Re: RE: ENERGY SYSTEMS- SOLAR, HYDRO, NUCLEAR

Brendon,

The five energy resources you mention (fossil, solar, nuclear, wind, hydro)
are the big ones, but there are indeed a few others, including:

geothermal:  heat in the ground can generate steam for heating or to 
generate electricity.  There are no emissions to the atmosphere except 
for water vapor, but there may be so many minerals in geothermal waters 
that pipes corrode or clog and so mainaining a geothermal system can be a 
problem.  There are functioning geothermal plants in the US,
Iceland, and New Zealand, that I know of and I'm sure there are more.
Unfortunately, this is only a practical source of energy in volcanically
active areas.

fuel cells:  hydrogen gas is burned to create electricity in these cells,
which have promise for the future.  Nevertheless, some source of energy 
is needed to refine the hydrogen before it can be used in a fuel cell.

wood or other plant fiber:  obviously a totally renewable fuel, but it 
has many of the negative environmental impacts of burning fossil fuels.
Combustion of organic mater always releases carbon dioxide and nitrous
oxides, both of which are greenhouse gasses

garbage:  several plants in Pennsylvania (USA), where I live burn trash
to make electricity.  This keeps the trash out of landfills and puts it
to some use.  Other plants burn methane produced by existsing landfills
to make electricity, but they are not large scale operations.  Both 
techniques still produces greenhouse gasses, as any combustion will.

conservation:  energy can be "produced" with no new pollution at all 
simply by using less of it.  Some utilities have started giving away 
or selling cheaply energy conserving light bulbs (compact fluorescent 
bulbs) and appliances.  This allows the utility to meet the needs of new 
customers with energy saved by their old ones and saves the cost of 
building new power plants.  It also saves the pollution those plants 
would create.  This is perhaps one of the most important things you or 
I can do ourselves.  Besides being good for the environment, it saves 
money!

There is a lot of info on the web about alternative energy and conservation.
For starters try this site:  www.webdirectory.com/Science/Energy

Why don't people run out and do these things?  That's a difficult question.
It's very hard to get people to change once they've become accustomed to 
one way of doing things.  One of the first steps is education.  It's 
amazing how many people either don't know or don't believe that there 
_is_ a problem with our energy use.  Governments get a lot of pressure 
from energy companies to preserve the status quo.  Many of these companies 
are multinational and have deep pockets for lobbying.  Alternative energy 
companies are often small businesses who can't lobby as effectively.  
Again, you can help by working to educate voters and getting your 
community to lobby legislators.  Also, it costs money to develop new 
technologies.  There has to be a market for them before someone will make
them in large enough quantities to be affordable.  It's a classic
business problem of how you create demand for something that doesn't 
exist yet.

I hope I answered some of your questions and that you can use the web 
resources to get more information.

Dave Smith