What Is Clean Energy?

What is Clean Energy? Clean energy refers to renewable sources of energy, either from resources that are unlimited or easily replenished. Clean energy also means that the by product or waste produced from using these sources of energy isn’t toxic to people or the environment. To say it another way; renewable energy is energy that can be reused and recycled while producing minimum pollutants. Examples of clean energy include wind, hydro, solar, and biofuel.

Types of Clean Energy

Wind power refers to the usage of wind turbines to harness the winds energy to generate power. This is usually done in areas that are consistently windy such as plateaus, plains and canyons.

Hydropower refers to the manipulation of water to produce clean energy. This form of clean energy has been around for a while. The construction of dams by federal and state governments has been a longstanding method for producing energy in the United States and abroad. Further advancement in hydropower technology has lead to other way to produce energy from streams and rivers. In recent years water turbines have been built and mounted at the bottom of rivers to produce energy. This method of producing energy is still in the developmental stages, but we can expect to see more focus in this area of clean energy in the future.

Solar power is the use of solar cells that capture and convert the energy of the sun into usable power. Though this process is thought to be complex it’s actually quite simple. Energy from the sun is absorbed by the solar cells of solar panels. From their it is relayed to a converter that converts that energy into usable energy which is then used to charge a series of batteries. Those batteries are then used to power your home or business. Solar panel technology continues to improve, creating more efficient panels and reducing the cost to consumers.  Soon the question “what is clean energy?” will be a thing of the past.

Biofuel is the usage of biological fuels instead of fossil fuels. You may have heard of people “stealing” or “borrowing” the dirty oil from the grease traps of local restaurants (you know the old oil they use to make your fries in). While this isn’t the most ideal form of biofuel, it does work for some diesel fueled vehicles. However this “dirty oil” wouldn’t really qualify as clean energy. The ideal biofuel is processed fuels that are made from biological sources. There are a number of crops that can be grown quickly to produce this type of fuel. Look for this type of energy to be more common as oil continues to increase in price.

What is clean energy? It’s the wave of the future. As we tread forward our need for less harmful sources of energy will continue to increase. As the demand for these clean, alternative sources of energy increases so will the amount of money and resources that will be spent on discovering and improving them. It is not a matter of if clean energy will be the primary sources of energy in the future, simply a matter of when.