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Specifically Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Not to downplay the positive steps that are being taken towards using renewable energy worldwide, but one must point out that all those countries except one are almost exclusively using hydroelectric power, whose availability at such scale is a geographical lottery. As for Iceland, which also relies mostly on hydroe…
Why geothermal is not renewable? Earth is not going to cool its magma soon enough
Solar is powered by fusion of Hydrogen in the Sun.
I'd use the same classification for both.
Specifically Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Not to downplay the positive steps that are being taken towards using renewable energy worldwide, but one must point out that all those countries except one are almost exclusively using hydroelectric power, whose availability at such scale is a geographical lottery. As for Iceland, which also relies mostly on hydroe…
Why geothermal is not renewable? Earth is not going to cool its magma soon enough
This is because using it cools the hole slowly and after a few decades (depending on how quickly ground water can dissipate heat gradient) a new hole need to be drilled a distance away.
Specifically Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Not to downplay the positive steps that are being taken towards using renewable energy worldwide, but one must point out that all those countries except one are almost exclusively using hydroelectric power, whose availability at such scale is a geographical lottery. As for Iceland, which also relies mostly on hydroe…
Why geothermal is not renewable? Earth is not going to cool its magma soon enough
However, given that there's no downsides to cooling down a hotspot other than, well, no longer being able to extract energy from it, geothermal is a bit of an honorary "renewable".
Actual renewables ultimately all come down to recent[0] solar energy, which will never deplete their source however much they are used. All the energy in wind, hydroelectric and biofuels has recently originated in the Sun.
[0] I say "recently" because fossil fuels are all also derived from the Sun, but their rate of regeneration is a bit too slow compared to the speed at which we use them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why geothermal is not renewable? Earth is not going to cool its magma soon enough
The Earth's heat content is about 1×10^19 TJ. This heat naturally flows to the surface by conduction at a rate of 44.2 TW and is replenished by radioactive decay at a rate of 30 TW. These power rates are more than double humanity's current energy consumption from primary sources, but most of this power is too diffuse (approximately 0.1 W/m^2 on average) to be recoverable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_powe…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance#On_Earth's_su...
Specifically Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Not to downplay the positive steps that are being taken towards using renewable energy worldwide, but one must point out that all those countries except one are almost exclusively using hydroelectric power, whose availability at such scale is a geographical lottery. As for Iceland, which also relies mostly on hydroe…
Other countries will have to be more reliant on interconnects, diverse renewable mixes and batteries. Luckily this is now almost always cheaper and more secure than fossil fuels and the trend lines point towards that continuing to be more and more true over time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Technically”
Then solar and wind aren't technically renewable either, because the sun is going to eventually consume the earth and explode. Geothermal is renewable.
That is not the case for geothermal. It could in theory be cooled down if exploited at a massive scale.
Saying geothermal is not renewable is not an indictment nor a criticism. Geothermal is great and we should use it more. It's just technically not renewable, but that doesn't matter.
i love that in a lot of countries people think these other countries are in the sticks and that they are modern... (ofc depending who u talk to but im sure we all know such a person...) :) a lot of perceptions based on old world views. Love to see these countries do so well on it. There might be many problems to solve still but it provides a degree of self reliance for energy that is really important today for a coun…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why geothermal is not renewable? Earth is not going to cool its magma soon enough
Geothermal is powered by fission Uranium and other heavy atoms deep in the Earth. Solar is powered by fusion of Hydrogen in the Sun. I'd use the same classification for both.
Most of the radiogenic heating in the Earth results from the decay of the daughter nuclei in the decay chains of uranium-238 and thorium-232, and potassium-40.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiogenic_heating
Potassium is more or less distributed in the body (especially in soft tissues) following intake of foods. A 70-kg man contains about 126 g of potassium (0.18%), most of that is located in muscles. The daily consumption of potassium is approximately 2.5 grams. Hence the concentration of potassium-40 is nearly stable in all persons at a level of about 55 Bq/kg (3850 Bq in total), which corresponds to the annual effective dose of 0.2 mSv.
https://www.nuclear-power.com/nuclear-engineering/radiation-...
The only countries with 10TWh/y are using nuclear. Large scale batteries are exciting for the future but need more development. The 2 biggest battery investments in the world are being made in Australia and California, yet still produce 4x the g CO2/kWh of France.