Sustainable energy
Sustainable energy is energy that is created in an environmentally friendly way. It involves both energy efficiency and renewable energy. Both resources help to stabilize and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.[1]
Efficient energy use allows energy demand to slow so that rising clean energy supplies can make big cuts in fossil fuel burning. If energy use grows too fast, renewable energy development will chase a receding target. Unless clean energy supplies grow rapidly, slowing demand growth will only begin to reduce total emissions. Reducing the carbon content of energy sources is also needed.[2]
Any serious vision of a sustainable energy economy thus requires major commitments to both efficiency and renewables.[2]
Types
Sustainable Energy Media
The use of modern renewable energy sources increased from 2000 to 2019 but coal, oil, and natural gas remain the most-used global energy sources.
Deaths caused as a result of fossil fuel use (areas of rectangles in chart) greatly exceed those resulting from production of sustainable energy (rectangles barely visible in chart).
A woman in rural Rajasthan, India, collects firewood. The use of wood and other polluting fuels for cooking causes millions of deaths each year from indoor and outdoor air pollution.
World map showing where people without access to electricity lived in 2016—mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent
Global energy usage is highly unequal. High income countries such as the United States and Canada use 100 times as much energy per capita as some of the least developed countries in Africa.
Clean energy investment has benefited from post-pandemic economic recovery, a global energy crisis involving high fossil fuel prices, and growing policy support across various nations. By 2025, investment in the energy transition had grown to about twice that for fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and coal).
A photovoltaic power station in California, United States
Wind turbines in Xinjiang, China
Cooling towers at a geothermal power plant in Larderello, Italy
References
- ↑ Obama, Barack (9 January 2017). "The irreversible momentum of clean energy". Science. Science (journal). 355 (6321): 126–129. Bibcode:2017Sci...355..126O. doi:10.1126/science.aam6284. PMID 28069665. S2CID 30991274. Retrieved 31 January 2017.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "The Twin Pillars of Sustainable Energy: Synergies between Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Technology and Policy". Archived from the original on 2008-05-05. Retrieved 2007-08-12.
- ↑ According to IAEA
