Here comes the Sun….energy!

Written on: December 3, 2014

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious passed a resolution at their annual meeting in the summer of 2014 “ to promote the national transition from fossil fuel energy to renewable energy sources as quickly as possible.”  Renewable energy is energy that comes from resources which are naturally replenished such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves and geothermal heat and are therefore sustainable over time.  Fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas are extractive sources of energy and are not sustainable.  They also tend to have significant carbon emissions that pollute the environment either in their extraction from the Earth or in their use.  Carbon emissions along with methane gas are primary sources of global warming.

The good news is that the use of renewables is increasing and therefore the cost for them is declining.    China and the United States are heavily investing in wind, hydro, solar and biofuels. This is significant as these two countries are the biggest polluters in the world.

This month, we are focusing on solar energy.  Solar in the United States increased more than 120–fold in the last 10 years.  Environment America reports “that smart public policies have been the key to clean, renewable solar energy  and the accompanying 143,000 American jobs and nearly $15 billion in annual investment.”

We are grateful to our Sun for its constant give-away of energy that enables life upon our planet.

Websites/topics to google:

• Renewable energy – the Wikipedia article is comprehensive and gives % of increase in use of various renewables.
• Environment America gives the % of increase in use of solar energy and names the 10 states leading the way.

(Clue: New Jersey and North Carolina are two of them.  However, New York and Georgia are noteworthy emerging states.)

This entry was posted in Blog and tagged: alternative energy, biofuel, carbon emissions, geothermal heat, global warming, hydro, methane gas, naturally replenished, rain, renewable energy, responsible consumption, solar power, sustainable, tides, unlight, waves, wind