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 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 renewables 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. For example, some biomass sources are unsustainable at current rates of exploitation. (Full article...)
Wind power is the use of wind energy to generate useful work. Historically, wind power was used by sails, windmills and windpumps, but today it is mostly used to generate electricity. This article deals only with wind power for electricity generation.
Today, wind power is generated almost completely with wind turbines, generally grouped into wind farms and connected to the electrical grid.
In 2022, wind supplied over 2000 TWh of electricity, which was over 7% of world electricity and about 2% of world energy. With about 100 GW added during 2021, mostly in China and the United States, global installed wind power capacity exceeded 800 GW. To help meet the Paris Agreement goals to limit climate change, analysts say it should expand much faster - by over 1% of electricity generation per year.
"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."
Scheer believed that the continuation of current patterns of energy supply and use would be environmentally, socially, economically, and politically damaging, with renewable energy being the only realistic alternative. Scheer had concluded that it is technically and environmentally feasible to harness enough solar radiation to achieve a total replacement of the foclear (fossil/nuclear) energy system by a global renewable energy economy. The main obstacle to such a change is seen to be political, not technical or economic. In 1999 he was one of the initiators of the German feed-in tariffs that were the major source of the rise of renewable energies in Germany during the following years. (Full article...)
... that the Cragsidecountry house in Northumberland, England was the first house in the world to be lit using hydroelectric power? In 1870, water from one of the estate's lakes was used to drive a Siemensdynamo in what was the world's first hydroelectric power station. The resultant electricity was used to power an arc lamp installed in the Gallery in 1878.
The following are images from various renewable energy-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 1Global map of wind speed at 100 meters on land and around coasts. (from Wind power)
Image 2Yearly hydro generation by continent (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 3Installed geothermal energy capacity, 2022 (from Geothermal energy)
Image 4Merowe 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 5Geothermal power station in the Philippines (from Geothermal energy)
Image 6The Hoover Dam in the United States is a large conventional dammed-hydro facility, with an installed capacity of 2,080 MW. (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 11Electricity generation at Wairakei, New Zealand (from Geothermal energy)
Image 12The Warwick Castle water-powered generator house, used for the generation of electricity for the castle from 1894 until 1940 (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 13Share of electricity production from hydropower, 2022 (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 19Concentrated 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 20Electricity generation at Ohaaki, New Zealand (from Geothermal energy)
Image 21Global map of wind power density potential (from Wind power)
Image 22Seasonal 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 23Parabolic dish produces steam for cooking, in Auroville, India. (from Solar energy)
Image 26Enhanced 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 28Onshore wind cost per kilowatt-hour between 1983 and 2017 (from Wind power)
Image 29Distribution 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 30Greenhouses like these in the Westland municipality of the Netherlands grow vegetables, fruits and flowers. (from Solar energy)
Image 31Solar water heaters facing the Sun to maximize gain (from Solar energy)
Image 32Wind 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 40The oldest known pool fed by a hot spring, built in the Qin dynasty in the 3rd century BCE (from Geothermal energy)
Image 41Cost development of solar PV modules per watt (from Solar energy)
Image 42Krafla Geothermal Station in northeast Iceland (from Geothermal energy)
Image 43Museum Hydroelectric power plant "Under the Town" in Užice, Serbia, built in 1900. (from Hydroelectricity)
Image 44Energy 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 45Global geothermal electric capacity. Upper red line is installed capacity; lower green line is realized production. (from Geothermal energy)
Image 46Electricity generation at Poihipi, New Zealand (from Geothermal energy)
Image 48Acceptance 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 50A 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 19Concentrated 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)](https://venvegame.netlify.app/host-https-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Photo_of_the_Week-_Boosting_Solar_Technology_(8722948189).jpg)
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