Alternative energy seems to be all the rage today, but a lot of people have are unsure of what it is or have different definitions. I hope this article clears things up,
alternative energy is commonly used to refer to sources of energy that are an alternative to coal, oil and natural gas. These fossil fuels have been the most common source of our energy for generations.
This wasn’t always the case. In the not too distant past, sailing ships and animals powered transportation.
Dutch windmills are an icon of the country. Windows are also closely associated wit old ranches of the American West.
Early in the 20th century nearly 1/3rd of homes in Florida used solar hot water. The availability of cheap electricity in the 1940’s changed that. At one point electric companies were even giving away hot water heaters to encourage consumption.
As you consider the above and similar facts I think you can see that the dominance of fossil fuels has been very brief and very recent. As it becomes harder and more expensive to meet our energy needs with fossil fuel, we need to return to other sources.
So for now we’ll consider alternative energy to be any source of energy that doesn’t rely on fossil fuels to create it.
Although some people use the phrase alternative energy and renewable energy interchangeably that really isn’t the case. Well many even most forms of alternative energy are, in fact, renewable some aren’t.
Concern for the environment has made people aware of the impact of burning fossil fuels. While price fluctuations and occasional interruptions and supplies makes it clear that we are also running out a fossil fuel. Factors such as these have led to the increased interest in returning to alternative energy sources.
Although most people think about solar panels and windmills when they think about alternative energy, the field is really much broader than that. it’s very exciting to see all the research being done in areas such as biomass, tidal power, geothermal, solar chimneys and so forth.
I think we can safely expect that the use of all forms of alternative energy will increase until they become the new standard.
