Renewable Energy in Africa - Avoiding Fossil Fuels

Avoiding Fossil Fuels

See also: Global warming, Peak oil, and Energy security

By investing in the long term energy solutions that alternative energy sources afford, most African nations would benefit significantly in the longer term by avoid the pending economic problems developed countries are currently facing.

Although in many ways fossil fuels provide a simple, easy to use energy source that powered the industrialization of most modern nations, the issues associated with the widespread use of fossil fuels are now numerous, consisting of some of the world's most difficult and large scale global political, economic, health and environmental problems. The looming energy crisis results from consuming these fossil fuels at a rate which is unsustainable, with the global demand for fossil fuels expected to increase every year for the next several decades, compounding existing problems.

While a great number of projects are currently underway to expand and connect the existing grid networks, too many problems exist to make this a realistic option for the vast majority of people in Africa, especially those who live in rural locations. Distributed generation using renewable energy systems is the only practical solution to meet rural electrification needs.

Read more about this topic:  Renewable Energy In Africa

Famous quotes containing the words avoiding and/or fossil:

    “If men as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts, avoiding pain and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves, the result for them all taken together must be a state of insecurity, of fear, and of promiscuous misery.”
    —Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

    “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)