ENERGY RESOURCES

Objectives:
• describe how electricity or other useful stores of energy may be obtained
from different energy resources
• give advantages and disadvantages of each energy resource in terms of
renewability, cost, reliability, availability, scale and environmental impact
• understand that the Sun is the source of energy for all our energy resources
except geothermal, nuclear and tidal
• understand that energy is released by nuclear fusion in the Sun.
The Energy We Use
 RENEWABLES AND NON - RENEWABLES
• Figure 7.2 shows that most of the energy supplies we use are fossil
fuels – coal, oil and gas.
• Oil and natural gas are expected to run out this century but reserves
of coal should last another 200 years. They are described as non
– renewables
• A non – renewable energy is an energy resource that is gone forever
once it has been used up. Examples are coal, oil and natural gas
• A renewable energy is an energy resource that will be replaced
naturally when used. Examples are wind, solar, biofuel, hydro, etc
 ENERGY DIRECT FROM THE SUN
• In hot sunny countries, solar panels are used to collect energy transferred by light
from the Sun.
• The Sun’s rays fall on a large solar panel, on the roof of a house, for example.
• This absorbs the energy of the rays, and water inside the panel heats up. This
provides hot water for washing.
• It can also be pumped round the house, through radiators, to provide a cheap
form of central heating.
• We can also generate electricity directly from sunlight . The Sun’s rays shine on a
large array of solar cells ( also known as photocells or photovoltaic cells).
• The solar cells absorb the energy of the rays, and electricity is produced
 SOLAR ENERGY
ADVANTAGES
1. It is renewable
2. It does not contribute to global warming
3. It is cheap
DISADVANTAGES
4. It is unreliable
5. Large area of solar panel is required to capture more energy
 WIND POWER
• Wind and waves are also caused by the effects of the Sun.
• The Sun heats some parts of the atmosphere more than others. Heated air
expands and starts to move around – this is a convection current
• Windmills have been used for a long time for grinding and pumping, and modern
wind turbines can generate electricity
ADVANTAGES
1. It is renewable 2. It does not contribute to global warming
DISADVANTAGES
2. It is unreliable 2. large space is needed to generate more power
3. It is noisy
 BIOMASS FUEL
• For many people in the world, wood is the most important fuel.
• It warms their homes and provides the heat necessary for cooking their food.
Wood is made by trees and shrubs.
• It stores energy that the plant has captured from sunlight in the process of
photosynthesis.
• When we burn wood, we are releasing energy that came from the Sun in the
recent past, perhaps ten or a hundred years ago.
• Wood is just one example of a biofuel. Others include animal dung and biogas,
generated by rotting vegetable matter.
ADVANTAGES
1. It is reliable 2. it is renewable
DISADVANTAGES
2. Burning of biofuels can lead respiratory and other health diseases
 HYDROELECTRIC POWER
• Water stored behind a dam is released to turn turbines, which make generators
spin.
ADVANTAGES
1. It is safe and reliable 2. it does not contribute to global warming
DISADVANTAGES
2. Habitat are destroyed during construction of the dam
3. Construction is expensive
4. drought
 FOSSIL FUELS
• Oil, coal and gas are all examples of fossil fuels
• When they are burned, they combine with oxygen from the air. In this process,
the carbon becomes carbon dioxide.
• The hydrogen becomes dihydrogen monoxide, which we usually call water.
Energy is released.
• Hence, we can think of a fossil fuel as a store of chemical energy. Where has this
energy come from?
• Fossil fuels are the remains of organisms (plants and animals) that lived in
• These trees captured energy from the Sun by photosynthesis. They grew and
eventually they died. Their trunks fell into swampy ground, but they did not rot
completely, because there was insufficient oxygen.
 FOSSIL FUELS
ADVANTAGES
1. It generates large amount of energy

DISADVANTAGES
2. Burning of fossil fuels produces sulfur dioxide which causes acid rain
and damage to ecosystem and buildings
 NUCLEAR FUEL
• The fuel for a nuclear power station is usually uranium, sometimes plutonium.
These are radioactive materials.
• Inside a nuclear reactor, the radioactive decay of these materials is speeded up
so that the energy they store is released much more quickly. This is the process of
nuclear fission
• Nuclear fuel is a relatively cheap, concentrated energy resource.
• However, nuclear power has proved to be expensive because of the initial cost of
building the power stations, and the costs of disposing of the radioactive spent
fuel and decommissioning the stations at the end of their working lives.
 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY
• The interior of the Earth is hot. This would be a useful source of energy, if we
could get at it.
• People do make use of this geothermal energy where hot rocks are found at a
shallow depth below the Earth’s surface.
• These rocks are hot because of the presence of radioactive substances inside the
Earth.
• To make use of this energy, water is pumped down into the rocks, where it boils.
• High-pressure steam returns to the surface, where it can be used to generate
electricity.
 TIDAL ENERGY
• A tidal power station is similar to a hydroelectric power station: electrical power
is generated by moving water.
• A barrage (dam) is built across a river estuary (where a river meets the sea)
creating a reservoir. As the tide goes in and out, water passes through turbines in
the dam
• Tidal power has the advantage of being renewable.
• Also, tides are predictable making it a fairly reliable energy resource.
• However, by flooding estuaries, a tidal power station can destroy wetlands, an
important habitat for wildlife, particularly migrating birds that use it to feed and
rest before the next leg of their journey. The barrage can also block shipping
routes.
 USING ENERGY RESOURCE TO
GENERATE POWER
• Many of the energy resources in this chapter produce electricity so that it can be
transferred to where it is needed.
• The thermal energy produced when fossil fuels are burned or when nuclear
fission takes place is used to heat water in a boiler to form steam.
• The steam turns the blades of a turbine , transferring thermal energy into kinetic
energy. The turbine is linked by an axle to a generator where a voltage is induced
in conducting wires when they move in a magnetic field.
• Those energy resources that do not use a fuel will not need a boiler, but they will
still use a turbine linked to a generator to produce electricity. Moving air (wind)
and moving water (hydroelectricity, wave and tidal) can turn a turbine directly.
 COMPARING ENERGY RESOURCES
• Factors to consider when comparing energy resources are:
1. Renewability
2. Cost
3. Availability
4. Reliability
5. Scale
6. Environmental impact
 ENERGY FROM THE SUN
• Most of the energy we use can be traced back to radiation from the Sun. To
summarise:
• Fossil fuels are stores of energy that came from the Sun millions of years ago.
• Radiation (light and heat) from the Sun can be absorbed by solar panels to
provide hot water. Sunlight can also be absorbed by arrays of solar cells
(photocells) to generate electricity. In some countries, you may see these on the
roofs of houses.
• The wind is caused when air is heated by the Sun. Warm air rises; cool air flows in
to replace it. This moving air can be used to generate electricity using wind
turbines.
• Most hydroelectric power comes ultimately from the Sun. The Sun’s rays cause
water to evaporate from the oceans and land surface. This water vapour in the
atmosphere eventually forms clouds at high altitudes. Rain falls on high ground,
and can then be trapped behind a dam.
 ENERGY FROM THE SUN
• We make use of a small amount of energy that does not come from the Sun as
radiation. Here are three examples:
1. The Moon and the Sun both contribute to the oceans’ tides. Their gravitational
pull causes the level of the ocean’s surface to rise and fall every twelve-and-a-
bit hours. At high tide, water can be trapped behind a dam. Later, at lower
tides, it can be released to drive turbines and generators. Because this depends
on gravity, and not the Sun’s heat and light, we can rely on tidal power even at
night and when the Sun is hidden by the clouds.
2. Nuclear power makes use of nuclear fuels – mostly uranium – mined from
underground. Uranium is a slightly radioactive element, which has been in the
ground ever since the Earth formed, together with the rest of the Solar System,
4.5 billion years ago.
3. Geothermal energy also depends on the presence of radioactive substances
inside the Earth. These have been there since the Earth formed; they have
been continuously releasing their store of energy ever since.
 SOURCE OF SUN’S ENERGY
• The Sun releases vast amounts of energy, but it is not burning fuel in the same way as
we have seen for fossil fuels. It is not a chemical reaction. The Sun consists largely of
hydrogen, but there is no oxygen to burn this gas. Instead, energy is released in the Sun
by the process of nuclear fusion
• In nuclear fusion, four energetic hydrogen atoms collide and fuse (join together) to form
an atom of helium.
• Nuclear fusion requires very high temperatures and pressures. The temperature inside
the Sun is close to 15 million degrees. The pressure is also very high, so that hydrogen
atoms are forced very close together, allowing them to fuse. At this temperature all the
atoms are ionised. All the electrons have been removed from all the atoms, creating
plasma of positive nuclei and negative electrons.
• The mass of the final nucleus is slightly less than the combined mass of the initial nuclei
and the difference in mass is turned into energy according to Einstein’s famous
equation: E = mc2
• The energy, E, released is big because the mass (m) is multiplied by the speed of light (c)
squared