ENERGY RESOURCES NOTES:

 Much of the energy used in everyday life is ultimately derived from the release of energy
in the Sun by nuclear fusion.
 Sunlight is used in biological processes to store chemical energy and can be harnessed to
generate electricity directly in solar cells.

Non-renewable energy sources

 These are resources that, once used up, cannot be replaced.

Two advantages of all non-renewable fuels are:

(i) their high energy density (i.e. they are concentrated sources) and the relatively small size of
the energy transfer device (e.g. a furnace) which releases their energy, and

(ii) their ready availability when energy demand increases suddenly or fluctuates seasonally.

Fossil fuels
 Fossil fuels include coal, oil and natural gas, formed from the remains of plants and animals
which lived millions of years ago and obtained energy originally from the Sun.
 However, burning fossil fuels in power stations and in cars pollutes the atmosphere with
harmful gases such as carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide.
 Carbondioxide emission aggravates the greenhouse effect and increases global warming.

 burning coal produces most carbon dioxide for each unit of energy produced. When coal and
oil are burnt they also produce sulfur dioxide which causes acid rain.

 The sulfur dioxide can be extracted from the waste gases so it does not enter the atmosphere
or the sulfur can be removed from the fuel before combustion, but these are both costly
processes which increase the price of electricity produced using these measures.

Nuclear fuels
 The energy released in a nuclear reactor from the fission of uranium, found as an ore in
the ground, can be used to produce electricity.

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 Nuclear fuels do not pollute the atmosphere with carbon dioxide or sulfur dioxide but
they do generate radioactive waste materials with very long half-lives safe ways of
storing this waste for perhaps thousands of years must be found.
 As long as a reactor is operating normally it does not pose a radiation risk, but if an
accident occurs, dangerous radioactive material can leak from the reactor and spread over
a large area.

Renewable energy sources

 These cannot be exhausted and are generally nonpolluting.
Solar energy
 The energy falling on the Earth from the Sun is transferred mostly by visible light and
infrared radiation and in an hour equals the total energy used by the world in a year.
Unfortunately, its low energy density requires large collecting devices and its availability
varies.
 The greatest potential use of solar energy is as an energy source for low temperature
water heating.
 The energy transferred by electromagnetic waves from the Sun is store as internal energy
in solar panels and can be transferred by heating to produce domestic hot water at about
70°C and to heat swimming pools.
 They are also used for small-scale power generation in remote areas where there is no
electricity supply.
 The energy generated by solar cells can be stored in batteries for later use.
 Recent developments have made large-scale generation more cost effective and large
solar power plants are becoming more common.

Wave energy
 The rise and fall of sea waves have to be transferred by some kind of wave energy
converter into the rotary motion required to drive a generator.
 It is a difficult problem and the large-scale production of electricity by this means is
unlikely soon.

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  However, small systems are being developed to supply island communities with
power.
Tidal and hydroelectric energy
 The flow of water from a higher to a lower level from behind a tidal barrage
(barrier) or a hydroelectric dam (tidal energy) is used to drive a water turbine
(water wheel) connected to a generator.
Hydroelectric energy
 is a reliable energy source, but there are risks connected with the construction of
dams, and a variety of problems may result from the impact of a dam on the
environment.
 Land previously used for forestry or farming may have to be flooded.
Geothermal energy
 If cold water is pumped down a shaft into hot rocks below the Earth’s surface, it may be
forced up another shaft as steam.
 This can be used to drive a turbine and generate electricity or to heat buildings.
 The geothermal energy that heats the rocks is constantly being released by radioactive
elements deep in the Earth as they decay.
Biofuels (vegetable fuel)
 Biomass includes cultivated crops (e.g. oilseed rape), crop residues (e.g. cereal straw),
natural vegetation (e.g. gorse), trees grown for their wood (e.g. spruce), animal dung and
sewage.
The Sun as an energy source
 The Sun is the main source of energy for man of the energy sources described above.
 The exceptions are geothermal, nuclear and tidal sources.
 Fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas are derived from plants which grew millions of years
ago in biological processes requiring light from the Sun.
 Sunlight is also needed by the plants used in biomass energy production today.
 The source of the Sun’s energy is nuclear fusion in the Sun (this is when hydrogen

nuclear combine to form stable helium isotope in the process releasing energy).

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Power stations

 The processes involved in the production of electricity at power stations depend on the

energy source being used.

Non-renewable sources

 Fossil fuels and nuclear fuels are used in thermal power stations to provide thermal

energy that turns water into steam.

 The steam drives turbines which in turn drive the generators that produce electricity.

 The overall efficiency of thermal power stations is only about 30%. They require cooling
towers to condense steam from the turbine to water and this is a waste of energy.

Renewable sources

 In most cases the renewable energy source is used to drive turbines directly, as explained
earlier in the cases of hydroelectric, wind, wave, tidal and geothermal schemes.
 The efficiency of a large installation can be as high as 85–90% since many of the causes
of loss in thermal power stations (e.g. water-cooling towers) are absent.
 In some cases, the generating costs are half those of thermal stations.
 A feature of some hydroelectric stations is pumped storage.
 Electricity cannot be stored on a large scale but must be used as it is generated. The
demand.

Economic, environmental and social issues

Economically:

 When considering the large-scale generation of electricity, the economic and

environmental costs of using various energy sources have to be weighed against the

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 benefits that electricity brings to society as a clean, convenient and fairly cheap energy
supply.

Environmental problems:

 such as polluting emissions that arise with different energy sources were outlined when
each was discussed previously.
 Apart from people using less energy, how far pollution can be reduced by, for example,
installing desulfurisation processes in coal-fired power stations, is often a matter of cost.
 Although there are no fuel costs associated with electricity generation from renewable
energy sources such as wind power, the energy is so diluted that the capital costs of
setting up the generating installation are high.
 Similarly, although fuel costs for nuclear power stations are relatively low, the costs of
building the stations and of dismantling them at the end of their useful lives is higher than
for gas- or coal-fired stations.

Reliability:

 The reliability of a source has also to be considered, as well as how easily production can
be started up and shut down as demand for electricity varies.
 Natural gas power stations have a short start-up time, while coal and then oil power
stations take successively longer to start up; nuclear power stations take longest.
 They are all reliable in that they can produce electricity at any time of day and in any
season of the year as long as fuel is available.
 Hydroelectric power stations are also very reliable and have a very short start-up time,
which means they can be switched on when the demand for electricity peaks.