Hi, I'm Steve Jones, and I'm going to tell
you how to go green with renewable energy.
Now, we know that at the moment we use these
fossil fuels; oil, gas, coal, and nuclear
fuel. We use them all to generate electricity
for our houses, we use oil in our cars, petrol
comes from oil. But, can we replace these
things by using these renewable forms of energy;
geothermal, biomass, hydro, wind, and solar
energies? Well, the answer is, in general,
yes. For example, biomass at the moment is
being used to replace oil. Oil, petrol that
we get from oil can be replaced by biodiesel,
and biodiesel is a very important fuel. The
one thing we have to remember is that biomass,
which is plants, the energy comes from the
sun, so we have to somehow resolve the use
of biomass also with production of food. We
can't turn every field into production for
biomass. So, if we're going to produce diesel
from biomass we have to think well, you know
is this sustainable? Can I get enough food
for the people to eat; otherwise, I'm actually
defeating my purpose. However, for well over
seventy, eighty years we've been using hydroelectric
power; particularly on big rivers like those
in America and in Russia, like the Colorado
River has several large dams, and each of
these produces hydroelectricity. A more modern
way of doing it, of course, is to use wind
power. Wind power is quite effective, especially
near coasts where there is plenty of wind.
Solar energy is generally used for smaller
uses, because you can't actually produce large
amounts of energy using solar energy unless
you have very large arrays of solar panels.
Geothermal energy; well, you're lucky if you've
got a geothermal power plant in your area.
But if there's no geothermal activity; Iceland
for example is a good place where there is
geothermal activity, then if you haven't got
that on your doorstep you're not going to
be using that. But this is how we can go green
with thermal and all of these forms of renewable
energy.