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The big story in Houser and Mohan's study is where these cleaner forms of energy are coming from that are responsible for half of the drop in emissions. It's generally assumed that the drop is a result of cleaner and cheap natural gas pushing out dirty coal. However, Houser and Mohan show that we shouldn't be counting out reneables.
Plumer:
Natural gas is indeed pushing out dirtier coal, and that makes a sizable difference (burning natural gas for electricity emits about half the carbon-dioxide that burning coal does). But wind farms are also sprouting up across the country, thanks to government subsidies. What’s more, industrial sites are burning more biomass for heat and electricity, while biofuels like ethanol are nudging out oil. All of that has done a lot to cut emissions.
From the Washington Post:
Map from the U.S. Energy Information Administration showing how much electricity each state gets from wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal. Maine was the clear winner in 2011, getting 27 percent of its electricity coming from renewable sources — a lot of it wind power and biomass. But Maine had a lot of renewable energy back in 2001, too. South Dakota and Iowa, at 21 percent and 17 percent, have seen far more impressive growth. Both of those states got almost none of their electricity from renewable sources a decade ago.
There are many types of natural resources like Minerals, Water, Wind, Coal, Natural Gas, Wood etc. These natural resources are divided into Renewable Resources or Non-Renewable Resources. Main difference is that some resources renewed at a very fast rate while others do not renew or renewed at a very less rate.
Renewable Resources are natural resources. These are those type of resources which can be replenished over time by some natural process. Renewable resources are used to overcome resource reduction which happened because of consumption or usage. Renewable resources have the capacity to be renewed over a short period of time.
There are many examples of Renewable Resources but mainly we will focus on Renewable Energy which is further categorized into energy resources like Geothermal Energy, Wind Energy, Solar Energy, Hydropower etc. Most of these renewable resources are also called alternative energy because many energy resources do not harm the environment.
Renewable energy is one of the best example of Renewable Resources. It is generated from natural resources and used to generate power or electricity. Electricity generated from these renewable resources are stored in the grid and then spread out through high powered lines. There are different sources of renewable energy which is used for generating power such as Solar Energy, Wind Energy, Wave Energy, Hydropower, Nuclear Power, Biomass Energy, Geothermal Energy etc.
Top 10 Renewable Energy resources can be found in the following video:
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