Renewable energy (also called green energy) is energy from renewable natural resources that are replenished on a human timescale. The most widely used renewable energy types are solar energy, wind power, and hydropower. Bioenergy and geothermal power are also significant in some countries. Some also consider nuclear power a renewable power source, although this is controversial. Renewable energy installations can be large or small and are suited for both urban and rural areas. Renewable energy is often deployed together with further electrification. This has several benefits: electricity can move heat and vehicles efficiently and is clean at the point of consumption. Variable renewable energy sources are those that have a fluctuating nature, such as wind power and solar power. In contrast, controllable renewable energy sources include dammed hydroelectricity, bioenergy, or geothermal power.
Renewable energy systems have rapidly become more efficient and cheaper over the past 30 years. A large majority of worldwide newly installed electricity capacity is now renewable. Renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, have seen significant cost reductions over the past decade, making them more competitive with traditional fossil fuels. In most countries, photovoltaic solar or onshore wind are the cheapest new-build electricity. From 2011 to 2021, renewable energy grew from 20% to 28% of global electricity supply. Power from the sun and wind accounted for most of this increase, growing from a combined 2% to 10%. Use of fossil energy shrank from 68% to 62%. In 2022, renewables accounted for 30% of global electricity generation and are projected to reach over 42% by 2028. Many countries already have renewables contributing more than 20% of their total energy supply, with some generating over half or even all their electricity from renewable sources.
The main motivation to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources is to slow and eventually stop climate change, which is widely agreed to be caused mostly by greenhouse gas emissions. In general, renewable energy sources cause much lower emissions than fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency estimates that to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, 90% of global electricity generation will need to be produced from renewable sources. Renewables also cause much less air pollution than fossil fuels, improving public health, and are less noisy.
The deployment of renewable energy still faces obstacles, especially fossil fuel subsidies, lobbying by incumbent power providers, and local opposition to the use of land for renewable installations. Like all mining, the extraction of minerals required for many renewable energy technologies also results in environmental damage. In addition, although most renewable energy sources are sustainable, some are not. (Full article...)
Tesla was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning as Tesla Motors. Its name is a tribute to inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla. In February 2004, Elon Musk led Tesla's first funding round and became the company's chairman; in 2008, he was named chief executive officer. In 2008, the company began production of its first car model, the Roadster sports car, followed by the Model S sedan in 2012, the Model X SUV in 2015, the Model 3 sedan in 2017, the Model Y crossover in 2020, the Tesla Semi truck in 2022 and the Cybertruck pickup truck in 2023.
"Renewable energy provides 18 percent of total net electricity generation worldwide. Renewable energy generators are spread across the globe, and wind power alone already provides a significant share of electricity in some regions: for example, 14 percent in the U.S. state of Iowa, 40 percent in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, and 20 percent in the nation of Denmark. Some countries get most of their power from renewables, including Iceland (100 percent), Brazil (85 percent), Austria (62 percent), New Zealand (65 percent), and Sweden (54 percent)."
"Solar hot water provides an important contribution to meeting hot water needs in many countries, most importantly in China, which now has fully 70 percent of the global total (180 GWth)... Worldwide, total installed solar water heating systems meet a portion of the water heating needs of over 70 million households. The use of biomass for heating continues to grow as well. Notable is Sweden, where national use of biomass energy has surpassed that of oil. Direct geothermal for heating is also growing rapidly."
"Renewable biofuels are meanwhile making inroads in the transportation fuels market and are beginning to have a measurable impact on demand for petroleum fuels, contributing to a decline in oil consumption in the United States in particular starting in 2006... The 93 billion liters of biofuels produced worldwide in 2009 displaced the equivalent of an estimated 68 billion liters of gasoline, equal to about 5 percent of world gasoline production."
Denis Allen Hayes (born August 29, 1944) is an environmental advocate and an advocate for solar power. He rose to prominence in 1970 as the coordinator for the first Earth Day.
... that Selling Solar: The Diffusion of Renewable Energy in Emerging Markets, a 2009 Earthscan book by Damian Miller, argues that in order to solve the climate crisis, the world must immediately and dramatically accelerate the commercialization of renewable energy technology ? This needs to happen in the industrialized world, as well as in the emerging markets of the developing world where most future GHG emissions will occur.
The following are images from various renewable energy-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 1A panoramic view of the United Kingdom's Whitelee Wind Farm with Lochgoin Reservoir in the foreground. (from Wind power)
Image 2Distribution of wind speed (red) and energy (blue) for all of 2002 at the Lee Ranch facility in Colorado. The histogram shows measured data, while the curve is the Rayleigh model distribution for the same average wind speed. (from Wind power)
Image 20Yearly hydro generation by continent (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 21Concentrated solar panels are getting a power boost. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) will be testing a new concentrated solar power system – one that can help natural gas power plants reduce their fuel usage by up to 20 percent.[needs update] (from Solar energy)
Image 22Energy from wind, sunlight or other renewable energy is converted to potential energy for storage in devices such as electric batteries or higher-elevation water reservoirs. The stored potential energy is later converted to electricity that is added to the power grid, even when the original energy source is not available. (from Wind power)
Image 25Installed geothermal energy capacity, 2022 (from Geothermal energy)
Image 26Wind turbines such as these, in Cumbria, England, have been opposed for a number of reasons, including aesthetics, by some sectors of the population. (from Wind power)
Image 27Onshore wind cost per kilowatt-hour between 1983 and 2017 (from Wind power)
Image 28Share of electricity production from hydropower, 2023 (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 29Greenhouses like these in the Westland municipality of the Netherlands grow vegetables, fruits and flowers. (from Solar energy)
Image 30Krafla Geothermal Station in northeast Iceland (from Geothermal energy)
Image 34Geothermal power station in the Philippines (from Geothermal energy)
Image 35Acceptance of wind and solar facilities in one's community is stronger among U.S. Democrats (blue), while acceptance of nuclear power plants is stronger among U.S. Republicans (red). (from Wind power)
Image 37Enhanced geothermal system 1:Reservoir 2:Pump house 3:Heat exchanger 4:Turbine hall 5:Production well 6:Injection well 7:Hot water to district heating 8:Porous sediments 9:Observation well 10:Crystalline bedrock (from Geothermal energy)
Image 39A turbine blade convoy passing through Edenfield in the U.K. (2008). Even longer 2-piece blades are now manufactured, and then assembled on-site to reduce difficulties in transportation. (from Wind power)
Image 46The Hoover Dam in the United States is a large conventional dammed-hydro facility, with an installed capacity of 2,080 MW. (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 47The Warwick Castle water-powered generator house, used for the generation of electricity for the castle from 1894 until 1940 (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 50Merowe Dam in Sudan. Hydroelectric power stations that use dams submerge large areas of land due to the requirement of a reservoir. These changes to land color or albedo, alongside certain projects that concurrently submerge rainforests, can in these specific cases result in the global warming impact, or equivalent life-cycle greenhouse gases of hydroelectricity projects, to potentially exceed that of coal power stations. (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 51Global geothermal electric capacity. Upper red line is installed capacity; lower green line is realized production. (from Geothermal energy)
Image 52Electricity generation at Ohaaki, New Zealand (from Geothermal energy)
Image 57Global map of wind speed at 100 meters on land and around coasts. (from Wind power)
Image 58Seasonal cycle of capacity factors for wind and photovoltaics in Europe under idealized assumptions. The figure illustrates the balancing effects of wind and solar energy at the seasonal scale (Kaspar et al., 2019). (from Wind power)
![Image 21Concentrated solar panels are getting a power boost. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) will be testing a new concentrated solar power system – one that can help natural gas power plants reduce their fuel usage by up to 20 percent.[needs update] (from Solar energy)](view.php?q=Portal:Renewable_energy&sq=&lang=&file=File:Photo_of_the_Week-_Boosting_Solar_Technology_(8722948189).jpg)
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