Contribution of Different Renewable Energy Forms to the Global Energy Profile

 Contribution of Different Renewable Energy Forms to the Global Energy Profile

The 21st century has witnessed the rise of awareness of global ecological problems. Organizations such as Greenpeace advocate for conservation of nature and non-damaging ecological behavior. For sustaining change on a global scale, people’s wish cannot be enough. Technological solutions have to be established in order to prevent adverse effects of progress on global natural balance. Air and water pollution have become a significant problem due to the heavy use of coal and oil for heating buildings and powering mechanisms. Above that, the resources of oil are limited, which enables people to seek other solutions. Presently, the percentage of renewable energy use globally does not exceed 13.8% (IEA, 2017). The scope of the study is limited to renewable energy solutions in the field of generating electricity and heating. As the main methodology, a systematic review was chosen. The relevance of this study is dictated by the high dependence of the world economy on fossil fuels, which negatively affects health and wellbeing of people and harms the environment. The present research aims to explore the extent of the contribution of different renewable energy forms to the global energy profile in the present and future.


Methodology
To discover and compare the contribution of various renewable sources of energy, the research used academic literature on specific topics such as solar, waste, wind, and water energy. In total, 12 sources were picked for analysis, 3 for each energy source. Google Scholar was used as the primary source engine, where articles were found using the following search terms: “solar energy perspectives,” “waste energy perspectives,” “bioenergy,” “wind energy effectiveness,” water energy perspectives,” “renewable sources of energy.” In each case, the search engine produced 30,000 to 100,000 results in more than ten pages. Sources were then handpicked from the results according to the relevance of the title to the current study.

Results
Present Contribution
Solar Energy
The present contribution of solar energy is rather small judging from the share it has in the overall global energy profile. According to REN21 (2016), solar power occupies approximately 1.4% of all energy market. Despite being drawn from the practically unlimited source, solar energy has so little use due to the fact that the establishment of proper infrastructure could be costly (Hernandez et al., 2014). Nonetheless, solar energy practically generates zero CO2, which is why it is considered one of the ‘green’ energy sources (Sharma, Tiwari, & Sood, 2012). Reducing the harmful effects to the planet is a task that solar power does effectively. It is often said that each kilowatt of power generated through solar panels saves half a kilogram of CO2 emissions (IEA, 2017). However, it may be wrong due to the fact it is not guaranteed that when a solar module is installed somewhere in the world in another place, a coal furnace stops working.

Global energy demand is rising with the amount of gadgets that need to be charged. Therefore, solar power’s contribution into saving planet from CO2 emissions is limited. It merely generates additional power that does not pollute the planet. It also saves the Earth from the harm that is done each day by coal-burning power plants. In addition, certain researchers tend to argue that the environmental cost of production and installation has to be considered when assessing the impact of the technology on nature. This seems to be somewhat illogical due to the fact that technology of producing solar panels and the technology that solar panels use to produce electricity are two different technical solutions that cannot be assessed collectively. Currently, the technology of gathering solar energy is somewhat unreliable due to the low amount of solar activity in some regions. In many places, the cost of the panels, installation, and maintenance costs are too great to be able to let the user regain the costs for a reasonable period of time, which is why present contribution is somewhat limite