Clean Energies

Clean energies are all that electricity generated through renewable sources and without the emission of pollutants or impacts on the environment. Currently, the largest representatives of this type of generation are solar and wind energy.

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She may not be on the most discussed topics on Twitter or have thousands of likes on Facebook, but believe me; clean energy is, or at least should be, the most important issue today for us as inhabitants of planet Earth.

The reason, of course, everyone already knows and knows its name: global warming, which shows its signs in an increasingly clear way through phenomena and natural disasters that often claim human lives.

And it is clear that, in a modern society highly dependent on energy like ours, electrical production accounts for one of the largest shares in the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG).

In Brazil, for example, electricity generation accounts for a large part of emissions within the energy category, which accounts for both production and consumption emissions.

According to the SEEG (Greenhouse Gas Emission and Removal Estimation System) report, electricity generation emitted 423.5 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in 2016.

But, since 2012, this is a scenario that changes every year as more consumers enter the distributed energy generation segment.

Through micro and mini-generators powered by clean energy sources, they produce the energy they consume to save on the electricity bill and stay free of energy inflation.

Types of Clean Energies

There are several renewable energy sources that allow for clean energy generation.

Among the most used are the waters of rivers and oceans, winds, sunlight, biomass, waves and tides and the heat from the earth.

All of them are available to us in an accessible and free way on the planet, in greater or lesser abundance.

Learn a little more about each of them:

Solar energy

It is the most abundant natural resource with the greatest availability on the entire planet; the sunlight.

Source of energy and heat indispensable to life on earth, sunlight also allows the generation of electricity through two different types of technology: photovoltaic and heliothermal.

• Photovoltaic Solar Energy:  is the transformation of solar radiation directly into electric current  through photovoltaic cells ,  which make up the modules (or photovoltaic panels), which are exposed to sunlight. This technology, in addition to being used in large projects of solar power plants, today has spread to millions of homes and businesses around the world through so-called  photovoltaic systems connected to the grid  that integrate  distributed energy generation.
• Heliothermic Solar Energy or Concentrated Thermal Solar Energy:  This technology, restricted to the centralized generation segment due to the size of the project required, uses a large number of collecting mirrors that reflect, in a concentrated manner, sunlight to a specific point of a large central tower, heating specific materials to high temperatures which, with their expansion or vaporization, move turbines that generate electrical energy.

Wind Energy

It is the generation of electricity through the force of the winds, in which propellers with two or three blades are fixed on top of high towers and rotate according to the intensity of the winds, generating energy through the driving force generated in the turbines.

This technology, which also allows generation by the consumer through micro wind towers, spreads more in centralized generation due to the availability of its source, much more restricted than sunlight.

Hydro energy

The most used source still in Brazil, through the large hydroelectric plants spread across the country.

In this technology, electrical generation takes place through large turbines moved by the driving force of the dammed waters of a river and which are released according to the need for generation.

Biomass

It is generation through the burning of organic materials, such as sugarcane bagasse, more common in Brazil.7

Or even alcohol, wood, rice straw, vegetable oils, among others.

Although the burning of these materials releases polluting gases into the atmosphere, it is considered a clean form of generation due to the fact that this amount of CO2 is absorbed in the cultivation of these materials, zeroing the environmental impacts.

Geothermal energy

It is the generation of energy through the internal heat of the earth, through plants installed close to regions where this heat is closer to the surface.

Through special ducts, a large amount of water is injected into the subsoil and transformed into steam, which returns through these same tubes to the turbines which, driven by it, generate electricity.

tidal energy

The power of waves and tides has great potential and is also already used for electricity generation.

Large underwater towers installed near the coast use propellers and various other technologies to capture the power of water and transform it into electricity.

Clean Energies advantages and disadvantages

Obviously, the biggest advantage of clean energy is exactly that it does not emit pollutants in its generation, enabling the decarbonization of the process and bringing clean and sustainable energy.

On the other hand, many of the renewable sources used for non-polluting electricity generation are available to us intermittently, that is, interspersed, such as sunlight and wind power.

Furthermore, some of the clean energy technologies are less efficient compared to some types of generation from polluting sources.

Clean Energies in the World

An electrical matrix is ​​formed by the set of sources available only for the generation of electrical energy in a country, state or in the world.

From the image below, we can see that the world’s electricity matrix, as well as that of most of the countries that comprise it, is still predominantly based on the use of fossil fuels, especially coal.

However, renewable energy sources, especially solar and wind, are gaining more and more strength.

Today, countries around the world invest in its use in the quest to transition their energy matrices, from polluting sources to clean and accessible energy sources.

Among these, the following stand out for their potential to attract investments in clean energy projects: China, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, South Africa and India, according to a study carried out at the end of last year by Blooomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF ).

The increase in the use of these technologies, in turn, leads to a successive drop in their production costs.

Solar energy, for example, ended 2016 as the cheapest form of electricity generation , with its installation costs breaking successive records in emerging countries.

Generating clean energy from solar is also becoming cheaper for consumers.

Using the button below, you can access the online simulator and check right now how much a photovoltaic system costs for your home or business.