COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Project on: Sustainable energy

Worked by Network four

Name IDNO
 INTRODUCTION
Renewable energy sources play an important role today and provide a significant potential for
the future. Developing of alternative energy can become important factor of sustainable
development of economy. Renewable energy sources are those resources which can be used to
produce energy again and again, e.g. solar energy, wind energy, hydropower energy, biomass
energy, geothermal energy, etc. and are also often called alternative sources of energy.

The renewable energies are domestic, available in any country; they are clean and
inexhaustible energy resources. They are natural energies which does not have a limited supply.

At present, consumption of fossil fuels is increasing along with the growth of population all
over the planet. That makes additional pressure on the basic resources of the planet and also has
significant adverse impact on the environment, resulting in increasing of health risks and the
threat of global climate change.

Increasing CO2 emission and increasing consumption of nonrenewable energy sources (coal, oil
and natural gas) and their limited reserves are factor which influence higher interests for
renewable energy. Also, renewable energy sources have become more important because of their
characteristics of reproducibility and less harmful impact on the environment.

Renewable energy sources that meet domestic energy requirements have the potential to provide
energy services with zero or almost zero emissions of both air pollutants and greenhouse gases.
Renewable energy system development will make it possible to resolve the presently most
crucial tasks like improving energy supply reliability and organic fuel economy; solving
problems of local energy and water supply; increasing the standard of living and level of
employment of the local population; ensuring sustainable development of the remote regions in
the desert and mountain zones; implementation of the obligations of the countries with regard to
fulfilling the international agreements relating to environmental protection. Development and
implementations of renewable energy project in rural areas can create job opportunities and thus
minimizing migration towards urban areas. Harvesting the renewable energy in decentralized
manner is one of the options to meet the rural and small scale energy needs in a reliable,
affordable and environmentally sustainable way.

Renewable energy sources supply 16 % of the total world energy consumption and the share of
renewable energy sources is expected to increase very significantly. According to the
International Energy Agency achieving the goal of halving global energy related CO2 emissions
by 2050 will require a doubling (from today’s levels) of renewable generation by 2020.

Growth of renewable energy sources reflects growth and investment in all market sectors.
During the period 2005-2010 total global capacity of many renewable energy technologies grow
to average rate around 15 to nearly 50 % annually. Total investment in renewable energy reached
211 billion $ in the 2010. Wind power added the most new capacity, followed by hydropower
and solar PV (Sawin, L.J. at all, 2011).

Governments and consumers take measures to increase the deployment of renewable energy
technologies for three principal reasons, which are interlinked:

• to improve energy security;

• to encourage economic development, particularly associated with rural and agricultural

sectors, or with innovation and high tech manufacturing;

• to protect the climate and the wider environment from impacts of fossil fuels use.

At early 2011, at least 119 countries had some type of policy target or renewable support policy
at the national level, up from 55 countries at early 2005. In general renewable forms of energy
are considered “green” because they cause little depletion of the Earth’s resources, have
beneficial environmental impacts and cause negligible emissions during power generation. It is
becoming clear that future growth in the energy sector will be primarily in the new regime of
renewable energy, and to some extent natural gas-based systems, not in conventional
International Journal of Social Sciences Vol. III (4), 2014 41 oil and coal sources. Industry
specialists suggest that the future growth in the energy sector will be primarily in renewable
energy (Herzog, A.V. at all. 2001).

Renewable technologies are considered as clean sources of energy and optimal use of these
resources minimize environmental impacts, produce minimum secondary wastes and are
sustainable based on current and future economic and social societal needs. Sun is the source of
all energies. The primary forms of solar energy are heat and light. Sunlight and heat are
transformed and absorbed by the environment in a multitude of ways. Some of these
transformations result in renewable energy flows such as biomass and wind energy.

Renewable energy technologies provide an excellent opportunity for mitigation of greenhouse

gas emission and reducing global warming through substituting conventional energy sources. In
this article a review has been done on scope of CO2 mitigation through solar cooker, water
heater, dryer, biofuel, improved cook stoves and by hydrogen.

At present, consumption of fossil fuels is dramatically increasing along with improvements in the
quality of life, industrialization of developing nations, and increase of the world population. It
has long been recognized that this excessive fossil fuel consumption not only leads to an increase
in the rate of diminishing fossil fuel reserves, but it also has a significant adverse impact on the
environment, resulting in increased health risks and the threat of global climate change. Changes
towards environmental improvements are becoming more politically acceptable globally,
especially in developed countries. Society is slowly moving towards seeking more sustainable
production methods, waste minimization, reduced air pollution from vehicles, distributed energy
generation, conservation of native forests, and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions .Increasing
consumption of fossil fuel to meet out current energy demands alarm over the energy crisis has
generated a resurgence of interest in promoting renewable alternatives to meet the developing
world’s growing energy needs. Excessive use of fossil fuels has caused global warming by
carbon dioxide; therefore, renewable promotion of clean energy is eagerly required.

Objective

General Objective
 To protect the environment.

Specific Objective
 To improve energy security;
 To contribute the economic, social and environmental energy sustainability.
 To improve access to energy for most of the population, they also reduce emissions of
local and global pollutants and they may create local socioeconomic development
opportunities.
 To protect the climate and the wider environment from impacts of fossil fuels use.

METHODOLOGY

RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES

Most renewable energy is ultimately solar energy. The sun’s energy can be used directly for heat
or electricity. Hydropower comes from falling water, which occurs because solar energy
evaporates water at low elevations that later rains on high elevations. The sun also creates wind
through differential heating of the earth’s surface. Biomass energy comes from plant matter,
produced in photosynthesis driven by the sun. Thus biomass, wind, and hydropower are just
secondary sources of solar energy. Non-solar renewable energy sources include geothermal
energy, which comes from the earth’s core, in some combination of energy left from the origin
and continued decay of nuclear materials. Tidal energy is another non-solar renewable energy
source, being driven by the moon. Though nuclear power from fission is not renewable, there is
great debate about whether nuclear power should be part of the post-fossil-fuel energy mix.

Biomass
Biomass is any fuel derived from plant matter in the recent past, and includes wood, crops, crop
residues, and animal waste. Fossil fuel was also once biomass, but in the ancient past. Biomass is
humanity’s original energy source, in use since the discovery of fire. It still accounts for 10% of
world primary energy supply and is the world’s largest single renewable energy source, since
much of the world’s population uses wood, charcoal, straw, or animal dung as cooking fuel (IEA
2012). Industrial economies may use biomass energy in several different forms. There is an array
of biomass utilization technologies, so the literature on this subject can be confusing. In its most
basic state, biomass in the form of wood pieces, chips, or sawdust can be burned. Similarly, grass
and crop residues can be compressed into pellets or bricks to be burned. Biomass combustion can
be used for heat (as in a wood stove), or it can generate electricity in a power plant, just like
burning coal.

Hydropower
Water power is the world’s largest source of renewable electricity, generating about 16% of
global electricity in 2008(IEA 2010). Where conditions are favorable, hydropower can be an
inexpensive source of renewable energy, often cheaper than fossil fuels. Thus hydropower has
already been extensively developed in many parts of the world.

Hydropower requires precipitation and elevation change to produce energy—wet, mountainous

areas provide the best prospects for hydropower. The total energy available from hydropower
depends on the volume of water available (flow), and its vertical drop (head). Head and flow are
substitutes for producing hydropower: a given amount of power can be obtained with relatively
low flow and high head, or with high flow and low head.

Tidal power
Though tidal power is in fact generated by lunar activity rather than solar, the physics are similar
to hydropower. As with hydropower, energy is generated by a combination of water head and
flow, the best sites having both high head and high flow. One method for harnessing tidal energy
is to construct a dam across the mouth of an inlet. Water can flow in both directions, when the
tide is coming in and going out, and energy is generated by flow in either direction. Head
changes constantly with the tides, from the maximum elevation difference between high and low
tide, to zero.

Compared to most hydropower sites, average tidal head is rather low, implying higher costs. In
addition, building dams and generation facilities in a marine environment is more problematic
and costly than in a freshwater environment. There is also great potential for environmental
externalities in a marine estuary, since estuaries are some of the richest biological sites in the
world. Yet in some places, tidal power may have potential as a significant and reliable source of
renewable energy.

Wind power
 Like biomass and hydropower, wind power has been used since ancient times. On the best sites,
modern electricity production from wind is very close to cost parity with sources like coal and
nuclear power. But there is a big difference between wind power cost on the best sites and on
less suitable sites.

Wind power is generated by the energy in moving air, and available energy varies with the cube
of wind velocity. Doubling wind velocity results in 2*2*2 = 8 times more potential energy;
tripling wind velocity results in 3*3*3 = 27 times more energy. More potential energy generally
means lower cost for a given quantity of energy. The windiest sites are thus much better than less
windy sites. Generally these sites are coastal and offshore, along mountain ridges, and in vast
open areas like the U.S. Great Plains.

Like biomass and hydropower, wind power potential in most regions is finite and limited by the
number of sites where the energy source can be developed at reasonable cost. But if the energy
output could be feasibly moved long distances, a region like the U.S. Great Plains could in
theory supply much of the energy for the United States.

Geothermal Energy
Like “biomass” and “solar”, the term “geothermal” actually refers to a number of different
technologies, distinguished primarily by the temperature of the geothermal resource. The
temperature of the earth increases steadily with depth, and the core of the earth is actually
molten. For geothermal energy utilization, the key questions are how high the temperature is, at
what depth, and how easily the heat can be extracted.
LITRATURE REVIEW
The use of renewable energy sources has no contribution to global warming and no polluting
emissions. In the process of transformation of renewable energy in other forms of energy,
releases small amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Almost none of them release gaseous or
liquid pollutants during operation. (Hepbasli, 2008). Renewable resources are ‘’green’’, or
environmentally friendly. This is because they do not emit carbon dioxide (the biggest
contributor to global warming) into the atmosphere. Renewable technologies are considered as
clean sources of energy and optimal use of these resources minimize environmental impacts,
produce minimal secondary wastes and there are sustainable based on current and future
economic and social societal needs. Renewable energy technologies provide an excellent
opportunity for mitigation of greenhouse gas emission and reducing global warming through
substitution conventional energy sources (Panwar, Kaushik, 2010).

The growth of renewable energy sources may also have the potential to create new industries, to
stimulate employment, through the creation of jobs in new ‘green’ technologies. Development
International Journal of Social Sciences Vol. III (4), 2014 42 and implementation of renewable
energy project in rural areas can create job opportunities and minimizing migration towards
urban areas.Renewable energy sources also offers a range of others exceptional benefits,
including: a decrease in external energy dependence; a boost to local and regional component
manufacturing industries; promotion of regional engineering and consultancy services
specializing in the utilization of RE; increased R&D, decrease in impact of electricity production
and transformation; increase in the level of services for the rural population; creation of
employment, etc. (Hepbasli, 2008).

However, there are some few disadvantages of renewable energy sources. The main barrier is
that renewable energy sources are not competitive with fossil fuels because of high costs of
investment and non-competitive price of output. However, in time, this problem will only be
lessened because of development and modernizing renewable energy sources technologies.

The use of renewable energy sources have many advantages and offer many environmental
benefits compared to conventional energy sources. Each type of renewable energy also has its
own special advantages that make it uniquely suited to certain applications. Some of the benefits
includes: renewability, environment protection, and savings of non-renewable energy resources,
energy efficiency, availability, and low exploitation costs, increase of employment, energy
security and independence, independence from frequent market change.
 From these advantages, the main benefits are the fact that these sources of energy are renewable.
That mean we can use renewable energy repeatedly without depleting it. That is the main
advantage to conventional energy sources which are non-renewable and have limited resources.
We will never run out of renewable energy (at least in our lifetime, as long as humans will exist).
For example: we will always have possibility to use sun energy. The amount of solar energy
intercepted by the Earth every minute is greater than the amount of energy the world uses in
fossil fuels each year. The wind will always exist. This advantage can provide the energy
security in many parts of the world.

A second advantage is that we can stop using fossil fuels to generate electricity. With renewable
energy we can use as much electricity as we like without adding to global warming.

Renewable sources are available. A key aspect of energy availability is a diversity of energy
sources. Conventional fuels and renewable energy sources have very different characteristics in
terms of the possibility to storage, extraction requirements, amount of reserves, susceptibility to
meteorological conditions and localization of the supply chain. These differences lead to a
different risk profile associated with the availability of the either source, according to the Policy
consideration for developing renewable.

Using renewable energy resources we saved non-renewable energy resources, which can have
positive effects on energy security and stability in the long term.

Renewable energy sources (RES) have significant potential to contribute to the economic, social
and environmental energy sustainability. They improve access to energy for most of the
population, they also reduce emissions of local and global pollutants and they may create local
socioeconomic development opportunities.

Environmental and economic benefits of adding renewable energy can include:

 Generating energy that produces no greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and reduces
some types of air pollution
 Diversifying energy supply and reducing dependence on imported fuels
 Creating economic development and jobs in manufacturing, installation, and more

Conclusion
Search for sources of energy which will not further affect the pollution of the environment,
resulted that renewable energy sources become part of a strategy of energy development in
almost all countries in the world. Considering required investment, developed countries are
leading in technology of development, implementation, and in using renewable energy. The
advantages of renewable energy compared to conventional fuels are numerous, and we can
extract the main reproducibility and total lack of emissions into the atmosphere. Renewable
resources are and the important factors for regional development.
Recommendations:

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