There’s a lot more news about alternative energies recently. Different people have different ideas about just what it is. They also have different ideas about how long alternative energy has been around. I wrote this article to give my perspective on
One way to look at it is to consider alternative energy an alternative to “standard” energy. Since the mid-1800s standard energy has pretty much meant fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas.
Our current perspective blinds us to the fact that the emergence of fossil fuels as the dominant form of energy happened only recently in world history. Wind, animals and hydropower were the dominant sources of energy until the mid-19th century.
A windmill by a ranch house is an icon of the American west because thousands of windmills were used to provide power to pump water before electricity was available.
Many people are surprised to learn that producing solar hot water heating systems was a commercially profitable business in the latter part of the 19th century and early 20th century.
Remembering these facts helps us keep things in perspective. The use of fossil fuels is more of a brief detour in energy history rather than a dominant stream. As fossil fuels become more expensive and environmental consequences become clear we actually are returning to other sources.
So for now we’ll consider alternative energy to be any source of energy that doesn’t rely on fossil fuels to create it.
While many people automatically assume that alternative energy sources are renewable, that isn’t necessarily so. For example, burning peat for heat is an alternative energy, but it is neither clean nor renewable.
Most sources of alternative energy have less environmental impact and burning fossil fuel. And most are renewable, meaning we don’t have to worry about running out of them. These considerations have led to the increased interest in exploring alternative energy today
Although most people think about solar panels and windmills when they think about alternative energy, the field is really much broader than that. it’s very exciting to see all the research being done in areas such as biomass, tidal power, geothermal, solar chimneys and so forth.
In the not too distant future we can expect that these forms of energy will no longer be “alternative” but instead be our dominate sources.
