Today's Energy

Today’s world is constantly using hydrocarbons to fuel our homes, cars and businesses. Researchers are trying to find a new and improved way of using our earth’s resources to do this without harming the environment. Renewable, nonpolluting sources of energy could help stop future damage that this world will eventually cause. Some experts say that we are slowly running out of hydrocarbons, but this isn’t the main reason we should start looking for new resources to use. It is because we won’t be able to live much longer with the consequences of using oil, coal and natural gas. Changes can be made, but lifestyles would have to be altered and many wouldn’t be in favor of this. Global warming could be slowed down, maybe even cease to exist if cars, homes, and factories are made more energy efficient and an aggressive investment in renewable energy is sought out. Even though plans sound feasible, this world is far from off the hook. There has yet to be found a renewable source that could replace the tasks that hydrocarbons can fulfill. Changes all over the world would have to be made for renewable sources. Car engines would have to be rebuilt to allow corn, sugar cane or hydrogen as their source of gas that would let the engine run, power plants would be built to collect energy from the sun and wind, and networks of pipelines would have to be laid out across the nation to transport hydrogen rather than fossil fuels. Some sources that could in the future be used are, solar power, which would collect energy from the sun, wind power, which would harvest energy by using windmill farms, geothermal power, which would gather heat from the earth’s core, gasification, which cleans coal so it wouldn’t emit harmful substances out into the atmosphere when being used, ethanol power, which would turn corn and sugarcane into forms of energy, nuclear power, and hydrogen power, which would use the earth’s most abundant source, water, to supply this world with clean energy.
(Time Magazine)