Alternatives To Fossil Fuel Power Plants
Alternatives to fossil fuel power plants include nuclear power, solar power, geothermal power, wind power, tidal power, hydroelectric power (hydroelectricity) and other renewable energies (see non-carbon economy). Some of these are proven technologies on an industrial scale (i.e. nuclear, wind, tidal and hydroelectric power) others are still in prototype form.
Nuclear power, and geothermal power may be classed as heat pollutants as they add heat energy to the biosphere that would not otherwise be released. The nett quantity of energy conversion within the biosphere due to the utilisation of wind power, solar power, tidal power, hydroelectric power (hydroelectricity) is static and is derived from the effects of sunlight and the movement of the moon and planets. It may be argued that the net release of geothermal energy into the biosphere through volcanic activity is mitigated slightly over time due to the draw down of heat energy by geothermal power stations. This would entail an extremely complex analysis to resolve for individual installations.
Generally, the cost of electrical energy produced by non fossil fuel burning power plants is greater than that produced by burning fossil fuels. This statement however only includes the cost to produce the electrical energy and does not take into account indirect costs associated with the many pollutants created by burning fossil fuels (e.g. increased hospital admissions due respiratory diseases caused by fine smoke particles).
Read more about this topic: Fossil-fuel Power Station
Famous quotes containing the words alternatives to, alternatives, fossil, fuel, power and/or plants:
“The literal alternatives to [abortion] are suicide, motherhood, and, some would add, madness. Consequently, there is some confusion, discomfort, and cynicism greeting efforts to “find” or “emphasize” or “identify” alternatives to abortion.”
—Connie J. Downey (b. 1934)
“Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman’s natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)
“The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit,—not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is now many years that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts: the New Englander and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and Robin Hood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill; in most parts of the world, the prince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their food. Neither could I do without them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The power of lying is much less than the power of “what is not to be discussed.””
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“From the time the Englishman’s bones harden into bones at all, he makes his skeleton a flagstaff, and he early plants his feet like one who is to walk the world and the decks of all the seas.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)