Energy for the future

Topic Selected: Energy

General Article icon Type: General Article

Fossil fuels provide most of the world’s energy. We depend upon them, and many developing countries want to use more. They took millions of years to form. But humankind will have taken just a few hundred years to use them up.
This means that fossil fuels are non-renewable energy sources. Oil and gas could be in short supply within your lifetime. Fossil fuels also cause carbon emissions and so contribute to climate change. But we can’t simply stop using them. So we need to use what remains more efficiently, so that:

  • they contribute less to climate change;
  • they last as long as possible.

We also need new sources of energy that can one day replace fossil fuels.
Renewable energy sources are replenished as fast as they are used up. They never run out, and can lead to much lower emissions. They include wind, solar, wave and tidal power.
Nuclear power is not a renewable energy source, but it could replace or supplement fossil fu

