Why are non renewable energy sources a problem

Oil spills are environmental disasters, especially offshore spills. Natural gas is another fossil fuel that is trapped underground in reservoirs. It is mostly made up of methane. You may have smelled methane before. The decomposing material in landfills also release methane, which smells like rotten eggs. There is so much natural gas underground that it is measured in million, billion, or trillion cubic meters. Natural gas is found in deposits a few hundred meters underground.

In order to get natural gas out of the ground, companies drill straight down. However, natural gas does not form in big open pockets. Natural gas is trapped in rock formations that can stretch for kilometers.

This releases the natural gas that is trapped in rock formations. If the rock is too hard, they can send acid down the well to dissolve the rock. They can also use tiny grains of glass or sand to prop open the rock and let the gas escape. We use natural gas for heating and cooking. Natural gas can also be burned to generate electricity.

We rely on natural gas to give power to lights, televisions, air conditioners, and kitchen appliances in our homes. Natural gas can also be turned into a liquid form, called liquid natural gas LNG.

LNG is much cleaner than any other fossil fuels. Liquid natural gas takes up much less space than the gaseous form. The amount of natural gas that would fit into a big beach ball would fit into a ping-pong ball as a liquid! LNG can be easily stored and used for different purposes. LNG can even be a replacement for gasoline. When natural gas is burned, it only releases carbon dioxide and water vapor which are the exact same gases that we breathe out when we exhale!

This is healthier than burning coal. However, extracting natural gas can cause environmental problems. Fracturing rocks can cause mini-earthquakes. The high-pressure water and chemicals that are forced underground can also leak to other sources of water. The water sources, used for drinking or bathing, can become contaminate d and unsafe.

Fossil fuels are the leading non-renewable energy sources around the world. There are others, however. Nuclear energy is usually considered another non-renewable energy source. Although nuclear energy itself is a renewable energy source, the material used in nuclear power plants is not. Nuclear energy harvests the powerful energy in the nucleus, or core, of an atom. Nuclear energy is released through nuclear fission , the process where the nucleus of an atom splits.

Nuclear power plants are complex machines that can control nuclear fission to produce electricity. The material most often used in nuclear power plants is the element uranium. Although uranium is found in rocks all over the world, nuclear power plants usually use a very rare type of uranium, U Uranium is a non-renewable resource.

Nuclear energy is a popular way of generating electricity around the world. Nuclear power plants do not pollute the air or emit greenhouse gases. They can be built in rural or urban area s, and do not destroy the environment around them. However, nuclear energy is difficult to harvest. Nuclear power plants are very complicated to build and run.

Many communities do not have the scientists and engineers to develop a safe and reliable nuclear energy program. Nuclear energy also produces radioactive material. Radioactive waste can be extremely toxic, causing burns and increasing the risk for cancers, blood diseases, and bone decay among people who are exposed to it. Biomass energy , a renewable energy source, can also be a non-renewable energy source. The resulting fuels freed humanity from its reliance on photosynthesis and current biomass production as its primary energy source.

First coal, then oil and natural gas allowed rapid growth in industrial processes, agriculture, and transportation. The world today is unrecognizable from that of the early 19th century, before fossil fuels came into wide use.

Human health and welfare have improved markedly, and the global population has increased from 1 billion in to almost 8 billion today. The fossil fuel energy system is the lifeblood of the modern economy.

Fossil fuels powered the industrial revolution, pulled millions out of poverty, and shaped the modern world. The first big energy transition was from wood and charcoal to coal, beginning in the iron industry in the early s. Coal has three times the energy density by weight of dry wood and is widely distributed throughout the world. Coal became the preferred fuel for ships and locomotives, allowing them to dedicate less space to fuel storage.

Oil was the next major energy source to emerge. Americans date the beginning of the oil era to the first commercial U. Oil entered the market as a replacement for whale oil for lighting, with gasoline produced as a by-product of kerosene production. However, oil found its true calling in the transportation sector. The oil era really took off with the introduction of the Ford Model-T in and the boom in personal transportation after World War II.

Oil resources are not as extensively distributed worldwide as coal, but oil has crucial advantages. Fuels produced from oil are nearly ideal for transportation. They are energy-dense, averaging twice the energy content of coal, by weight. But more importantly, they are liquid rather than solid, allowing the development of the internal combustion engine that drives transportation today.

Oil changed the course of history. For example, the British and American navies switched from coal to oil prior to World War I, allowing their ships to go further than coal-fired German ships before refueling.

Oil also allowed greater speed at sea and could be moved to boilers by pipe instead of manpower, both clear advantages. Natural gas, a fossil fuel that occurs in gaseous form, can be found in underground deposits on its own, but is often present underground with oil.

Gas produced with oil was often wasted in the early days of the oil industry, and an old industry saying was that looking for oil and finding gas instead was a quick way to get fired. In more recent times, natural gas has become valued for its clean, even combustion and its usefulness as a feedstock for industrial processes.

A final key development in world energy use was the emergence of electricity in the 20th century. Electricity is not an energy source like coal or oil, but a method for delivering and using energy. Electricity is very efficient, flexible, clean, and quiet at the point of use. Over the 20th century, the energy system transformed from one in which fossil energy was used directly into one in which an important portion of fossil fuels are used to generate electricity.

The proportion used in electricity generation varies by fuel. In sum, the story of energy transitions through history has not just been about moving away from current solar flows and toward fossil fuels. It has also been a constant move toward fuels that are more energy-dense and convenient to use than the fuels they replaced.

Greater energy density means that a smaller weight or volume of fuel is needed to do the job. Liquid fuels made from oil combine energy density with the ability to flow or be moved by pumps, an advantage that opened up new technologies, especially in transportation.

And electricity is a very flexible way of consuming energy, useful for many applications. Before we could make efficient use of solar flows, this seemed like a great idea. However, the advantages of fossil fuels come with a devastating downside. We now understand that the release of carbon dioxide CO 2 from burning fossil fuels is warming our planet faster than anything we have seen in the geological record.

One of the greatest challenges facing humanity today is slowing this warming before it changes our world beyond recognition. Now that there are almost eight billion of us, we clearly see the impact of rising CO 2 concentrations. Going back to the old days of relying mostly on biomass for our energy needs is clearly not a solution. Nonetheless, we need to find a way to get back to reliance on real-time solar flows and perhaps nuclear energy to meet our needs.

There are so many more of us now, interacting via a vastly larger and more integrated global economy, and using much more energy. But we also have technologies today that are much more efficient than photosynthesis at transforming solar flows to useful energy. The earth gets plenty of energy from the sun for all of us, even for our modern energy-intensive lives.

The amount of solar energy that reaches habitable land is more than 1, times the amount of fossil fuel energy extracted globally per year. The problem is that this energy is diffuse. The sun that warms your face is definitely providing energy, but you need to concentrate that energy to heat your home or move a vehicle.

This is where modern technology comes in. Wind turbines and solar photovoltaic PV cells convert solar energy flows into electricity, in a process much more efficient than burning biomass, the pre-industrial way of capturing solar energy. Sign In. KQED Inform. Sep 6, The non-renewable energy resources are: Coal Nuclear Oil Natural gas Renewable resources, on the other hand, replenish themselves.

The five major renewable energy resources are: Solar Wind Water, also called hydro Biomass, or organic material from plants and animals Geothermal, which is naturally occurring heat from the earth While renewable energy resources have the advantage of unlimited supply over the long haul, they are limited in their availability at any given moment.

Non-renewable Energy and Climate Change When coal, natural gas and oil are burned to produce energy, they emit heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide. The Nuclear Debate Experts debate whether nuclear energy should be considered a renewable or non-renewable energy resource.

For this reason, supporters of nuclear energy argue it should be considered renewable. Technically, all nonrenewables will replenish themselves eventually, but it will take them millions of years, whereas resources like water, sunlight, and wood will take anywhere from 24 hours to a few decades to replenish.

Nonrenewable resources are used to help provide humans with the energy they need to power their homes, cars, and Fourth of July barbeques. Even though these nonrenewables are used to power virtually everything in the world, that does not mean that they come without problems. There are two major problems with nonrenewable resources. One is environmental and one is economic. Nonrenewable resources are usually bad for the environment.

Most nonrenewable energy resources produce carbon dioxide as a byproduct. The CO2 gets trapped in the atmosphere and is the main cause of climate change, according to most climatologists. Aside from long-term problems, most nonrenewable resources also dirty up the air we breathe each day.

Dirty air is the main cause for aggravated respiratory diseases and several other health-related problems. The EERE goes as far as to say that if we transitioned from nonrenewable sources of energy to renewable ones like solar we could save over 25, lives.

The more we use nonrenewable resources, the more valuable remaining nonrenewables become. So long as we depend on nonrenewables, we can expect to see our energy bills get more and more expensive. These increasing prices will make it harder financially for some people to meet their own energy needs on a daily basis.