RENEWABLE ENERGY
Renewable energy, often referred to as clean energy, comes from natural sources or processes that are constantly replenished. For example, sunlight or wind keep shining and blowing, even if their availability depends on time and weather.
Types of Renewable Energy Sources
The most common renewable power technologies include:
Wind
This takes advantage of wind motion to generate electricity. Wind motion is brought about by the heat from the sun, and rotation of the earth, mainly via the Coriolis Effect.
Solar
It taps heat from the sun to produce energy for the generation of electricity, heating, lighting homes and commercial buildings.
Hydropower
Utilizes moving water to produce electricity. Moving water creates high energy that can be harnessed and turned into power.
Biomass
Organic matter that constitutes plants is referred to as biomass, which can be utilized to generate electricity, chemicals or fuels to power vehicles.
Ocean
Takes advantage of rising and falling of tides to generate electricity
Geothermal
Leverages heat from underneath the earth to generate electricity.
Challenges with Renewable Energy
✅Integration with the Main Grid: Integrating the renewables with the main grid is the area India needs to work upon.
✅To accelerate the uptake of renewables, storage and battery solutions is needed in large quantities.
✅Cost factor: Renewable resources are slightly more expensive than conventional sources.
✅24*7 Power Supply: Sustainable, round-the-clock power supply along with the storage system is a big challenge ahead.
✅Agricultural Sector: Much power is consumed in the agricultural sector. The challenge is to provide sufficient power and energy to every household and to the agricultural sector as well.
Why Renewable Energy
✅Sustainable: Energy generated from renewable sources will be cleaner and greener and more sustainable.
✅Employment opportunities: Inclusion of a newer technology simply means more employment opportunities for the working population of the country.
✅Market assurance: From the economy point of view, renewable sources provide the market and revenue assurance which no other resources can provide.
✅Power supply: Providing 24*7 power supply to 100% of the households, sustainable form of transports are some of the goals that can only be achieved through sustainable power that comes from renewables.
Green hydrogen
Hydrogen when produced by electrolysis using renewable energy is known as Green Hydrogen which has no carbon footprint.
✅The hydrogen that is in use today is produced using fossil fuels, which is the primary source.
✅Organic materials such as fossil fuels and biomass are used for releasing hydrogen through chemical processes.
Significance of Green Hydrogen:
✅Green hydrogen energy is vital for India to meet its Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) Targets and ensure regional and national energy security, access and availability.
✅Green Hydrogen can act as an energy storage option, which would be essential to meet intermittencies (of renewable energy) in the future.
✅In terms of mobility, for long distance mobilisations for either urban freight movement within cities and states or for passengers, Green Hydrogen can be used in railways, large ships, buses or trucks, etc.
Applications of green hydrogen:
✅Green Chemicals like ammonia and methanol can directly be utilized in existing applications like fertilizers, mobility, power, chemicals, shipping etc.
✅Green Hydrogen blending up to 10% may be adopted in CGD networks to gain widespread acceptance.
Benefits:
✅It is a clean-burning molecule, which can decarbonize a range of sectors including iron and steel, chemicals, and transportation.
✅Renewable energy that cannot be stored or used by the grid can be channelled to produce hydrogen.
Mitigation of Eutrophication
✅Treating Industrial effluents domestic sewage to remove nutrient-rich sludge through wastewater processing.
✅Riparian buffer: Interfaces between a flowing body of water and land created near the waterways, farms, roads, etc. in an attempt to filter pollution.
✅Sediments and nutrients are deposited in the buffer zones instead of deposition in water (Wetlands, estuaries are natural riparian buffers).
✅Increase in efficiency of nitrogen & phosphorous fertilisers and using them inadequate levels.
✅Nitrogen testing & modelling: N-Testing is a technique to find the optimum amount of fertiliser required for crop plants. It will reduce the amount of nitrogen lost to the surrounding area.
✅Encouraging organic farming.
✅Reduction in nitrogen emission from vehicles and power plants.
Ionising radiations
✅Ionising radiations cause ionisation (one or more electrons are pealed out from the outer shells of an atom) of atoms and molecules of the medium through which they pass.
✅Electromagnetic radiations such as short wavelength ultraviolet radiations (UV), X-rays and gamma rays and energetic particles produced in nuclear processes, electrically charged particles like alpha and beta particles produced in radioactive decay and neutrons produced in nuclear fission, are highly damaging to living organisms.
✅Electrically charged particles produced in the nuclear processes can have sufficient energy to knock electrons out of the atoms or molecules of the medium, thereby producing ions.
✅The ions produced in water molecules, for example, can induce reactions that can break bonds in proteins and other important molecules.
✅An example of this would be when a gamma ray passes through a cell, the water molecules near the DNA might be ionised and the ions might react with the DNA causing it to break.
✅They can also cause chemical changes by breaking the chemical bonds, which can damage living tissues.
✅Short range effects include burns, impaired metabolism, dead tissues and death of the organisms.
✅Long range effects are mutations increased the incidence of tumours and cancer, shortening of life-span and developmental changes.
