The advantage of using green energy sources is that it’s clean so it doesn’t emit anything harmful into the air which has an impact on the environment. It’s also renewable which means we’ll never run out of it unlike oil which is expected to dry up in a decade or so.
Although green energy facilities are expensive to build, it needs less maintenance so you do not have to shell out a lot of money to operate it.
While these sound good, there are some who say that there are disadvantages to using such technology.
While green energy sources can produce electricity, how much it can generate isn’t consistent. This is because we have no control of the weather so if a certain area relies on solar energy and there’s a weather disturbance, it won’t be able to convert sunlight into electricity.
Building these facilities also needs a lot of land so we might have to cut on farmland which is what several are concerned about if more wind turbines are to be put up.
Another disadvantage is the fact that some of the green energy sources can’t be installed in certain areas of the planet. For instance, wave energy can only be utilised if the waves coming from the ocean reach at least 16 feet. The use geothermal energy can only be done in geologically unstable parts of the planet.
But if you look at such arguments, places that can’t use one form of green energy source can be substituted for another. If wind turbines require more space, they can be installed near the coast instead of putting these on land.
Although the weather is something we can’t control, it’s not everyday that there’s a weather disturbance so this too shall pass. If solar energy is being used and the sun is covered, the emergency generators will be activated and use up the energy that was stored.
The point is that there are ways around the arguments put by certain individuals which discourage the use of green energy sources. In fact, research is ongoing to try and harness other means to generate the power we require.
In the US, only 7% of green energy sources are used nationally. This was much higher 11 years ago and if we do not have to worry about the cost of oil or even reduce our dependency on it, we have to invest more in this clean energy.