• Availability: the biggest one because it is readily available in the air. There is no element on the earth that is as abundant as hydrogen. (Energy, 2015) Disadvantages • Dependency on Fossil Fuels: you need other resources like coal to separate it from the oxygen. • Flammable: hydrogen has a lot of stored energy and there are constant reminders of the risks associated with it. • Ease of Replacing Infrastructure: the bills just seemed to rise when trying to replace the traditional methods with the use of hydrogen and to add on to that there is not existing hydrogen infrastructure to start off with in the first place.
The first one is that it is efficient. It is “up to 50 percent or greater for fuel cells, up to 90 percent or greater for electric motors powering the car, compared with 25 percent efficiency for an internal combustion engine” (Crabtree). A second advantage is reduced dependence on foreign oil – hydrogen can be produced from natural gas or from entirely renewable resources such as solar decomposition of water. A third potential advantage of hydrogen is environmental – the emissions from the hydrogen car are harmless: water and a small amount of heat, though the emissions from producing hydrogen vehicles in the first place emissions may dip significantly into this advantage
These primary sources are converted to electricity, a secondary energy source, which flows through power lines and other transmission infrastructure to your home and business. 7 Types of Renewable Energy Sources 1. Solar Energy One of the first renewable sources of energy is sunlight. It is the reason why life on the planet Earth has flourished and is the one truly renewable source of energy. About 70% of sunlight gets reflected back into the space and we have only 30% of sunlight to meet up our energy demands.
To begin with, nuclear energy has several major advantages. A large amount of energy can be produced with only a tiny amount of energy input to the power generator. The maintenance cost is low also. Therefore, it is a cost-effective energy source comparable to fossil fuel. Moreover, unlike fossil fuel, it will not cause serious air pollution.
If the hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels, some pollutants are produced (granted, less than in conventional petrol engines, but not altogether as clean as some motor companies would lead on). • Furthermore the cost of construction of the processing plants needed to produce hydrogen would be exorbitant, due to hydrogen rarely existing as free hydrogen. It usually is bound to something else, like hydrogen in water or in natural gas. The hydrogen would then need to be trucked to the stations and stored in large above-ground tanks, another cost factor, that would all need to be functioning alongside standard petrol processing and delivering systems while a phase-out occurs. This ultimately means tax money will have to support two separate and functioning systems at the same time.
To successfully have hydrogen as a fuel source, it needs to have no greenhouse gas produced while it is being produced or used. According to the Joseph J. Romm, author of The Promise of Hydrogen, “The environmental paradise of a hydrogen economy rests on two pillars: a pollution-free source for the hydrogen itself and a device for converting it into useful energy without generating pollution.” At the moment, when producing hydrogen as a fuel source
However, as like FOSSILS FUELS hydrogen is not a primary source of energy , it is an energy carrier. It can store and transport energy from any energy source. Hydrogen is not freely available in universe and it can be produced from water and other compounds. If hydrogen is producing from water, the energy which is required to produce it costs more than one can easily recover it from burning it.
If we don’t replace fossil fuels with other clean energy, our Co2 level will be as many as the time of the dinosaurs and we don’t know what will our lives be if this really happened. The best way to solve this is by using solar energy. You may think that solar energy isn’t enough but we can use it with other clean energy. It is a wise choice to use solar energy because solar energy is renewable and abundant, it is environmentally friendly, and it is also available around the world. Solar is the most abundant energy resource on Earth.
One of these fuels is known as the element thorium. Thorium has great potential to be a reactor fuel because it outputs far more energy at the same cost, as well as being a safer material to use in the event of a nuclear meltdown (“Pros and Cons”). Another pro of nuclear energy is its relative safety compared to other sources of energy. Fossil fuel energy comes with a high rate of accidents and death. Mining accidents, oil rig explosions, and illnesses such as lung cancer and other ailments are far more common to occur than issues with nuclear reactors.
Hence heat energy can be retrieved almost anywhere under the earth (Raven, et al. 2012). Similar to other renewable energy sources, geothermal energy has environmental and economic advantages compared to fossil fuels. Geothermal energy is captured using a geothermal power plant. These power plants are used to generate electricity from geothermal energy sources which are within the earth.