Time Magazine Senior Correspondent Michael Grunwald joins Clean Skies News to discuss his article in Foreign Policy Magazine, “The 7 Myths of Alternative Energy.” Grunwald says the U.S. needs to curb trends and use less, not jump right to zero emissions.

Duration : 0:9:44

Technorati Tags: carbon emissions, Clean Skies News, Michael Grunwald, oil, Power Generation, solar, Time Magazine, wind

The sun undergoes nuclear reactions which result in the release of photons (beams of light that have energy associated with them). Alternative energy forms just capture the energy from the sun in different ways (actually, fossil fuels also got their energy from the sun a long time ago).

Here are a few alternative energy sources and how they relate to the sun:

Bio-fuels: We can grow plants (such as algae, corn, sugar cane) which collect the photons from the sun and use the energy in the photons to create sugars. We can harvest those sugars and and turn them into liquid fuels such as ethanol.

Solar Energy: This technology directly harnesses the energy of the sun by absorbing photons through photovoltaic solar cells and which create an electrical current when they absorb a photon. Additionally, you can use the energy of the sun to thermally heat an object, which is referred to as solar-thermal energy.

Wind Energy: When the photons from the sun hit the air in the atmosphere, that energy can cause the generation of wind. We can harvest the wind energy by using turbines which spin when the wind hits them. The spinning motion is used to turn a generator which produces electricity.

Hydro-electric: When the sun hits water, it can cause the water to turn into a gas and later that gas can result in rain. If the rain occurs at a high enough elevation and gets held behind a dam, the water now possesses a high potential energy due to the energy from the sun. That energy can be turned into electrical energy by converting the potential energy of the water into kinetic energy which is then used to turn a turbine in a hydroelectric dam.

Duration : 0:4:17

Duration : 0:4:17

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Thank You.

All forms of renewable/alternative energy come with their own list of pros and cons.

Windmills are great for producing energy in the plains states and coastal regions, but they are a hazard to birds.

Photovoltaic cells work well just about anywhere in the US. But if we used enough of them to provide a significant amount of our energy, we’d also be contributing to a warmer climate because of the heat being absorbed by the black surfaces of the solar panels.

Hydroelectric dams interfere with wildlife and increase the amount of water that is lost to evaporation.

One of the sources of energy that has the most promising future with regards to having minimal adverse impacts would be that derived from geothermal sources. However, geothermal energy isn’t as widely available as other sources of energy.

The answer might just be that we shouldn’t limit ourselves to any one single source of energy but rather to draw from a variety of sources.

Duration : 0:3:54

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Duration : 0:3:54

Technorati Tags: biofuel, biomass, Commission, energy, EU, European, EUtube, geothermal, hydro, policy, renewable, small, solar, wind

Duration : 0:3:41

Technorati Tags: alternative, biomass, energy, gasification, gasifier, source, Wood

Duration : 0:2:49

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