 You get home from school, open the fridge to get a glass of orange juice, put a snack in the microwave, call your friend to chat, turn on the TV and sit on the couch. Can you image how much electricity you just spent in the last ten minutes?
What if there was a blackout? There would be absolutely nothing to do! You would be very bored.
Can you imagine if we ran out of energy and black outs happened all the time? Relax, this isn't going to happen tomorrow. But if we don’t conserve our energy, it just might not be there in the future.
In our daily lives we don’t even realize how dependent we are on electricity and how much of it we waste. It seems that there is an infinite amount of electricity at our disposal so we can watch TV, talk on the phone, email with our friends and have the radio on all the time.
What’s energy?
Energy is a natural phenomenon. It is produced by waterfalls, animals, plants, the sun and the wind.
We convert large amounts of energy into electricity to make our lives more comfortable. We use several methods to do that.
64.1% of electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum (oil) and natural gas. These methods fuel our cars and our everyday appliances. But burning fossil fuels (to provide the energy we need) also releases carbon dioxide and other pollutants that are very bad for the environment.
These pollutants can cause acid rain, the greenhouse effect and damage the ozone layer. Also, petroleum is a limited resource that one day will no longer exist.
There are many ways to get energy
Other popular methods around the world to create electricity include nuclear power and hydropower. Nuclear power produces 17.0% of the world’s electricity and hydropower produces 17.3%. Unlike fossil fuels, nuclear-generated electricity doesn’t release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That is much better!
But, nuclear power also isn’t 100% environmentally friendly because it generates nuclear waste. Nuclear waste is radioactive and can cause deformities and diseases such as cancer. This nuclear trash has to be put in special repositories so it doesn’t contaminate the soil, the water and ourselves.
Hydropower on the other hand, utilizes a process in which flowing water is used to spin a turbine connected to a generator. The process itself is environmentally friendly but still has a big drawback. Hydropower plants require a lot of space. Often the flow of a river must be changed to build hydropower plants, and this can interfere with the natural habitat of the animals that live in the area.
Environmentally-friendly energy
What about the sun and the wind? Can they be used to produce energy?
Yes, solar and wind power are both environmentally-friendly but are used less often.
Solar power is derived from the energy of the sun. Wind power is derived by converting energy contained in wind into electricity. These two methods are clean sources of energy that don’t damage our environment or our health. But currently less than 2% of the world uses the sun and the wind as energy sources. Don’t get discouraged, many scientists are working to find more efficient ways of utilizing these sources and to discover other alternatives.
So what can we do in the meantime? Conserve! Save as much energy as you can! Turn off the lights when you leave a room, don’t leave the TV on when you are not watching it and spread the word about what you learned today. At the very least, you will save your parents some money and get them off your back.
What does it mean?
Fossil Fuels: Fuels—such as coal, natural gas, and crude oil— that come from the compressed remains of ancient plants and animals. Gasoline and diesel are fossil fuels that can be burned in internal combustion engines to power everything from jet planes to automobiles to railroad locomotives.
Acid Rain: is precipitation containing harmful amounts of nitric and sulfuric acids formed primarily by nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides released into the atmosphere when fossil fuels are burned.
Greenhouse Effect: Increases in temperature caused when incoming solar radiation is passed but outgoing thermal radiation is blocked by the atmosphere.
Ozone Layer: Layer of gases which protects the Earth's surface from excess ultraviolet light.
Radioactive: Giving off radiation. Radioactive describes the spontaneous disintegration of atomic nuclei accompanied by the emission of small particles. Depending on the type of emission, scientists define alpha (helium nuclei), beta (electrons or positrons), and gamma radiation (short-wavelength electromagnetic waves).
Related Links
www.earthforce.org
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