• Question: Can the world shift entirely from fossil fuels to renewable sources such as wind, solar and marine power?

    Asked by ciaradougray to Rhod, Matt H, Matthew, Helen, Chia-Yu on 17 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by aniqanishat, aniqamazumder.
    • Photo: Matt Carnie

      Matt Carnie answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      We will have to eventually as one day fossil fuels will run out or get to expensive to extract. They key to ensuring energy supply is by not putting all your eggs in one basket. This means we will need a mix of every type of energy production, renewables, nuclear and fossil fuels. As renewable energy technologies get better we will be able to rely less and less on the others.

      If you ask me, solar energy is the key. Every day, enough energy falls on the Earth to power everything for 27 years! We only need to capture a small amount of that and we will have all the energy we could ever need.

    • Photo: Helen Pritchard-Smith

      Helen Pritchard-Smith answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      That is the long term aim, unfortunately at the moment the technology is not quite keeping up with the global energy demands. One focus at the moment is using what we have left more efficiently, a lot of these new technologies require a lot of energy to make in the first place so it is best to keep developing them to a point where they are good enough to replace what we have.
      Another issue is what to do with all of the current systems such as car engines, these require fuel. We need what is called a ‘drop in replacement’ as it would be really expensive to replace all of the car engines in the world. My group works on ethanol upgrading: this means they have found a way to turn ethanol made by fermenting plants (biomass) into butanol which can be used in cars creating the first example of a usable renewable fuel for cars.

    • Photo: Rhodri Jenkins

      Rhodri Jenkins answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      I reckon we could. A lot of countries use a ton of renewables for energy production … the problem is that there are issues with all of them which needs futher research. The more efficient the alternatives are, the more likely we are to use them. It’s just gonna take a bit of time.

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