Bio-fuels and non renewables Flashcards
What are biofuels ?
renewable energy resources created from either plants or animal dung. They can be solid, liquid or gas and can be burnt to produce electricity or run cars in the same way as fossil fuels.
Advantages or disadvantages of biofuel
Carbon neutral although there is debate about this as it’s only really true if you keep growing plants at the same rate you’re burning them
Fairly reliable as crops take a relatively short time to grow and different crops can be grown all year round. However, they cannot respond to immediate energy demands. To combat this, biofuels are continuously produced and stored for when they’re needed.
The cost to refine bio-fuels is very high and some worry growing crops specifically for bio fuels will mean there isn’t enough space, water to meet the demands for crops that are grown for food.
In some regions, large areas of forest have been cleared to make room to grow biofuels, = lots of species losing their natural habitat. The decay and burning of this vegetation also increases CO2 and methane.
Advantages and disadvantages to non renewables
Advantage : fossil fuel, nuclear fuel are reliable and enough of them r extracted from earth at a fast rate that power plants always have fuel in stock.
Running costs aren’t that high.
low fuel extraction costs, using fossil fuels is a cost effective way to produce energy
Disadvantage : fuels slowly running out, if no new resources are found some fossil fuel stock may run out in the next hundred years
Set up costs are quite high compared to other energy resources.
Environmental problems of fossil fuels
1) coal, oil and gas release co2 into the atmosphere when they’re burned. All this co2 adds to the greenhouse effect and contributes to global warming.
2) burning coal and oil also releases sulphur dioxide, which causes acid rain - harmful to trees and soils and can have far-reaching effects in ecosystems
3) Acid rain can be reduced by taking sulphur out before the fuel is burnt or cleaning up the emissions
4) Coal mining makes mess of landscape, especially “open-cast mining” . View spoilt by fossil fuel power plants
5) Oil spillages cause environmental problems, affecting mammals and birds that live in and around the sea. Always happens.
6) Nuclear power is clean but the nuclear waste is very dangerous and difficult to dispose of,
7) nuclear fuel is relatively cheap but overall cost of nuclear power is high due to cost of the power plant and final discomposing.
8) nuclear power always carries risk of major catastrophe like the Fukushima disaster in Japan
