• Question: what do you think is the cleanest form of energy? e.g.coal

    Asked by fashandchaps to Andrew, Ben, Heather, Louisa on 23 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Heather McKee

      Heather McKee answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      Well the sun would obviously bee a lovely clean source though the liklihood of us being able to cover the planet in solar panels is nil!Wind again is another clean source though again nt sure how many windmils we would need to have in our gardens for it to be enough. I hear geothermal engery is quite a winner in the cleaning department. The process of geothermal heating includes heating water into steam using the heat generated from the earth’s mantle. There are no greenhouse gas emissions from this energy, and it is thought of as one of the most untapped forms of renewable energy to date.

      For more info see:
      http://www.greenmomentum.com/wb3/wb/gm/gm_content?id_content=1571

      xx

    • Photo: Louisa Chard

      Louisa Chard answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      At the moment, things like wind power and solar energy are the cleanest forms of energy and we will be relying on these more and more. Hydrogen as a fuel is also very good, it is clean and can be produced anywhere and cheaply. But at the moment, we still need fossil fuels to produce it, so that part is not very clean or efficient!

    • Photo: Andrew McKinley

      Andrew McKinley answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      oooh… good question! The ‘perfect’ fuel is supposed to be Hydrogen – when you burn hydrogen, or use it in a ‘fuel cell’ (turns fuel energy directly to electricity without burning it), the only by-product is water. You do however have to make the hydrogen by using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and the ‘cleanliness’ of the hydrogen depends on how you do this. You could use a wind turbine which uses wind energy to generate the electricity, but you have to build the wind turbine! Ultimately everything will pollute until we get our renewable network in place so that we can make renewable sources possible using our current renewable energy sources.

    • Photo: Ben Still

      Ben Still answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      The cleanest form of energy is nuclear fusion, the process that powers stars. Light elements are fused together to form heavier elements which are stable, no heavier than lead. This is still future technology although advances are being made all of the time.

      I think the second cleanest form of energy is nuclear fission. Heavy elements, such as Uranium, split into smaller elements and release energy. This is the method used in all nuclear power stations. I think that this is the cleanest because it produces the least waste per unit of energy produced. By waste I include the production of all the required machinery and infrastructure not just the spent fuel. Also fission is still the most efficient way of producing electricity with current technology.

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