A lot has been said about climate change. I like what senator Bernie Sanders says on the subject. "I believe along with Pope Francis and almost all scientists, that climate change is threatening this planet in horrendous ways, and that we have to be aggressive in transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel." Sen. Bernie Sanders. To bring about meaningful change countries must act decisively and urgently making policies to arrest climate change. This requires that they not only invest in clean, renewable energy sources but also in reducing worldwide energy consumption. A number of technologies are currently under development which can make this happen. A few promising developments are highlighted below. In France a development is underway to combine solar cells into a 1000 km long road …show more content…
Technology is also fast under development which harnesses the energy of the sea. United States alone has a potential of 2100 terawatt - hour of energy from waves incident on its shores. While the technology is still nascent, development is underway to create commercially viable solutions which use the energy of ocean waves & currents and convert this into electricity using specially designed generators. Considering that the world is 75 per cent water the potential for ocean-wave related energy is huge. A number of technologies harness solar power. Among these are Power Towers which are very tall structures with many heat absorbing mirrors -called heliostats- surrounding them in a long radius. Each tower can be as tall as 459 ft and with up to 170,000 heliostats. These reflect light onto a receiver at the top of the tower. Steam is produced in the receiver & used to run a conventional turbine generator . This technology would be perfect in hot areas such as desert countries countries near the equator, etc. Other solutions include the molten-salt solar power