Energy resources?

Question

what is the main type of energy resource we have and how can we collect it?

Answer 1

1-fossil fuels, such as coal, oil (LPG, Petrol, kerosene, diesel) Natural gas.

2-Bio fuels, such as firewood(cow dung, grass etc); bio diesel, ethanol, bio digester gas (similar to natural gas)

2-sunlight directly for solar electricity, space and industrial heating and hot water. Also directly used to produce hydrogen by some clever chemical processes.

3- wind, windmills, wind turbines;

4-hydro, as in use of dams and hydro power stations, also run of the river hydro, which causes less environmental problems.

5-Tidal power, using the same technology as hydro but relying on tidal flows,

6-waves, there are a range of designs to extract energy from waves. This is a rich source of energy and complements other renewable energy sources. All are at the trialling stage, none have yet been implemented on a large scale, it looks very promising however.

7-Geo thermal, based on naturally occuring steam vents in geologically active areas, NZ, Iceland; these can provide heat for industrial use, home heating and electricity.

8-Hot rocks, another form of geothermal energy but much more common even in areas not considered, 'volcanic'. Drill into the hot rocks, pump water down, drill some distance away ,crack the rock between and collect the resulting steam out of the second hole,, bit more complicated in practice, but using technology that is well established by the oil drilling industry. A few trial operations already exist.

9-Nuclear fission, widely used, limited supply of uranium, but possible to use breeder reactors that create more fuel than they use. (safety issues, including political risks, terrorism etc)

10-Nuclear fusion, not shown to be practical any time soon.

Then we come to a whole range of more exotic but perfectly reasonable sources: wind turbines on gliders tethered in the jet stream, space based solar collectors for both microwaving back energy and just reflecting light into darkness.

large slow turbines mounted in the path of ocean currents, deep sea thermal, cold water low down vs warm water on surface, there was a working plant in the early 20th century in Tonga.

Ultimately there are just a few original sources,

A) the sun, this includes fossil fuels as they are the result of photosyntheses long ago, wind , waves hydro are all results of sun light striking the earth.

B) tidal, this uses the kinetic energy of the moon orbiting the earth and the earth orbiting the sun and spinning.

C) Geothermal which relies on the original heat of planet formation and fission decay within the planet since then,

D) Nuclear.

All energy available to us can be traced back to one of these forms.

There is no energy shortage, there is ample energy still available for humanity for thousands of years and more. However there is a technological and economic crisis for humanity because we have been wasteful, and not extracting energy for ourselves in a sustainable way. This means we now all of us pay for the mistakes of the past and present mainly made by the so called developed countries.

Answer 2

solar radiation

http://www.greenenergy.org.uk/sta/solare...

Answer 3

At the moment, most of the global energy demand is met by using fossil fuels. These are oil, which can be drilled for; gas, which can be drilled for also; and coal, which is mined. If you mean natural or green  energy sources, we can use hyro-electric power, collected by causing water to flow past turbines which spin and are connected to a generator which collects the electricity; wind power collected by wind turbines which are likewise connected to generators, and solar power from the sun, which is collected by solar panels and converted to electricity.