Technology

The standard of living and the socio-econometric structure of any country can be directly related to the per-capita energy consumption, of that particular state. Today its a well known fact that conventional sources of energy, mainly consisting of fossil fuels like coal, natural gas, and petroleum products are eventually depleting with time, and would certainly be exhausted in near future. Further the damage these conventional sources cause to the environment through pollution has become a major concern today. Thus the global civilization has started to divert into new directions, to find out suitable technologies to replace the conventional energy systems with alternate sources of energy. Alternative energy sources include natural sources like energy derived from sun, wind, water, geothermal, and biomass. These sources are self sustaining and once used they are replaceable. They happen to be readily available since they occur naturally. Unfortunately these alternative renewable sources of energy have proved to be cheap only for small scale production of energy.

But when it comes to a larger scale, the extraction of energy by means of alternative energy sources becomes so expensive with our present technologies at hand, that the cost of the processes to extract energy in a large scale exceeds the cost of the energy extracted itself. It goes without saying that this is the very reason why the amount of energy produced from alternative sources are still not sufficient enough to meet demands in larger scale.  Hence still today the world is more interested in using conventional energy sources consisting of fossil fuels like coal, natural gas and oil to be the primary sources of energy because with far little expenditures in the process of extracting energy from them, huge amounts of energy can be produced, much cheaper than the former. Thus it is justifiable to state that the total expenses on energy extraction by means of alternate energy sources quite often exceed the quantity of energy obtained.

In fact there have been many attempts to find a suitable generic term to describe the whole range of technologies designed to tap the earths natural energy flows. Among all other terms the word renewable has gained the widest spread acceptance. This section of the thesis presents a glimpse of those technologies designed by us to harness these natural sources of energy. The store of fossil fuel resources in this living planet is getting exhausted constantly and hence at a certain point of time these conventional sources are predicted to be unable to keep pace with the constantly growing demand of energy by the human civilization. These fossil fuels are non replaceable asset, and hence it is certain that the supplies are going to cease at one point of time in future. Added to this, there stands predominant the pollution, caused by the continuous usage of these conventional sources over the years. While extracting energy from them, there prevails simultaneous release of extremely harmful by-products like carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulphur  nitrous oxides, along with other toxic hydrocarbons, causing extreme damage to the our environment in the form of global warming and ozone layer depletion, whose impact would result into upcoming environmental disasters of extremely high intensities, sufficient enough to bring a complete end to the living planet.        

In order to deal or rather eliminate these consequences or the alternative energy sources have been considered as a perfect replacement. Such renewable sources happen to be the kind that once used it can be replaced. Once again they are total environment friendly in the sense that they do not pollute the atmosphere and hence produce cleaner and green energy. These energy sources that are thought to be better in terms of the pollution and cleanness of the energy produced have been classified as renewable energy sources which includes energy extracted from sun, wind, water, biomass, ocean, and geothermal sources, all of them readily available in nature itself.

Research Findings and Discussions 
Just as it has been explained in the introduction, there has been an ongoing kind-of shift from the old or the existing energy sources such as oil, coal, and natural gas in order to adapt these renewable energy sources. The renewable resources happen to be naturally availability they are easy to harness. Solar energy has the greatest potential of all the sources of renewable energy. Utilizing as low as 5  of this energy will amount to 50 times the amount, what the human civilization requires to cater all its needs.  The energy from the sun can be utilized both as thermal energy as well as electrical energy using photovoltaic cells. Energy of wind can be economically used for the generation of electrical energy using the high wind velocity available A minimum wind speed of 3ms is needed to produce energy, and so coastal, hilly, and valley areas are most suitable to utilize wind energy. Geothermal Energy derives the heat from the center of the earth and is also having a high potential of generating energy. Energy from Oceans can also be tapped in the form of wave, tidal or ocean thermal energy. Biomass is yet another renewable source of energy in the form of wood, agricultural residues, etc. These organic wastes can be burnt directly to extract the energy or specially designed biogas plants can be used to decompose the biomass and the gas extracted may even be used to run automobiles. This particular source of alternate energy is highly effective for rural and remote areas where supply of electricity is yet to reach.

Renewable Energy Sources- Government Policies  Public Opinions    
Nowadays we can see that, government do everything possible to make us believe that alternative energy is our future. We see special taxes, laws, conditions for individuals, who will use or produce green energy. Present president of USA, Mr. Barack Obama, is supporting green energy everywhere, from financing renewable energy industry, till giving this industry own territories for building factories. The present U.S. president approved 3.6 trillion budget for next fiscal year, in context to development of superior technologies to harness the renewable sources more effectively. According to the United States Government the best choice to be would be to become the worlds leading exporter of clean energy. USA will certainly lead the world in creating new energy sources. The present Obamas government has sanctioned the largest investment in basic research funding in the American history for green energy research. Its no doubt a great initiative towards renewable energy and ecology on all levels. The government, like in the case of the United States looks forward to adopt such sources of energy and as a result the government is aiming at making subsidies and incentives for such-large scale energy production.

Thus it has become evident that the public is equally concerned about the use of renewable energy sources, with just a very few objecting the idea. The publics concern has been on the issue of pollution that has led to climate change along with the fact that the non renewable sources cannot be replaced once they are used. Everybody today having some basic awareness is considering alternative energy as a great opportunity to save expenses and help ecology to survive, and getting balanced, in countries around the world. Americans are seen as totally oblivious to the issues of global warming, and energy and food crisis. Recent research only supports statement about citizens beliefs about energy. When asked if its important for the U.S. to develop and use solar energy, 92 of Americans responded yes, according to a recent survey by Kelton Research. One such question asked, was what sort of renewable energy resource they would prefer the most as an alternate energy source, and the answer was solar - 43 percent, wind - 17 percent, natural gas - 12 percent, nuclear - 10 percent. This is to bring into view that with time, these sources of energy will be depleted and thus with time there will be no source of energy. In order to safeguard the world from expected true depletion of non-renewable sources of energy, of value and considerations the use of renewable sources of energy. Energy essence of great importance and in simple terms, its availability should be unlimited. In this regard, it has been noted with a lot of interest that most of renewable energy sources are too expensive to fully utilize them. For example, thinking of oil prices is an issue that has brought a lot of concern in that the prices are too high. On the other hand in citing the example of the solar energy, its a source which is naturally available and that too free of cost. The only one time cost involved is to set up the infrastructure to harness the energy and then use it for lifetime without spending a dime. the in the market that the prices attached to it will be high and unaffordable. Another point to note is that the renewable sources of energy will never run out of stock and that their affordability makes lifestyle better in the sense that they are readily available and affordable to majority of the population. It is evident that out of many advantages attached to the use of alternative energy to make life better the most important point to note is that renewable sources of energy do not pollute environment as it he case of the non-renewable sources. They are not associated with the production of carbon dioxide resulting in global warming in particular, leading to many problems especially related-pith climate change that has highly contributed to economic recession globally. Public concern over the effects of climate change and global warming has fuel opinion to favor the use of alternative sources of energy.

The other important factor is that the renewable sources of energy are best suited in the rural areas and remote areas. In this sense, the amount of energy produced is only suitable for small amount of work to be accomplished. At the same time, the technologies applied to harness the energy from these resources are affordable to many in the rural areas and remote areas whereby the lives of people are improved.

Considering the cost of total energy produced from the renewable sources the cost of resources and the technologies used for harnessing the energy, exceeds in most cases. Taking the example of wind power, it is of a requirement that wind mills, wind turbines, wind pumps should be installed in large extents of land, which indeed becomes very costly in order to generate energy in a large scale fit for industrial use, since industries require a lot of electric energy that the wind mills cannot produce if not installed in large extents land areas.
At the same time, the use of solar energy is very economical in the sense that solar radiations are naturally occurring phenomena. However, the technology that calls for the harnessing of solar energy in large scale proves to be very expensive. Following these arguments, it is clear that the renewable energy sources are difficult to harness and expensive to produce for large scale use. Thus it becomes difficult to depend entirely on the renewable sources as energy sources since the amount that is produced by means of renewable sources is yet to exceed the amount invested in the installation of the technologies, thus leading to an imbalance that may jeopardize the economy globally. Other disadvantages prevailing includes extensive amount of land being used in the case of wind mills, including killing of birds by vanes of the wind mills.

Conclusion and Recommendations
So under such a present circumstance, the best feasible solution available to mankind to sustain life and prosper on this planet is to harness these renewable sources of energy through highest possible effective ways effective in the sense of cost of generation, effective in the sense of usability and effective in the sense of every other way to support the growth of the global civilization. Demand for energy will eventually continue to grow up rapidly even if governments adopt vigorous policies to conserve energy. This in turn would create demands for more new energy resources, and compatible technologies to harness the same with utmost vigor. Thus to conclude, in future, the alternate or renewable sources of energy will definitely have to meet the energy crisis which have already started posing to be a threat to the human civilization. So it needs adequate amount of investments, and sufficient time durations to develop effective and stable technologies to utilize these sources in such a proper way, that at some point of time the renewable sources of energy will be sufficient enough to replace the conventional energy sources slowly but steadily. From the above discussion on the issue that total expenses on energy extraction by means of alternative energy sources quite often exceed the quantity of energy obtained, there emerges a great challenge on the adoption of alternative energy sources. It is therefore recommendable to make a development in the technologies that are employed in harnessing these renewable sources effectively and economically. Once these technologies are fully developed, then it will be easy to obtain a large output of energy that will prove to be profitable.

Nonetheless, the advantages far much outweigh the disadvantages. Today almost in every developed and developing economies around the world, scientists and engineers are working constantly towards research, development, design and successful deployment of superior energy conversion technologies able to run on these renewable sources. Thus finally it can be said that the most primary task of the world at this present hour is to develop proper strategies to manage The Transition from dependence on conventional fuels, to greater reliance on other sources of energy, specifically the green renewable sources, which are available freely in nature, and would continue to be available for our future generations in the forthcoming decades.      
The standard of living and the socio-econometric structure of any country can be directly related to the per-capita energy consumption, of that particular state. Today its a well known fact that conventional sources of energy, mainly consisting of fossil fuels like coal, natural gas, and petroleum products are eventually depleting with time, and would certainly be exhausted in near future. These fossil fuels are non replaceable asset, and hence it is certain that the supplies are going to cease at one point of time in future. Added to this, there stands predominant the pollution, caused by the continuous usage of these conventional sources over the years. While extracting energy from them, there prevails simultaneous release of extremely harmful by-products like carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulphur  nitrous oxides, along with other toxic hydrocarbons, causing extreme damage to the our environment in the form of global warming and ozone layer depletion, whose impact would result into upcoming environmental disasters of extremely high intensities, sufficient enough to bring a complete end to the living planet.  In order to deal or rather eliminate these consequences or the alternative energy sources have been considered as a perfect replacement. Non-Conventional Energy Sources or Renewable energy derives its name from the fact that the sources of the energy are self sustaining. They happen to be readily available since they occur naturally. Hence there is no such threat of such energy sources to get exhausted with continuous usage.  Moreover energy harnessed from these alternate sources is eco-friendly, and hence are also termed as green energy. Sources that come under this category are Solar Energy, Wind Energy, Geothermal Energy, Biomass Energy, and Energy from Oceans in the form of Wave Energy, Tidal energy and Ocean Thermal Energy.  Though these energy sources have no threats of getting exhausted like conventional fossil fuels but still when it comes of producing energy from renewable energy sources in a large scale, the process and implemented technologies to extract of energy from alternative energy sources becomes quite expensive while compared to the cost of the extracted energy. Hence its a key factor that explains the very reason why the amount of energy produced from alternative sources are still not sufficient enough to meet demands in larger scale. However nowadays we can see that, government is doing everything possible to make us believe that alternative energy is our future. We see special taxes, laws, conditions for individuals, who will use or produce green energy. Present president of USA, Mr. Barack Obama, is supporting green energy everywhere, from financing renewable energy industry, till giving this industry own territories for building factories. The present U.S. president approved 3.6 trillion budget for next fiscal year, in context to development of superior technologies to harness the renewable sources more effectively.  Its no doubt a great initiative towards renewable energy and ecology on all levels. The government, like in the case of the United States looks forward to adopt such sources of energy and as a result the government is aiming at making subsidies and incentives for such-large scale energy production.  Eventually the public in general is becoming equally concerned about the use of renewable energy sources, with just a very few objecting the idea. The publics concern has been on the issue of pollution that has led to climate change along with the fact that the non renewable sources cannot be replaced once they are used. Everybody today having some basic awareness is considering alternative energy as a great opportunity to save expenses and help ecology to survive, and getting balanced, in countries around the world. Americans are seen as totally oblivious to the issues of global warming, and energy and food crisis. Recent research only supports statement about citizens beliefs about energy. When asked if its important for the U.S. to develop and use solar energy, 92 of Americans responded yes, according to a recent survey by Kelton Research.

Nonetheless, the advantages far much outweigh the disadvantages. Today almost in every developed and developing economies around the world, scientists and engineers are working constantly towards research, development, design and successful deployment of superior energy conversion technologies able to run on these renewable sources. Thus finally it can be said that the most primary task of the world at this present hour is to develop proper strategies to manage The Transition from dependence on conventional fuels, to greater reliance on other sources of energy, specifically the green renewable sources, which are available freely in nature, and would continue to be available for our future generations in the forthcoming decades.