• Question: do you think we will ever be able to function without using fossil fuels for energy

    Asked by 256ened46 to Andrew, Dona, Liena, Sandra, Stevie on 8 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Andrew Allan

      Andrew Allan answered on 8 Nov 2015:

      Yes. It will still take a long time to get there, but we already have really big changes with wind power – and we we see more from Solar PV, from tidal and one day hopefully also fusion! There are hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers researching and designing solutions. We also need energy storage – that could be big batteries or it could be other mechanical, chemical or other types of storage!

    • Photo: Steven Wray

      Steven Wray answered on 9 Nov 2015:

      Yes! But I think it will be a long time coming. At the moment, renewable energy relies on money from the government to be cost effective so a lot of the world still plans to be using coal for the next 50 years.

      Hopefully nuclear fusion will help answer this problem in the future, needing just sea water and lithium as raw fuels and not producing any long-lived radioactive waste. It would also be controllable as opposed to relying on the wind or clouds! We’re currently trying to design a test fusion power plant that is expected to be built some time in the 2030s.

    • Photo: Dona Galhena

      Dona Galhena answered on 10 Nov 2015:

      Yes we will be able to do that and we will have to do that.
      This would need lots of hydroelectric dams, wave-energy systems, wind turbines, solar power plants and rooftop photo-voltaic installations. One problem we would face is that the wind and solar power sources are intermittent: the wind doesn’t always blow, the sun doesn’t shine at night. Therefore we will have to rely a lot on energy storage.

Comments