Acknowledgment:
First of all, I would like to thank God for giving me the strength to complete this paper. I would like to express my special thanks to my professor Michael Sjoerdsma, who gave me the opportunity to do this paper, which also helped me in doing research and i came to know many new things. I would like to thank my parents for their love and support. I would also like to thank my group friends and my TA Soroosh Haeri for the proof reading for this paper and for helping me in correcting my mistakes.
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BENEFITS OF RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES (ALTERNATIVE SOURCES)
Introduction:
Renewable energy sources are continuously resupplied by the Sun or the tap inexhaustible resources, such as geothermal energy. In contrast, fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas form slowly as compared to their usage. Hence, we are essentially mining finite, nonrenewable resources and will eventually exhaust quality supplies. My audience will be the power generating companies, which generate power using hydrocarbons such as oil and natural gas. In this paper, I want to create awareness about the importance and direct economic benefits, including job creation, of investing in renewable energy technologies.
Since humankind’s beginning, the ability to harvest and convert has been a mean of survival. According to [4],”when the industrial revolution in Europe caused an evolution of society and areas of larger population density, people realized that factors such as comfortable housing and energy could be important to the development of a country. Fossil fuels became essential products of a modern society, and new strategies were developed to guarantee their uninterrupted supply”. For decades, proponents of renewable energy sources have focused on direct economic benefits of alternative sources, such as less health and environmental impact.
However, they have had less contribution in energy production. Fossil fuels are the major contributor in world’s energy market. According to Goldemberg, “the world’s energy market worth around 1.5 trillion dollars is still dominated by fossil fuels.”[11] Although other energy sources are expanding in the world, the rate of fossil fuel consumption for energy will also continue to increase [12]. Shafiee and Topal state that “the fossil fuel time depletion is calculated to be around 35, 107 & 37 years for oil, coal and natural gas respectively.”[13]
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The current rate of use of fossil fuels is extremely high, which in return raises a question: what will happen if these fuels run out? The only answer to this concern is to develop more of alternative resources that presently exist on this planet in an infinite quantity. The next important issue after the global consumption of fossil fuels is fossil fuels price movements. Boyle et al. state that “every year, Americans spend about $1900 per person on energy purchases, which is about 8% of the average person’s total expenditure on goods and services in a given year. Of this amount, 40% goes to pay for electricity.”[7]
Advantages of fossil fuels:
The theory that fossil fuels formed from the fossilized remains of dead plants by exposure to heat and pressure in the earth’s crust over millions of years was first introduced by George Agricola in 1556 and later by Mikhail Lomonosov in 18th century [5]. The main advantage of fossil fuel is that it has a very high calorific value. In other words, their consumption generates a tremendous amount of usable energy and considered as a high efficiency fuel. Thus, the energy produced by fossil fuel is greater than that of produced by an equivalent amount of any other energy resource.
In spite of being such a highly combustible material, these are quite stable in nature as compared to other resource. Another advantage of fossil fuel is their availability. The fuels can be easily found on the surface of earth. Moreover, their
