What are non-renewable energies

Since the beginning of time, human beings have been looking for help in nature to be able to survive and improve their quality of life. For this reason, one of the first most important advances that were made would be the discovery and, later, the control of fire, a heat source with countless uses: from serving as a heater, through use in the kitchen, to lighting in the darkness. In this lesson from a TEACHER we will explain what are non-renewable energies and the uses that are made of these.

To know what non-renewable energies are, we have to define that they are elements that found in nature in limited quantity, that is to say, they are sources that are exhausted because the renewal of these requires many years.

These energies are used from the beginning as fuels for the progress of civilization, expanding their use from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, where the inventions that appeared required large amounts of energy, as was the case with the steam engine.

Within the nonrenewable energy we will find two types of fuels:

• Fossil fuels
• Nuclear energy

Continuing with our lesson on what non-renewable energies are, we must talk about coal, natural gas and oil, which are called fossil fuels because have been generated after the decomposition of organisms that inhabited the planet millions of years ago.

Thus, these energy sources are the following:

• Coal: It is of plant origin, therefore it was generated through land plant remains thousands of years ago. It was one of the first energies to be used, because since the dawn of civilization, we will find its use. Coal can also be generated from burning wood, and can be regenerated more quickly. Its use today has been declining, in favor of other cleaner energies that have been appearing. Even so, we can still find stoves in village houses that work with this source of energy, in addition to its use for grills and in industry.
• Natural gas and oil: Unlike coal, these two sources of energy come from remains of microorganisms and animals that lived millennia ago. Due to decomposition, pockets were generated underground where they were preserved from the outside. Natural gas is generated by the decomposition of said remains, remaining in the upper part of the bag; while the oil remains in the lower part, being itself the result of the decomposition of the organisms.

The problem with the disproportionate use of these is that these bags took many years to generate and to a matter of decades we are ending them without leaving time for the earth to generate new bags.

Plastics and even some medicines are generated from these elements, although the highest percentage is burned to generate energy, which also causes a large amount of waste to be expelled into the environment CO2.

Surely you know the latest news on the use of nuclear energy, because in recent years there is carrying out a policy to eliminate the various nuclear power plants due to their high level of danger.

However we have to say that, although it is dangerous because they are used chemical reactions To release energy from these substances, if waste is stored correctly and is prevented from being dumped into the environment, it is energy that we can still use for a little longer.

From the beginning it has been used to generate heat and electricity, supplying both cities and industry. However, a carelessness in waste can generate great losses in the environment, completely changing the landscape and life in it.

That is why they are looking for energies that are not so polluting for the environment, such as renewable energy, which, although they are more respectful with the environment, also change the landscape and interact in one way or another with the species that live in those places. In the same way, we have to say that, although now they seem to be on the rise, they are much more expensive to install, hence there is still a long way to go.