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Insights About Creating Your Own Energy Article
Insights about Creating Your Own Energy
from: Beverly SaltonstallCreating your own energy should be prioritized these days. Through the years, the initiatives to use renewable energy sources have been solely carried out by governments. Now is the time it is carried over to the level of homes. Every home could invest in home-made solar cells or home-made turbines to produce electricity that could be used to run basic appliances used by the household.
Nowadays the most common source of energy is fossil fuel, an example of which is petroleum products. We use them to make electricity, to fuel our cars, and even to relieve chapped lips. These fossil fuels, as the name implies, took billions of years, not to mention a lot of dead dinosaurs, to accumulate and transform into what we now mine as black gold or oil. We've been using oil faster than it can be renewed, understandably because we don't have a couple of million years to wait for a liter of petrol just so we can drive to the office. The carbon compound by-products of fossil fuel combustion are a threat to our bodies as the dark soot lodges in our lungs and a threat to the earth as greenhouse gases that prevent excess heat to exit from our atmosphere.
It is probably time for something other than oil, time for renewable energy sources. We're talking about harnessing energy from the wind, water, sun, earth's heat and biomass. These are not remotely science fiction or witchcraft. The world's biggest wind farm, Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center in Texas generates electricity for about a million average US homes. The Grand Coulee Dam in Washington State is the third world's largest hydroelectric gravity dam. The US produces the greatest geothermal energy and it is home to seven solar energy companies, most of them international. Other countries like Germany, Japan and Iceland also have renewable energy facilities.
Building a wind turbine or buying a solar panel might not be cost effective initially because we have to spend for new facilities, technology, and research, but in the long run, the energy cost would be considerably lower because the sources are renewable. The harmful effects to the environment are also minimized. So the next time you see an advertisement for a quirky looking car that runs on water for example, do not dismiss the price and look at it as an investment to you and your children's future. It is also most wise if you would start the initiative of creating your own energy through using home-made generators, home-made solar cells, or home-made portable wind generators.
Beverly Saltonstall is an environmental writer. She is the owner of
several websites related to the environment and has published many
highly read articles concerning sustainable development, pollution,
recycling and going green. She is also a guest lecturer on wildlife
and environmental issues in the SW Florida region.
Visit her website, Sustainable Development Forecast for more articles on interesting energy articles written by this author.
http://sustainable-development-forecast.com