Table of Contents
- Clean Energy
- Summary
- What’s Next?
In the previous segment, we learnt about Nuclear energy, In this segment, we will try and find out of all the different sources of energy, which is the cleanest.
What is Clean energy?
Any energy which does not pollute the environment, harm it or destroy the earth can be called Clean energy.
We know that energy sources like fossil fuels are not clean energy. But this does not mean that the alternative sources of energy like solar energy, wind energy or tidal energy are clean. In fact, there is no energy source that is entirely clean.
Let us understand this with the help of an example.
We know that using coal to heat water is not environmentally friendly. This is because,
- Coal gives out a lot of smoke causing air pollution
- Coal cannot be reused. That is, once used, it cannot be converted into any usable form
- It is non-renewable, that is, coal takes millions of years to form.
Alternately, if we use an electric stove to heat the same quantity of water, which is powered by electricity generated from tidal energy, it seems environmentally friendly. The reasons being,
- The electric stove does not give any smoke, so no air pollution
- Tidal energy is reusable umpteen number of times
- Tides can keep giving more energy, making it a renewable source of energy.
But when we build a dam to use tidal energy or any other equipment to tap into these energy sources, we are in some way or the other disturbing the environment and it will lead to some collateral damage.
In other words, these methods of producing energy do less harm to the environment when compared to fossil fuels, but they are not completely harmless either.
