Future energy sources

by the Glob on someday

Passive House

In order to reduce our energy needs, every building should be constructed to be as energy efficient as possible, as 40% of all energy consumed is from existing buildings. One way to achieve this is to make all buildings conform to the Passive House or similar standard. Passive houses are recommended because buildings built to this standard are extremely energy efficient and comfortable to be in at the same time. It is not only new buildings that can be passive houses, existing buildings can also be retrofitted to this standard. Just doing this alone will tremendously reduce the energy requirements for the building.

Spray on films for walls and windows and solar roof tiles

These energy efficient buildings can and should also have their own solar energy, either as solar panels which are expensive, or better still (when available) using spray-on solar film for walls and windows and installing solar roof tiles which I would personally recommend. Such a building would at the very least be zero-energy (or minimal energy), and could even be a net exporter to the electricity-grid, especially if other energy sources are also added.  We can also have rainwater collection systems added not only to potentially generate more electricity (especially using nanotechnology), but also to provide water at the same time for gardening, washing machine, car washes, WCs, and (with a suitable filtration system) even for drinking water and showering. 

Solar power arrays and solar farms

The Solúcar PS10 solar power tower, which is in Sanlúcar la Mayor, a small town 15 km west of Sevilla in Andalusia, Spain, is the world's first solar power plant is operational since 2007.  Construction of the nearby Solúcar PS20, the second generation solar plant began in 2006.   Both the PS10 and PS20 are estimated to generate enough energy to power the equivalent of the city of Sevilla, and are both scheduled to be complete in 2013.  

Wind farms on and off shore
Whitelee Windfarm is Europe's largest windfarm and is located on Eaglesham Moor just 20 minutes away from central Glasgow. The windfarm has 140 turbines which can generate 322MW of electricity, enough to power 180,000 homes. 

Geothermal energy

The obvious place, and where traditionally where the first geothermal power plants were constructed, is to build close to the surface where tectonic activity happens, typically geysers, or near volcanoes. Binary cycle power plants is one modern type of geothermal plant, first introduced in the USSR in the 1960s. A more recent development is in Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) which do not require convective hydrothermal resources, and which involve deep drilling, injecting high pressure water, then extracting the resulting heat from the steam. Depths for the EGS wells can be 3-5 km deep.

Tidal power
Since the Earth's tides are dependent on Earth's rotation, as well as the gravitational attraction of the Sun and the Moon, this source of energy is limitless. SeaGen, the world's first commercial tidal power generator is already in use in Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland.

Nuclear fusion

This is an energy source for the future, perhaps the late 21st Century or the 22nd Century onwards. Nuclear fusion works by fusing two or more atomic nuclei to form a single heavier atomic nucleus, currently known to operate at very high temperatures in the order of 1 million-100 million °C, and this releases vast amounts of energy. Nuclear fusion happens in the core of stars.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France, theWendelstein 7-X in Germany, and the Large Helical Device in Japan, are demonstration proof-of-concept fusion reactors, whose development is in progress. Actual power generation for homes would be expected in the late 21st Century or the 22nd Century. Fusion Energy can also be used to propel spacecraft in the long term future (or could even be used just for spacecraft engines, should renewable energy meet all our energy needs on Earth).

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