, solar, geothermal, tidal power and wave together today produce less than 1 % of the vitality being used. Yet these renewable sources of energy have the possibility to provide far more energy than is now available from all classic sources.
The main problem facing the renewable energy industry is looking infinity coil for electricity (visit link) ways to help make the price tag of clean energy more directly competitive with traditional fossil fuel-generated energy - - ecological advantages aside. Investment capital allocated to unlimited energy climbed from $80 billion in 2005 to hundred dolars billion in 2006. This purchase is creating true savings in the cost of unlimited energy as technologies are refined, economies of scale are made, and renewable energy is made progressively available to customers.
For reference purposes, in 2001 dollars, coal-generated energy, cost between .04-.08 per kilowatt hour. Wind energy, now costing .04-.08/kWh, is projected to drop around.03/kWh. Solar photovoltaic energy, now .25-1.60/kWh, is likely to cost .05.25/kWh in the near future. Solar thermal energy, now .12-.34/kWh, is projected to are available in between .04-.20/kWh. Geothermal power, now created at .02-.10 per kilowatt hour, must be offered at .01-.08/kWh.
Many projects for creating clean, renewable energy are underway worldwide. The wind power development increased 8-fold between 1997 and 2006; new wind producing equipment installed in 2006 alone is estimated at twenty three dolars billion. A task now underway in the U.K. will ultimately consist of 341 turbines and definately will provide one-third of London's residential energy requires, saving 1.9 million a ton of co2 gas emissions annually.